Kundu, page 14
For a long time he stood there, head drooping, his body slack, his hands plucking helplessly at the seams of his trousers. When at last he straightened up, his mouth was twisted into a tremulous, youthful grin.
“Well, that’s it. I daresay I can take it, given time. Now wait till I spruce up, and I’ll drink myself silly on your husband’s grog.”
He washed his face and straightened his hair, changed his shirt and buckled on his belt, and then walked with her back to the bungalow. His heart was empty and his brain was tired; he felt like a man who had wakened suddenly from a nightmare and groped frantically for a handhold on reality. But his back was straight and his head was high, and he greeted Kurt Sonderfeld with a smile.
Cadet Patrol Officer Lee Curtis had entered into man’s estate.
Once again they were dining together in the candlelit room with its vista of stars and dark mountains, while the kundus thundered up from the valley and the chant rose and fell into crests and hollows of melody. Once again there was the warmth of wine and the savour of fine food and the smell of flowers and the shifting play of flames on silver and crystal.
But there were ghosts at the banquet—the ghost of Max Lansing, querulous, demanding, disappointed, inescapable; the crackling echo of Père Louis’ voice, interpreting the signs and the portents; the monstrous tossing shadow of Kumo the Sorcerer, symbol of all the dark evil of the valleys. There were ghosts at the banquet and their presence could not be ignored, their voices could not be stifled.
The talk eddied uneasily round the quartet at the table, lapsed and stirred again as Sonderfeld, flushed and emphatic, commanded their attention to a new subject or an old argument. He had been drinking deeply and steadily since the end of the afternoon and he was by turn truculent and goading, or given to fantastic condescensions and wild laughter. Gerda was shocked and helpless, afraid to provoke him, ashamed for herself and her guests. Theodore Nelson kept his eyes on his plate and tried vainly to escape the attention of his host. But Sonderfeld nagged at him with perverse amusement and soon reduced him to mumbling confusion.
Then he turned his attention to Lee Curtis. His big voice boomed in drunken mockery.
“Now, Curtis, you are among friends. You can afford to be frank. Tell me, have you never found yourself tempted to try the village women?”
“Kurt, please—”
“No, my dear, you must not be prudish. It does not become you. Mr. Curtis is a man of the world—even if a very young one. He lives much alone. He would be the first to admit his need of the satisfactions of the flesh. Well, my friend?”
Curtis flushed with anger, but he kept a tight hold on himself.
He said, coldly, “So far I haven’t been interested.”
“Yet some of them are beautiful, are they not? Scrape off the pig fat, take the lice out of their hair, wash them well with soap and water, don’t you think they would grace your bed as well as—say, Gerda here?”
“I—I—I say, old man …” Nelson began to stammer a half-hearted protest.
Curtis cut him short with a gesture.
“If you’ll leave your wife’s name out of it, Sonderfeld, I’ll answer your question.”
“Forgive me!” Sonderfeld waved a regal hand. “I offend you. I mentioned Gerda simply for comparison. She is beautiful, is she not? I believe other men find her desirable. I did myself once. However, we will omit her from the proposition. You will admit that in certain circumstances dark flesh might be very desirable?”
“Possibly.”
“To you?”
“I doubt it.”
“And yet there are cases on record of—shall we call them lapses?—even among your own colleagues.”
“Not within my experience.”
“But then”—Sonderfeld’s voice dropped to a low purring pitch of calculated insult—“you are so very young, Curtis. Your experience is so very limited. How can you say what the years may do to you? How can you promise that you will not sicken of hothouse fruit and turn to the wild vine and the apples of Sodom? What would you say if I told you that I, myself, have tasted them and found them sweet?”
“I would remind you,” said Curtis bluntly, “that it’s an offense against Territory law to cohabit with native women. I’d also remind you that you’ve had too much to drink. I suggest it’s time you started to sleep it off.”
