The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels (7 page)

“You see? We cannot afford to wait for a cure. If he cannot be persuaded—we will try, of course—then we must use force.”

There was silence for a time. Pretty Flower began to cry again. She did not interrupt the silence with her crying. The water swam down her cheeks and the malachite came with it, like spill from a mine. The river continued to rise. The Prince sat, tinkling every now and then.

Presently Pretty Flower stopped crying.

“I must look a mess.”

“No, no, my dear. A little—disarranged, perhaps. Becomingly.”

She signalled for her women.

“You know, Head Man? It shows how far I have been corrupted. I very nearly don’t care. Not quite, of course but very nearly.”

He looked down at her, frowning, puzzled.

“About the flood?”

“Oh
that
—no. My face, I mean.”

The women went away again. Pretty Flower settled herself firmly.

“I’m ready now.”

The Head Man spoke loudly.

“Have him brought here.”

The Prince scrambled to his feet.

“Well—I think—I’ll go and have a drink——”

The words came hissing from the chair.

“Stay where you are, you runt!”

The Prince sat down again.

There were noises beyond the terrace and among them the sound of a well-known voice talking, voluble as ever but at a higher pitch. Two tall black soldiers wearing nothing but loincloths dragged the Liar forward between them. The soldiers brought him round and held him before Pretty Flower. He stopped talking and looked at her. She looked back at him with eyes like stones and would have seemed secure as a dweller in the house of life, if it had not been for the way her dress shivered over her breast. The Liar caught sight of the Prince, squatting beyond her by the wall. He convulsed between the soldiers and yelled at the top of his voice.

“
You
—traitor!”

“I didn’t——”

“Just one moment, Liar.’’ The Head Man turned to Pretty Flower. “Shall I?”

She opened her lips, but no sound came out. The Head Man lifted a finger.

“Let him go.”

The two soldiers backed away from the Liar, glistening. They unslung their spears and held them pointed at him as if he were a beast in a net. He began to talk again, quickly, desperately, from person to person.

‘‘Poison is cruel. You may say it doesn’t hurt but how do you know? Come now, have you ever been poisoned? I have many secrets that would be of use to you. I could even stop the river rising—but I must have time, time! We don’t any of us like being frightened, do we? It’s horrible to be frightened—horrible, horrible!”

The Head Man interrupted him.

“We aren’t frightening you, Liar!”

“Then why, when I stop speaking, do my teeth sing in my head?”

The Head Man put out his hand to the Liar who flinched away.

“Calm yourself, my dear man. Nothing is going to happen to you. Not at this moment.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Let there be a pause. Relax, Liar. Just lie down and curl up comfortably on the mat.”

The Liar looked suspiciously at him; but the Head Man only nodded and smiled. The Liar put out one hand to the floor, knelt, looking up sideways. He glanced round him, winced at the sight of the spears, then slowly laid himself down. He pulled himself into a parody of the foetal position; but no foetus was ever so tense, so quivering. No foetus ever stared so, up, sideways, and round.

The Head Man glanced at the swollen river and winced from it as the Liar had winced from the spears. Visibly he pulled himself together.

“Now, Liar. There’s nothing to be frightened of. We have all the time in the world.”

He saw an unblinking eye, looking up warily as a crab under a rock.

“Close your eyes. Let everything go.”

The eye closed, snapped open, then shut once more but left a gleaming slit. The Head Man spoke softly.

“Let us think of real things.”

The Liar jerked and quivered on the floor.

“Death. Murder. Lust. The pit.”

“No! No! Gentle things, soft things, homely things!”

The gleam shivered, expanded, then disappeared. The foetus murmured against the floor.

“Wind on the cheeks. Coolth.”

“Good.”

“White flakes tumbling. Mountains that wear a white cloak——”

“There you go again! Real things, I said!”

“White men. Pure, white women, ivory and gold—strangers all—and thus available. Oh the kindness of a strange woman by a strange hearth!”

The Head Man was so strung up that he sniggered then glanced at Pretty Flower apologetically. Her dress was shivering again.

“Listen Liar. Now you are calm, I am going to make one last appeal to your generosity. You are dear to the God. It angers Him that you will not go to Him. Accept the gift of eternal life—for our sake!”

The Liar yelled.

“No!”

“Wait. We understand you are sick and ungenerous. Therefore to help you help us, we will be generous too. We will give you as much as we gave Him.”

“Bribery?”

But the Head Man was not listening. He had begun to pace round and round the Liar, whose head followed his movements like the head of a snake.

