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DURING THE NIGHT the sorcerers had been busy. To the sound of the flutes they had danced around the house of the Red Spirit and smeared its posts with pig fat and hung about it the clattering jawbones of the slain pigs, so that the people would say that the spirits had eaten of their sacrifice and were pleased with their offering.
Then, from a secret place, they had brought out little boards of casuarina wood, each pierced with a rhomboid hole and daubed with moss. Each of these boards were handed up to a man standing on the roof of the spirit house and slipped over the long, projecting center pole, in symbol of the act of union. The Red Spirit was the spirit of fertility. Through him the seed quickened and grew to life in the womb of the earth and of pigs and of women.
All through the ceremonies the sorcerers spoke in the whispered voices of spirit men and the flutes played and the tribes listened, fearful and withdrawn in the smoky darkness of the huts.
Then, when the flutes were silent and even the sorcerers had retired to rest their strength for the great killing, a shadowy figure emerged from a clump of bamboos at the edge of the compound. He wore no ornaments, his face was lowered against recognition and he peered about the deserted compound as if afraid some late-walking lovers might surprise him. But at the sound of the flutes even the lovers were afraid, and they had all gone into the huts to lie in one another’s arms until the sunlight came and the evil haunters of the night were blown away with the leaves of the sacred plant which is called bombo.
Satisfied that there was no one watching, the stooping figure signalled with his hand, and two others stepped out from the cane clump. They, too, were bowed and naked of ornament, but they carried in their arms the ceremonial wigs and little gourds and coloured pigments and a small bundle of food against the long hours of waiting. They hurried across the compound in the wake of their guide and came to the house of the Red Spirit with its clacking bones and its crown of coital symbols.
The grass curtain was lifted and they climbed inside and drew it close behind them. Then their guide stole another furtive look at the circle of huts and, satisfied that no one had seen him, straightened up and walked swiftly back into the shadows.
Kumo the Sorcerer had accomplished his task. The ransom of his life was almost paid. Tomorrow the Red Spirit would reveal himself to his people.
In the stinking darkness of the spirit house Kurt Sonderfeld and N’Daria lay together in loveless union, and when the first light showed through the chinks of the bamboo wall, N’Daria began to daub her master’s body with pig fat and paint his face for the moment of revelation to the tribes.
In the village they rose with the sun and purged themselves and began to dress themselves for the festival. Even the married women were absorbed in the unfamiliar rituals of adornment. Some wore coronets of feathers and beetle shards, but most wore headdresses of leaves from the sweet-potato vines. Their pubic belts were of fresh twigs and green leaves, and their necklets were of green snail shells and crescents of gold-lip trochus.
The bucks and the unmarried girls wore cane belts and bird of paradise plumes, while the chiefs and the sorcerers and the ceremonial dancers wore massive wigs of plaited hair, daubed with golden gum and glistening with green beetles and tossing plumes—scarlet and orange and purple and iridescent green.
When they were dressed, the men took up their clubs, whose shafts are made from the wood of the sacred tree, and which are used only for the ritual killing at the pig festival. The women followed them out of the huts into the sunshine, each carrying the family store of taro and kau-kau and bananas, which they arranged in a small mound in front of the spirit house.
Then they squatted on the ground, jostling one another to come as close as possible to the dwelling of the Red Spirit, gasping with wonderment at the sight of the pig bones, nudging one another and pointing at the symbols of fertility that crowned the roof. The children hung about them, chattering, giggling, lost in the wonder of the carnival day, awed by the noise and the colour and the air of tension and expectation. They, too, wore pubic skirts of fresh leaves, and the little girls wore on their foreheads or round their necks the diamond of womanhood, so that their breasts would grow and they would mature quickly.
Now the men had withdrawn from the compound, hiding themselves in the bushes and the kunai grass while they donned the last of their finery and finished their face-painting and warmed up the drums for the dance of the Red Spirit, while the sorcerers gave the last instructions on the ritual of the ceremony.
They then formed up—the sorcerers and the chiefs with their great golden wigs, the drummers with their black kundus and behind them the warriors with clubs and spears and stone axes.
