The Sky And The Forest

  “All is well with Musini, Lord,” said Nadini. “She sleeps, and the -- the children lie at her side.”

  Nadini showed momentary difficulty in concealing her ingrained disgust when she had to mention the revolting subject of twins, but Lanu's face lit up with a broad smile at her news.

  “You may go,” said Loa to Nadini, and, when she was out of earshot, he turned back to Lanu and to the subject he had in mind.

  “Do you remember,” he asked, slowly, “those fish that we ate on the day that we took the canoe?”

  He said the strange word, the word that had disappeared utterly from the vocabulary of the town, with hesitation and difficulty, but Lanu rolled an understanding eye at him.

  '“Well do I remember them,” he said. “There were others that Musini and I ate when we were in the pen in that town. They were good. As good as meat.”

  “With canoes,” went on Loa, “you could get for us more fish perhaps from the river?”

  He said “you” advisedly and with slight stress, and the form of address he used was chosen with all the nicety of which he was capable -- not the form used by a god to a mortal, nor that used by a parent to a child, but that of a superior person to one hardly his inferior. He wanted Lanu to assume certain grave responsibilities because, vague though the plans were which were forming in Loa's mind, they were plans he did not believe himself capable of putting into execution himself.

  “I do not know how to catch fish or how to kill them,” said Lanu, but he was not being merely obstructive. Loa could see that he was receptive enough to the new idea.

  “You do not,” Loa agreed. “But there are men in towns beside the river who do. Twice we have seen men catching fish in the river.”

  “That is so,” said Lanu. He was willing to be helpful, but he could not grasp yet what Loa had in mind.

  Loa was not sure himself, for that matter. Neither his mind nor the vocabulary in which he thought were adapted for logical thinking. The actual formulation of plans was a difficult step beyond the vague aspirations which a whole series of experiences and emotional disturbances had stirred up within him. Theoretical thinking was something that was almost beyond him, especially when he was thinking about something quite foreign to his ordinary life. What Loa really had at the back of his mind was to divert his people's minds from domestic politics by a series of wars of aggression, but the vocabulary at his disposal did not allow him to phrase it as briefly as that, nor in twenty times that number of words. He could only feel the need and grope his way towards expressing it, both to himself and to Lanu. Besides, he was moved by pure ambition as well, and in addition to that by a whole series of other motives, most of them simple enough in themselves, but adding up to a complexity that utterly entangled him. He wanted revenge in general upon a world which had treated him so ill; he wanted revenge in particular on certain individuals and communities; and he wanted, too, to exercise himself, and provide himself with outlets for his activity, now that he was back in a world which could be utterly tranquil at a time when his recent experiences had stirred him up so that the prospect of tranquillity was quite distasteful to him.

  Misdoubting his own executive ability, he desired to assert himself through the medium of Lanu.

  “When we killed those men,” he said, laboriously, “when we took their canoe to cross the little river, you wanted to keep the boat. Do you remember?”

  “Yes. I remember.”

  “You thought you might go down the river in it.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “And I said that when we reached home you might have a boat of your own.”

  “Indeed yes, Lord. I remember that.”

  “There are towns here, towns like ours, except that they are close to the river and their people use boats and eat fish.”

  “Musini and I were captured by such people,” said Lanu. “You got us out of their cage. Lord.”

  “That is right. We could find such a town again. We have only to go seek along the riverbank. You could go with the men from here, and at night, when the town is asleep, you could go into it with the men. With spears and with axes, you could kill those people who tried to fight against you. The others you could fasten in forked sticks, if you wished to. Some of the women we could have as wives, to raise up more children for us who would fight for us when they grew up. And the men -- they would know about boats. They would know how to make boats. They would know well how to make boats go upon the water. They would know how to catch fish. You could make them show you how to do these things. You could make them do these things for you.”

  “Lord,” said Lanu, “all this might well be done.”

