Forest of the Pygmies(38)
"Let's make a deal," Nadia proposed to the hunters. "In exchange for Ipemba-Afua, you will give the elephant back its life."
The amulet meant much more to the Pygmies than the elephant's ivory, but they didn't know how to remove the nets without being crushed by its feet or impaled upon the very tusks they had meant to take to Kosongo. Nadia assured them that they could do it without being harmed. In the meantime, Alexander had moved near enough to examine the slashes in the animal's thick skin.
"It's lost a lot of blood, it's dehydrated, and these wounds may become infected. I'm afraid it's facing a slow, painful death," he pronounced.
At that point Beyé-Dokou came over to the beast, amulet in hand. He removed a small stopper in one end of Ipemba-Afua; he tipped the bone and shook it like a salt shaker, while another of the hunters cupped his hands to catch the greenish powder that spilled out. They gestured to Nadia that she should apply it; neither of them dared touch the elephant. Nadia explained to the beast that she was going to heal its wounds, and when she saw it had understood, she sprinkled the powder onto the deep cuts from the spears.
The wounds did not close magically, as she had hoped, but within a few minutes the bleeding ceased. The elephant turned its head to feel along its side with its trunk, but Nadia warned it not to touch the injuries.
The Pygmies worked up their courage and removed the nets, a task considerably more complicated than the act of dropping them, but eventually the aged elephant was free. It had resigned itself to its fate, perhaps it had even crossed the frontier between life and death, only to find itself suddenly, miraculously, freed. It took a few tentative steps, then staggered off into the thicket. At the last moment, before it disappeared into the jungle, it turned toward Nadia and, looking at her through one incredulous eye, lifted its trunk and trumpeted.
"What did it say?" Alexander asked.
"If we need help, call," Nadia translated.
?
Soon it would be night. Nadia had eaten very little in recent days, and Alexander was as starved as she was. The hunters found the tracks of a buffalo but didn't follow them, because those animals were dangerous and moved in a herd. Their tongues were as rough as sandpaper: They could peel off a man's flesh by licking him, they said, and leave nothing but bones. They couldn't hunt buffalo without the aid of their women. At a trot, the Pygmies led Alexander and Nadia to a group of tiny huts made of branches and leaves. It was such a miserable little settlement that it didn't seem possible that humans could live there. They hadn't built anything sturdier because they were nomadic, they were separated from their families, and now they had to travel farther and farther in their search for elephants. The tribe owned nothing, only what each individual could carry. The Pygmies fashioned the basic articles for surviving in the forest and for the hunt; everything else they obtained through trading. Since they weren't interested in civilization, other tribes thought they were very primitive.
From near the huts, the hunters unearthed half an antelope, thickly coated with dirt and insects. They had killed it a couple of days before, and after eating part of it had buried the rest to prevent animals from dragging it off. When they found it was still there, they began singing and dancing. Nadia and Alexander learned once more that despite their travails, the Pygmies were happy when they were in the forest; any pretext was an excuse to joke, tell stories, and laugh uproariously.
The meat smelled ripe and was greenish in color, but thanks to Alexander's cigarette lighter and the Pygmies' skill in scouting out dry tinder, they built a small fire and roasted the meat. The natives also enthusiastically ate the larvae, caterpillars, worms, and ants cooked along with the meat, true delicacies in their minds, and they all topped off the meal with wild fruit, nuts, and water from nearby puddles.
"My grandmother warned us that unpurified water would give us cholera," said Alexander as he gulped from his cupped hands; he was dying of thirst.
"You, maybe, you're so delicate," Nadia teased him. "But I grew up in the Amazon; I'm immune to tropical diseases."
They asked Beyé-Dokou how far it was to Ngoubé, but he couldn't give them a precise answer; for his people, distance was measured in hours and by how quickly they traveled. Five hours walking was equivalent to two running. Neither could he point out the direction, because they had never used a compass or a map and didn't know the four cardinal points. The hunters oriented themselves by the surrounding nature; they could recognize each tree in an area of hundreds of acres. Beyé-Dokou explained that the Pygmies had names for all the trees, plants, and animals; everyone else believed that that the forest was one huge green, swampy morass. The soldiers and the Bantus ventured only between the village and the fork of the river, the place where they maintained contact with the outside world and negotiated with smugglers.
"Traffic in ivory is prohibited in almost every part of the world. How do they get it out of the region?" asked Alexander.
Beyé-Dokou informed him that Mbembelé bribed the authorities and counted on the help of a network of cronies along the river. They tied the tusks underneath the boats, and because the contraband was underwater, there was no difficulty transporting it in broad daylight. Diamonds left in the stomachs of the smugglers. They swallowed them with spoonfuls of honey and cassava pudding, and a couple of days later, when they were in a safe place, eliminated them, a rather revolting procedure, but safe.