Kumo stood in front of them, greatest of the sorcerers, chief paramount of the secret valleys by virtue of his alliance with the Red Spirit himself. His headdress was a triple tier of bird of paradise feathers, blue first, then orange and scarlet. His wig hung almost to the nipples of his breast, and two crescent shells hung down from its green fingers. His forehead was green, dappled with yellow, his cheeks were red, and his nose ornaments were a crescent pearl shell and a circle as large as a saucer. Round his neck were ornaments of shell and a stole of possum fur, and in his hand was a great club made of the sacred wood, with a circular head of dark obsidian.
He was a monstrous, challenging figure as he stood surveying the serried ranks of the tribes, holding his stone club high above his head, signalling them to attention, holding them rigid and expectant till his arm swung downwards and the drums burst out like thunder and the chant rang round and round the ridges of the valley.
He led them in a wild charge into the compound and through the dancing grove. He dropped to his knees and the whole army followed him. He rose again, shouting, and led them five paces, then dropped again to his knees—three paces, and another genuflection—two paces—one—and they were ranged in front of the spirit house, the drums thudding and the chant going on and on—“Ho-ho-ho-ho”—a surging, wave-like monotony in the still and sunlit air.
Halfway down the steep fall into the valley, George Oliver heard them and looked across at Père Louis.
The old priest waved his hand and shouted breathlessly, “No need to worry, my friend. There is more and more yet.”
Oliver raised his hand in acknowledgment and plunged down the slope, stumbling through the thick undergrowth, tripping over trailing vines, stubbing his feet against rocks and fallen tree boles, until they broke out at last into the tall kunai that masked their last approach to the village.
Cramped and sweating in the half-dark of the spirit house, Kurt Sonderfeld abandoned himself to the mounting fervour of the ritual. The drums were a thunder in his brain and a pulsing fire in his blood. It was as if their energy were being stored up inside him, cramming him to bursting point for the explosive moment of the great revelation. When he peered out through the cracks in the walls, he saw the tossing plumes and the dusty dancing bodies and knew them for his subjects, spending themselves in his honour, preparing themselves by ritual frenzy for the great moment of immolation.
His body was naked, as theirs were. His wig was greater than Kumo’s, its plumage richer, its colour a flaring ochre, spilling down over his daubed face and his glistening breast. His arms were bound with cane and golden fur; his anklets whipped like live tails as he walked, and his belt was sewn with alternate rows of gold-lip and cowrie shells. In his hand was the jawbone of a monstrous pig.
N’Daria, too, was dressed in her finery as became the bride of the Red Spirit. She squatted on the floor and watched Sonderfeld with doting eyes, all her hurts forgotten, all her fears submerged in the fierce wonder of the drums and the singing and the pounding rhythm of the dance.
Then, suddenly, the drums stopped. The dancers were still. The singers fell silent and there was no sound but the grunting and squealing of pigs, penned in the big palisade.
Kumo raised his club and pointed. Two hundred men went at a run towards the enclosure, leapt the low fence and seized, each one, a pig, looping a halter about its neck and hauling it towards the gate. The gate was opened and a great shout went up as the pigs were dragged out. Then the gate was thrust shut again and the pigs were pulled and pushed into the clear space facing the entrance to the spirit house.
Kumo raised his club again. A group of warriors stepped forward, fingering the shafts of their weapons, licking their lips, bracing themselves for the leap. The air was crackling with excitement. Kumo’s club swept down in a great arc, cracking the skull of the nearest pig.
A wild cry broke out from the assembly and the warriors leapt in among the pigs, beating them with their clubs, crushing their skulls, breaking their backs, laughing, screaming with delight, splashing in the spilt blood, scooping it up in handfuls and tossing it over the yelling, stamping multitude that crowded around the killing place.
When all the pigs were dead, they were dragged in front of the spirit house and stacked in a wide semicircle, their heads pointing inward to the dwelling of the Red Spirit, their hindquarters splayed outward to the watching crowd.
Then a new batch was brought out and a new batch of warriors made the killings, and the sickening ceremony was repeated time and time again until nearly a thousand carcasses were piled in the compound and the air was full of the stench of blood and the ground was black with flies and the whole crowd was drunk with the smell and the spectacle and the orgiastic delight of cruelty.
Now the great moment was come !
A signal from Kumo and the whole assembly of the tribes were dumb with wonder and expectation. They saw the monstrous figure of the sorcerer mount to the top of the pile of pig bodies and stand there, arms outspread in hieratic exaltation. They heard his voice roll over them like a drumbeat.
“Behold, my people! Behold the Red Spirit! Lift up your eyes and see the bringer of riches and the source of all fruitfulness.”
