The Black Halo (28 page)

She looked at him with astonishment. ‘He died,’ she said. ‘He went to live in the forest and he died.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And tomorrow you will go to the Long Grass. It is not far from here.’

The same even intense heat was beating down on the earth, merciless, dry.

‘We didn’t have much rain this year,’ she said. ‘Perhaps the grass will not be so long as it used to be.’

‘Is that a bad thing?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’

‘But what can I do,’ he asked. ‘I can’t hunt. I’ve never hunted in my life.’

‘You can pray,’ she said innocently without malice. ‘That is what you can do.’

I am a spear in their hands, he thought, a spear in the war that is always going on, the war against starvation and disease.

‘Is that why you came?’ he asked. ‘To buy my help?’

‘The chief sent me here,’ she answered simply.

The chief. What sort of man was he really. Old and wise, strong and intelligent, keeping the tribe together day after day, he was alive in time, in darkness.

‘Come,’ she told him and he found himself swimming in the dark waterfall again, among the shadows, among the lightning that poured about him, an eternal spear piercing a cloud
without end.

‘I can’t leave you now,’ he said stroking her hair. She looked at him with calm fathomless eyes.

‘In the tribe,’ she said, ‘it’s a law that I must leave you if you cannot win meat for us both.’

‘Leave me?’ he echoed.

‘That is the law,’ she answered. ‘It is natural.’

But what of love, he almost shouted, what of loyalty, pity, are they too dependent on the world of plenty and abundance, are they unnatural?

‘That is why,’ she said, ‘Banga’s wife left him. He wasn’t winning meat for her. His wife and children were hungry. That is why he began to beat her: that is why he
became a Christian. He thought that he might learn magic from the Christian church that would help him to kill deer.’ Donald nearly laughed aloud. Banga had gone in search of the soul in
order to provide for the flesh!

‘He thought that there was big magic in the church,’ she repeated. ‘When the other missionary died we had a good wet season.’

She sat in front of him like an idol of ebony, cut out of time, heavy, strong, potentially fertile.

My shadow, my black flower, my darkness from which all that is abundant and powerful flows.

He felt himself like a white worm inside that darkness.

He knew that this wasn’t love, this was lust alone, and behind her, behind time, he saw a white church rising with white slender turrets, a large church, a cathedral.

But how would he win meat for her?

He who had never used a spear in his whole life.

He put his arms around her and said, ‘What would I do without you,’ as he buried his face in her hair. ‘I would be completely alone in this strange place.’

Your breasts, your legs, the perfume that pervades you.

Your flesh, your flesh.

The deer running about the glade like rays of sunlight, and he himself pursuing them with the spear of truth.

He sensed a shadow falling across the doorway and when he looked up there was the chief with a rifle in his hand. ‘I brought you this gun,’ he said. ‘No one in the tribe can
use it. It will help you in the Long Grass.’ The missionary seized the gun joyfully. How kind the chief was, how thoughtful. But why were his eyes so mocking, so distant? What was he thinking
about? And again he had the uneasy feeling that he was merely a white puppet in this man’s hands, that he was being pushed out of the darkness into the sunlight. They looked at each other,
each holding an end of the gun, and it seemed as if the chief were handing to the white man a treacherous secret weapon.

But at that very moment a ray of sunlight flashed across the old wood of the gun and everything was clear and simple again. When the chief left he himself kissed Miraga, and while he did so his
hand rested on the gun that lay between them. Slowly her hand crept forward and also touched the gun as if by doing so she was showing the purest trust in his ability to provide for her. And he was
filled with a sudden and almost holy joy.