“Gott im Himmel!” Sonderfeld crashed his fist on the tabletop, so that the glass shattered and the cutlery danced and rattled under the flickering candle flames. “In my own house, at my own table, I am reprimanded by a puppy!”
“I didn’t ask to come,” said Curtis quietly. “I didn’t expect to be insulted.”
“No, that’s true.”
As suddenly as it had come, his anger seemed to leave him. His features composed themselves into a mask of smiling approbation. Ignoring the wreckage on the table, he leant forward in the attitude of a great gentleman delivering a careful compliment.
“You know, Curtis, I like you. You have more brains than I gave you credit for. You have courage, too. Do you never feel that you are wasted in this pitiful routine—poking through the valleys, sitting in judgment on childish disputes, listening to childish lies, making little lists of folk who will be dead in two years, writing reports that no one ever reads?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you are, you know. Look!” He slewed round, unsteadily, in his chair and flung his arm out in a forensic attitude towards the picture window that framed the stars and the black barrier of the mountains. “Out there is the last unknown country on the map of the world. Behind those mountains there is wealth undreamed of, gold and oil and manpower, to turn this wilderness into a paradise. There are a million men in the valleys waiting for a leader, ten thousand drums waiting to burst into the march of the conqueror. And you have—what? Ten thousand Europeans and a shabby charter from the United Nations. Look at it, man! Look and look again and tell me whose way is right—yours or mine?”
“What is your way, Sonderfeld?”
The question was soft and innocent, but it had the impact of a bullet. Sonderfeld’s hieratic attitude was gone in an instant. His face twisted into a grin; his eyes were cunning and wary as an animal.
“Oh, no, Curtis! I am not so big a fool! Why should I peddle my visions to the blind and shout my message to the deaf? Go back to your hut! Suck your pencil stub and scribble your little notes and wait for the thunder and the lightning that will strike you dead!”
He heaved himself from his chair and lurched unsteadily to the door. Then he turned and looked at them. His face was distorted, his lips slobbered, his eyes were sullen and bloodshot. His voice was hoarse with liquor and excitement.
“The cassowary men are abroad in the valleys. They run from village to village with the news of the great coming. There is a name spoken that is louder than the drums. There is a chief promised who will raise the tribute of the valleys, who will sweep from the Sepik to the Huon Gulf, and the name of the chief is—is—”
He broke off. He seemed suddenly to understand where he was and what he was saying. They saw him struggling for control, shaking his head to clear it of the liquor fumes, composing his flushed features into a travesty of smiling charm. He steadied himself against the doorjamb and surveyed them with something of the old mockery. Then he made them a little bow and left them. They heard him stumbling out onto the veranda, down the steps and onto the path that led to the laboratory.
Then they looked at each other with relief and with horror, and in the eyes of each was the same unspoken verdict.
Gerda buried her face in her hands and sobbed. Lee Curtis patted her shoulder awkwardly and made a sign to Nelson to wait for him on the veranda. He hesitated a moment, as if unwilling to be left alone, then he went out, polishing his glasses, peering anxiously into the shadows as if afraid that Sonderfeld might be waiting to leap upon him out of the darkness.
Slowly, painfully, Gerda recovered herself. She dried her eyes on Curtis’s handkerchief and took the cigarette that he offered her. She smoked a few moments in silence until her hands stopped trembling and her tight nerves began to relax. Then she turned to him with a simple, pathetic question.
“What am I going to do, Lee? Tell me, please.”
“Wait. That’s all you can do. Wait till George Oliver gets here.”
“But Kurt … ? You saw him. What … ?”
“He was drunk. He’ll sober up before morning.”
“He was mad. You know that as well as I do.”
“There’s no one here to certify him, Gerda.”
“But what am I to do?” It was a cry of terror wrung from her by the sudden press of memories she had thought buried forever—memories of Rehmsdorf and the gas chambers and the protracted torment of the damned and the dispossessed.