There was a moment’s pause. Then the grass curtain parted and Kurt Sonderfeld stood, deified, on the raised platform of the spirit house, while N’Daria crouched at his feet in an attitude of adoration. For one suspended moment of glory and terror the crowd watched him, his pale body shining in the sun, his head a scarlet wonder, his hands full of promise, his smile a benediction, and a threat.
Then they buried their faces in their hands and moaned—a long, sobbing wail of fear and supplication.
George Oliver walked into the center of the compound. His voice cracked over them like a lash.
“Fools! Blind fools! Cheated by a liar! Seduced by a coward! They have crammed dust into your mouths and called it food ! They have rubbed your faces in filth and called it riches! Lift up your eyes and see! The Red Spirit is a white man, like I am! Kumo the Sorcerer fears him because he holds his blood and seed and spittle in a little tube, like this!”
Slowly, fearfully, they raised their eyes and saw George Oliver standing alone and unarmed in their midst with the bamboo capsule in his hand, and behind him, a long way behind, Père Louis and Lee Curtis with the police boys, rigid and alert, at their backs.
They looked up at Kumo and saw that he was standing, mouth slack, arms dangling, staring as if at an apparition. Then they looked at Sonderfeld, and as their faces turned to him, the big man opened his mouth and screamed at them:
“Kill! Kill! They are liars, all of them! They want to cheat you of the wealth that is yours by right. They are few ! You are many! Kill them now!”
But his reason had left him and he spoke in German, which they did not understand, and they turned their faces back to Kumo, begging him to interpret for them.
Slowly the sorcerer took possession of himself. He looked at Sonderfeld and remembered the power that lay in his hands. He looked at Oliver and saw that he was unarmed. He looked at his people and saw that they were many and at the police boys who were so pitifully few. He hefted his club and began to move slowly, cautiously, along the slippery platform of carcasses in the direction of George Oliver.
Oliver stood stock-still and watched him come. Then he raised his hand so that the people saw the bamboo tube, and his voice was like the crack of exploding wood.
“Wait!”
Kumo stopped. Oliver paused for two seconds to gather himself for the final attack.
“The white man lied to you, Kumo. He told you he held your life in his little tube. He did once, but not now. I have it. He left it unguarded and I took it into my hands. Look, Kumo—look!”
A long, gasping exhalation went up from the crowd as they saw Oliver stretch out his hand towards the sorcerer. They saw Kumo cringe away, then stiffen as Oliver lifted his voice again.
“I will give you your life, Kumo. I will give it to you now, if you will lay down your club and come to me.”
Then Sonderfeld found his voice again. He gave a great shout and leapt towards the sorcerer.
“He lies, you fool! He lies! I hold your life! Look!”
All eyes were turned on him as he stood there, arms outflung, holding in one hand the bamboo tube and in the other the bleached jawbone of the great pig. This was the moment of challenge—the moment of choice between the old gods and the new—between the small isolated authority of Oliver and his police boys and the ancient dominion of the sorcerers.
And the choice was in the hands of Kumo.
He had but to lift his hand in acknowledgment of Sonderfeld and the tribes would rise in fury, trampling down the white men and their alien mercenaries from the coast. Their few weapons would be powerless against ten thousand men, and they would be trodden like grass under the black, naked feet. But Kumo hesitated. He was paralyzed by doubt. Of the two men who challenged him, Sonderfeld and Oliver, one was a liar and the other had the power to destroy him utterly.
He looked from one to the other. He saw the wild fury of Sonderfeld and the stony calm of Oliver. He remembered that Sonderfeld had once betrayed him through N’Daria and that Oliver was a man who had never spoken a lie to the tribes or made an idle threat. But it was not enough. His life hung in the balance. He needed more proof. There was no one to give it to him.
Then Père Louis stepped forward, small, withered and old, and raised his voice in the tingling silence.
“Look at me, Kumo!”
Kumo shifted his grip on the club and turned slowly to the little priest. Père Louis spoke again.
“Look at me, Kumo, and tell me! Have you ever heard a lie from my mouth? Have I ever taken what was not mine? Have I ever done injury to man, woman or child? Have I not tended your sick and cared for your old?”
He paused. Kumo made no answer. He was as tense as an animal at the moment of attack. The old man’s voice rose again, vibrant and strong.
