Kundu, page 11
He needed time, prayer, and a little solitude, to extricate himself from his dilemma. So, in spite of Gerda’s curiosity and disappointment, he took himself off in the direction of the big clump of bamboos that screened the boy houses from the main bungalow and Gerda’s garden.
There, sitting on a mossy log, he made a short prayer and smoked a long, soothing pipe before he made up his mind what to do.
First, he hailed one of the houseboys and traded him a plug of tobacco for a bamboo container similar in size and texture to Sonderfeld’s. He had the boy bring him a wad of cotton wool and, with the aid of spittle, tobacco juice and blood pricked from his finger, he made a reasonable facsimile of the contents of Sonderfeld’s tube.
Then he took the wad containing Kumo’s vital juices and transferred it to his own container. In its place he put the tampon he himself had made, closed both tubes and held them side by side in his outstretched hand—the real and the false—while he pondered how he should use them.
The forgery he would return to Gerda, so that Sonderfeld would find it when he came home. The original he would keep against the time of final conflict.
He saw it clearly and in detail: the assembly of the tribes in the Lahgi Valley, the tossing plumes, the spilt blood, the bodies of the sacrificial pigs piled high outside the spirit houses. He saw Sonderfeld proclaimed by Kumo as the incarnation of the Red Spirit. He saw himself, small and alone, in the center of the compound, challenging Sonderfeld for a liar and Kumo for a dupe and holding up his own bamboo capsule in proof of the challenge. He saw the doubt and the uncertainty in Kumo’s eyes—for even the great sorcerer could not pierce the bamboo walls to know which man was a liar and which held his life in the hollow of his hand.
The next moment he could not foresee, because this would be the moment of the final gamble, the moment when the shrewd primitive would weigh him against Sonderfeld for truth and credit and strength. This would be the moment in which he would have great need of the sheltering mercy of God, for if he were found wanting, he would be cut down by the stone axes and his blood would be spilt with the spilt blood of the pigs.
He shivered in spite of the warmth, thrust the tube into his pocket and, carrying the other in his clenched fist, walked slowly back to the bungalow.
In the rich darkness of the cool mountain night, Kurt Sonderfeld came home to his bungalow. His bones were weary from the long trek over the mountains, his body stank with fatigue and his stained clothes were stiff with mud and drying sweat. He was ill-tempered and troubled by the stiff reserve of Lee Curtis, who, in spite of his youth and inexperience, had conducted the investigation with punctilious caution. In spite of the fact that he had found nothing suspicious or at variance with the village story, he was reserved and wary and he made no secret of his displeasure at Sonderfeld’s constant questioning.
When, at the first homeward halt, he had asked to see Lansing’s manuscript, Curtis had handed it to him without demur. But, as he skimmed it, thumbing quickly through the close-written pages with their cryptic notes in professional jargon, he was conscious that Curtis was watching him closely, studying his face for any reaction of surprise or displeasure. The boy mistrusted him, but Sonderfeld was unable to put a finger on the cause of his distrust. So far as he could see in the first quick glance, there was nothing at all in the notes that could be construed as an accusation. Finally he shrugged off his fear, but the ill temper stayed with him the rest of the way home.
More than all, however, the loss of the bamboo tube fretted him. So much depended on his possession of that small sinister capsule; so much more depended on keeping his possession a secret. If Gerda found it, all would be well. She was indifferent to such things, accustomed to his having about him such trifles of native workmanship.
It was the houseboys who troubled him. If one of them had picked it up, he would be certain to open it—the Highland native is curious as a jackdaw. Then, when he saw what it contained, he would either fall into a gibbering panic or he would keep it for a trade with Kumo or another sorcerer. Either event could spell disaster for Sonderfeld.
But, when he came into the bedroom where Gerda was sleeping soundly, he saw on the bedside table a pile of freshly washed handkerchiefs and, on top of them, the bamboo tube. Gerda had found it then. She had done as wives do with a mislaid cuff link or a forgotten wristwatch—laid it where he would be sure to see it when he came home.
