Robert Silverberg - Lion Time in Timbuctoo

“Some of the common people may believe such stuff. But do you think I do? Do you think we’re all a bunch of ignorant savages here, girl?”

“There’s a charm that can be worn to keep vampires from creeping into your bedroom at night and sucking your blood. I want you to get me one.”

“I tell you, there aren’t any vamp—”

“Or there’s a special prayer you can say. And while you say it you spit in four directions, and that traps the vampire in your house so he can be arrested. Tell me what it is. And the charm for making the vampire give back the blood he’s drunk. I want to know that too.”

They were on the private upstairs porch of Little Father’s palace. The night was bright with moonlight, and the air was as hot as wet velvet. Selima was wearing a long silken robe, very sheer. He could see the shadow of her breasts through it when she turned at an angle to the moon.

“Are you always like this?” he asked, beginning to feel a little irritable. “Or are you just trying to torment me?”

“What’s the point of traveling if you don’t bother to learn anything about local customs?”

“You do think we’re savages.”

“Maybe I do. Africa is the dark continent. Black skins, black souls.”

“My skin isn’t black. It’s practically as light as yours. But even if it were—”

“You’re black inside . Your blood is African blood, and Africa is the strangest place in the world. The fierce animals you have, gorillas and hippos running around everywhere, giraffes, tigers—the masks, the nightmare carvings—the witchcraft, the drums, the chanting of the high priests—”

“Please,” Little Father said. “You’re starting to drive me crazy. I’m not responsible for what goes on in the jungles of the tropics. This is Songhay. Do we seem uncivilized to you? We were a great empire when you Ottomans were still herding goats on the steppes. The only giraffe you’ll see in this city is the stuffed one in my father’s throne room. There aren’t any gorillas in Songhay, and tigers come from Asia, and if you see a hippo running, here or anywhere, please tell the newspaper right away.” Then he began to laugh. “Look, Selima, this is a modern country. We have motorcars here. We have a stock exchange. There’s a famous university in Timbuctoo, six hundred years old. I don’t bow down to tribal idols. We are an Islamic people, you know.”

It was lunacy to have let her force him onto the defensive like this. But she wouldn’t stop her attack.

“Djinn are Islamic. The Koran talks about them. The Arabs believe in djinn.”

Little Father struggled for patience. “Perhaps they did five hundred years ago, but what’s that to us? In any case we aren’t Arabs.”

“But there are djinn here, plenty of them. My head porter told me. A djinni will appear as a small black spot on the ground and will grow until he’s as big as a house. He might change into a sheep or a dog or a cat, and then he’ll disappear. The porter said that one time he was at the edge of town in Kabara, and he was surrounded by giants in white turbans that made a weird sucking noise at him.”

“What is this man’s name? He has no right filling your head with this trash. I’ll have him fed to the lions.”

“Really?” Her eyes were sparkling. “Would you? What lions? Where?”

“My father keeps them as pets, in a pit. No one is looking after them these days. They must be getting very hungry.”

“Oh, you are a savage! You are!”

Little Father grinned lopsidedly. He was regaining some of the advantage, he felt. “Lions need to be fed now and then. There’s nothing savage about that. Not feeding them, that would be savage.”

“But to feed a servant to them—?”

“If he speaks idiotic nonsense to a visitor, yes. Especially when the visitor is an impressionable young girl.”

Her eyes flashed quick lightning, sudden pique. “You think I’m impressionable? You think I’m silly?”

“I think you are young.”

“And I think you’re a savage underneath it all. Even savages can start a stock exchange. But they’re still savages.”

“Very well,” Little Father said, putting an ominous throb into his tone. “I admit it. I am the child of darkness. I am the pagan prince.” He pointed to the moon, full and swollen, hanging just above them like a plummeting polished shield. “You think that is a dead planet up there? It is alive, it is a land of djinn. And it must be nourished. So when it is full like this, the king of this land must appear beneath its face and make offerings of energy to it.”

“Energy?”

“Sexual energy,” he said portentously. “Atop the great phallic altar, beneath which we keep the dried umbilicus of each of our dead kings. First there is a procession, the phallic figures carried through the streets. And then—”

“The sacrifice of a virgin?” Selima asked.

“What’s wrong with you? We are good Moslems here. We don’t countenance murder.”

“But you countenance phallic rites at the full moon?”

He couldn’t tell whether she was taking him seriously or not.

“We maintain certain pre-Islamic customs,” he said. “It is folly to cut oneself off from one’s origins.”

“Absolutely. Tell me what you do on the night the moon is full.”

“First, the king coats his entire body in rancid butter—”

“I don’t think I like that!”

“Then the chosen bride of the moon is led forth—”

“The fair-skinned bride.”

“Fair-skinned?” he said. She saw it was a game, he realized. She was getting into it. “Why fair-skinned?”

“Because she’d be more like the moon than a black woman would. Her energy would rise into the sky more easily. So each month a white woman is stolen and brought to the king to take part in the rite.”

Little Father gave her a curious stare. “What a ferocious child you are!”

“I’m not a child. You do prefer white women, don’t you? One thing you regret is that I’m not white enough for you.”

“You seem very white to me,” said Little Father. She was at the edge of the porch now, looking outward over the sleeping city. Idly he watched her shoulderblades moving beneath her sheer gown. Then suddenly the garment began to slide downward, and he realized she had unfastened it at the throat and cast it off. She had worn nothing underneath it. Her waist was very narrow, her hips broad, her buttocks smooth and full, with a pair of deep dimples at the place where they curved outward from her back. His lips were beginning to feel very dry, and he licked them thoughtfully.

She said, “What you really want is an Englishwoman, with skin like milk, and pink nipples, and golden hair down below.”

Damn Ali Pasha! Was he out of his mind, telling such stuff to her? He’d go to the lions first thing tomorrow!

Amazed, he cried, “What are you talking about? What sort of madness is this?”

“That is what you want, isn’t it? A nice juicy golden-haired one. All of you Africans secretly want one. Some of you not so secretly. I know all about it.”

No, it was inconceivable. Ali Pasha was tricky, but he wasn’t insane. This was mere coincidence.

“Have you ever had an Englishwoman, prince? A true pink-and-gold one?”

Little father let out a sigh of relief. It was only another of her games, then. The girl was all mischief, and it came bubbling out randomly, spontaneously. Truly, she would say anything to anyone. Anything.

“Once,” he said, a little vindictively. “She was writing a book on the African empires and she came here to do some research at our university. Our simple barbaric university. One night she interviewed me, on this very porch, a night almost as warm as this one. Her name was—ah—Elizabeth. Elizabeth, yes.” Little Father’s gaze continued to rest on Selima’s bare back. She seemed much more frail above the waist than below. Below the waist she was solid, splendidly fleshly, a commanding woman, no girl at all. Languidly he said, “Skin like milk, indeed. And rosy nipples. I had never even imagined that nipples could be like that. And her hair—”