“Mind, even that may not be enough. After what I have heard recently, He may be so angry that—but we must do what we can. Do you suppose we ask you to join the others in the periphery and lie there merely heat-dried? Oh no, indeed! We will take off the stones and the beams——”

“What are you talking about?”

“You shall lie by the God Himself. In no less than three coffins, the innermost to be made of such materials—however rich—as you shall specify.”

The Liar was kneeling. He yelled again.

“You old fool!”

“Wait till I finish. We will cut you open and clean you out. We will pull your brains through your nostrils and fill your skull with liquid fragrance——”

And carried away, the Head Man was making ample gestures round his own body. The Liar had wrapped his arms round himself and was hooting like a demented owl. “—we will cut off your public parts——”

The Prince leapt to his feet.

“Oh yes, yes!”

The Liar stopped hooting and began to speak, more and more violently.

“A patch of land no bigger than a farm—a handful of apes left high and dry by the tide of men—too ignorant, too complacent, too dimwitted to believe the world is more than ten miles of river——”

“You’ll drown us all!”

“Drown then, if you haven’t the wit to climb the cliffs away from it——”

“We implore you!”

“Myself, trapped, condemned, the only sensible man in this, this——”

He flung himself forward and grabbed Pretty Flower by the foot.

“Don’t you understand? Your brother is—what is he—ten?
You
have the power—the power, the power, the power! Do you want to marry him? That miserable shrimp of a boy——”

“Unhand me!”

“He’d sooner be a girl. You have the soldiers—you, one of a dozen petty chieftains that line this river—you have the beginnings of an army——”

Pretty Flower was gasping for breath. Her hands were up by her face. She stared at him as if his eyes were the only place to look. The Liar spoke again.

“Do you want to marry him?”

Her mouth opened and shut. Her hands on the arms of the chair drew back. Her knuckles whitened. She took her eyes from his face, glanced at the smiling Prince, at the bowl on the pedestal.

“You have the beginnings of an army. What could you not do?”

The Head Man spoke.

“We know what to do.”

But as if he had found some hope, some security in Pretty Flower, or even some power over her, the Liar stood before her and spoke like a God.

“The man who holds the high seat in this country is the man who has you, strange and beautiful woman, for his bed. He could burn up the banks of this river from one end to the other, until all men living by it were bowing to your beauty.”

“Who on
earth
,’’ said the Head Man, “would want to do a thing like that? I said you are mad!”

“I am not mad. There is no deceit and no wickedness in me.”

Pretty Flower cried out.

“No wickedness? After what you said about strange women?”

The Liar flung his arms wide.

“Don’t you see? You’ve none of you seen! In this land of halfwits there is only one man with access to all women—Great House, the God!”

Pretty Flower was standing up, her hands over her cheeks. But the Liar had turned and was staring at the Head Man in hatred and contempt.

“Not even you—a man thought wise—all this nonsense of my not having that woman, that girl, that beautiful—and her wanting me——”

He stabbed out a finger in the Head Man’s face.

“
Supposing
I
were
Great
House?
”

Under his dark skin, the Head Man’s blood ebbed away then came rushing back. He took three steps away from the Liar.

“Soldiers—kill him!”

The soldiers moved forward behind their spears. The dignity dropped from the Liar like a fallen cloak. As if fear and hate had possessed him like a God, he did instant and impossible things. His body took charge of his face. He swerved sideways and forward, turned. The soldiers passed him and even before they had stopped this movement, one was tripped and falling and his spear had whipped into the Liar’s hands. Nor could eye follow the snake-tongue of the point as it snicked in and out of the soldier’s neck. The other soldier turned but only in time to meet the point. He flapped at his chest and fell in a disjointed way. He had not reached the floor before the Liar had faced round to the Head Man, who shouted at the top of his voice.

“Bowmen!”

The Liar’s spear made magic passes round the Head Man who did nothing. Talking, the Liar sprinted across the terrace and leapt to the top of the parapet. He turned back, just as the bowmen came running with their unstrung bows. He threw the spear, and a bowman fell, his string still coiled in his hand. All the time, as his body did these impossible things, the Liar talked and talked out of his worried face. Even when he leapt from the parapet he talked. He dived neatly into the flood water and perhaps he talked under there as well; only when he surfaced, labouring great armfuls of water out of the way, there was too much noise on the terrace for anyone to know whether he talked or not. Arrows were digging into the water round him, then floating away, feathers upward.

