Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales

  Several people were out on deck, where the air was cooler. I described Kay, a beautiful woman, young, somewhat heavy, dark, black hair, yellow dress, and so on. No one had seen her, but one woman suggested that she might have gone back to our stateroom.

  Unable to think of anything better (though the key was in my pocket), I went there. When I opened the door I got the shock of my life.

  The stateroom was dark. The corridor in which I stood brightly lit. In our stateroom, emerald eyes glowed with reflected light!

  I flipped the wall switch. Kay (Marthe?) lay on our bed, quite nude, propped up on one elbow and smiling. “I thought to arrange the small surprise for you.”

  I switched off the light and shut the door. “It was.” I was gasping, and grasping at straws, too. “I couldn’t imagine what had happened to you.”

  “You could not? You like our food, I think.”

  “It was good, as ship’s food goes.”

  “This I do not think. It make me so ill I think to retire. The steward admit me.”

  I nodded. “I see.”

  “When I am undress, I am well again.” Pouting. “You do not like my surprise? It may be I find the place for sleep elsewhere.”

  “Please don’t.” I was undressing too by this time. Without pondering the unintended irony I added, “It might be dangerous.”

  “For me you worry and worry.” She laughed. “You pull up the pins. Is this what you they call? With the oil and so many tools you push them up. You must get them out! You work and work.”

  “You mean the hinge pins of your cage. Yes, I did.”

  “Perhaps I fool you. Perhaps I reach through my bars and pull them up.” She sounded amused.

  I refused the bait. “Perhaps you did.” There had been three hinges and it had taken me almost an hour to remove the first. The other two had required at least twenty minutes each, even after I had learned how to do it.

  “I worry also. About you I worry. That is bad, no? Most bad.”

  I was touched. “Foolish, at least.”

  “Not foolish, only bad. I worry that I may hurt you.” She sounded genuinely concerned.

  A thin line of fine, soft hair ran up from her pubic hair to her navel. I stroked it as I spoke. “I have been hurt before,” I said. “I’m still here.”

  “Why is it you come to Africa?”

  “To see it. I’d read a lot about it, and felt as though I should have a look myself while I was still young enough to do it.” I recalled how difficult the decision had been, and the enormous relief I had felt when the ship was actually under way. Suddenly and delightfully, I had felt that I could fly—that I could do anything.

  When she said nothing, I added, “I thought I might do a bit of big-game hunting, too. Elephants, rhinos, and hippos. Lions and leopards. Heads on my wall. All that nonsense.”

  She laughed. “Very long you would take to eat the elephant.”

  “You’re right,” I told her. “We should kill only to eat. I shot antelopes to feed my men. There were six of us coming, four porters, Jakada, and myself. Coming back, you made seven.”

  “You shoot the baboons. For this I am always grateful to you.”

  “They would have killed you,” I told her.

  And it was true—they would have killed her if they could. When they finally fled her, those nearest fled last. Torn and bleeding. Limping. Silent. The uninjured had chattered loudly. Not these. One’s arm had been torn completely away. Neither my bullets nor Jakada’s had done that.

  “What is it you think? Always you think and think, always you are so silent.”

  “I suppose.” We lay sweating in the dark, side by side.

  “When you are old, old man, you will wish to speak but none will listen. He is old man, they will say. These old men know nothing.”

  Very well. I feel as old as a man can ever feel this night, older than you might believe, and I will say this. Old men know one thing. They know how little they know. Does Kay really harbor the spirit of a leopard? The soul of one? What is it, this thing we call the soul that it can—perhaps—be passed like a handkerchief from one hand to the next? Or does it pass itself, as a man leaves the house his parents left him and enters a new one?

  Could Kay (who had been Marthe and how many others?) actually take the form of a leopard? Ridiculous on the face of it; but human eyes do not reflect the light. Only the eyes of an animal do that.

  “Did you shoot the elephant? Give much meat to the men who help you?”

  “No,” I said. “I never shot one.”

  “For a tribe it is good, perhaps. There are so many hungry mouths there. The children crawl inside and come out. Then their little bellies are round with elephant meat.” She laughed softly.

  “I never shot one,” I repeated.

  “For you there will be vultures, jackals, hyenas. Feed us, bawana! We are your children.”

  So they would call, I thought, and they would be right. They are our children, the heirs of mankind.

  “Leopards are cleaner than we,” I said. This was not said to Kay; I was talking to myself as I sometimes do when I know I’m right. “They kill because they’re hungry, and eat all they kill. We kill to create moth-eaten dust-catchers our human heirs will drop into the trash.”

  Kay murmured, “I am glad,” apropos of what, I cannot say.

  “The lions and leopards fear us as honest men fear criminals, and we fear them as criminals fear the police.”

  I fell silent until at length Kay said, “What it is you think?” She was stroking me, but there were signs that it could not go on forever.

  “I was thinking of the baboons. They chatter and chatter, and it doesn’t mean a thing. Human beings must have chattered in the same way, with meaning gradually creeping in. Thus the origin of speech, which has puzzled so many.”

