Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [285]
Of course, Jimmy must have related the events in precise order. Jimmy was a good teacher. He was one of those who had stumbled on a vocation here. He was gifted alike at pointing a moral or adorning a tale. And this was history now: heroic protest, concerted rebellion, execution of the tyrant, a new social order. It ran like a clear stream – useless to require it to resemble the viscous substance of truth.
FIFTY-TWO
With nightfall people began to congregate outside Neema’s hut. Mats had been spread and there was a good fire. Neema sat at the entrance, the baby in her lap, greeting the visitors as they arrived with their gifts and good wishes. She had been busy with preparations since the closing of the Palaver that morning, sweeping out the hut and the space all around, cooking, tending the fire, pausing only to give milk to the baby. At the approach of the dark she had stopped and gone to dress herself in her best, then taken up her position here. The results of all this labour lay spread on a litter of sea-grape leaves. Calley’s eyes glistened at the sight and the lean Sullivan invoked the saints. There were pieces of boiled fish, kebabs of venison on cane spits, a sweet dough made from acorn meal and dried coco plum. Various people had made contributions. Tabakali, a friend and near neighbour, had made koonti cakes for the occasion; the day before, Danka, most accomplished of hunters, who had a friendship for Tiamoko in spite of conflicting trade interests, had brought a big turkey which he had stalked and shot on the edges of the cypress swamp; the unpredictable and taciturn Hughes surprised everyone by presenting a wild honeycomb and then leaving almost immediately. Children of various ages moved among the guests, round-eyed with excitement at so many voices, the leaping of the fire, the display of food. Tiamoko and Cavana, both a little drunk by this time, gave out the beer. It was Neema’s first boy and they had used up their entire stock of wild grain to brew enough beer for the party.
By the time Paris arrived things were in full swing. Fortified with beer, Sullivan had already given the company a couple of reels on his fiddle. He had now been joined by Sefadu with a cane flute limited in range but piercing in sound and by Danka with a finger drum made of deerskin stretched over a hollowed-out section of black gum tree. These three had performed at similar gatherings before and varied in their effects from a loud and cheerful dissonance to occasional wild harmony.
Paris went up to Neema and laid his gift on the ground before her, beside the others. He had not much skill in making things, but during the summer he had discovered a variety of sapodilla tree and had collected a number of the seeds with a view to planting them in the spring. They were like flattened beans in appearance and glossy black. He had strung some of them on plaited palm fibre to make an unusual, and distinctly handsome, neckband. ‘Dis for de boy when he fiddle old pas’ now,’ he said. ‘I wish he live long time for you.’
He looked down at the baby, which returned his gaze with singular intensity. Its eyelids were polished and shiny, as if by some gently frictive agency of the air; they were tiny – the narrowest of rims for eyes so amazingly lustrous that they seemed to take up all the face. The hands were the only other visible part. Paris had seen a good many babies in his time, but the perfection of the hands moved him always. In the light of the fire he could see the paler webs at the base of the fingers and the tiny pink cracks of the knuckles as