Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [257]
With the fish they had swamp cabbage, eaten raw, and koonti cakes – excellent these last, as Paris several times exclaimed. The koonti plant, knowledge of which they owed to the Indians, grew plentifully in the shore hummocks and in the pine ridges above them, and it was the exclusive concern of the women to gather the roots and make the flour. But Tabakali’s koonti cakes had a particular excellence known to everyone in the settlement, rivalled only by those of Sallian, and this despite the fact that Tabakali came from a nomadic people who did not cultivate the ground and so – unlike almost all the other women – she had no experience of similar root crops like cassava. But she was meticulous almost to a fault and addressed herself thoroughly to everything from gathering and cooking to cleaning her teeth and oiling her body. She had developed her own methods of pulping the roots and washing the starch free, fermenting the sediment not just once or twice but four times, so that the flour was purer and her cakes lighter in texture, pale yellow in colour instead of the usual orange. With wild honey, when this could be found, there were few things in Paris’s experience more delicious.
After supper the younger children were put to bed and Kenka went off to see his friend Tekka – his friend for the moment, at least: these two were of an age and by turns friends and enemies. Just now they were united in a common excitement as they were both to be allowed to accompany Paris and Nadri and Shantee Danka on a hunt for deer due to take place before the moon reached the full.
Inside the hut they lit a thin, foot-long pine quill resting longways in an upright stand fashioned by Barber from a cask-hoop. The resinous wood gave off little smoke and the light from it was reddish, slightly wavering.
Tabakali sat near the light on a low trestle. She was sifting through some wild cane seeds she had gathered to make porridge, taking them handful by handful from a skin bag on to a board across her knees. Paris sat with his back against a corner post, saying little, enjoying the peace that came to him always within this warmly lit enclave at nightfall, compounded of the silence, the gentle light, the deft movements of the woman. No call would be made on him here; Tabakali rarely enjoined any task on him or Nadri when they came to her. She had a strong sense of territory, and that included the division of labour; Nadri’s work was trapping, at which he was a notable success, applying skills learned from his father in childhood, snaring quail in the wide grasslands; Paris’s work was his sickroom and his garden.
Kenka did not return, but this caused no concern to either of them. The boy knew better than to go alone outside the compound after dark. It was a lesson drummed in from an early age: night was the time of the bear and the panther and the crocodile. He would be sleeping elsewhere, as he frequently did – perhaps at Tekka’s. The night was silent now except for the occasional cry of nightbirds. Paris rose to light another splinter of wood. Tabakali looked up at the movement and her long fingers rested among the seeds. ‘You worrit, an’t you?’ she said. ‘Why you keep mum? What good dat serve?’ She never missed any change in his demeanour, though it was sometimes long before she spoke of it. Lately she had seen some unhappiness drag at the lines of his mouth, though the expression was fleeting, soon lost in the patience and obstinacy that his face wore in repose. ‘Keep mum, end up poison belly,’ she said.
‘It’s nothing,’ Paris said. ‘No wort’ palaver.’ He moved towards her and put out his hand to touch the warm soft skin at her nape. He had always loved the strong column of her neck, thick but shapely and unblemished. The musky scent of her body came to him and the sweet smell of the acorn oil she used on her hair.
‘We see if wort’ palaver,’ she said. ‘You tell me, den we see.’ She smiled suddenly and he realized,