Redemption in Indigo (4 page)

Still, the compliments fell flat. Talking about food reminded one of Ansige, and thinking of Ansige brought a tension to the atmosphere akin to a mental indigestion.

Semwe was the first to admit his thought. ‘About your husband?’ he began uneasily.

Paama stiffened, but the tremor was gone in a heartbeat and her shoulders slumped in the despair of acknowledgement. ‘Yes, Father, I know. I know that Ansige has brought his huge, bottomless hunger into Makendha, and it must be satisfied or he will embarrass us all. But I do not know what I can prepare that will fill him. I have fallen out of the habit of planning meals for twenty.'

Semwe patted his daughter's arm while beside him Tasi made consoling noises. Neila, who was still oblivious to Paama's distress, continued eating and daydreaming and ignoring her family.

'I have a suggestion,’ Semwe said. ‘Why not send him a large basket of roasted corn? Roast enough for twenty men. That should keep him for the day. I really cannot see him getting through all of it.'

Paama smiled weakly, unconvinced. She might have forgotten how to cook for twenty, but there were many terrible memories of Ansige's eating still branded on her mind.

'I'll do that,’ she replied. ‘I'll go pick them right now so they'll be ready and roasted by the time Ansige wakes up.'

Paama went once more into the family lands and walked down the rows of maize, carrying a deep basket strapped to her back. While she picked, the growing heat of the sun beat down on her cloth-draped head until, wearied with her joyless task, she decided that she had picked enough. Then she carried her heavy load back to the yard behind their house, emptied the basket, and lit a fire under the large metal grill of the outdoor oven. As one batch of corn roasted, she wrapped it in palm leaves to keep in the heat and set it in the basket again. Roasting and packing, roasting and packing, she filled the basket up again.

'Now to get this to Ansige,’ she said, hefting it onto her back once more.

When she got to the guest lodge, she expected to see Ansige, but she was told he was still sleeping. Secretly, she was relieved. She left the basket in the care of the other lodgers with strict instructions that it was to be given to Ansige the moment he awoke. Then she departed in gratitude, feeling lighter, and not only because of the lack of the heavy basket.

Ansige awoke, a delicious smell tickling his mind into full consciousness. He opened his door and saw the basket.

'What is that?’ he exclaimed even as his nose confirmed the good news.

'Your wife brought it for you,’ replied a passing fellow lodger.

A number of thoughts and emotions flashed through Ansige's mind. First he was very very glad that the delicious smell belonged to him and no-one else, but then he became instantly suspicious and annoyed. Imagine Paama leaving something like that out where anyone could have stolen it! In fact, perhaps the other lodgers had been picking at it all day while he slept. Perhaps they had stuffed the gaps with more palm leaves to make it look as full as ever.

'Ah??hank you,’ he said awkwardly, and dragged the basket into his room, shooting nervous glances about. What if more people saw his bounty and wanted to have a share in it?

He quickly washed and dressed, the smell teasing him all the while. Then he stuck his head out of his door and looked around furtively before sneaking out and trotting down the road with the basket on his back, heading to the only place he knew where he could eat alone and in peace—the fields.

He avoided the place of his previous crime—not consciously, perhaps, given that the crop fields were so much closer to the village than the pastures where the livestock grazed. He hopped over low vines of sweet potato and wove in and out of rows of maize until he was well in the centre, where he could not be disturbed. Then he began to eat.

It was delicious. Even the sight and sound of the maize rustling in the breeze above him seemed to add greater pleasure to his dining. For a while he revelled in it, but then something terrible happened. His arm plunged into the depths of the basket, and his hand scraped the bottom! A sinking sensation of loss made the comfortable, full feeling in his stomach lessen. He scrabbled through the discarded palm leaves around him in case he had missed one last corncob but eventually emerged empty-handed and depressed.

Imagine now Ansige in his nest of palm leaves, sitting dejectedly by an empty basket, all but pouting in his disappointment. An expression that would have been very familiar to Paama was present on his face: ‘I am Constantly Mistreated and Abused.’ He looked up to the heavens in entreaty, and his gaze was intercepted by the unusual sight of a single locust sitting on a corncob in one of the maize plants. It had peeled back the pale green leaves and was rubbing its forelegs in glee. Suddenly it became aware of Ansige's presence. It matched his unblinking stare for a brief moment and then seemed to shrug.

