Eeva had been sitting with her back against the stone, her head drooping forward. She looked up now and then through the dirty yellow hair fallen over her face. He thought she was dozing off from time to time, but when he got closer to her while he was building the fire, he saw that her eyes were wide open and tears running down her cheeks. They were washing away the dirt in stripes and leaving pink stripes beside the black ones. The coloring of the clean stripes resembled that of the crocodile's heart, which lay on the broad, flat rock beside the other chunks of meat and her catch of lizard, mouse, and insects. The heart was long and arrowhead-shaped and pulsed slowly and irregularly.
Ras got down on his knees and put his arm around her shoulders. She placed her head against his chest and warm tears trickled over his chest, ran down his belly, and wet his pubic hairs. She must have opened her eyes then, because she stiffened and tore herself loose from his arm. She crawled away before turning to face him.
"Is that all you think about?" she said. "Can't I even touch you without your... ?"
She struggled for speech, made some gargling sounds, and then spat many unintelligible words, which he supposed were Finnish.
Ras said, "It's been a long time." He left her to climb back down the cliff. After a few minutes, he came back with an armful of wood. Using the lighter, which she had carried in her pants pocket, he soon had a fire going. Eeva had said nothing during this, but she seemed to feel reassured by his deflation and moved closer to him and the fire. The world below the cliffs fell into darkness, and within a few minutes the sky darkened enough for a few stars to appear. Ras held a skinned leg on a hardwood stick over the fire until the juices began to drip in the flames and a black crust formed over the red flesh. Eeva sniffed deeply and came closer. Ras put the leg down and split it into even shares. The meat was so hot that she dropped it, giving a low cry at the same time. But she picked it up and ate without even trying to brush off the dirt.
Ras held his piece of leg with one hand while he held the liver over the fire at the end of the stick. When they had finished the leg, he offered her part of the liver. By now, the blood ran down her mouth and neck and stained some of the yellow hair. She did not seem to mind the blood now but licked it off hungrily and even wiped some of it off her breast and licked it off her hand.
The crocodile heart, lying near enough to the fire to absorb its heat, was still pumping, although not as vigorously. Ras wondered how long it would continue to live if he swallowed it whole. He could not do this, of course, because it would choke him, but he could feel it swelling and shrinking within him. The thought of its beating next to his heart was exciting, and the thought had its effect.
Eeva, looking down, suddenly stopped chewing. Then she swallowed loudly, and she said, "Don't!"
"Why not?" Ras said, even though he did not care to argue.
"Let's not even talk about it," she said. She started to rise.
"You won't have me," Ras growled. "You are dead, no better than a ghost, you white-skinned, yellow-haired, ghost-woman!"
"You mustn't," she said. She was standing up now and beginning to inch away backward. The fire laid pale hands upon her so that the skin showed whitely where the tears had washed, redly upon the bloodied lips and chin and neck and stained hair, and grayly and whitely from the wide eyes.
Ras stood up, reaching out to pick up the heart with his left hand as he did so.
He hefted it, looked down at it, laid it upon the stone, and sliced it in half with the knife. Then he put the knife into its sheath and picked up one of the halves. The half on the stone and that in his left hand continued to beat.
"You don't want me?" he said. "Take this then!"
And he leaped outward, catching her outflung left arm with his right hand. He pulled her to him and forced her to her knees by twisting her arm, so that she had her back to him, after which he dropped the heart and used both hands to make her lie upon her back. She fought, but he tore the rotten clothing of her pants away until she was naked.
Silently, her face contorted, eyes wide, mouth working, she squirmed and writhed. But he held her down with one hand between her breasts while he picked up the half of the crocodile's heart with the other. Although he said nothing, his grin and the manner in which he waved the flesh must have told her what he was going to do. Her efforts to keep her legs together were useless. He pinned one leg down with the weight of his body and pushed the other outward with the back of the hand gripping the heart. Then he took his hand away and, before she could bring her leg back, he had thrust the end of the crocodile heart into her.
The piece of meat was solid but only semistiff, and she was dry. Nevertheless, he shoved it all the way in and then rolled over on top of her so that she could not move.
They were eye to eye. Her heart beat so hard it felt as if it were trying to fly through her skin and into his.
She still said nothing. He kept grinning at her. After a while, he said, "How does it feel?"
She closed her eyes. Her mouth was a little open. Ras did not repeat his question. She began to shudder a little, as if she were responding to the swelling and shrinking within her, as if she trembled each time it beat against the walls of her flesh.
She shuddered, relaxed, shuddered, relaxed.
Suddenly, tears ran again, and she sobbed a few times, and then the tears quit flowing.
Ras said, "Whenever you want it out, say so."
"And then you...?"
"Of course. Unless you want both of us in at the same time."
Eeva groaned and said, "Jumala!" It was the only Finnish word he had learned. It meant God.
"What kind of world do you come from?" he said. There was no need to clarify his question. Eeva knew what he meant.
She said, "Neither," in answer to his previous statement.
Then she whispered, "Please take it out. And leave me alone."
"I won't," he said.
She opened her eyes, stared at him, and closed them again.