“Nothing. Nelson and I will stay here tonight, in the guest room. You’ve only to raise your voice and we’ll come running. Besides, he may not even come back. He may decide to sleep it off in the laboratory.”
She saw him then with new eyes. She saw him tempered, as steel is tempered, violently and abruptly in fire and water, to a new strength and hardness. The soft lines of youth had disappeared. His mouth and his eyes were hard and the skin of his cheeks was tight as vellum on a drum. This was what must have happened to George Oliver—this and things like it—until youth was dead and there were no illusions left and the heart was empty of all but strength.
She came to him then and took his face in her hands and kissed him gently on the lips, and though he knew that she was kissing another man, he did not resent it. He took her arm and led her out onto the veranda where Theodore Nelson was waiting for them.
For all his huckster’s shrewdness, for all the bright burnish that travel had given him, the round-faced, myopic fellow was of indifferent courage. He drove hard bargains for the men who stood behind him in business. He made profit for scant payment in the casual commerce of the bed. His mind was a card index of facts and figures and dossiers of people who might be useful to him. He was amusing when he cared to be, brusque and inconsiderate when his comfort or convenience were involved. He had travelled the world in pursuit of one star, apparently unaware that it was a gaudy pasteboard pinned to his own navel. Inside, he was as hollow as a coconut.
He had made his alliance with Lee Curtis because, despite his youth, the patrol officer represented the big battalions. Now, when the treaty seemed to demand service in return for protection, he wanted to dissolve it as soon as possible. Sitting alone in the darkness, listening to the beat of the drums, he had framed his proposition with some care. Now he laid it before Lee Curtis.
“Have you told Mrs. Sonderfeld about the—er—arrangements?”
“About Oliver coming up? Yes. There was no good reason why she shouldn’t hear about it.”
“Good. When do you expect Oliver to get here ?”
“Late tomorrow, possibly. More than likely the following morning.”
“Will he be bringing more police with him?”
“I should think so. Depends on what’s available in the pool at Goroka. Why?”
“Well—er—I have a very tight schedule, as you know. Lots of places still to see in the Territory. Then I have to get back to Sydney to catch a ship for Colombo—”
“Yes?”
The monosyllable wasn’t encouraging, but Theodore Nelson stuck to his script.
“Well, I’m not much use to you here. This sort of fandango isn’t my choice of entertainment. So I thought—er—with Oliver on the way, you’d be able to give me a couple of police boys for escort back to Goroka. I could leave first thing in the morning.”
“You could leave tonight.”
“Well, there’s not that much hurry. But, of course, if you thought …”
“You want to know what I think, Nelson?”
“What?”
Curtis’s voice was a savage lash of anger and contempt.
“I think you ‘re a yellow-livered bastard. So far as I’m concerned, you can get out any time you like—alone!”
“You have a duty to protect me. That’s the understanding on which the company …”
“You’re being protected. You’re sitting on this veranda with your belly full of food and whisky. What more do you want?”
“There’s trouble blowing up. If you can’t guarantee my safety, then I demand to be sent back under escort.”
“I can’t spare an escort. Besides, the southern tracks are as safe as King’s Cross—a damn sight safer, come to that. The trouble’s up there, fifteen, twenty miles north. You’ll be going the other way. I’ll give you two days’ rations and you can sleep in the Kiap houses. That’s the best I can do. Make up your own mind.”
Before Nelson had time to frame his reply, the drums stopped abruptly. The sudden silence was as commanding as a trumpet blast. Tense, expectant, they peered out across the valley. They saw no movement. Even the trees and the feathery bamboos hung still in the windless air. Then, distant but distinct, they heard the crescendo beat of the running cassowary.
“What’s that?” Gerda whispered the question close to Curtis’s ear.
“Cassowary,” said Curtis flatly.
“Kumo?”
“Probably.”
“What do you mean—Kumo?” Nelson’s voice was a husky croak. “A man doesn’t run like that. He couldn’t.”
“I know,” said Curtis quietly.
“Then what the devil … ?”