Early in the morning they left the village, he and ten other tribesmen including the chief himself, they carrying spears, he his gun. They walked silently through the forest,
the missionary following the others. There was dew still on the ground and now and again he would see a bird peering through the mist, grey and wet, a ghost of a bird sitting on a branch with
folded dripping wings. The whole world was like the ghost of a world, like a misty thought, the leaves silent and motionless under the wet heavy grey mist. There was no sight or sound of any
animal, only the intent tribesmen moving silently forward, now lost and now found by his eyes. Donald thought, This is the meaning and marrow of existence and not preaching a dry sermon from a
pulpit: this is natural, that other is unnatural. Though man may not live on bread alone he needs bread as well. The soul grows from the body as a flower from the earth, as a bird sings out of the
mist. The hunters ahead of him were half running half walking at a steady pace, bending forward into the whitish mist ahead of them. No one spoke.

We are tied by an invisible string, thought Donald looking at the slightly wet gun in his hand. Inside the gun death was waiting, quiet and ready and exact, almost dapper. In a short while it
would give a bark, and a deer would fall. And it occurred to him that he had never killed any animal in his whole life. Apart from Banga and his family, that was, and his face twisted in a painful
smile. But a gun was simpler than that, pitiless, without feeling. The gun had come from Europe, from that white world that moved so confidently into the future. It had come out of that light and
not from the darkness of Africa, it did not have the dirt of roots about it, it was clean and calm and elegant and self-contained.

At that moment they came to the end of the forest and the tall grass was in front of them, a vast sea of green: and he knew that they would soon see the deer. Past him as a ship passes another
in mid-ocean he saw a tranquil yellow body glide, eyes gold-coloured and sunny, and he knew that it was a lion. He almost raised his gun and fired at the royal mane, but the lion was lost in the
grass as quickly as it had appeared out of it. He clutched his gun firmly, feeling, strangely enough, no fear at all. He thought the others had not seen the lion, for they continued on their way
without deviation, bent to the earth, the grass climbing their bodies like a river or a green stair so that sometimes he could hardly make them out at all.

But he sensed that the grass was alive with animals, that it was shifting and seething like a green silken flag around them, for now and again he would catch glimpses of eyes, claws, heads, and
he felt as he had felt when moving through a cornfield once in his distant youth. And yet at the same time he would ask himself, What am I doing here? But he knew what the answer was: he was there
because Miraga wanted food, and her body, like his own, was dependent on it. They existed in a green waving seething chain.

They were almost swimming through the grass which rose above their shoulders and was wet with dew. He raised the gun above his head so that it would be clear of the wetness and he thought wryly
that if anyone were watching he would only see a gun moving above the grass, tall and bare, with a purposeful motion of its own.

The chief was making signs to him and the missionary saw that they had almost come out of the grass and that in front of them was a long wide river which was green with the reflection of the
grass. Without sound the river flowed, a wide snake on which the sunlight flashed. In the distance the missionary thought he could hear the persistent thunderous noise of a waterfall, but the river
itself was placid and smooth.

They were now near its bank though still hidden in the long wet grass and when Donald looked he saw a sight that he had never seen in his whole life and that he would probably never see again.
The bank was crowded with deer of all kinds, horned and unhorned; with small and large gold-coloured animals; with zebras whose beautiful mortal stripes leaped out of the light.

On all of them the sun flashed as they stood quietly drinking, a friendly congregation. The only noise in the whole universe was their drinking, their lapping of the water from the river.

How helpless, beautiful, strange, they looked in the rays of the sun in that far place, thought Donald: it was as if they had leaped at that very moment into history, as if they had not existed
at all till he and the other tribesmen had arrived, as if they were in some way a startlingly abrupt answer to their desire for meat. Rich abundant flesh glittered and gleamed in front of them in
the multitudinous light. Now and again Donald would see a deer lift its head from the water and then look dreamily ahead of it as if it were seeing a sight invisible to anyone but itself among the
foliage that came down to the further bank of the green sluggish river. Then it would slowly and almost regretfully lower its head again.