  “When I am a little girl, it is the same. My parents leave England and go to France. They send me to the French school. It is so I will be made ready for the school that come before school.”

  “Kindergarten,” I said.

  “That is German, garden of children. It is what we say in America?”

  “I think so.”

  “I know only a few words English at that time, words I remember from England. I try and try to remember them all. At night in the bed I whisper them. It is like I pray.”

  “Because they had meaning,” I said. “The French words you heard others say had meaning, too. But not to you, at that time.”

  “I love you,” Kay whispered; and I wondered just what meaning, if any, those words held for her.

  And for me.

  Much later, after she had left me to go into the little bathroom down the corridor, and had returned to me (as I had greatly feared she would not); and after I had left her for much the same purpose, and had returned to a gently rocking bed I had feared would be empty, and had found her asleep there, she began to purr. It was a deep and vibrant purr, very soft.

  I told myself over and over that I was dreaming, and at last I left our bed, dressed quietly, and went out. Her purr followed me until I cut it off by shutting the steel door of our compartment behind me.

  Outside I found that the stars had come out before me. Africa is an excellent place for seeing stars—I mean when one is out from under the trees, out on the veldt or in a field of some plantation. The sea is almost as good when the night is far advanced and the ship almost dark. The few running lights are invisible. The searchlight on the bridge probes the night, a shining pencil of light—and then goes dark. The night air is hot, and would be still if it were not for the motion of the ship. The stars do not twinkle but seem to be what they in fact are, distant fires.

  “There is a big cat on board,” a voice behind me said.

  I turned to look, seeing only the pale blur of a face shadowed by a dark mustache. I wanted to say that he had certainly been mistaken. What I said instead was “It seems every ship has at least one cat.”

  “A much larger cat than that.
”

  “You mean a big cat?” I asked. It sounded terribly stupid, but I could think of nothing else to say.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Are you talking about a lion? Something of that sort?”

  “Yes.”

  “A tiger, perhaps.” I tried to sound amused.

  He shook his head, the gesture scarcely visible though he was not two feet from me. “We just left Africa. There are no tigers in Africa. Tigers are found in India, China, and a few more Asian nations.”

  When I did not speak, he said, “Leopards are found in both Asia and Africa.”

  “So I understand.”

  “You yourself are interested in leopards, sir. Deeply interested. I hope you will forgive my touching on what is perhaps a personal matter.”

  “Certainly.” I turned away, looking out to sea.

  “We have had a death on this voyage. Two children appear to have vanished.”

  Without looking at him, I nodded. “So I understand.”

  “You have interested yourself in all three. You questioned Mrs. Bowen and the children’s mothers.”

  “I believe I did,” I said, “but you can hardly blame me. Those things have been the talk of the ship.”

  “While your interest in them has not been.”

  He had not asked a question, but I answered it anyway. “No. Or not to my knowledge. Why should it be?”

  “You vouchsafed no information whatsoever to either woman.”

  “That is by no means true.” I turned to face him. “You seem to know something about me, sir. I, on the other hand, know nothing whatever about you.”

  “I am Dr. Miles Radner. There is no ship’s doctor aboard—perhaps you were aware of it.”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t been ill.”

  “It is the case.” Dr. Radner was almost whispering. “I am the only doctor on board. Passenger ships often carry a physician as a part of their crew. The post is a difficult one to keep filled, however.”

  No comment from me seemed to be called for.

  “A married physician will rarely wish to spend so much time separated from his wife and family. Furthermore, a physician thus separated cannot refer his most difficult cases to a hospital. Too often his patients must die under his care, not because he lacks skill but because he lacks facilities.”

  “The dead man … ?” I let the question hang.

  “No. Bowen was dead when I was brought to see him. Nor could I have saved him if he had not been. He had been bitten in the back of the neck, a powerful bite that severed the spinal cord. It is the way in which big cats, and even lynxes and bobcats, kill.”

  I said, “You seem to know a great deal about these matters, Doctor.”

  “Thank you. Four years ago, I was called upon to treat a native who had been attacked by a leopard. Also to examine the bodies of some native children who had been killed, I would judge also by a leopard. Killed and partially eaten. Wolves and dogs tear the throat. The big cats bite the nape of the neck.”

  I did not turn away to face the sea again, but neither did I reply.

  “Was this your first trip to Africa? I do not intend to pry.”

  “It was,” I said, “but I stayed almost two years.”

  “You are independently wealthy. I am not, but I saved for more than twenty years in order that I might achieve my dream of hunting in Africa.”

  “I hope you enjoyed it.”

  “I did, though I hunted very little. Or killed very little, let us say. For one thing, I wanted to see the place every bit as much as I wanted to hunt. For another, every village had its sick—or so it seemed. I found I could not walk away and leave them.”

  “You had taken an oath,” I suggested.

  Dr. Radner shook his head. “It wasn’t that. I did what I could, and quite often that was a lot. Infected wounds and broken limbs … ”

  “Did you ever get a trophy?”

