T. Boyle - Water Music

“Exactly.”

“And all the regular avenues is closed — you bein’ a Scotsman and your father only a crofter. So you can’t enter politics or take a commission in the army or hobnob with the elite in their drawin’ rooms and clubs—”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what else is there? You rely on your courage and stamina and you go off to fathom the unknown and then come back a hero. Right?”

“Yes — but there’s more to it than that. I want to know the unknowable, see the unseen, scale mountains and look behind the stars. I want to fill in the maps, lecture the geographers, hold up a torch for the academicians.

The Niger. . think of it, Johnson. No white man has ever laid eyes upon it. I’ll have seen what none of them have — not the Laird of Dumfries, nor Charles Fox, nor the King himself.”

“All well and good,” shouts Johnson over the protestations of a nearby lion. “But you got to get to it first, and then you got to backtrack all this long way we come already — with all your notes and faculties intact, not to mention your lights and limbs. .”

But wait: what’s all this noise in the bushes? They’ve been so engrossed in their discussion they haven’t paid it any mind — but yes, come to mention it, bushes have been swaying and leaves rattling — steadily — for the past few minutes now. The realization grips them like a seizure: words choke in their throats, their limbs go heavy, ears leap. A twig snaps, the leaves rush, and suddenly explorer and guide are on their feet, the one clenching a thorny cudgel, and the other brandishing an engraved dueling pistol. There’s a moment of silence, and then the movement begins again — unmistakable — coming right for them. Leopard, lion, wolf, they think. Or worse: Dassoud! “Come on out of there!” Mungo shouts. “Be you man or hyena!”

Lightning breaks the sky, thunder rolls in the hills. Johnson swallows hard and tries to steady the pistol. And then, with a sudden dramatic swish, the bushes part — to reveal the stooped and wizened old soothsayer from Jarra. The dead guinea hen still hangs from his neck, half plucked, limp and stinking. ‘‘ Wamba reebo jekenek ,’’ he says, his bags and wrinkles attempting a sort of grin. ‘‘ Bobo keemboo .’“

A moment later the old man is squatting between explorer and guide, bony knees and cracked feet, snuffing the skewer and jabbering like an ape come down from the trees. “What a night! Lions trying to chase the moon. Hear that one? Close by, eh? Hee-hee. Hm, meat smells good. I know how to cook meat, bet your life. Used to, anyway. Now I’m alone and friendless, terrible calamity. Did you know? Going my way by any chance?”

“What calamity?” Johnson asks, and the old man, waiting his opening, launches a windy narrative embellished by the geriatric gesture and punctuated by the creak of rusted joints. His name, it seems, is Abah Eboe — or Ebah Aboe — the explorer can’t decide which. He had been separated from the other refugees during a skirmish with Mansong’s army. On hearing that the fugitive Jarrans had crossed into Bambarra seeking asylum, Mansong had apparently decided that the time was ripe for collecting a little tribute — a squatter’s fee. He appeared around a bend in the road, enormous, mounted on a baby elephant and surrounded by eighty or a hundred potbellied warriors in leopard skins and ostrich plumes. A jilli kea , or singing man, preceded him, howling out his demands. The long queue of refugees came to a halt. Yambo, the Jarran chieftain, made his way to the front and protested that his people had been loyal to Mansong during the war with Tiggitty Sego and that the loss of their village and all their goods was calamity enough. They threw themselves on the mercy of the wise and charitable potentate of Bambarra.

Mansong’s scepter was capped with a human skull. He adjusted his proud fat belly and repeated his demands. It was at this point that the soothsayer had interceded. (Here the old man becomes violently animated, flailing the twigs of his arms and pounding his chest.) He had shoved his way angrily through the crowd and hobbled up beside Yambo. Then he raised his fists in the air and began castigating the Bambarran king. If Sego was a tyrant, the old man had squawked, then Mansong was an ogre conceived of queers and jackals. Mansong smeared himself in dung and sucked the seed from his warriors. He was a thief and a woman — only look to his great sagging tits for proof. For a moment, both parties were stunned silent. Then, with a shout, Mansong’s army fell on the defenseless Jarrans. Two hundred were killed, mostly women and children. The rest were led off in shackles.

“And how did you manage to escape?” the explorer asks in his halting patois.

The old man glances up, his features lost in a grin. A noiseless laugh shakes at the bones of his chest. “ Mojo ,” he says.

The explorer looks at Johnson.

“The man says he’s got his mojo workin’,” says Johnson, twirling the meat on the skewer. “You know: magic, black arts, hoodoo and voodoo. Nobody messes with a witch doctor.”

“Witch doctor?”

“Of course — what do you think he’s doin’ runnin’ around with that chicken tucked under his chin?”

The explorer leaps to his feet. “Can he — can he tell fortunes?”

Johnson’s lids are thick as a crocodile’s. He looks up at the explorer and sighs. “Well he’s no gypsy, if that’s what you mean. . But listen, you sure you want your signs and portents conjured with, Mr. Park? Here and now? I mean, it’s one thing to have some old white lady take a look at your tea leaves in her front parlor up in Edinburgh or London or someplace — but hey, this is Africa , man. The eye of the needle, mother of mystery, heart of darkness. And this old naked black man here with his feet all crusted up and his penis danglin’ in the mud — he don’t fool around.”

“Don’t be silly, Johnson. I’ve got the luck of the Scots with me. There’s renown in my future, I know it. Laurels, and a book. And Ailie. Are you kidding: I’ll die in front of the hearth with a cat in my lap.”

“All right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Overhead, lightning tesselates the sky until it glows like an illuminated map of some celestial river and its tributaries. Off in the distance, harsh dyspeptic rumbles of thunder can be heard. Johnson turns to the old man and mumbles something in Mandingo. The effect on Eboe (or Aboe) is instantaneous. The grin vanishes, crow’s-feet rush out from the eyesockets and corners of the mouth, furrows drop and lines vein the cheeks and chin until he’s transformed, unrecognizable, a great drooping bloodhound, a ball of wax, an unthrown pot. He rises shakily and takes hold of the explorer’s hand, scrutinizing it as if it were a text or a painting. His leathery old fingers play over the knuckles and joints, a wild bolt lights the sky, thunder steps down like a giant walking the earth. The soothsayer spits in Mungo’s palm, then pricks his finger with a vulture’s talon, blending blood and spittle and now a bit of clay, all the while working it into the lines of the palm and muttering some antediluvian formula over and over, mojo-mojo-mojo , his eyes pinched shut, the thunder beating like tribal drums. Finally he looks down into the huge white palm and his eyes go wide. He is stung, stricken. Utters a cry like a wounded beast and clutches at his breast.

A hyena laughs in the night. The wind tastes of sand. Mungo is frightened. “Well?” he says, his voice a pinched vibrato. “What do you see?”

But the old man doesn’t answer. Already he’s edging away from the explorer, hands held up to his face, his stooped black form a shadow among shadows. CRACK! Lightning blanches the clearing and the old man is a ghost. CRACK! Johnson is pale as milk. ‘‘ Obi-lo-hojóto ,’’ the seer intones. ‘‘ Obi-lo-hojóto. ”