Chapter 41
I glared at Pelvis across the table. She had better start talking … now. Enough of this one word answer shit. Charlie had spent weeks teaching her English. Now was the time to elicit more comprehensive answers.
"Well, sweetheart," I grumbled. "Start talking. Tell me about the Chockli, the weed, cocoons—"
"Miss Fleetsmith?" Charlie said, "Perhaps I could be of some assistance in the interrogation. I realize that Penny has shown a certain lack of—"
"A certain lack? Are you kidding? She's been so bloody obstinate, yet she smiles like she knows exactly what we're talking about. Have you seen her smile? Huh, Chuckie boy?"
I turned to Pelvis once more.
"The weed. Say something about the weed," I said, encasing my request in the most menacing tones I could muster.
"Weed?" she said, a nervous quiver to her voice.
"No!" I shouted, jumping up from the table. "I don't want one word answers!"
"Miss Fleetsmith?"
"Charlie, shut up! This is important." I sat and turned again to Pelvis. "Start talking!"
It looked as though Penny were going to burst out in a flood of tears. Her hands, lying flat on the table before her, were shaking.
"The weed …" she began, "it fix sick people." Then she went quiet.
"And?" I snarled, actually surprised at the length of her response.
"The weed … put it on body …fix sickness." She was staring right at me, her lips barely moving. "Make white skin. Make … make …" She looked up at Charles, now standing nervously beside her chair.
"Cocoon," Charlie said softly, placing his hand gently upon her shoulder.
"Cocoon," Penny continued, "and boys sleep and sleep … and soon Father takes knife and cuts … cocoon, and boy is alive and good and no sickness."
Now we were getting somewhere. I felt like asking her about eumycota fungi and mitochondrial DNA and—
"Girl have baby and Father rub weed on baby and baby sleep and sleep in …" She looked at Charles. "In cocoon," she concluded.
"What!" I cried, jumping up from my seat. Penny jerked back in her chair, apprehensive. "Sorry, sorry," I said, "It's just that … uh, putting it on a baby. I can't believe this. Please continue, please, Penny." I slowly sank into my chair.
"Father cut cocoon and baby come out and is new boy."
"Shit!" I shouted, jumping up once again. "I knew it! I knew it! Turns girls into boys! Shit!"
Penny continued, now unperturbed by my outbursts.
"No," she said, smiling as though pleased with my response. "Wrong. Weed make boy to boy. Make girl to girl." Then she went quiet again.
"And? And?" I said.
"And?" she said.
"Shit! Keep talking!"
"And … and young girl give to Father and he take her—"
"Wait just a minute. Who is this Father?" I said.
Penny seemed confused and looked up at Charlie.
"The chief," Charlie said. "They call him Father." Penny smiled and Charles continued. "Well, it's not exactly father but it's a Chockli word that means father."
"Okay, okay. Keep going," I said, staring once again at Penny.
"Father keep girl. When girl is woman, small woman …" she looked again at Charlie.
"She means a young woman," Charlie said. He actually seemed to be enjoying this exchange, probably because it demonstrated his skill at tutoring. Come to think of it, he'd done a very respectable job of teaching Penny the basics of—
"Young woman," Penny continued, exaggerating the word young, "go to Bohi-mahu and ties to breasts and boys … small boys … young boys watch and—"
"Hold on. Wait a minute. Bohi-mahu. What's that?" I ask, looking first at Penny then at Charles.
Penny looked up at Charles who answered: "The stone statue, Miss Fleetsmith. The Goddess of fertility. Bohi-mahu." Charles grinned, ear to ear. "You will remember, Miss Fleetsmith, that you were once regarded with the esteem ascribed to Bohi-mahu when you were … uh, stripped of your blouse and—"
"Yeah, sure. That's something you'd remember, Charlie boy." I turned to the girl. She needed no encouragement to continue.
"Pelvis was ties to breast of Bohi-mahu and—"
"Oh shit … here we go again," I grunted. "What the hell does she mean by ties to breast?" I was looking at Charlie.
"You will recall that Miss Penny was tied to the stone statue … to the breasts of the stone statue," he said. "And, Miss Fleetsmith, did you notice that she refers to herself as Pelvis? I believe it to be an important factor in her cultural edification that you refer to Miss Penny as—"
"Okay Penny, keep talking," I said.
"Weed put on Pelvis, over body … make … make …"
"Cocoon," Charlie said."