Curtis was silent a moment, as if debating whether to answer. When he spoke, it was with a sort of calculated calm.
“I can’t tell you very much because I don’t know. It’s common belief among the tribes that certain sorcerers have the power to change themselves into cassowaries and travel between the villages faster than a man could possibly run. I’ve heard accounts from reliable men, old hands, missionaries, that point to such things actually happening. I’ve never heard one who was prepared to deny it flatly. Two things I do know.” He paused a moment, listening to the drumming crescendo. “The first is that that’s a cassowary out there. And yet … the cassowary never travels at night.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ve half a mind to go down and find out.”
“No, please!” Gerda clung to him desperately.
“You can’t leave us here. It’s your duty to protect us.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Nelson!”
For a few moments he sat, undecided whether to go or stay, then he decided with some relief that there would be little profit and possibly a great loss in an abortive effort to confront the sorcerer. Even if he succeeded, what could he say or do? Sonderfeld was the man he wanted, and already Sonderfeld had played halfway into his hands. He relaxed in his chair, lit two cigarettes, handed one to Gerda and listened to the steady chuff-chuff-chuff of the great earthbound bird that never travelled at night.
When they reached the village, the footbeats stopped, and for twenty minutes or more there was silence, broken only by the small crepitant noises of the night and the low murmur of their own desultory talk. Then, from down in the village, came a wild shout of triumph whose echoes rang startlingly across the sleeping valley. Then the drums broke out again, and the singing-a new rhythm and a new chant, savage, exultant, rolling like thunder round the ridges and the peaks.
“To hell with it!” said Lee Curtis. “Let’s go to bed. We share the guest room, Nelson. Four-hour watches. If Gerda calls, wake me immediately.”
“You can’t give me orders like that!” Nelson’s voice was high and petulant.
“I give ’em, you take ’em. If not, you spend the night in the Kiap house—alone. Come on, Gerda, you’ve had enough for tonight. It won’t look half so bad in the morning.”
Together they walked into the house with Theodore Nelson at their heels like a frightened puppy. At the door of her room she kissed him lightly and left him.
He went straight to the guest room and flung himself, fully dressed, in the armchair, leaving Theodore Nelson to sleep the first four hours of the night watch.
At two in the morning Sonderfeld had still not returned, so he woke Nelson and sat him, grumbling and ill-tempered, in the chair, while he himself stretched out on the bed for a few hours of uneasy slumber.
But Nelson was a man who needed his rest. He nodded and dozed fitfully and finally slept, forgetting even to awake Curtis to relieve him.
When morning came, they found that Sonderfeld was gone, taking N’Daria with him, and that the whole village was moving out to the pig festival.
Chapter Twelve
•
THEY POURED OUT OF THE VALLEY like an army on the march.
Plumed and painted, armed with stone axes and clubs and bows and arrows, the warriors strode out to the beat of the black kundus. Their marching song was a long repetitive ululation, counterpointed to the pattern of the snakeskin drums. The sound echoed and re-echoed till it hung like a moving haze of melody along the shoulders of the mountains.
Behind the warriors came the unmarried girls dressed in their finery, their blood pulsing in time with the kundus, their flesh fired by the sight of the sweating male bodies rippling and swaying in the stamping gait of the march. Between them were the pigs—some carried trussed on long poles, others leashed and led like dogs, while the laughing, screaming children prodded them with sticks to urge them to greater speed. They grunted and snuffled and squealed, and the sound was a new theme in the wild orchestration of the tribal triumph.
Then came the married women, old and young, their bodies bowed under the weight of suckling children and huge string baskets filled with taro and paw-paws and bananas. They, too, were decked in unaccustomed finery, with necklets of green snail shell and pubic skirts of fresh taro leaves. They giggled and gossiped and took up the refrain in short breathless bursts of song. For them the pig festival was a rare release from the domestic slavery into which they had lapsed when their kunande days were over and they shed the cane belt and the ornaments of courtship.
