Karen Lord: Redemption in Indigo

With such interesting news, people quickly came running out of their doors. ‘In the well?’ ‘What happened?’ ‘How did he manage to do that?'

Paama gasped out her story. ‘He saw cattle??hey had got loose??hey were trampling the young corn. He tried to chase them away, and he gathered up the ears that had been broken off. But when he tried to make his way back to the village in the dark, he stumbled off the trail and fell into the well!'

'Never mind, we'll get him out,’ they reassured her, mistaking her panting breaths for distraught sobs.

With lights and ropes, they went to the well, and soon Ansige was hauled out onto dry land. Others rushed off to the cornfields and took the cattle back to their pasture. People clamoured around Ansige, trying to ask him his story of how such a thing had happened. Paama pushed forward quickly.

'Ansige, you must be in shock. People, please do not badger the poor man. He must get dry. He must change his clothes. He must have his dinner.'

'Dinner?’ Ansige said plaintively.

All desire to talk about his ordeal vanished. He trotted obediently beside Paama towards her family's house.

ansige loses his dignity and his head

The next day, Paama was so miserable that even after she put her tears under the river stone, she could still feel the salt water sitting heavy on her heart. Her sister, who had finally seen Ansige at table, was at least more sympathetic than previously, but it wasn't enough. Her mother wore a look of suffering by proxy and guilt by association that gave Paama no comfort at all, at all, at all. Only her father gave her some hope. He was pondering the problem of Ansige so deeply that his brow was furrowed. Paama prayed that such strenuous mental effort would be rewarded with success.

She confided in him. ‘Father, Ansige thinks that all the things that have happened to him are not because of his own foolishness, but because I am not taking proper care of him. What can I do?'

Semwe's frown fell away for a moment as he looked fondly at his daughter. ‘Paama, there is very little that one can do when a foolish person chooses to think foolish things. But perhaps you could prepare for him a special dish, one of his favourites. You will satisfy both his ego and his appetite.'

Paama smiled. ‘That is an excellent suggestion. I know what he would like best. Millet dumplings. I'll go start grinding the meal now.'

She set up her large mortar with its tall pestle in the court, the usual place to go to grind meal. After all, it was a job that had to be done singing, so that the rhythm could carry the motion of the pestle. As she worked and sang, passing villagers called out the familiar refrain in reply to her verses.

Again Paama filled the mortar and ground the millet, and then filled and ground again. This was for Ansige, so naturally there would have to be a lot of it.

When the song had ended and the grinding was done, Paama's heart felt light at last. She caught sight of Ansige at the far edge of the court, looking at her as if his life depended on the contents of her mortar, and instead of being irritated at him, she felt sorry for him. Such an obsession with food could not be normal. Maybe he had a maw worm, a ravenous parasite living in his guts that ate the majority of the food he put into his body. Maybe he had a dislocation in his brain, so that instead of his feeling happiness, sorrow, or anger, his emotions were replaced by the sensation of hunger. She wished she could help him—not merely feed him to take away the hunger for a short while, but cure him so that food would never rule him again.

She mixed the millet with water, spices, and a touch of honey and cooked up a huge amount, platters full of dumplings, enough for twenty. When she brought them to Ansige, he was so ecstatic over this treat that she was able to go home, content and at peace, knowing that she could have a moment's well-deserved rest.

Ansige was indeed happy. To have food is always pleasant, but to have one's favourite dish, and to have it after watching it being prepared by the hands of someone who cares about you, that must surely be the greatest culinary delight. He ate and ate and ate until the sad moment arrived when he was holding the last dumpling in his hand. He popped it into his mouth and swallowed it down. Still hungry! Heaving a deep sigh, he looked around sadly and saw Paama's mortar still standing in the court.

'Good dumplings,’ muttered a tiny voice by his foot.

He looked down, and there was a beetle, green and gold in the dusty brown soil of the court, worrying a large crumb of dumpling with its mandibles.

It looked up at him and, impossibly, winked. ‘Bet you wish there was more where this came from, eh?'

Ansige's bottom lip pushed out in one of his variations on ‘Woe is me!’ Then he paused, struck by the beetle's words. Perhaps there was a bit of millet left at the bottom. There was only one way to find out. He went to the mortar and scraped a finger around the bottom, coming up with a tiny scoop of precious millet meal. Licking the finger clean, he again reached in and drew out another fingerful, but the small portions were more annoying than satisfying. There had to be a better way to get to the bottom of the mortar. Of course! He could put in his head and lick what he wanted straight from the sides and bottom.

It was one of his most brilliant ideas yet. He soon cleaned down the walls of the mortar and was heading for the remnants at the bottom when something disastrous happened. He could not get any closer! Frantically he extended his tongue as far as it could reach and strained to achieve the last few millimetres to his goal, but soon he had to admit defeat. He tried to pull his head out into the open.

Horrors! His ears, which had slid in so easily, refused to slide back up!

He tried a corkscrewing motion, turning his neck while his hands braced the edges of the mortar. If anything, it only made matters worse. Utterly chagrined, he scrambled blindly away to the side of a building and started to knock his wood-helmeted head against the wall.

Paama, he screamed in silent desperation, if you come and get me out of this, I promise I will never take you for granted again!

Paama sat up with a twitch. She had been relaxing, reclining, sipping coconut water and mulling over ways to convince Ansige to seek professional help for his problem. Then came this spasm, like a warning. It had been too quiet for too long. Ansige was not hanging around, begging for his between-meals snack. Something was wrong.

She ran to the fields, because that was where he had ended up during the previous two crises. No Ansige. She rushed back into the village and went towards the guest lodge.

Bup bup bup.

Paama wondered who could be pounding meal in such an odd fashion. Rather than the subdued, deep tone of wood on wood, it sounded like wood on stone.