She moaned again and said, faintly, "Oh, I wish I could die! I want to be dead!"
"You are dead," he growled. "You haven't begun to live. That dead heart is more alive than you are. Just now, anyhow."
He felt between her legs, and he smiled. She had become so greasy that he had trouble getting hold of the heart to pull it out. It was still flexing and unflexing, as if the warmth and moisture and darkness had made it think that it was back in the crocodile's body. But, as soon as it was outside, it slowed down, and within a few seconds was dying swiftly. It gave a final quiver, after which he threw it onto the flat stone near the fire, which was now only red embers. The shock of the fall started the heart again. It beat three times and then died finally.
"It's no good," she said. "I'm no good. I'm cold, colder than that piece of meat, cold as..."
Her voice trailed off. She turned over slowly as if she could not believe that he was going to free her. Shaking as if the heart were still in her and beating against her, she got to her hands and knees. For a moment, she remained in that position, shaking her head back and forth and moaning. Ras touched the inside of her leg, where the lubrication was still running down.
"You want me below. You don't, above," he said wonderingly. He shook his head. "Very well. Say yes. And also say no. I will talk only to that part which says yes."
She stopped shaking her head and began crawling away. Before she had moved her knees and hands twice, she was down on the dirt and rocks with Ras pressing her from above. She gasped as she felt him drive into her from behind and under.
Ras cried out almost immediately and shook as she had when the heart was within her. It had been so long a time. He had burst with his burden.
He did not withdraw, and soon he told her to turn over. She did so without saying anything or without enthusiasm, as if she did not want to do so but knew that he would force her if she refused. Nevertheless, she was beginning to breathe heavily, and then she began moaning and rolling her head from side to side and a
fter a while she clawed his back and kissed his lips and then bit them and was crying out in Finnish.
They fell asleep shortly before dawn, but not until Ras had rebuilt the fire and cooked some more meat. He took especial delight in cooking the heart and offering her a part. She hesitated a moment and then bit into it. She ate it all and then lay down to sleep, but she kissed him and muttered something that sounded like an endearment.
19
THE WISDOM OF THE DEAD
When the sun was three hands wide above the cliffs, they were awakened by the stinging of the flies. She cursed him for what he had done. If she were pregnant, she said, she would kill him.
Ras grinned at her, although his expression was more of disgust than amusement. She was dirty, her ribs were like big teeth behind thin lips, her skin was bruised and bumpy from his maulings and from sleeping on the stone and splotchy from a hundred insect bites and scratches; her face was haggard, and she had big blue bags under her eyes.
She looked, and was, miserable. A moment later, she was struck with diarrhea. She continued to have attacks during the day. She became so weak that she could not walk, and so they stayed there the rest of the day and night. She was not so drained that she could not, however, curse him from time to time. He paid no attention to her words. He was busy cleaning up after her, fetching water for her, and making her comfortable. When he had ripped her clothes off, he had ruined them for any use except as rags, which he used to keep her clean.
He also scouted around the area for Sharrikt and hunted for some herbs that Mariyam had used for dysentery. He found some and prepared a tea, which she drank and which seemed to be responsible for the beginning of a recovery. Ras supported her while they walked to the river and carried her part of the way. At the river, he helped her bathe and washed out her hair, and then cleansed himself. She asked him if she had to go naked now and also added that she would freeze to death at nights if she didn't get some covering.
"You won't need it during the day," he said, "and at night I'll keep you warm. Don't worry about it. The end of the river can't be more than several days' journey away. I don't want to hang around here for a week while I hunt to get food to fatten you up and to get skins for you. It takes time and work to tan skins. We'll wait another day or so, and then we'll push on. You can take it easy; I'll do most of the work. Once we get there and find out from Wizozu how to get to Igziyabher's place, we'll worry about clothing you."
The evening of the night before they were to start again down the river, he sat behind her and combed her hair with the tortoise-shell comb his mother had given him. Eeva had said that he did not have to do this, but he insisted. She leaned forward as if to get as far away from him as possible, and she trembled. He talked softly to her for a while as he gently pulled the comb through her long hair. Then he dropped the comb and slid his arms around her and onto her breasts, and though she said, "No!" she shivered and did not struggle.
Later, she told him that she had only been able--up to now--to have an orgasm three times in her life. Once when she was drunk on wine (but she had refused to drink wine any more), once after she had smoked marijuana (but a second time with marijuana six months later had done nothing for her), and the night that she thought she and her husband would separate forever.
Until now, she said. But she did not love Ras because of what he gave her. She hated him. And she did not want to get pregnant. But she could do nothing about stopping him. Could she?
Ras said that she could run away or kill him.
She did not talk about her feelings thereafter, nor did she seem to object at all when he put his hands on her. His back became covered with bloody wounds, which had to be covered with mud during the day to keep off the flies.
Shortly before noon of the third day, the banks narrowed to a sixty-foot width. Where they had previously sloped gently upward from the water, they now began to rise toward the vertical. Moreover, the banks became taller, so that soon the surface of the river was twenty feet below their edges. The increase in speed was not alarming, but Ras wondered if he shouldn't put into shore and go ahead by land for some distance to see what lay ahead. By the time he had decided that he should, he found that he was too late. The banks were so steep that there was no place on which to beach the dugout.
