Dupont then threw stones at other boulders, all of which turned out to be perching birds. They milled around in the air, protesting angrily.
Dupont got back in the truck.
“They’re called nightjars,” he told me.
The truck had barely got underway again when the birds settled back on their stumps, becoming inconspicuous once more.
“During the daytime, they’re so immobile against their background you’d never know they were living things,” said Dupont.
Even then, for some reason, witnessing these transformations filled me with a sense of foreboding. I told Dupont so.
“Probably there are human beings with the same talent,” he said.
Neither of us could have had any inkling of the ominous significance those words would have in a far-off day, in a distant hemisphere.
DUPONT WAS well known in some of the villages, having visited them on his previous trips. He was able to get by in pidgin and in several of the native languages. The chief or the shaman would sometimes come to greet him, having heard by means of the drum-telegraph that he was passing through. They’d fawn over him and beg him to use his alien magic on their behalf.
We stopped for a brief clinic at one of these grasslands villages. Dupont had told me I’d see someone of interest there, but wouldn’t say more.
“It’s a surprise,” he said.
From a hut near where the truck stopped, a man and several women came to greet us. The man was tall and thin, with big sad eyes. But what astonished me about him was this: he had a wispy grey beard divided in two parts, adorned at the points with green beads and little silver bells.
“I wanted you to see where I got the idea,” said Dupont, smiling and fingering his own beard. “This man’s the tribe’s shaman — their medicine man — and I’m our medicine man, so why not?”
He went to the tall man and shook his hand. They chatted in a strange language for a moment, their bells jingling as they talked. Dupont turned to me.
“Apparently almost everyone’s out harvesting crops, so there won’t be any need for a clinic this visit,” he said. “But there’s a woman who’s just given birth to her first baby in this hut — it’s the maternity hut — and he’s about to perform the initiatory rite. I’m going in to watch. Do you want to come along? I guarantee it’ll be quite educational.”
Knowing Dupont as I did by now, I tended to be cautious when he said something like that. He saw what I was thinking.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not as if they’re going to offer us anything weird to eat.”
Though I was feeling a little dizzy, I agreed to go with him. We all proceeded — the shaman, the women, Dupont, and I— into the hut.
THE MATERNITY hut was large and airy. Some other female villagers were already there, standing around a rattan mat on the floor. They made room for the shaman. One of them tied an elaborate multicoloured cloak around him.
On the rattan mat lay a naked woman with swollen breasts. The baby she’d just delivered was being held by an onlooker, who rocked it gently in her arms and crooned to it. The little body was streaked in blood and slime.
After Dupont and I took up our places watching, the sad-eyed shaman knelt down and bent over the woman who’d given birth. He then spread his arms dramatically and shook his multicoloured cloak. It immediately burst into a clamour of screeching and chirping. I saw that it wasn’t really a cloak at all, but a piece of netting with dozens of little birds of different colours attached to it by their legs in some ingenious way. The sound they made reminded me of those noisy flocks of starlings that would nest in the infrequent, skeletal trees of the Tollgate.
Soon the birds became silent. The shaman grasped the woman’s breasts in his hands and began to suck, taking a few minutes at each. Then he straightened up and looked with his sad eyes at all of us gathered there. His mouth was open wide, milk dripping from his chin. I could see he had no teeth, only bare, pink gums.
The birds again began their shrieking and the baby, perhaps sensing the milk, howled even louder than the birds. The child was handed down to the mother. She put it to her breast and it sucked furiously.
ON OUR WAY back to the truck, Dupont asked whether the experience had been as educational for me as he’d hoped.
In fact, I’d felt queasy even from the first sight of the baby— especially that horrible slime and blood.
“All human beings enter this world covered in slime and blood — even if they’re born in palaces,” Dupont said. Then he explained the meaning of the ceremony. “In this tribe, the cloak of little birds is supposed to prevent the baby’s soul from leaving its body. But what’s particularly interesting is that mother’s milk is the only food a shaman is ever allowed. So, for him, women are the most important members of the tribe — he depends on them completely for his survival. This is very good for the women and elevates their status. For new mothers, it also has a practical benefit: the shaman makes sure the breast milk flows for their babies. Contrary to what most men think, that’s not always a simple matter.”
It was certainly news to me. What with that and the sight of the revoltingly slime-covered baby, I was curious as to why any woman in her right mind would ever want to have one.
“All it takes is the right man to talk her into it,” said Dupont with a laugh that set his beard tinkling merrily.
I was too queasy to laugh. Anyway, I couldn’t help thinking: surely it was just as important for a man to find the right woman? But hadn’t I already done that, and she’d broken my heart?
7
At a certain point in the journey, the truck became our private taxi. There were no other passengers and we stopped at no other villages. Trees of any kind were now rare as we drove hour after hour through great expanses of undulating grasslands. The wind was steady, bending the tall grasses before it. Then the truck crested a hill and the grasslands abruptly ended. Before us lay the desert, like an ocean that had been miraculously turned into sand, with huge waves in suspended motion.
A final check had to be done on the truck’s engine before entering a place so hostile to machinery, so Dupont proposed that we take advantage of the break.
“Let’s go for a short walk,” he said. “Your first time on foot in the desert will be something to remember.”
I didn’t at all mind getting out of the truck bed for a while, though the air was like the blast from a hot oven. We walked about half a mile, navigating sand dunes, our feet sinking deep at every step. With Dupont’s help I was able to scramble to the top of one of the highest dunes.
“Let’s sit here for a while,” he said.
We could see for miles around us.
“The hospital’s only about an hour that way,” he said, pointing to the northeast where the desert seemed to stretch to infinity. A fine powder of sand fell on us, carried by a wind that howled eerily.
“It’s called the harmattan,” said Dupont. “Before I came here, I used to think winds made a noise only because they were blowing through trees and wires and buildings. But there are no such things in the desert, so you almost feel it’s the voice of the wind itself you hear.”
We were silent, listening to it. It had such an unsettling, mournful quality that it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I thought back to those Upland winds Miriam and I used to listen to when we wandered the moors around Duncairn. They were bracing and often chilly, but I loved their voice because I myself was in love. Up here on the dune, the wind’s lamentation again seemed to reflect the state of my own mind.