“You cannot name me a liar. Hear then when I tell you the truth. The man who holds your life is Kiap Oliver. I gave it myself into his hand. I took it from the house of the red-headed man, whom you call the Red Spirit, and who is a liar and a cheat.”
There was a moment of dreadful silence. Kumo turned slowly back to face Sonderfeld. He cried out, desperately demanding an answer from the man whom he had made a god. Sonderfeld opened his mouth to speak, but the words were a frothing babble on his lips. He made wild, flailing gestures, but even his limbs would not obey him, and the bamboo tube the bleached bone dropped from his twitching fingers on the bloody carcass at his feet.
N’Daria screamed, leapt from the platform and ran, stumbling and tripping, into the shelter of the bushes.
Then Kumo whirled on Sonderfeld and crashed his club into his skull and, when he fell, struck him again and again, while the tribes watched, fascinated, and George Oliver stood in helpless horror, unarmed, in the middle of the compound.
Then he heard Curtis’s voice behind him and saw the police boys coming at a run to seize the sorcerer and wrench the bloodied club from his hands and hurl him to the bottom of the small mountain of pigs. They hauled him to his feet and twisted his arms up behind his back, and one of them tore off his plumes and his golden wig and trampled it in the dust, before they ran him, stooped and gasping, along the squatting ranks of the women and forced him to the ground at Oliver’s feet.
For a long moment Oliver stood looking down at him, then he spat contemptuously in the dust and turned back to face the crowd. He flung out his arms in the attitude of the tribal orators and his voice rang out sharp as a sword blade.
“You see what happens to those who turn away from the white man’s law to follow the lying voices of the sorcerers ? You see that the white man is dead and Kumo, too, will die in his own time. Your festival is ruined and the voices of your ancestors will cry out in anger against you. Their spirits will haunt this valley, and there will come a blight on the crops and a barrenness on your women. And I, myself, will punish you. I will raise a double tax on your pigs and on your gardens. I will set you to build a new road without pay. I will strip the badges from your luluais and will set new ones to rule over you. And I will publish your folly to the Kiaps in Goroka and to the folk in the far valleys so that your names will be a laughter in the mouths of all men.”
A moan of fear and penitence went up and they hid their faces from his anger. But they could not escape the relentless castigation of his voice.
“The festival is finished, do you hear? You will leave the valley and return to your own homes. When you are gone, my men will bum this village, because the luluai was a fool who listened to the lying voices. But he will not depart from it. He will stay here and rebuild it with his people, because now he is a luluai no longer. Go now, all of you ! Lest you be burnt in the fire of my anger and die as the white man died—as Kumo, too, will die, because he killed one man with his club and another by the snake sorcery.”
He turned away from them, but they could not move for the terror of his voice and the anger of the outraged spirits whose festival had been denied them and whose sacrificial pigs would rot in the sun.
Kumo was on his feet now, sullen and glowering, in the strong grasp of the police boys.
“Take him away,” said George Oliver wearily.
“No,” said Père Louis. “Not yet.”
George Oliver whirled on him. The little priest stood his ground. He held out his hand.
“You owe me a debt, George Oliver. I want it paid.”
They faced each other, eye to eye, toe to toe, like wrestlers, looking for an opening. George Oliver was the first to give ground. He fished in his pocket, brought out the bamboo tube and slapped it in the palm of the old man’s hand.
“All right, Father, you’ve got it. Now what?”
The priest said nothing. He stood in front of Kumo, holding the tube in his outstretched palm. His voice was low and secret in the place-talk of the tribe.
“Kumo, you were once my son. You are not a fool but an intelligent man. Once you knelt at the altar and received the body of God into your body. Then you turned away to give your soul to the Devil. See, now, where he has brought you—to death, which you cannot escape, almost to damnation. See, I hold your life in my hands. I give it back to you in return for your soul. Turn back to God and I will plead for you with the Kiaps. Even if they will not listen, I will be with you when you die, and I will promise you, in the name of God, the salvation of your soul. Take it, Kumo! Stretch out your hands. Take your life and give me your soul!”
Kumo lifted his head. His eyes were blank. His lips framed the toneless words.
“How can I stretch out my hands when I am held like this?”
“Let him go,” said Père Louis in Motu.
The police boys looked inquiringly at George Oliver. He nodded curtly. Kumo was released to stand towering over the little priest. He held out his hand.
“Give me my life.”