  He said it with amazement, a new revelation opening up before him. No physical miracle that Loa might have performed could have impressed Lanu as much as this speech. Lanu would not have been as excited if Loa had stood the little axe on end and made it dance of its own volition. Lanu lived in a world where one did not inquire into the causes of things very deeply; an axe might dance, a tree might talk, just as branches moved in the wind or a river chuckled and gurgled. What Loa was proposing to do was something startlingly different. It was as if he had pulled aside a series of veils which had hitherto enclosed Lanu, revealing amazing new landscapes, all well within reach. The pang of pleasure which Loa experienced when he saw Lanu's admiring reaction to his suggestion was deeper than anything Loa had felt before. He was thoroughly aroused now.

  “The men would make many boats for us,” he said. “Not one boat, but many. Not little boats, like the one in which we crossed the river, but big boats.”

  “Like the one which captured Musini and me,” said Lanu. “Boats with many men.”

  “Yes,” went on Loa. “Many large boats, so that many many men could go in them. All the men in this town. In boats they could go far.”

  “Indeed they could,” said Lanu. “I would lead them far.”

  “So you would. There would be no town that could stand against us.”

  “We would come by the river,” said Lanu. “We would step on shore in the darkness close to the town. No one would know we were near. We would kill them. We would take all they had. We would drive them to the boats and bring them back here.'‘

  Lanu slapped his thigh in his excitement, as the new prospects revealed themselves in growing detail. Neither Lanu nor Loa was at all aware of how much they were indebted for these ideas to the Arab slave raiders. Every new conception -- revolutionary, all of them -- had its origin in their recent experiences. The fundamental one, of attacking people who had done them no harm, was due to the example of the Arabs. The plan of the night surprise, even the idea of slavery, were from the same source. There was something, perhaps, of originality in Loa's idea of sea power, of building up a naval strength on the river as a ready means of dominating other people, but even that really found its beginnings in what Loa had seen on the beach at the Arab slave depot. Intense experiences, working on simple minds that had long stagnated, were producing violent reactions.

  “You can go out soon,” said Loa. “You can take with you one or two men, and you can seek along the river for a town. You can look at it well and secretly. Then you can come back and all the other men will be ready to go with you.”

  “And the spears and the axes?” asked Lanu.

  Loa paused to consider the question of munitions of war. There used to be some spearheads of iron in the town which probably still existed. There must be many axes; the whole culture of the town depended on the steel-edged axe which could fell trees and clear the forest for the planting of bananas and manioc. If Litti the worker in iron had not survived the raid -- and Loa could not remember seeing him today -- some of his family and trade must still be alive. They could make spearheads and axes; Loa scowled a little as he thought that under pressure they could make them much faster than they had done in the old happy-go-lucky days. Most men could make bows, and the women could be put to work braiding bowstrings. Somebody would have to be detailed
to make a fresh supply of arrow poison. Loa turned back to Lanu to debate another new conception, that of the mobilization of the nation for war.

  It was a deeply interesting discussion; the father and son went on with it while darkness fell, and they hardly noticed the passage of time. Only a sharp shower of rain eventually broke into their deliberations, and made them seek shelter in the house Loa had appropriated to himself. It was here that Maku addressed them, herself wet and glistening after running up the street in the rain.

  “Musini sends a message to her Lord,” she announced, at the threshold.

  “What is it?”

  ''Musini says” -- the message did not come easily from Maku's lips -- “that now she lies awake. She lies with her children beside her, hoping that perhaps Loa her Lord would come and visit her.”

  Loa could not think on the spur of the moment how to reply to such a remarkable request, so he temporized.

  “Go back to Musini,” he ordered, “and say that Loa will consider the matter.”

  With Maku gone, Loa turned the notion over in his mind. It was quite inconceivable that a god should walk the length of the street merely to visit a wife in childbed. He might look in upon her tomorrow if, as was to be expected, business regarding the reorganization of the town led him that way. Musini would be up and about in a couple of days at most. Meanwhile she was of no use whatever as a wife, incapable even of laying a plantain on a grid. But on the other hand the rain had stopped, and there were a few minutes left before complete darkness began. He could step outside to stretch his legs after so much squatting. A breath of air at least -- Loa had not been under a roof for a year, and it felt strange to him. Lanu followed him when he rose and stretched and walked outside. Loa breathed with pleasure the sudden coolness resulting from the rain and the disappearance of the sun. The mud was soothing under his bare toes.