Sonderfeld smiled with satisfaction. His ill humour fell away from him like sloughed skin. He thrust the tube into his trouser pocket, then, remembering the mishap of the previous day, thought better of it and put it far back in the drawer of his cabinet and covered it with the handkerchiefs. It would be safe there until he needed it.
He stripped off his soiled clothes, threw a towel over his arm and walked down to the shower room to refresh himself for sleep. As he passed the half-open door of the guest room, he heard the sound of deep, regular breathing, punctuated by an occasional snore. He stopped, pushed the door open and peered into the room. Père Louis was sleeping the sleep of the just and godly. Sonderfeld withdrew, frowning.
The presence of the priest puzzled him. He remembered their last meeting and the old man’s refusal to visit him again unless he were summoned. He wondered if Gerda had sent for him. Then he remembered that Père Louis’ village was close to Lansing’s. He would have heard the news before any of them. But why had he come here instead of making straight for Lansing’s place?
He chewed on the proposition as he bathed and towelled himself; and, finally, because he could not brook any thought that challenged the perfection of his own planning, he decided that the priest had come to offer sympathy to the friends of the dead man—a natural enough gesture in the isolation of the mountains, where any excuse is good enough for a gathering. Perhaps, too, the old man wanted to make friends again. He would miss the whisky and the regular dinner among civilized people.
Sonderfeld smiled with sour triumph and walked back to the bedroom. He told himself he was a fool to trouble over trifles. Let them suspect what they would; let them hate him as much as they dared; they could not shake a single stone of the empire of Kurt Sonderfeld.
He threw himself on the bed, drew the covers about his shoulders and lapsed immediately into a dreamless sleep.
He did not hear the running feet of the cassowary bird pounding down the mountain, drumming past the village, thundering up the slope, towards the laboratory where N’Daria tossed uneasily in her lonely bed.
Père Louis heard them and sat bolt upright, instantly awake. The habit of years was strong in him; he had lived through times and in places where death walked the jungle paths, and more than one lonely missionary had fallen under the stone axes and the heavy clubs of the people he had come to save. He knew, too, that the cassowary bird does not stir abroad at night but sleeps like other birds during the hours of darkness.
The muffled crescendo could have only one meaning. Evil was abroad under the stars. The village slept and the kundus were silent, but the sorcerers were active about their dark business of perversion.
He listened intently. The running feet were closer. They were passing the village. They were turning up the slope towards the plantation. He threw off the covers, dressed himself hurriedly and crept out of the house.
The night was empty of all but stars and shadowy trees, but the air vibrated with the sound of drumming feet coming closer and closer yet. Père Louis crossed himself and invoked the protection of Christ and His Virgin Mother and walked slowly down the path to meet the oncoming footsteps.
N’Daria heard them, too, and trembled with terror in the darkness. She buried her head under the blankets, but she could not shut out the sound of their inexorable approach. She knew what they meant. Kumo was coming for her as she had known he must come, now that Sonderfeld had rejected her.
She had betrayed her lover and had been betrayed in her tum. Now her lover was coming to exact vengeance, the terrible, dark vengeance that only a sorcerer could exact.
Ever since that night she had lived in constant terror. She had not dared to go to the kunande. She had not set foot in the village. She had hidden herself even from the work boys and had kept herself in the laboratory hut, trying frantically to concentrate on the tasks that Sonderfeld had set her but that were now without meaning or potency. She was lost and she knew it. She had tried to live in two worlds, and in both her foothold had crumbled. She had rejected her own people. The white man had rejected her. The knowledge he had given her was no armour against the secret wisdom of the sorcerers.
Fearful, alone, full of guilt and remorse, she could do nothing but lie there, shivering and helpless, while the footbeats came closer and closer and finally stopped outside the window of the hut.