'Good corn,’ it said conversationally, and reared back in preparation for the first grand bite.

Ansige roared. The locust took off in fright and spun off into the sky, never to be seen or heard or remembered again. Ansige snatched the corncob that it had sat on and snapped it off its stalk, brandishing his prize with another roar, this time of triumph.

Then, panting a little, he paused to consider the corncob in his hand.

After all, if he took a few, just enough to replace the ones that the others
stole
from him when the basket was outside his door, that wasn't stealing. That was just being fair.

Setting the basket on his back, he started to work. It was really amazing how industrious Ansige could be about anything that guaranteed a good feed at the end. Of course, since there wasn't any way for him to gauge how many had been taken from him, he kept picking, just to be sure. The sun was so hot in the early afternoon that he put aside his growing load and sought the shade of a breadfruit tree. Naturally that put ideas into his head, so he hooked down a number of the large green globes and built a small fire. After roasting many pieces on the point of a stick and eating his way through six of the starchy, football-sized breadfruits, you would have thought that he would forget all about corncobs, but all that happened was that he decided to nap for a while, just until the cool of the evening, when he could finish his harvesting in comfort.

Hours passed before he awoke again. The breadfruits had descended to the nether regions of his capacious stomach, and he was ready to top up again. Taking up his basket, he continued his previous work as twilight fell.

Meanwhile, Paama was growing uneasy. She had an instinct that told her that Ansige was heading for some kind of food-related trouble. She went on preparing dinner (the menu was greatly expanded as Ansige would be joining them at table) and tried to forget her vague fears, but when night fell and there was still no sign of him anywhere in the village, not even for a brief visit to lick the spoon, her sense of foreboding increased. Taking a torch, she went towards the fields, hoping he was not trying to capture another sheep.

Then she saw what looked like a squat, hunchbacked shadow lumbering towards the village. She began to call out.

'Ansige? Ansige is that you? Wait??e careful??ou're too close to the??atch out!'

There was a faint answering ‘Aughhhhhhh!’ sounding as if it were fading into the distance, and then an even fainter splash.

Paama ran. She skipped along the trail that led from the village to the fields, a trail which, on closer examination, did perhaps run entirely too close to the well for a stranger to tell the difference in the dark. She wondered how he had managed to topple over the low wall around the well that was supposed to keep out animals and small children. Then, when she shone the torch down the well, she almost shrieked. There was Ansige, bobbing in the midst of a huge mass of floating corncobs and fragments of basket.

'What are you doing?’ she cried, not knowing whether to laugh or wail.

Ansige splashed, snorted, and spluttered. ‘Don't act as if you don't know me! I ate the corn that you sent me, but since people
insist
on taking what isn't theirs, I had to fetch some more. And then a rock tripped me, and then the basket toppled me over, and then I was falling and—
stop laughing, you silly woman!
I could have been
killed!
?

Paama choked back her hysterical laughter. ‘I'm sorry, Ansige. But look at you, stealing people's corn and talking about property rights! Now I have to get you out of this, in truth. You're far too heavy for me to pull up by myself. Wait—I'll be back soon.'

She rushed off, hardly attending to his grumble that he could hardly go anywhere now, could he? Then an idea came to her. Running as fast as she could, she went to a field of grazing cattle, untied them, and chased them into the cornfields. Only then did she dash back to the village. She began to raise the alarm, crying out for help as she ran along the streets. ‘Help me! Help! Something terrible has happened! Ansige has fallen into the well!'

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.

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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.

Beat him down, beat him down

then we can hold his wake

Maize for porridge, barley for beer

Millet for dumpling and cake

Beat him down, reaper

Beat him down, miller

Beat the grain man down

Scatter his bones in the field

Wait for the sun and the rain

Soon he shall rise up, ready for reaping

Ready for grinding again.

Raise him up, sun

Raise him up, rain

Raise the grain man up

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.

Mortar and pestle for drum

Trials and tears make a song

Look how we glad when a man rise up

But happier yet when he's down

Beat him down, brother

Beat him down, sister

Beat the grain man down

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.