The Head Man was changing. He was holding his midriff and looking at once far away and inside himself. He lowered himself on one knee. There was a collapsed look about his face. It was smaller, older.

The Prince had changed too. He ignored the dead and dying. His smile was bright, as he spoke to Pretty Flower, though she paid him no attention.

“Then my eyes wouldn’t matter, and I wouldn’t have to be a God, would I?”

The Head Man spoke with his cheek against the floor.

“Bleeding inside. He stings like a scorpion.”

Far away and beyond reach of anything but random shot, the Liar had climbed out of the water to the top of a wall that, like a narrow path, led onward beneath the heads of palms to the central current of the flood. He turned back to the terrace, arms gesticulating, miming silently, but staunchlessly, the mechanics, the necessity of survival. The bowmen stood by the parapet, their quivers empty. They were turning to Pretty Flower for orders; but she still stared after the Liar, hands up, mouth open.

The Head Man made his last statement, clearly, professionally.

“He has a death wish.”

The Prince’s grin was so wide it was ridiculous.

“Can I have a drink now?”

She answered him absently.

“Presently, dear child.”

She moved forward towards the parapet.

“A death wish. All the same——”

The bowmen waited, looking at her. She was changing too. She was becoming rounder, plumper, even. The gloss included her eyes, her hair. Those planes that had been her cheeks were now curved. As if some perfume concealed in her body was taking aromatic and excited charge, she shone, she sparkled. There was colour beneath the curved cheeks, where the beginnings of a smile revealed their dimples. Her arms were up, their henna’d palms outward, gesture reserved for revelation.

“All the same—we’d better go and talk to Him.”

Palm listened to the Bee Women, her smile like applause so that they were happy as she intended. There was no disease, and yes, the bees were bringing back honey from the plain as well as from the forest. You could taste the plain in the honey, a spice, an aroma. Yes. The bees were doing well. When she had used her smile as much as was necessary she turned away to take it back the short distance to the space between the river and the straw huts, the lean-tos and shelters in the tumbled rocks. It was the space the children played in, hot and dusty now, but not as hot as it would be, when the sun was at height. The children felt the heat, she saw that at once; for two small boys were fighting in more than play and only fell apart when they saw her and her smile. Another boy—smaller this one and not much more than a baby—came toddling with an egg in either hand and held them up.

“Clever,” she said, “Clever!”

She tousled his hair and walked on. It was time the children went for their midday sleep. More of them were making a fuss, by the bank of the river, three boys and two girls. The girls were marching along by the boys in step. They raised sticks together in their right hands. They chanted.

“Rah! Rah! Rah!”

One of the boys was red and crying, already. The other two had their heads bent down and were making marks in the dust. The two girls turned, lifted their sticks, saw her and took them down again, giggling. They looked away, rubbing one foot over the other. She spoke quietly to them as she passed.

“Play somewhere else, will you?”

There was plenty of space and plenty of children—boys throwing things or wrestling, girls playing with dolls, skipping, or talking together. Palm let each group have a share in her smile as she passed. She set herself to climb.

The morning sun had removed the mushroom top from the vapour over the Hot Springs. There was little more than a faint mist over the highest point of the rise, where the boiling water seethed up. Lower down, in the string of pans where the water cooled to lukewarm and lost itself in the river there was no vapour at all. Still, once you climbed the littlest way from the place where the children played the air was fresher as if it had moved down from the mountain rather than in across the plain. She decided there and then that she would bathe just one pan higher than usual. She looked forward to the long soak for she felt the faintest creak in
one shoulder and hoped that the hot water would take it out. She climbed, then, with dignity, and with a grace hardly modified at all by the creak. Her long grass skirt rustled, her naked toes gripped and relaxed on the worn rock. Still, she admitted to herself that her heart beat more heavily than it was used to. She stopped halfway up, flicked the water of a pan as if to see how hot it was—or as if to remove a dead leaf or insect. She straightened up, turned round and inspected what lay below her, pretending it was her custom to do so from here rather than later on, at the summit, by the boiling spring.

The women were working in the woods and in the Place of Women. She could not see them but she could hear their chatter and occasional high laughter. Where the woods thinned out and the water from the hot springs met the river, young girls were wading waist-deep and hauling a net. She could see how the diminishing area of water was stippled as if with raindrops and knew they had caught a shoal. Beyond that again, the Bee Women were working among the straw skeps. Much food, girls working and laughing, many children, two women suckling babies among the rocks, another heavily with child and even now, being helped by her sisters to a shelter, Hot Springs, warm air——

She spoke to herself as she did now, more and more often.