  “My mother is here,” said Lanu suddenly, beside him.

  Inside the house it was quite dark, as was to be expected, but Musini had heard their approach.

  “That is you. Lord,” she said gladly. “I hoped you would come.”

  A thin wail arose from the dark interior, to be instantly matched by another.

  “See, Lord,” went on Musini's voice. “Your children greet you. They are fine boys, worthy of their father. Lord, it was good of you to let them live. I -- I did not want them to die. Lord -- no devil was the father of either of them. There has been no thought in my mind but for you all this time. You knew that, Lord, and so you spared them, the children of my old age. Lord, I am grateful.”

  Musini's hand, reaching out in the darkness, found Loa's knee. She stroked his calf and pressed his ankle eagerly.

  “It is nothing,” said Loa, but Musini continued feverishly.

  “Lord, you have led us home. You have killed Soli. The people put their faces to the ground before you again. You will always eat your fill, and many women will attend to your wants. But none of them were with you in the forest, to find you white ants when you were hungry. None of them pillowed your head when the rain fell and the lightning flashed, or listened for the tread of the little people with you when all the forest was full of enemies. I have shared all this with you. Perhaps you will never pay attention again to an old woman like me, but I have had what no woman ever had before me or will ever have again, and that will be mine for always. Never again shall I be able to speak to you like this, Lord, but I have said what I wanted to say. I am grateful. Lord.”

  It was a tactless speech to address to a god. Loa resented, uncomfortably, being reminded of being hungry and of being frightened by the lightning. Whatever Musini might say, it was Loa who owed a debt of gratitude to Musini, and that was not a pleasant thing to think about. Besides, it was unconventional, to say the least, for a woman to speak her mind to any man, let alone to him. Loa could remember the days before the raiders came when Musini evinced a shrewish sharpness that had not conduced to his dignity -- that in fact had nearly sent her to serve his ancestors -- and the fanatical possessiveness underlying her recent speech warned him that the same thing might happen again, easily, if similar circumstances ever arose. He must make sure that they did not, that Musini's position as senior wife should be so defined in future as to give her no such opportunity.

  All this his brain or his instincts, his infinite experience of wives, told him. He shied away from his love for Musini as a wild animal shies away from a trap, and yet he was moved inexpressibly by that urgent whisper, by the feverish touch of the woman's hand upon him. He inclined more and more towards melting, towards making a host of rash promises. He had to summon up all his resolution to tear himself away, to free himself from the magic hold this old woman, his earliest wife, had upon him. He withdrew himself from her reach, yet even then did not have all the moral strength necessary to end their relationship once and for all. Instead he temporized again.

  “Sleep well, Musini,” he said, with a kindly note that he could not keep out of his voice. “Feed your children well, and rest in peace.”

  Walking back from the house he was perturbed, a little sore and resentful. But there was one easy way in which at least he could forget Musini, there was one specific opiate which could at least temporarily negative the sting of his feelings.

  “Nadini!” he called as he approached his house.

  “Lord, I come,” said Nadini.

  CHAPTER 16

  For a thousand years at least, perhaps for many thousand years, the forest and its people had lain in torpor and peace. There had been food for all who could survive disease and cannibalism; there had been room enough for all, there had been materials enough to satisfy every simple need, and there had been no urge, either economic or temperamental, to wander or to expand. There prevailed an equilibrium which was long enduring even though it bore within itself the potentialities of instability, and it was the Arab invasions, pushing southwards from the fringes of the Sahara, westwards from the valley of the Nile and from the coast opposite Zanzibar, which first destroyed the equilibrium of the life in the deep central recesses of the forest. On the Atlantic coast, where the great rivers met the sea, the disturbance began somewhat earlier as a result of the activities of Europeans. Hawkins on the Guinea Coast first bought from local chieftains the victims who otherwise would have gone to serve the chieftain's ancestors, and sold them at a vast profit on the other side of the Atlantic. More and more white men arrived, seeking gold and ivory and slaves, and willing to pay for them with commodities of inestimable desirability like spirits and brass and gunpowder; and the demand raised a turmoil far inland, for where local supplies were exhausted the local chiefs soon learned to make expeditions into the interior in search of more. Soon there was no more gold; the supply of ivory died away to the annual production when the accumulated reserves of ages were dissipated; but the forest still bred slaves, and slaves were sought at the cost of the ruin and the depopulation of the coastal belt.