Flesh, flesh, his body was crying and his soul was saying, How beautiful they are. He raised his gun and aimed it. At the far end of the gun he saw a back, flanks, a head. He saw a spear curve
out of the grass, hang in the air for a moment, and then quiver into the body of a deer, and at that very moment he fired. When the noise fell out of the sky the deer began to scatter, wildly
making a huge thunder about him, shaking the very ground on which he was standing. Spear after spear plunged out of the sky, hovering, needling the wax-coloured flesh, and the gun fired again and
again. And the deer moved hither and thither as if dazzled and not knowing what to do. There was blood on the earth, and in the water into which some of the animals had fallen. His companions had
now jumped out of the grass but the deer were running away at full speed as if at last they had identified their enemy. There was tumult and noise about him, heads rising out of the grass,
tormented and frightened, and then suddenly disappearing. In a short while there was complete silence.

They all walked out of the long grass and looked down at the dead animals. Of these there were only five altogether. He himself stared down – the gun in his hand emptied of its cartridges
as an animal of its litter, and it was as if he had forgotten it. He saw black breasts panting and sighing, swelling and fading, he saw faint distant eyes gazing at him as if out of eternity, he
saw blossoms of blood opening on the flanks of the animals and he stood above them, compassionate and just. After all death was a part of life. And then he saw the ten tribesmen looking at him. And
he knew that he should not have fired the gun so quickly, that all he had succeeded in doing was scatter the quarry, that they had expected far more meat than was now lying, some of it still alive,
on the bank of the river.

For a long time they looked at him in silence and he knew that he had made a terrible mistake. Their gaze was directed at him like so many spears, though they did not speak. And then the thought
came to him; I shall be shamed in front of the tribe. Perhaps I should kill all the witnesses now. But he knew that he could not do that and in any case his gun was empty. His throat was sick with
humiliation and he could not meet their eyes. Can I never do anything right in this country? And then the question rose in front of him as tall as the grass itself. What if Miraga leaves me now
that I haven’t brought home the meat that she wanted? He looked around him continually as if searching for some salvation from the grass or from the river, but they remained as they always
were, in their own silence. Heavily he bent down and hoisted a deer from the ground, one of his companions taking the other end, and together, though separate, they began to make their way back to
the village.

He was standing in front of the hut, the chief beside him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he was saying over and over, ‘I’m sorry sorry sorry. What will I do now?
Will Miraga leave me?’ And he began to shake as if he were in high fever.

‘I don’t know,’ said the chief gravely.

Donald knelt in front of him. ‘I do not want to lose her. I’ll do anything.’

‘The people are angry,’ said the chief. ‘I shouldn’t have given you the gun,’ and it occurred to Donald: perhaps he gave me the gun for a deep reason of his own. He
knew what was going to happen. But he said aloud, ‘What can I do? I’ll do anything.’

He was on his knees in a net of shadows while the chief looked down at him.

‘We will have to go to war for our food then,’ said the chief. ‘We will have to fight another tribe and take the food from them.’ He gazed blandly and innocently at
Donald.

‘War?’ said Donald.

‘Yes,’ replied the chief. ‘The deer won’t return till next year, and we cannot do without meat.’

My soul that was once white is growing dark again, thought Donald. When will this confusion and trouble end?

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I can use the gun in the war.’

‘Good,’ said the chief, ‘good.’ And he left. Donald went into the hut where Miraga was sitting. When he entered she didn’t speak to him. He kissed her but her lips
were cold. ‘If you leave me I am lost,’ he told her but still she didn’t speak: she was a statue of black marble.

He went out again restlessly and sat in front of the hut as he had seen the natives do, but it wasn’t long before he got up and went into the hut again.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what happened to the other missionary.’

‘He died.’

‘How did he die?’

‘He killed himself.’

‘That’s not right,’ said Donald fiercely. ‘I’m sure that’s not right. Tell me what happened.’ And he was so angry that he was ready to kill her.

‘Tell me the truth,’ he shouted.

‘When the rain didn’t come,’ she said, ‘he offered his body as a sacrifice. He was crucified on a cross. In the forest. His bones are among the other bones. He said that
he wasn’t doing any good in this country and so he sacrificed himself. When he died the rains came and the grass was green and wet again.’