The last time they visited, while sitting on the steps and waiting for Mr-Robichaux to dress, the youngest girl - a grimy-faced toddler, her diaper at half-mast - waddled up to Donnell and offered him a bite of her jelly donut. It was stale, the jelly tasteless, but as he chewed it, Donnell felt content. The eldest boy stepped forward, the other children at his rear, giggling, and formally shook Donnell’s hand. ‘Wanna thank you,’ he muttered; he cast a defiant look at his brothers and sisters, as if something had been proved. The toddler leaned on Donnell’s knee and plucked off his sunglasses. ‘Ap,’ she said, pointing at his eyes, chortling. ‘Ap azoo.’
Robichaux was buttoning his shirt when Donnell entered. He frowned and looked away and once again thanked him. But this time his thanks were less fervent and had a contractual ring. ‘If I’m down to my last dollar,’ he said sternly, ‘that dollar she’s yours.’
Donnell shrugged; he squinted at Robichaux’s field. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Don’t need no doctor to tell me I’m cured,’ said Robichaux. He peered down inside his shirt. The web of broken capillaries rose to the base of this neck. ‘Don’t know why you had to do this mess. Worse than a goddamn tattoo.’
‘Trial and error,’ said Donnell without sympathy. It had come as a shock to him that he did not like Mr Robichaux; that - by gaining ten pounds and a measure of vigor - the characterless thing he had first treated had evolved into a contemptible human being, one capable of viciousness. He suspected the children might have been better off had their father’s disease been allowed to run its course.
‘It ain’t that I ain’t grateful, you understand,’ Robichaux said, fawning, somewhat afraid. ‘It’s just I don’t know if all this here’s right, you know. I mean you ain’t no man of God.’
Donnell wondered about that; he was, after all, full of holy purpose. For a while he had thought healing might satisfy his sense of duty unfulfilled, but he had only been distracted by the healing from a deeper preoccupation. He felt distaste for this cringing, devious creature he had saved.
‘No, I’m not,’ he said venomously. ‘But neither are you, Mr Robichaux. And that little devil’s web on your chest might just be an omen of worse to come.’
‘… Since the great looping branches never grew or varied, since the pale purple sun never fully rose or set, the shadow of Moselantja was a proven quantity upon the grassy plain below. Men and beasts lived in the shadow, as well as things which otherwise might not have lived at all, their dull energies supplied, some said, by the same lightless vibrations that had produced this enormous growth, sundered the mountain and sent it bursting forth. From the high turrets one could see the torchlit caravans moving inward along the dark avenues of its shadow toward the main stem, coming to enlist, or to try their luck at enlistment, for of the hundreds arriving each day, less than a handful would survive the rigors of induction…’
‘What do you think?’ asked Donnell.
Jocundra did not care for it, but saw no reason to tell him. ‘It’s strange,’ she said, giving a dramatic shudder and grinning. She emptied the vase water out the window, then skipped back across the room and burrowed under the covers with him. Her skin was goose-pimpled. It had been warm and dead-still the night before, but the air had cooled and dark, silver-edged clouds were piling up. Sure signs of a gale. A damp wind rattled the shutters.
‘It’s just background,’ said Donnell petulantly. ‘It has to be strange because the story’s very simple. Boy meets girl, they do what comes naturally, boy joins army, loses girl. Years later he finds her. She’s been in the army, too. Then they develop a powerful but rather cold relationship, like a hawk and a tiger.’
‘Read some more,’ she said, pleased that he was writing a love story, even if such an odd one.
‘War is the obsession of Moselantja, its sole concern, its commerce, its religion, its delight. War is generally held to be the purest natural expression of the soul, an ecological tool designed to cultivate the species, and the cadres of the Yoalo, who inhabit the turrets of Moselantja, are considered its prize bloom. Even among those they savage, they are revered, partially because they are no less hard on themselves than on those they subjugate. As their recruits progress upward toward the turrets, the tests and lessons become more difficult. Combat, ambush, the mastery of the black suits of synchronous energy. Failure, no matter how slight, is not tolerated and has but one punishment. Each day’s crop of failures is taken to the high turret of Ghazes from which long nooses and ropes are suspended. The nooses are designed not to choke or snap, but to support the neck and spine. The young men and women are stripped naked and fitted with the nooses and lowered into the void. Their arms and legs are left unbound. And then, from the clotted darkness of the main stem, comes a gabbling, flapping sound, and the beasts rise up. Their bodies are reminiscent of a fly’s but have the bulk of an eagle’s, and indeed their flights recall a fly’s haphazard orbiting of a garbage heap. Their wings are leathery, long-vained; their faces variously resemble painted masks, desiccated apes, frogs, spiders, every sort of vile monstrosity. Their mouths are all alike, set with needle teeth and fringed with delicate organelles like the tendrils of a jellyfish. As with any great evil, study of them will yield a mass of contradictory fact and legend. The folk of the plain and forest will tell you that they are the final transformation of the Yoalo slain in battle, and this is their Valhalla: to inhabit the roots and crevices of Moselantja and feed upon the unfit. Of course since the higher ranks of the Yoalo model their energy masks upon the faces of the beasts, this is no doubt a misapprehension.
‘There are watchers upon the battlements of Ghazes, old men and women who stare at the failed recruits through spyglasses. As the beasts clutch and rend their prey, these watchers note every twitch and flinch of the dying, and if their reactions prove too undisciplined, black marks are assigned to the cadres from which they had been expelled. Many of the recruits are native-born to Moselantja, and these are watched with special interest. Should any of them cry out or attempt to defend themselves or use meditative techniques to avoid pain, then his or her parents are asked to appear the next day at Ghazes for similar testing. And should they betray the disciplines, then their relatives and battle-friends are sought out and tested until the area of contagion is obliterated. Occasionally a seam of such weakness will be exposed, one which runs throughout the turrets, and entire cadres will be overthrown. Such is the process of revolution in Moselantja…’
As he read, Jocundra tried to force her mind away from the unpleasant details, but she could not help picturing the hanged bodies in stark relief against the purple sun, rivulets of blood streaming from their necks as the beasts idly fed, embracing their victims with sticky insect legs. When he had finished, she was unable to hide her displeasure.
‘You don’t like it,’ he said.
She made a noncommittal noise.
‘Well,’ he said, blowing on his fingers as if preparing to crack a safe. ‘I know what you do like.’
She laughed as he reached for her.
A knock on the door, and Mr Brisbeau stuck in his head. ‘Company,’ he said. He was hung over, red-eyed from last night’s bottle; he scowled, noticing their involvement, and banged the door shut.