“There is too much food. Not meat perhaps, but fish, eggs, roots, honey, leaves and buds——”

She put both hands on her belly above the grass skirt. Her smile was rueful.

“And I eat too much of it.”

Well, she thought, I am getting older. That explains everything. I must not expect to be beautiful for ever.

She began to climb again among the pans, following the worn path through the white and green encrustations. The air warmed as she went upwards from pan to pan. The noise of the women and children diminished and at last was swallowed up in the seethe, plop, bubble of the boiling spring at the top. A girl stood there, on the little space of level rock by the spring. She was slim and her grass skirt was shortened to her knee. Her long, black hair was wound tightly on little sticks. She had a broad, uncomely face, but the grace of adolescence shone over it. She stood up straight when she saw who approached her. She laughed, and pointed sideways over the plain.

“It was there. In line with the cleft.”

“You’re sure, child? There are such things as grass fires, you know.”

“It was a camp fire—Palm.”

The girl hesitated at the name, still abashed at addressing her as one adult to another. But Palm had turned and was staring out over the plain. She pursed her lips.

“Then they’ll work along that side of the plain, near the hills—where the dry ravine is. You’ll see tonight’s camp fire
there
—I should think. Unless of course they’ve changed their minds, or been frightened, or started fighting or something.”

The girl giggled.

“Or something!”

Palm smiled at her.

“So they’ll be away for two whole days. You can take your hair out of curlers.”

The girl’s mouth opened. She looked blank.

“Two days?”

“It might be more.” She peered closely at the girl. “Angry Elephant, isn’t he?”

“Oh no—Palm. He
was
Angry Elephant but now he’s Furious Lion.”

“Before he was Angry Elephant, he was Busy Bee, I think. Of course he was much younger then. You would hardly remember.”

The girl’s face had changed colour. She gave a wriggle and a giggle.

“You know how they are—Palm!”

“I do indeed. None better. Well—remember!”

The girl’s face went solemn, and proud.

“Now I am a woman.”

Palm made a gesture of assent and turned to go.

“Palm——”

“What is it?”

“The old Leopard Man——”

“Which one, child? We have three here, after all.”

The girl pointed down.

“That one there.”

Palm looked down, saw the bald head among the rocks, the knobs of shoulders, the thin legs splayed out. The girl spoke at her shoulder.

“I don’t know his names. But he hasn’t moved for—oh for ever so long! And his breathing—I think he belongs to us now. He’s a baby again. Isn’t that right?”

“You did very well to notice. I will have it seen to. So. Keep good watch!”

She turned away and walked down; not the way she had come, but another, towards the bald head of the Leopard Man where she could see it below her. He was not far from the Lodge Of The Leopard Men. Poor thing, she thought to herself, he has got as close to it as he could! The rock was steeper above him, and she went carefully, frowning with the effort. But there was no frown on her face when she came to where he lay, his back against the rock, his legs stretched in front of him. His hands played restlessly with the scrap of worn and soiled leopard skin he held in his lap. His mouth was open and dribbling. His breathing was quick. She knelt by him and put a hand on his forehead. She peered into his eyes, where there was nothing. She smiled with infinite sweetness and murmured to the empty face.

“Sleep?”

She stood up quickly, crossed to the mouth of a shelter, and spoke into it.

“That man, that poor old thing—what is his name? Fierce Eel? Oh, yes, I remember—and Flame and Wasp. He needs you. Now, this moment.”

She stood up and made her way across to the string of pans. Businesslike, she put the thought of the old man out of her mind. She felt pleasure in this high point of the day, good thoughts and feelings came crowding in. That nice child up there on lookout, she’s so sweet, so eager—hot water—then when I’ve had my bath—we have at least two clear days—I’ll see that it’s plentiful, and good and strong——

She spoke aloud and ruefully again.

“I drink too much.”

That was when she remembered what the Bee Women, the children, the lookout and the Leopard Man had pushed into a corner of her mind. The unease. It swelled out and filled her mind so that she made her sweet smile stay where it was. She thought:
I
smile
sweetly,
as
a
cat
eats
grass
for
distemper!

So she stood, dallying with the bath lest it should disappoint her and not soothe away the unease. She stared up the rise of pans through the faint mist over the boiling water at the top, to the mountain beyond, that had its own vapour. It rose hugely, jets of steam vented here and there from smears of red or yellow on black. Smoke rose from the top amid a crown of snow. At once she was aware of how the mountain looked down at her. She put both hands to her mouth, but stared back; because you always stare back when you are not only Palm but also She Who Names The Women; and then the mountain was just a mountain, and her unease was with her.