  But no effect was evident in the deep interior of the forest. The cataracts on all the rivers, where they fall from the central plateau, the vast extent of the forest, and, above all, the desolation of the intermediate zone, hindered for a long time the penetration of the deep interior either by the native chiefs of the coastal fringe or their white accomplices. The Napoleonic wars delayed the inevitable penetration, and when they ended the diminution and eventual suppression of the slave trade delayed it yet again. Towards the coast the strains and stresses of the slave-raiding wars had brought about the formation of powerful kingdoms -- especially in the areas whither Mohammedan influence had penetrated from the Sahara -- which subsequently had to be destroyed by the Europeans to gain for themselves free passage beyond them. The Hausa empire, Dahomey, Ashanti, and innumerable other native states, rose and later fell, built upon a foundation of barbarism cemented by European and Moslem influences. In the same way the intrusion of the Arabs from the east set the central part of the forest in a turmoil, so that war raged and no man's life was safe in his ow
n town; and these developments occurred at the moment when Arab influence ebbed away as a result of events elsewhere, leaving the central forest disturbed and yet not further disturbed; as if the highest wave had swept the beach and none of its successors ever reached as high.

  And so Loa was able to build up his little empire undisturbed. Those moments of vision -- blurred though the vision might be -- of his first conversation with Lanu were never succeeded by anything comparable, and yet they proved to be all that was necessary. There can have been few statesmen in the world who have ever carried out so completely a scheme conceived at the beginning of their careers. As time went on, Loa saw every step of his vague plan carried through. He saw Lanu develop from a lively thoughtful boy to a bloody-minded warrior. The raiding parties that Lanu led rarely if ever came back empty-handed. There was the first notable occasion when, having set out on foot, he returned by water, with his men in three big canoes paddled by prisoners. He landed on the river-bank, naturally, at the practicable beach below the site of the vanished town which Nasa, thirty years before, with less vision than Loa, had utterly destroyed. Equally naturally there grew up on the site in time a new little town, the port of Loa's capital, populated largely by the captives taken in the various raids; for Loa, partly from necessary policy, and partly from something resembling good nature, did not send all his prisoners to serve his ancestors.

  Sometimes he was ferocious and terrible. There were days when the ceremonial axe was hard at work, when his own people and not merely the slaves spoke with hushed voices in fear lest upon them should fall Loa's choice, when from the grove which sprang up in the accursed spot at the far end of the town there came the shrieks of men and women in agony. But this happened only when Loa's instincts told him it was time to assert his majesty afresh, for often prisoners were too valuable to be sacrificed when they could be incorporated into his own population, as wives for his men or as skilled workmen for his enterprises; and the children could soon be trained into devoted soldiers and subjects. Skilled slave labour built for him the canoe fleet that swept the whole long reach of the river between the rapids; captives taught his men how to handle paddles; and captives, in addition, actually manned the paddles in great part -- it did not take long to convert, by plunder and victory, the slave of yesterday into the enthusiastic warrior of today. Lanu, having led armies from boyhood, soon became a skilled and then a famous warrior, and as the years went by his much younger twin brothers began to make a name for themselves as soldiers too, but the ultimate power was wielded by Loa, who never went out on a raid, but who lived in mysterious state in his own town, sometimes weaving plans, but always, according to the frightened reports of both his friends and his enemies, weaving spells that brought him inevitable victory. In twenty years Loa had spread his rule over a wide circle of the forest, so that his boundaries came into touch on the one side with the waning Arab dominion extending from the Great Lakes, and on the other with the new power from Europe which was slowly extending from the sea.