Père Louis laid the tube in his outstretched palm. Kumo’s fingers closed around the tiny cylinder. Then he threw back his head and laughed horribly.
“You offer me my life! You think to buy Kumo, the greatest sorcerer in the valleys! You want my soul? I tell you, you will never have it. Go home, missionary! Go home to your village and talk to the women !”
Once again the old priest’s heart sank and his flesh crawled at the spectacle of primitive pride rejecting mercy, rejecting life itself in order to preserve face with the tribe.
He stood there facing the man who had been his son in Christ, wrestling with him for his life and for his soul, praying desperately that Kumo would bend his stubborn spirit to the last mercy. But Kumo was beyond even mercy. In the next instant he made the act of final rejection.
He raised his hand and sent the tube spinning through the air into one of the smoking fire pits. Then he laughed again and spat full in the face of the old priest.
Before the police boys could lay hands on him, he had whirled away from them and raced into the thickets. The boys were swift in pursuit, but above the soft padding of their feet, monstrous and horrible came the thudding beat of the taloned claws of the cassowary bird.
Père Louis wiped the spittle from his face and stood waiting while Oliver and Curtis and all the villagers watched him curiously.
He knew better than they the meaning of Kumo’s defiant gesture. Locked in the bamboo tube was his life and his life principle—all that primitive man knows of soul. He had tossed away his life. When the fire consumed the bamboo shell, his life would be consumed as surely as if he had been cut down with a stone ax. The old belief was stronger then the new. Its roots plunged down, darkly, to the life spring itself.
Slow and inexorable, the seconds ticked away. Then, sudden and startling, the bamboo tube exploded in the fire pit. In the silence of the valley it rang like a gunshot, and before the echoes were dead, from far up the valley came the long, raucous, soul-wrenching scream of a dying cassowary.
The plumed multitude stood rigid in a long suspension of shock and terror. They rolled their eyes from side to side, looking for one to step forward and lead them out of the cursed valley, away from the vengeful presence of the spirit ancestors and the angry Kiaps, but no one moved.
They saw Père Louis turn away, bowed and shrunken, an old, defeated man, walking slowly out of the village and up the hillside. They saw his few frightened Christians break from the ranks and straggle after him, like sheep led homeward by a tired shepherd.
Later they would come to his chapel and confess themselves of adultery and fornication and lapses into the old idolatry, and he would shrive them and comfort them and read them stem lectures on the power of the Evil One and the fate of those who allied themselves with him.
But for Père Louis himself, there would be neither comfort nor shriving. The nearest brother priest was fifty miles away across the mountains. So he must bear alone the burden of his own presumption. He had tried to bribe a man with the gift of life—which, like the grace of repentance, God holds in His own gift. He had made himself party to an act of despair, a positive rejection of salvation. There was no recourse left to him but mercy, and he felt so old and spent and useless he wondered whether God would take the trouble to bestow it.
George Oliver stood and watched him go, while the assembly waited, breathless, for his next move. He did not see them. He saw only the figure of the old priest stumbling up his Calvary with the tiny crowd at his back, and his heart went out to him, because he, too, was tired and was beginning to be old.
He had brought peace to the tribes. He had yet to attain it for himself. To the end of his days he would never know whether he might have prevented the death of Sonderfeld and whether, with prevention in his power, he would have had the courage to avail himself of it. He had tumbled down the idols of the grove, but their shadows were still long across his path.
Then Curtis came and tapped him on the shoulder and said gently, “Go back, sir. Go home and tell her the news. I can handle the rest of it.”
George Oliver looked at him a long time before he answered. Then he grinned and held out his hand.
“Good luck, youngster. It’s all yours.”
Then he, too, turned his face to the hills and began the long trudge back to where Gerda was waiting for him.
Curtis made a sign to one of the police boys who trotted quietly after Oliver. All the way to the plantation he would walk in his tracks—a faithful servant seeing his master home safely from a long and weary war.
Kumo the Sorcerer was dead on the upland path. N’Daria cowered, lost and trembling, in the bush at the fringe of the camp. Kurt Sonderfeld lay on the mountain of pigs, with the flies crawling over his bloody face.
And, silent among the silent, fearful people, Cadet Patrol Officer Lee Curtis was left alone—master of ten thousand men, fountain of the law, collector of the tribute, lord of life and death in the valley of the tribes.
He was twenty-four years old.