Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [243]
Tongman was a dealer by instinct, a settled, sedentary man, wily of speech. As he paddled out through the narrow channels in the mangroves into the ruffled, gleaming expanse of open water, he wove a golden future for himself. He would exchange the surplus of his vegetables for the salt and flint that more adventurous spirits like Cavana and Tiamoko, working in partnership, brought down from the north. Salt and flint were goods that could be kept indefinitely, until the time came when shortage would increase demand.
His net broke the water. A large, green-mottled lizard fish threshed in the depths of it, its long jaws snapping to show the rows of teeth.
‘Dis fish palava too much,’ Tongman said. ‘Look at me bad yai. I got de answer for you, my fren’.’ He took up a short club from the floor of the canoe and gave the lizard fish a blow on the head with it, stilling its movements instantly. ‘Where dat bad yai now?’
He was pleased to find the silver-blue fish with the big fleshy lump on its forehead, which he knew from the rivers of home. ‘You come a long way. Got a big head, live a long time, finish now. Only one time fish ken die, same as man.’
He felt confident he could win the case. He had made his own enquiries and had a surprise witness, whom he had sworn to secrecy. All the same, there were aspects of the business that worried him, the main one being the identity of Iboti’s accuser. Shantee Hambo was a fellow tribesman of Danka, one of the men with whom Tongman traded, and more importantly of Kireku, whom it was better to have for a friend than an enemy. These three were all the Shantee that had survived, but they formed a powerful group. And they had begun to claim their male children, which was contrary both to rule and custom …
The net was in now. Apart from the big parrot-fish, it had not been a good catch. But there were two bait fish, which he knew from the strong, brassy lustre of their colouring. They were not good to eat, but they were full of oil and could be chopped and scattered to attract the the big, black and silver food-fish that lay in the deep water of the creek mouths. This he remembered doing in another life, on a wider, swifter river.
Tongman had been a boy of fourteen when he was caught by a slaving party and sold aboard ship. His memories of childhood lay beyond the misery and terror of the voyage. They were thus in a charmed place, not altogether believed in but vivid and piercing when they came, and curiously arbitrary too. He had remembered scattering bait on the bright, flecked surface of the Roketa River, rocking in a dugout canoe not much different from this one, his father in the stern with a long spear. The memory was changeless: there was always the bright, eddying water, the crash of waves over the bar at the river mouth, the conical roofs of huts along the banks. And there were big white birds with forked tails that flew endlessly over the water. He could remember their quick shadows over the surface but he could not remember hearing any sounds from these birds, nor ever seeing them settle. In his memory they dipped and wheeled for ever in total silence …
Past and present were also interfused in an argument taking place on the outskirts of the settlement at more or less the same time, between Billy Blair and the negro named Inchebe.
‘Oh, Billee, Billee, I so sorry for you, I ready for cry,’ Inchebe said, shaking his head from side to side and blinking sorrowfully. ‘You don’ know de shit of de fire from de burnin’ of de fire, dat you great trouble, man.’ He was small and coal black, with a mobile, slightly twisted face, very quick and delicate in all his movements.
Blair’s frayed and battered palm-leaf hat dipped over his brows and the lower part of his face was hidden by a fair, curly beard. But his blue eyes were wrathful as ever, wide now with the furious protest with which he greeted all the manifold contradictions and failures of logic in the world. ‘You