"Make cocoon," Penny said, "and small woman … young woman … leave alone when cocoon come and Father come after, much after, and cut cocoon and young woman come out … and young woman is … is … choose or gomorashu."
"Gomorashu?" I ask. "What the hell is—?"
Charles leaned over Penny's shoulder and whispered something in her ear. Shit! This was a ridiculous scene. Have I been so ignorant of Penny's presence these past few weeks that only Charlie could communicate? And why hadn't he told me of her ability to—
"Perfect," Charlie said.
"Huh? Perfect?" I said. "What's perfect?"
"The young women, after emergence from the cocoon, are gomorashu, perfect," Charlie said. "It seems that Miss Penny was destined to become perfect, had we left her among the Chockli. For the young women of the Chockli, their sojourn within the cocoon results in a perfect metamorphosis. They emerge perfect, gomorashu." Charles was all smiles.
"Perfect? In what sense," I ask, completely confused.
It was Charles who spoke: "Perfect, Miss Fleetsmith, in the sense that they had no frailties, no addictions, no ailments, freedom from disease, a complete—"
"Okay, I get the idea. Please continue," I said. "Oh, and don't forget the hair. Tell me about the hair. Do they or don’t they become hairy apes."
"Apparently, Miss Fleetsmith, they do not. It would appear that the onset of a hairy epidermis is a characteristic only of Caucasians. Perhaps—"
"Okay, no hair, but what about dropping dead? Here, people drop dead."
Charles whispered into Penny's ear and she smiled.
"Hair," she said. "No hair. Gumuhacki. No hair."
"Ah, Jesus … what the hell is Gumuhacki?" I groaned.
Charles walked slowly to a chair and sat. He was enjoying this far too much.
"You may recall, Miss Fleetsmith, that the first tribe we met in the Amazon jungle were bald. They appeared much like the Chockli, but without hair on their scalp." He turned for a moment to penny, said something I didn't understand, she responded with something I still didn't understand, then he continued. "They were rejects. Faulty. Inadequate."
"You just said something to Penny. What was that?" I asked.
"I asked her about the lack of hair and she explained that it was the Gumuhacki tribe. Failure to live up to the expectations of the weed meant banishment to the Gumuhacki, which actually means, in Chockli, dumb ones."
"Shit!" I snarled, rising slowly from my chair. "Are you telling me, Mr. Charles Curran, that you can speak to this girl in Chockli?"
"Why yes, Miss Fleetsmith. It's quite a simplistic language although it does have some merits. For example—"
"Damn you! Damn you!" I was angry. Hell, I was furious. "How long have you been able to speak in Chockli?"
"Ah, Miss Fleetsmith, I have only scratched the surface of the language. Although the sentence structure is simplex, ideas are also conveyed by the tonal quality imparted to the words. For example—"
"To hell with your examples! Just ask Pelvis why there were so few women in her village!"
"Girl, go Gumuhacki," Penny said, seeming to understand my question.
There was a minute of silence while I tried to understand the significance of this.
"The girls went with the Gumuhacki?" I asked. "Why on earth would they—"
"A bargain, Miss Fleetsmith," Charles said without hesitation. "It was the arrangement made between the Chockli and the Gumuhacki. The Chockli regarded themselves as perfect—the restoration of perfect biological stature, via the cocoon, you understand—and, to persuade those for whom the weed failed to provide perfection, to wit, the Gumuhacki … to persuade them to leave the village, the Chockli provided them with perfect women. Hence the poverty of females within the—"
"Shit! It's that simple?"
"It would appear so," said Charles. "Of course, a few … Ah … well-utilized women were kept in the Chockli camp for child bearing purposes. Miss Penny was one. Indeed, she had become of age and was about to be cocoonized—"
"Cocoonized?" I said.
"It seems an appropriate appellation, wouldn't you say?" Charles said with an annoying smirk. "And, I might add, the young men who sat about the Bohi-mahu and watched the beginnings of cocoonization, they would eventually return and select the most gomorashu of the young women who emerged. There was a limit on the number selected—which explains why your father was not well tolerated when the Father gave him a gomorashu—and those without a young man to speak on their behalf were sent to the Gumacki. You will undoubtedly have noticed that there were traditionally two cocoonizations: one with every Chockli child, shortly after birth … then again when they became of age, as was the case with Miss Penny."
I was exhausted. gomorashu, Bohi-mahu … It made my head spin. Unfortunately, it seemed that there was little if anything that would explain how to reverse the apefication of Caucasians.
Apefication. It seemed an appropriate appellation.