  “Nothing that would get me into the record book. One day Dan Harwood came to me with a new idea. Dan was my professional hunter, and he’d done his best for me. Record animals, even animals that just possibly might set a new record, are damned hard to find. Maybe a professional hunter sees a dozen, or half a dozen, in his entire career. But Dan had been listening to his shortwave and he’d heard something he thought might interest me. I hadn’t gotten a leopard yet, and there was supposed to be a man-eater up in the Saraban. It might not be a record animal, he said, but it sounded like it had to be a big one.”

  You can guess how I felt when I heard the doctor say that. He can’t have seen much of my face in the dark, and I wished with all my heart that he hadn’t been able to see it at all.

  “Record animals aren’t the only ones that can get a hunter into the books. Kill a man-eater, and everybody who writes about big-game hunting will know your name. You’ll be in a dozen books, in the papers, and in magazine articles a hundred years after you’re dead. I told Dan I wanted to go after it, and I’d do whatever it took.”

  I said, “As interesting as this is, I think I’d better go. My wife will be getting worried.”

  For a moment I could see the doctor’s teeth under that black mustache. “It gets more interesting to me—and I’d certainly think to you. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll stay and listen.”

  I did.

  “We engaged a bush pilot to fly us up there. You can’t land in that area, but there’s overgrazed pasturage in the French Sudan not far from it. We hired a guide and a few porters, and ended up at a plantation owned by an immigrant named Joseph Hecht. I’ve heard he’s dead now; did you know him?”

  I shrugged. “I met him once.”

  “Not a friend, I take it.”

  I shook my head.

  “He had sugarcane fields and coffee trees and so on, and shipped his produce down the river. His plantation was about the only civilized place in the area. I met his wife as well, though he wouldn’t let her out of her cage. I remember that I lit a cigarette for her. She smoked it with a good deal of pleasure and thanked me for it. Her husband didn’t allow her matches—or at least, that was the impression I got.” Dr. Radner took a cigarette from a gleaming case and lit it from the lighter built into the top, then offered me one, which I declined.

  “Her name was Marthe, and although she was foreign she spoke understandable English. We left, and I never saw her again. Certainly I didn’t expect to see her on this ship.”

  “Did you get the leopard?” I inquired.

  “For a time I wondered if there was any. Have you heard of the leopard-men?”

  I said I had not, but they sounded interesting.

  “It’s a sort of lodge.” His teeth reappeared. “Something like the Masons. I’m a Mason myself.”

  There were deck chairs behind the promenade on which we stood. As he spoke I realized that something—a child, perhaps, or some sort of animal—was moving soundlessly among them.

  “Many of them are witch doctors, or so I’m told. They wear leopard skins on their midnight raids, so that people who glimpse them will think they’ve seen a leopard. Have you ever worn brass knuckles?”

  “No,” I said, “but I know what they are.”

  “Their claws aren’t quite like that, but the idea is much the same. The claws are iron and protrude between their fingers—that’s what Dan told me. There’s an iron handle inside that they grasp. They claw their victims, and the deaths are blamed on leopards.”

  “That’s what you found in the Saraban?”

  “It wasn’t—that was what I half expected to find, based on tales I’d heard. Dan had warned me, you see. So had the bush pilot and some others. The best way to hunt a leopard is to construct a blind a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet away from his kill. In this case we couldn’t do it, because the kills had been human beings. We staked out goats instead, and searched for pug marks in the morning with native trackers. It took ten days, but I got my leopard. By that time I had to go. I had already spent more time in Africa than I had inte
nded or budgeted for. We thanked Hecht for his hospitality and radioed the bush pilot. The day after we left Hecht’s plantation, we got word that another child had been killed by a leopard. It seemed that the leopard I had shot had not been the man-eater.”

  I asked whether he had gone back for that one.

  “I didn’t, nor did I want to. Now I’ve seen Hecht’s wife on this ship, which was quite a surprise. I wasn’t sure until I heard her talk, but now I have and that’s her. What happened to Hecht?”

  “He died,” I said.

  “Killed by a leopard?”

  “So I’m told. I didn’t see his body.”

  Dr. Radner nodded and flipped his cigarette over the railing and into the South Atlantic, where it died like a meteor.

  “You told me Bowen had been bitten in the back of the neck,” I said.

  “I did.” Dr. Radner nodded. “He was.”

  “What about the children?”

  “I have no idea. But leopard-men kill their enemies, or at least that’s what everybody says. I suppose they might kill their enemies’ children, too. Hatred of the family or revenge. Still … ” He let the sentence trail away.

  “You must know the slanders that were directed against my wife.”

  “I do,” Dr. Radner said. “I also know that it is utterly impossible for any human being to turn into a leopard, far less turn into a leopard for a few hours and return to human form. It is far from impossible, however, for a human being to believe that he or she does it. The witches of the Middle Ages believed they flew through the air on brooms. They believed that utterly and sincerely, and many like instances might be given. A man—or a woman—might believe that he or she became a leopard at times, and might use iron claws of the kind I had described to claw his or her victims to death. I told you what I did because it may be useful to you to distinguish between true and false leopard kills.”

  “There are no leopards in the United States.” I made it as firm as I could.