“I am still young enough to have a child. Perhaps when they get back——”

She glanced quickly this way and that but there was no male near—not even some ancient Leopard Man able to do no more than lie in the sun—not even some man child who might remember he heard what She Who Names The Women had said. There was no one at all within hearing. She dropped her hands and climbed upward to her bath.

The pans were each a little higher than the next, perhaps by the length of a forearm. Each brimmed and let a film of water seep perpetually over the smooth surround into the next. Sometimes the film was thicker than usual, as if the earth had changes of mood; but always the pans were full. This fulness was a source of pleasure to Palm, who felt it as a rich thing, a foison, a generosity of water. She was grateful to the water, without personifying it. The bath invited her. She put her hands to her waist and loosed the grass skirt so that it fell round her feet. She thrust her hands under her hair to the nape of her neck. But when she laid the rows of clattering shells on the rock, she did not climb immediately and step down into the soothing heat. She knelt, pushed back her long hair and peered into a cooler pan. She let the sunlight fall on her face, held her breath and stared at the face that swam up from the darkness.

“I am beautiful.”

A tress fell and ripples made the face shake. She swept the hair back and stared down again. The dark eyes were huge, black patches, the face oval and neat. She put up a hand and felt its softness—felt too, though she could not see them, the beginnings of wrinkles by the mouth, the wrinkles of the neck where the shells had hidden them.

“I am still beautiful. That—cannot be it.”

From the forest and Place of Women came the chatter and laughter of the girls. The children were silent, sleeping in the shade. She Who Names The Women stood up briskly. She climbed three pans higher and tried the top one with a toe. She stepped in, biting her lower lip. She sank into the hot water and sweat burst out of her skin. She squatted, willing herself to wait until her skin accepted the pain and became accustomed to it. At last she relaxed, lay back and rested her head on the stone that had been put there for the purpose. Her hair spread; and slowly her body rose, pale brown and green in the clear water. She floated, all but her head that rested on the stone. Her graceful body was laid out at the surface like a diagram of womanhood. She shut her eyes. There was a gap with no time in it.

From the shelter the woman hooted like an owl. Palm opened her eyes and thoughts formed immediately. Soon I shall have a baby to examine. A girl, I should think, from the way she was carrying. I hope—I hope whichever it is, we can keep it. I do not like——

The unease was back, wide, deep, ungraspable as water. She sat up, smearing back her hair. She twisted and stared up through the vapour to where the white head and dark shoulders of the mountain loomed under its own smoke. Sometimes, she thought, the mountain looks up at the sky as if we weren’t here; and sometimes the mountain stares down—as if we weren’t here!

She shook herself so that the water splashed.

“A mountain is a mountain! Palm, you think like a man!”

So briskly she ducked her head, tossed it so that the hot water streamed from her face and hair. She began to massage her face with her fingers, busied herself with her own body, but all the time her thoughts busied themselves in her mind. Nothing is wrong. You can be happy or sad, you can be nothing in particular when you are thinking of what is to be done. But you cannot be uneasy at what
is.

All the same, we are
menaced.

She stood up, stepped down into cooler water, ducked, then got out and sat down to let the sun dry her. She bowed her head and began to run her fingers through her hair again and again. Feelings are feelings; but each hair must lie smoothly by the next. Presently attend to the dressing of it, the greasing of the face, the shaping of nails with an appropriate stone.

“Palm! Palm!”

It was the child from the lookout, swaying and leaping down between the pans, her hands up for balance, grass skirt flying.

“Palm! Oh Palm!”

Now she has learnt to call me that, thought Palm, she will use it every other word! She laughed at the child and blew her a kiss.

“Palm! Palm! Palm! I’m not a forest, you know!”

“I’ve seen them!”

“They’re not coming back, surely? Not so soon?”

“Oh no! You were right, Palm. Palm—they’re going farther. Ever so far! I wouldn’t have been able to see them, but—” she giggled. “They’re climbing a tree!”

Palm laughed back.

“All of them? For nuts? Or for a dare?”

“I could only see one—very high up.”

“Bird’s eggs.”

“I thought you’d better know, Palm.”

Palm put back her hair with one hand and patted the girl’s cheek with the other.

“You did quite right—” She made herself remember—“Minnow. After all, that’s what you’re there for, isn’t it? Now, help me with my skirt!”