Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [275]
Tongman rose. It was the right of the accused person, or the one speaking for him, to address questions to the beck-man. ‘What dis sarve?’ he said. ‘I ask what puppose all dis sarvin’. Whedder dey bombiri leaf or no, who care bout dat?’
‘What de puppose?’ Billy asked Hambo.
‘Bombiri leaf fall quick when him stick cut from tree. Dat mean bad fetish, make house fall down me. Tongman, you head go soft, you sabee dat before.’
Billy thought for some time, his small, pugnacious face tight with the seriousness of his office. There was tension in the air of the meeting and he was feeling it along with everybody else. Apart from the occasional voices of the smaller children, complete silence reigned among the people gathered there. ‘Hambo got de right,’ Billy said. ‘He tryin’ show us dis fetish strong too much, capsai him house.’
Encouraged thus, and aware of the intense interest of his audience, Hambo went on to draw attention to the two sticks, one blunt and one sharpened, the sharp one being unkumba, the second spear of witchcraft. Finally he held up the dust-stopped whistle. ‘Dust under him foot,’ he said. ‘Arifa see him take it. Dust in whissul make Hambo die, foul him win’pipe.’
He strode back and forth some time longer, still waving the cane, but it was clear that he had stated his case and was now merely repeating it, a favoured rhetorical device of the Shantee.
After some minutes of this Billy asked for the return of the stick, which passed next to Arifa. She was a big woman, built on voluptuous lines, with heavy features and a stolid expression, somewhat redeemed by the coquetry of luxuriant eyelashes. She had taken particular care with her appearance for this public occasion: white cowrie shells, exactly matched, adorned the large lobes of her ears and a gold coin, found on the beach by Calley and obtained from him by means everyone knew of, hung shining between her breasts. These were not very much concealed by the cotton wrap thrown with studied negligence over her shoulders, and they swayed and swung magnificently with the motions of her narrative. Yes, she had heard Iboti utter the death threats. He had threatened, among other things, to open up Hambo from puga to chin and to cut off his testicles and compel him to eat them. Some laughter came from the audience at this, whether from the sense that a man with his belly cut open would not be in a fit state to eat his own testicles or at the very evident contrast in physique between the two men. But the silence of total absorption returned when Arifa began to tell of seeing Iboti gather up the dust.
She had seen him stoop and take up the dust in the palm of his hand and move away with it in the direction of his hut. It had been just after sunrise, she was outside her hut putting pulped koonti roots into a basket so as to take them and wash them in the creek. ‘He hol’ dat dust like it water in him hand,’ she said, in her strong contralto voice. ‘Like cargo gol’ dust. Never take me like dat – Iboti ball go sleep long time ago.’
Iboti lowered his head in humiliation at this. Paris heard Tabakali beside him utter a harsh exhalation of anger and contempt. She had never liked Arifa. ‘Dat one bumbot woman,’ she said loudly. ‘She put man out when Hambo say, den she say fault him ball. Dat one fat bumbot hussy.’
‘Tabakali, stow you gab, you ’pinion Arifa not de bleddy question,’ Billy said.
‘You no ’fraid, Iboti,’ Tabakali called. ‘You find anadder woman good pas’ dis one.’
‘Matthew, Nadri, you woman no keep mum, we still here tomorrow. Stick pass to Hambo agin, ask for Iboti punish.’
Hambo’s plea for the punishment of his alleged evil-wisher was brief. ‘Dis man try kill me,’ he said. ‘What he go give me now? He poor like kabo, like rat. He give me bag koonti root? Hah! Hambo life wort’ more dan bag koonti. My country, man try kill me, I kill him. We kill Wilson long time ago for kill one man. But Hambo good heart, no ask Iboti