Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [277]
Sounds of assent came from here and there among his listeners and Tongman nodded and smiled. Then the smile faded and he compressed his lips in an expression of perplexity. Was it not surprising, then, that Hambo had so easily come upon this particular fetish? By his own account he had returned to his hut and found it on the roof. Danka, his friend and fellow-tribesman, had seen him find it.
Tongman’s strolling between the lines had brought him, it seemed accidentally, opposite to Danka now. He stopped and looked mildly down. ‘You see Hambo find de fetish, dat right?’
‘Dat right,’ Danka said.
‘You see him klem up roof, look roun’, find de fetish?’
‘Dat right, I see him. He say, “Danka, look dis, someone try kill me.” ’
‘I no ask you what he say. I sartin he say many ting. You see him look de roof adder time?’
‘Adder time?’
‘You see him look de roof adder time or jus’ dat one time?’
Danka was a loyal friend, but his wits were nowhere near equal to Tongman’s and he had been taken by surprise. He hesitated a moment, then uttered a short grunt of contempt for the question. ‘I no see him look adder time. Why he look adder time?’
‘Why he look adder time? Dat a very good question.’ Tongman resumed his perambulation between the lines. ‘Danka no see Hambo look adder time. Nobody see Hambo look adder time. I go tell you why.’ However, for a moment he hesitated, his confident expression wavered a little and he passed his tongue quickly over his lips. Then, with a dramatic increase of volume, he said, ‘Hambo no look adder time cause he sabee well fetish no on de roof adder time.’
Hambo shouted a denial and rose to his feet, taking some steps between the files towards Tongman. The latter, his brief attack of nerves now quite overcome, demonstrated his sense of theatre by turning his back on his furious opponent, drawing himself up to his full height and raising Delblanc’s cane high in the air. ‘Who got the stick?’ he demanded loudly. Neema’s baby, disturbed by all the noise, set up a lusty bawling.
‘I tell you one time, Hambo,’ Billy shouted over the hubbub. ‘Now I tell you agin. Tongman got the stick. Shove you oar in one more time, Palaver finish, Iboti go free.’
Hambo’s face expressed violent displeasure, but he was obliged to return to his place. After courteous thanks to the beck-man for his timely intervention, Tongman resumed his case. He had the audience now in the palm of his hand. They might think, he said, that if a man knows exactly when and where to look for a thing, he either has some special information about it or he has put it there himself. But Hambo had made no claim to special information, except only the knowledge of the death threats and the business of the dust – both derived from Arifa. Perhaps Arifa could now throw some light on these extremely puzzling questions …
Arifa had been pondering all this while and had hit upon what she thought a good way of neutralizing the damning point that Tongman had just made. In her eagerness she did not wait for questions, a serious error as it turned out. ‘Hambo no look de roof adder time, ha-ha, dat easy say why. He no sabee Iboti badmowf, I no tell him Iboti badmowf, I no tell him Iboti pick up dust. I tell him after. When I tell him, den he look.’
‘You no tell him?’ Tongman raised his eyebrows. ‘We go see now. Day you see Iboti, dat de day you take koonti root wash in creek, seven-eight adder woman same-same ting altagedder? Dat de day, yes? An’ you no