Chapter Nine
•
AT FIRST IT WAS A SMALL, INSISTENT SCRAPING, like the brushing of a windy branch against the windowpane. N’Daria lay rigid under blankets and pretended to be asleep. Then the scraping became a hammering of knuckles, rapid and rhythmic like the beat of a tiny drum. This, too, she tried to ignore, but the pulse never slackened and the noise seemed to multiply in the hollow pipes of the bamboo walls until it filled the whole room and vibrated in every nerve of her body.
She could bear it no longer. She threw back the covers and looked up. Kumo was staring at her through the window. His eyes were twin coals; his lips were drawn back in a snarling grin that showed his red-stained teeth; his face was distorted into a monstrous mask by pressure against the glass.
She fought down a scream and tried to turn away her eyes from the terrifying vision, but the eyes of Kumo held her petrified. She stared and stared until it seemed that the horror would stifle her. Kumo gestured to her to open the door. Mechanically, like one in a hypnotic trance, she walked through to the laboratory, unlocked the door and let him in.
The night was still and airless, but the impact of his entry was like the rushing of great wind that robbed her of breath and thrust her back and back, until she felt the hard wood of the bench press into her thighs, and her spine arched backwards in a last futile effort to escape him. He towered over her, tall and menacing, his painted face hideous, his plumes tossing, the skin of his breast shining with sweat and oil.
If he had touched her, she would have crumpled at his feet. Instead, he stood there, grinning like a tusked beast, his eyes commanding her so that she could not look away but must stare and stare until his face swelled and swelled like a bladder, blotting out the room, blotting out the stars that shone through the open doorway, until there was nothing left but the pair of fiery eyes full of gloating accusation. Then, as if from a great distance, she heard his voice.
“This is N’Daria, who stole my life to give it to the white man.”
She tried to answer him, but her throat was full of mossy vapour and no sound came. She tried to struggle, but her limbs refused their functions. Her breast and her belly were pressed down as if by a great stone.
“This is N’Daria, who thought the magic of the white man was greater than the magic of Kumo. The white man is sleeping, N’Daria. He is weary from his journey over the mountains. He will not come to you until the morning.”
She heard him laugh and the sound was an enveloping thunder. His eyes held hers, immovable in the terror of it.
“The white man holds my life, but he cannot touch me while he sleeps. Now we shall make proof of the magic of Kumo. Feel it, N’Daria! There is an arrow in your belly! Feel it!”
He made no movement. He did not touch her even with a fingertip; but she writhed and twisted in agony, clutching at her middle, her face distorted in a soundless scream.
Kumo watched her, grinning with pleasure. Then with the sound of his voice the pain left her and she was still again, stiff and motionless as a cataleptic. His fiery eyes were a mockery, his voice was a bubbling chuckle.
“There is more, N’Daria. There is more. Your mouth is full of thorns and your throat is choked with pebbles. Feel them!”
Her eyes bulged, her cheeks puffed out. The arteries of her throat swelled and her diaphragm was sucked in under the rib cage. She was in the final agony of suffocation before he released her again and watched her retching with relief, her face grey and streaming with sweat.
So, in the timeless seconds of the hypnotic syncope, he led her through one agony after another. He made her flesh crawl with stinging bull ants. He set a fire in her brain and a gnawing animal in her stomach. He made her joints crack as if distended on a rack. He made her feel the lash of canes and the mutilation of stone knives. And still he did not touch her.
The whole performance lasted only a few minutes, but before he released her she had run the gamut of torment, endured a lifetime of affliction. Then she stood before him, trembling and broken, the tears streaming down her cheeks, her mouth slobbering open, her nerves twitching uncontrollably.
Kumo licked his lips, savouring the salt tang of vengeance. Then he took from his armband the same bamboo capsule with which he had killed Max Lansing.
N’Daria gasped with the impact of this final terror, but she had no strength to withdraw from it.
“You know what this is, N’Daria?”
“Yes.” It was a stifled whisper.
“You took my life, N’Daria. You took my life and gave it to the white man. Now I shall take yours and give it to the spotted snake, and the white man will never know.”
