Oh yes, there were fresh rumors. Still. Six years after the fact and better than eight months since the Colonial Department had officially closed the case. They worked their tortuous way to her ears as if drawn by some mysterious irrepressible force. Through the Bight of Benin to the Antilles and Carolina, through Badagri to the Canaries to Lisbon, Gravesend, London and Edinburgh, from savages to slavers, from slavers to diplomats to the man in the street, the rumors persisted: white men were alive in the interior of Africa.
In fact, though no European would ever know it, there was a grain of truth in these reports. If they erred, it was an error of degree, not of substance — it was not white men who lived on in the deeps of Africa, but a single white man. A survivor. A man totally unknown to the public, a pariah of sorts, a man who had been born to poverty and experienced the miracle of resurrection.
♦ ♦ ♦
Some thirty-six hours after the disaster at Boussa, Ned Rise opened his eyes on nirvana for the third time in his life. But this time paradise was neither a dank, fislistinking shanty on the banks of the Thames nor an operating theater off Newgate Street. . it was brighter, far brighter, glaring with all the intensity of the tropical sun. The last thing he remembered was the grim leering face of his own death, the rock wall hurtling at him, the mob howling for blood, the struggle with Park. .
And now what? He was disoriented. His body ached. There was a fire in every joint, his kneecaps felt shattered, a deep intransigent pain stabbed at his lower back. If he could summon the will to sit up and take stock of things, he would discover that he was as naked and unencumbered as the day he was born, the straw hat and tattered loincloth swept away in the flood, the silver dueling pistol buried forever in the muck of the riverbed. But he couldn’t. He merely lay there, inert, the sun spread across his back like a blanket of flame.
His vision blurred, steadied. His temples pounded. He lay in a pile of rubble — leaves, branches, fragments of wood and bone — amidst the humped pastel forms of water-smoothed boulders, boulders strewn across the landscape like the eggs of antediluvian monsters. The air was as hot and still as the breath of a sleeping dragon, no sound, no movement, and then suddenly — violent contrast — it exploded with the stiff harsh rattle of beating wings. Ned looked up into the inevitable skewed face of a carrion bird, a vulture, splayed talons, wings spread like a canopy. Bold, combative, the great ugly graverobber hissed at him and took a tentative step forward. It begins again, Ned thought.
But then the bird leaped back, swiveled the flat plane of its neck in alarm, and lurched up out of his field of vision. Something had frightened it off. Hyena? Lion? Maniana? Ned could barely muster the will to care. He stared at the polished surface of the rock before him, a trickle of water washing his legs and groin, the clatter of wings echoing in the silence. Then there was another sound, breathy and melodic, no mere birdsong, no illusion created by rubbing branches or mimetic streams — it was the sound of music, the sound of civilization and humanity. Had he died after all? Was this the afterlife — purgatory — a steaming stinking groundless place where devils and angels vied for his soul? He closed his eyes. Perhaps he slept.
The music played on — flutes, it seemed, three or four of them, melodies intertwined like vines. He was lulled, he was comforted. By the time he pushed himself up the sun was low in the sky and only the convex crowns of the rocks were illuminated, suffused with a pinkish glow, as if each were about to hatch. The music had suddenly stopped. He looked round him: there was no sign of the Boussa rapids, no sign of music-makers, no sign of life. Nothing but smoothed boulders, tumbled to the horizon like melons or beachballs or great hairless heads, and the river at his back. Had he imagined flutes?
Shakily, the pain driving like spikes through his hands and feet, he pulled himself erect and then almost immediately collapsed against the nearest rock. He was bruised, torn and battered. Welts rose along his collarbone, and so many discolored abrasions spangled his legs, buttocks and ribcage he looked like a clown in motley. He’d taken quite a beating. But he was alive and breathing, and so far as he could tell nothing was broken. It was almost as an afterthought that he realized he was hungry.
Then — it was unmistakable — something moved. Out there, in the confusion of rocks. And then again: jostling elbows, hunched shoulders. “Hello?” Ned called. Nothing. He tried again — in Mandingo, Soorka and Arabic. There was a long moment of silence, and then, as if in response, the music started up again. No fool, Ned leaned back against the rock and tried to look appreciative. After a moment, he began to clap in time with the unseen musicians, while somewhere off to his left a drum started up, steady and sonorous, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Timid, skittish as deer, they began to show themselves. A head here, a torso there: hide and seek. Then they became bolder, and he saw that the rocks were full of them, little people, no bigger than children, standing out in the open now and gazing at him out of their placid umber eyes. They were naked, these people, their limbs bundles of fiber, their abdomens swollen like the rounded pouting bellies of infants. And they weren’t black — not exactly — they were more the color of acorns or hazelnuts.
Ned waited. He could count eighteen of them now, including a pair of children. The musicians — four grizzled, splay-footed homuncuh with nose flutes — kept up their piping, and the hidden drummer flailed at his hides. The whole troop was swaying to the music, and Ned, despite a nagging throb in his elbow, continued to clap along. It was at this point that one of the men separated himself from the others and began to make his way forward, feet shuffling in the dirt, head and shoulders undulating to the insistent pulse of the rhythm. He clutched a tiny bow to his breast — it looked like a toy — and wore a quiver looped over his shoulder. His nipples were dark rosettes, scarred from some ancient mishap — fire? war? rites of initiation? — clavicle and ribs protruded, his pubic hair was a snarl of white wire from which the rutted gray penis hung like a badge. An aureole of canescent hair fanned out round his head, and his jaws collapsed on toothless gums: he could have been the first man on earth, father of us all. Ned studied his face, trying to gauge the appropriate response, but the patriarch’s expression was blank.
They were singing now, all of them, a bizarre high-pitched whining interspersed with clicks and grunts. For the first time Ned began to feel apprehensive — maybe they weren’t so harmless after all. And then he saw it. Something glinting in the old man’s hand: a knife? a gun? Was this it, was this what he’d been saved for? But then suddenly he knew what that refulgent, fight-gathering object was, knew why they were offering it to him, knew what he would do and how he would survive. All at once he could see into the future He was no outcast, no criminal, no orphan — he was a messiah.
The old man handed him the clarinet. It was still damp from its soaking but the pads were clear, the keys undamaged. The drum thumped, the flutes skirled. He put it to his lips — they were smiling now, ranged round him like precocious children — he put it to his lips, and played.
♦ ♦ ♦
The years peeled back like the skin of an onion, layer on top of layer. Beau Brummell fled to Calais in disgrace, De Quincey swallowed opium. Sir Joseph Banks and George III gave up the ghost. There were riots in Manchester, Portugal and Greece. Beethoven went deaf. Napoleon fell and rose and fell again. Sir Walter Scott was shattered by the crash of 1826. Feathered bonnets came back into fashion and furbelows were all the rage. The Niger remained a mystery.