Then they rounded a bend, and the twenty-foot-high walls became hundred-foot-high walls; the mud had given way to rock; the channel narrowed even more; the boat traveled more swiftly; the water began to get choppy.
Eeva said, "I should have recognized this, but it's been some time, and I saw it from the air. It looks different down here."
The canyon, curving slightly, finally straightened out. The walls became several hundred feet higher and overhanging. The rock was black and lumpy. There were now no places where Ras and Eeva could take refuge even by abandoning the dugout.
"There's an island ahead," Eeva said. She was standing close to him as if she wanted some protection from the gloomy rocks. She was talking louder as if she had to be heard over a loud noise. The river, however, was still only growling; it had not yet begun to roar.
About a hundred and fifty yards away, the river split. It raced through two narrow channels on the sides of a low pile of stone approximately eighty feet across at its widest. At this edge--Ras could not see the other--the island was shaped like a spearhead, with the point directed into the stream. It rose from the water rather gradually, so that from the side it probably would look like the back of a turtle.
Beyond it, about three hundred yards, were the cliffs, and at their base a hole a hundred feet wide and fifty feet high. It held the end of the river, of the world that Ras had once believed was the only world and blackness like the end of the world.
On the top of the island was a large hut with a thatch roof. On all sides of it were many wooden, and some stone, statues.
Ras felt a chill, but he was too busy paddling the dugout toward the island. It came in exactly where he wanted it, its front end sliding upward on a shelf of rock betrayed by a white toss of water. The stop was so sudden that he and Eeva were hurled onto their faces, but they were not tossed off. They leaped up and off the boat and into the water. They had to work hard to get most of it onto the rock, because the river clutched it, but they managed.
When Eeva had quit panting, she said, "Who in the world would want to live here?"
"The ancient magician the Wantso call Wizozu and the Sharrikt call Vishshush," Ras said. "I've told you that. The Wantso say that he lived here before the Thatumu--the people the Sharrikt called the Dattum--came through the hole from the underworld."
Eeva smiled knowingly and said, "I doubt that that hut would have lasted that long. Or that anybody came through here. How could they have made their way up against the river?"
"Gilluk said that there was once a path through the caves in the mountain and that it went alongside the river and up above it. Also, at that time, the river was smaller."
"Perhaps," Eeva said. "Anyway, there is no Wise Old Magician here."
"Then I don't know who Wuwufa and Gilluk talked to when they came here as young men to get power and wisdom," Ras said.
"Oh, yes? And how did they get back up the river against that current?" she said.
"I do not know. But there is a way. Wizozu told Wuwufa and Gilluk how to get back safely, but he also made them promise to tell no one else."
Eeva tossed her head impatiently and said, "All this talk will settle nothing. Let's see what's in the hut."
"You stay here until I say you can come on up," he said. "Wizozu does not like women. They drain him of his power and his wisdom. He kills them as soon as he smells them."
Eeva rolled her eyes with disgust, but she sat down on a relatively smooth rock. He walked up the slope toward the hut. The canyon was quiet except for the rush of waters. There were no birds on the island or in the air and no plants whatsoever on the island. The sun, almost directly overhead, filled the canyon with light, but he had the impressi
on of darkness brimming up from the waters.
The statues, carved from tree trunks, were twice as tall as he. Some had the bodies of frogs or crocodiles or leopards or unknown beasts. Most of the heads were half man, half animal. There were some carved heads mounted on tops of poles.
The hut beyond them was round and about twenty feet in diameter. Now that he was closer, he could see that most of the walls on this side were of thin slats of wood. The doorway was large and covered by a thin cloth of some material he could not identify at this distance. But he could see that something huge and black was on the other side of the curtain.
Gilluk had said that the ancient magician sat on the other side of the curtain and talked to him with a voice like the bellow of Baastmaast.
Gilluk had also said that his uncle had come here to gain extra power and wisdom so that he could slay Gilluk's father, but that the uncle had never returned. And when Gilluk had gone to the island, he had found his uncle's bones--which he recognized by their association with his uncle's war club--lying outside the hut. Vishshush had told him to throw his uncle's bones into the water and also to throw the other bones away. Vishshush had not told him why he had killed the uncle, and Gilluk did not feel like asking him.
If Gilluk's story was true, he had left the island bare of bones. Yet there was now a skeleton lying on the path about twenty feet from the hut. The skull and the bones looked as if they were Wantso. There were no weapons in sight.
Ras passed by the first statue, which was polished mahogany and represented a frog with a gorilla-like head. It must have weighed at least a ton, and this caused Ras to think of the power that Wizozu must possess to have been able to bring this heavy statue onto this island.
He went past the statue. The closer he got to the hut and the curtain behind which Wizozu bulked so blackly, the more nervous he became. He stopped once to glance back at Eeva, to make sure that she was obeying him but also to draw some comfort and courage from the fact that another human was in this place.