She could not move. She could not cry out. She could only stand and wait as he brought the tube closer and closer to her body, so that when the snake was released, it would erupt like a spring and fasten on the tight skin of her breast. Wide-eyed, she saw Kumo’s fingers tighten on the cap. She smelt the foulness of his breath and felt his trembling eagerness in this moment of triumph.
Then, as sharp and sudden as a cracking stick, came the voice of Père Louis.
“Drop it, Kumo. Drop it!”
The bamboo capsule fell, bounced once and rolled into the shadows against the wall. N’Daria crumpled to the floor in a dead faint. Kumo and the priest faced each other.
The sorcerer towered over the old man like a grotesque carven idol. His painted face was twisted with fury, and in his eyes was the naked evil of all the centuries. Père Louis’ blood ran like ice in his veins; his old flesh crawled with horror. This was Satan made manifest. This was the true biblical phenomenon of diabolic possession, in the presence of which even prayer was stifled and faith rocked for one perilous moment on the razor-edge of despair.
But only for a moment.
Père Louis’ hand closed over the rosary in his pocket. With a sharp commanding gesture he thrust the small wooden crucifix full in the face of the sorcerer. His voice was sharp as a sword blade in the old and terrible command:
“Retro me Sathanas! Get thee behind me, Satan!”
Kumo’s body was wrenched with a sudden convulsive tremor. He yelped like an animal, and a small yellow foam spilled from the comers of his mouth. Then he turned and ran from the hut, and Père Louis stood rocking on his feet and listening to the thudding flight of the cassowary man under the dark drooping of the tangket trees.
Down in the Kiap house, Lee Curtis woke with a start to find Père Louis bending over him.
“Get up. Dress yourself. Light the lamp. I want to talk to you.”
“What the devil!” Curtis rubbed his eyes and tried to orient himself. By rights the old priest should have been in his village, miles away. His presence on the plantation was the final straw in the day’s burden of irritations and mysteries. “What’s the trouble? What are you doing here ?”
“Keep your voice down. Do as I say. I will talk to you when you are awake.”
Stumbling and cursing softly, Lee Curtis dressed himself and lit the lamp, while Nelson, awakened by their voices, sat bolt upright on his bedroll and fumbled for his spectacles. Then, when they were settled in the small circle of light, Curtis said bluntly, “All right, Father, let’s have it.”
“First,” said Père Louis, “I want to show you how Lansing was killed.”
He held the bamboo tube up for their inspection.
“God Almighty!” stuttered Nelson. “Not another one.”
Curtis leant forward to take the tube from his hand, but Père Louis drew it back sharply.
“Careful. This one is dangerous. Look!”
He tilted it under the lamp so they could see the small circle of air holes punched in the pithy cap.
“Now listen.”
He shook the tube and held it first to Curtis’s ear, then to Nelson’s. They heard a tiny movement and friction against the walls of the barrel.
“What’s that?” It was Nelson who put the question. Curtis was tight-lipped and thoughtful.
“Snake sorcery,” said Père Louis simply. “Inside that tube is a small and deadly snake. The sorcerers catch them and imprison them in these tubes, sometimes with a fragment of the clothing of those they wish to murder. They irritate the snake with noise and movement and hunger, so that when it is released it will attack the first object on which it alights.”
“Where did you get it?” Lee Curtis’s voice was grim.
“From Kumo. Not ten minutes ago he tried to murder N’Daria in the laboratory up there. Fortunately I had heard him coming and was ready for him.”
“He—he gave it to you?” Nelson was stammering with excitement and fear.
“Not exactly. I—I commanded him in the name of God. He fled from me and left the tube behind.”
“Just like that,” said Curtis softly.
“As you say, just like that.”
“And the girl ?”
“I left her in the hut. She is badly frightened but unharmed. But you see”—Père Louis leant forward and gestured emphatically—“we now have the picture complete. Nelson will have told you that Sonderfeld has in his possession the life juices of Kumo.”
