“I should like to know how he did it.”
“In his head, between his ears, how else? Everything is in the head. Nothing is wood, nothing is stone, nothing is water, nothing is blood, nothing is bone; all things are sanisukiarad.”
In her frustration at never knowing the key word, Tamara watched Ram’s face as if she could interpret from it; and indeed he understood. His eyes shone; he smiled, so that his features rounded out and grew gentle.
“He dances,” he said. “He dances.”
“Maybe so,” Bro-Kap replied. “Maybe Man dances in his head, and that makes sanisukiarad.”
Only with this repetition did Tamara hear the name “Man” as a name, a Ndif name or word which happened to coincide in sound with the English word “man”—but she had taken it to coincide in meaning—
Did it?
For a minute everything fell apart into two levels, two overlapping screens or veils, one of them sounds, one of them meanings, neither of them real. Their overlap and interplay, their shift and movement, confused everything, concealed or revealed everything, in that flow there was nothing to take hold of, not even once can you step into the river unless you are the river. The world began and nothing was happening, some wizened old men and women talking nonsense with Lord Shiva in a smelly hut. Talking, merely talking, words, words that meant nothing twice.
The parted veils closed again.
She checked that the tape was running in the recorder, and turned up the gain a little. Replaying all this later, with Ram to interpret and explain, maybe it would make sense.
They did dance, at last. After much talk Binira announced, “That’s enough peremenkiarad without music,” and Bro-Kap rather ungraciously said, “All right, askiös, go ahead.” At which Binira began to sing in a small unearthly creaking voice; and presently one old man, and then another, got up and danced, a slow dance, the feet close to the ground, the torso still and poised, intensity concentrated in the hands, arms, and face. It brought tears to Tamara’s eyes, the dance of the shadowy old men. Others joined; now they were all dancing, all but Kara and herself. Sometimes they touched one another, lightly and solemnly, or bowed like cranes. All of them? Yes, Ram was dancing with them. The golden dusty light from the smokehole flowed along his arms; lightly and softly he lifted and set down his bare feet. An old man faced him. “O komeya, O komeya, ama, O, O,” sang the creaking cricket trill, and Kara’s hands, Tamara’s hands patted time on the brown dirt The old man’s hands were lifted as in supplication. Ramchandra reached to him, the flowing arm, the poised and separated fingers; smiling, he touched, and turned, still dancing, and the old man smiled and began to sing, “O komeya, ama, ama, O…”
“Do we have a session on tape for you to listen to!” Tamara said, but she said it mainly to distract Bob from his hangdog mood as they went together down the path towards the clearing where the duel was to be fought. The path was littered with lamaba-fruit rinds, as most of the village had preceded them.
“More love songs?”
“No. Well, yes. Love songs to God… You know what God’s name is?”
“Yes,” Bob said indifferently. “Old man at Gunda told me. Bik-Kop-Man.”
The duel went nearly, but not quite, as planned by both parties. Since it was the one group action by the Young Ndif besides saweya and baliya dancing which seemed to be a genuine ritual or meaning-focussed act, Tamara diligently taped, filmed, and note-took the whole thing, including the redheaded Potita’s expression (and here she is, Miss America); the infliction of a knife stab in Bob’s thigh by Pit-Wat, the Gunda Challenger; Bob’s fine gesture throwing away his long-bladed knife (a glittering arc into the pink-flowered puti bushes); and the karate throw that stretched Pit-Wat flat and apparently lifeless on the ground.
Bob did not stay to deliver his lecture on the unhygienic aspects of murder. His wound was bleeding hard, and Tamara cut off the movie camera and got to work with the first-aid kit. Thus the jubiliation of Hamo village and the discomfiture of Gunda were recorded only on sound tape; and the tape recorder was off when Pit-Wat revived, to the discomfiture of both Hamo and Gunda. Slain sallenzii were not supposed to come alive and get up, staggering but undamaged. By this time, however, Bob was on the homeward path to Hamo, white-faced and not unwilling to hold on to Tamara’s arm. “Where’s Ram?” he asked for the first time, and she explained that she had not even told Ram a duel was to take place.
“Good,” Bob said. “I know what he’d say.”
“I don’t.”
“Irresponsible involvement in native lifeways—”
She shook her head. “I didn’t tell him because I didn’t even see him today, and I thought—” She had in fact forgotten about the duel, it had seemed so silly, so unreal, compared to that dancing in the Old Men’s House; it had all been a stupid annoying joke, right up to the moment when she saw the color, the splendid and terrible color of blood in the sunlight; but she could not tell Bob that. “He’s made a kind of breakthrough. By getting involved himself—he spent all day in the Old Men’s House. I want him to talk with you tonight. Once we get your leg looked after. And he’ll want to know what the people in Gunda said about Man. About God, I mean. Look out for that vine. Oh, Lord, here come the football fans.” A troupe of Young Women were pursuing them, halfheartedly pelting Bob with puti flowers.
“Where’s Potita?” Bob muttered, setting his teeth.
“Not in this lot. Are you really fond of her, Bob?”
“No. It’s that my leg hurts. No, it was just fun and games. I just wondered if Pit-Wat got her or I did.”
It turned out that Pit-Wat got her, since he stayed on the field of combat and performed the Victory Dance, rather shakily to be sure. Bob was relieved, since Pit-Wat was certainly better suited to Potita by temperament and circumstance; and as for the Victory Dance, a two-minute fit of stomping and posing, they had already got several films of champion wrestlers performing it. “All we needed was a movie of me beating my chest,” Bob said. “Christ! With my leg spouting. And feeling like a prize ass all round anyhow.”
“Ass all round, curious image,” Ramchandra said. They had got a fire going in Bob’s hut. It was raining—it rained only at night on Yirdo—and Bob had lost enough blood that a little extra warmth and cheer might do him good. The air got smoky, but the ruddy light was pleasant; it made Tamara think of winter, of rain and fire-fight in winter, a season unknown to Yirdo. Bob lay stretched out on his cot and the other two sat by the hearth, feeding the fire with dried lamaba rinds, which burned with a clear flame and a scent of pineapple.
“Ram, what does peremensoe mean?”
“Thinking. Ideas. Understanding. Talk.”
“And peremenkiarad, is that right?”
“About the same. Plus a connotation of… illusion, deception, trickery—play.”
“Is this Old Ndif?” Bob inquired. “If you’re making dictionaries, let me see ’em, Ram. I couldn’t understand anything the old boys were telling me in Gunda.”
“Except God’s name,” Tamara said.
Ramchandra raised his eyebrows.
“Bik-Kop-Man made the world with his ears,” Bob said. “And that is the Ndif equivalent of Genesis, Book One.”
“Between his ears,” Ramchandra corrected coldly.“With them or between them, it’s a pretty poor excuse for a Creation myth.”
“How do you know, if your vocabulary is inadequate?”
Why did he take that tone with Bob? Supercilious, pedantic, offensive, even the voice high and schoolmarmish. Bob’s solid good nature shone by contrast in his reply: “It’s taken me weeks to realize that if I’m after myth or history the only people here who may have them are the Old Ones. I should have been checking in with you much earlier.”