Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [255]
‘See dis tree?’ he said. ‘Dis killer tree. Dis tree find anadder tree den grappul him, climb all over de trunk till fust tree life choke out.’
Kenka did not know this word and Paris placed hands round his own neck in illustration. He tried to explain the operation of this strange, deadly plant, which had seeded in some crevice on the oak and from these tiny beginnings and over many years had clambered relentlessly up to the light, murdering its host by infinitesimal degrees on the way. It had tentacles as thick as a man’s body now; one of them had leapt a dozen feet and put a smooth loop round the branch of a nearby mangrove.
‘In de finish, kill dat too,’ Paris said. He was aware that this had become a different story from the one he had set out to tell. Some darkness from himself had intruded. He felt suddenly guilty, as if he had committed some sin of the spirit, perhaps irreparable, seeing the boy’s rapt face in this dimness among the trees. ‘I want tell you,’ he said. ‘You listen good and member it. Dis a tree, we talkin’ ’bout, not a man. Man ken climb an’ live in de sunshine tagedder.’
This had come perhaps too belatedly. Kenka’s face had a considering look but his mind had taken a different turn. ‘One tree chok anadder,’ he said. ‘Den anadder chok dat one. In de finish all dem fall down.’ He made a sharp gesture with one thin arm. ‘We come back grass agin, no aylan.’
‘What den?’ Paris asked, amused and somehow touched at this rigorous conclusion.
Kenka answered his father’s smile with the look of serious pleasure he always had when he knew the answer. ‘Anadder seed come on de wind,’ he said.
FORTY-EIGHT
Father and son walked back together in the failing light. The lagoon water was steel-coloured, glimmering faintly, quite motionless. They kept well above it. In this deceptive light it was better not to go too near the water. Alligators sometimes entered the lagoons hunting for turtles. They could lie at the shadowed verges almost without breaking the surface. A moving adult was not likely to be attacked, but in the early years of the settlement a small son of Iboti had been seized and dragged under and no one had forgotten it.
High in the branches of a tree on the far side of the water a black snake-bird stretched its fantastic neck and uttered a single screaming cry. And as if this were a signal, while Paris and Kenka began the gradual ascent towards the first huts of the settlement, there began the evening clamour of the marsh birds rising to their roosting places, shrieking at the touch of the dark with a sound harsh and sorrowful like a fanfare of defeat. This lasted some minutes only, then the birds fell silent.
The compound was smoky with cooking fires and loud with the drum-beat sound of mortar and pestle. Tabakali’s hut was near the centre, facing the stockade gate but further back than most of the others, nearer to the dense foliage of the hummock that lay immediately below the pine ridge. The clashing rustle of palmetto fans was audible here in the slightest breeze and in the mornings the tallest of the palms cast thin shadows over the thatch.
The hut was the same as the others, built on a rectangle with more frontage than depth, with a palm-thatch roof sloping down on either side from a central ridge-pole. Woven mats hung from the split-log rafters to divide the space inside. In the hot season the huts were open-sided, but now in November mats had been hung all round to make an enclosure.
Tabakali was crouched at a low fire cooking silverfish on a cane grid. She smiled as they approached, but said nothing – she never spoke in greeting. Kenka, seeing that the food was not ready yet, disappeared round the back of the hut,