Forest of the Pygmies (25 page)

“It wasn't a panther, Kate. It was a jaguar. It didn't eat him, but it gave him a good scare.”

“How do you know that?”

“How many times do I have to tell you that my totemic animal is the jaguar, Kate?'

“Still harping on that same old obsession, Alexander! You are going to have to see a psychiatrist when we get back to civilization. Where's Nadia?”

“She'll be back soon.”

During the next half hour the delicate balance of forces in the village was on the way to being defined, thanks in large part to Brother Fernando, Kate, and Angie. The missionary was able to convince the soldiers of the Brotherhood of the Leopard that they should surrender if they wanted to get out of Ngoubé alive. Their weapons wouldn't fire, they had lost their commandant, and they were surrounded by a hostile population.

In the meanwhile, Kate and Angie had gone to the hut to look for Nzé and, with the help of the wounded man's family, had brought him there on an improvised stretcher. The former guard was burning with fever, but after his mother explained what had taken place that evening, he wanted to help. They set him down in a visible spot, where in a weak but clear voice he spoke to his companions, urging them to rebel. There was nothing to fear; Mbembelé was out of the picture. The guards wanted to go back to a normal life with their families, but they felt a deep-seated fear of the commandant, and were programmed to obey his authority. Where was he? Had the ghost of the large cat devoured him? But if they listened to Nzé and then their leader returned, they would end up in the pond of the crocodiles. They didn't believe that Queen Nana-Asante was alive, and even if she was, her power could not compare to that of Mbembelé.

Once they were reunited with their families, the Pygmies were ready to head back to the forest, which they never meant to leave again. Beyé-Dokou donned his yellow T-shirt, picked up his spear, and went over to Alexander to return the fossil he believed had saved him from being ground to mush by Mbembelé. The other hunters also said their emotional good-byes, knowing they would not see this wonderful friend with the spirit of a great cat again. Alexander stopped them. They couldn't go quite yet, he told them. He explained that they wouldn't be safe, even in the deepest heart of the jungle where no other human could survive. Running wasn't the solution, since sooner or later the world would catch up with them or they would need that contact. They had to deliver the last blow to slavery and to reestablish the friendly relations they once had with the people of Ngoubé, which meant they had to rob Mbembelé of his power and chase him and his soldiers from the region forever.

As for Kosongo's wives, who had been kept prisoner in his harem from the age of fourteen or fifteen, they had mutinied, and for the first time were enjoying being young. Oblivious to much more serious matters worrying the rest of the population, they had organized their own carnival: They were playing the drums, singing and dancing. They tore the gold ornaments from their arms, throats, and ears and tossed them into the air, wild with their new freedom.

That was the state of events in the village—everyone still in the square but each group absorbed in its own concerns—when Sombe made his spectacular appearance, summoned by occult forces to impose order, punishment, and terror.

A rain of sparks like fireworks announced the arrival of the formidable sorcerer. The dreaded entrance was welcomed with a single outcry. Sombe had not materialized in many months, and some had harbored the hope that he had gone to the world of the demons for all time. But there he was, the messenger from all that is evil, more impressive and filled with fury than ever. People backed away, horrified, as he took the center of the square.

Sombe's fame had spread beyond the region, and village by village it had traveled across much of Africa. It was said that he could kill with his thoughts, cure with a breath, divine the future, manipulate nature, alter dreams, sink mortals into a sleep of no return, and communicate with the gods. It was also told that he was invincible and immortal, that he could turn himself into any creature of sea, sky, or earth, and that he entered the bodies of his enemies and devoured them from within. He drank their blood, turned their bones to powder, and left nothing but skin, which he then filled with ashes. That was how he created zombies, the living dead whose horrendous fate was to serve him as slaves.

The sorcerer was gigantic, and his incredible attire seemed to double his stature. His face was covered with a leopard mask and, in place of a hat, he wore a large-horned buffalo skull crowned in turn with a
leafy branch, as if a tree were sprouting from his head. His arms and legs were adorned with the teeth and claws of wild beasts, and he had a necklace of human fingers. Around his waist a string of fetishes and gourds held magic potions. Various animal hides stiff with dried blood cloaked his body.

Sombe arrived with the attitude of a vengeful devil who had determined to impose his personal form of injustice. The Bantu population, the Pygmies, even Mbembelé's soldiers, submitted without a trace of resistance. They shrank back, trying to disappear, resigned to doing Sombe's will. The foreigners, stunned with surprise, witnessed how his presence destroyed the fragile harmony they had begun to achieve in Ngoubé.

The sorcerer, crouching like a gorilla, roaring, and supporting himself on his hands, began to whirl, faster and faster. Suddenly he would stop and point a finger, and the person he singled out would fall to the ground in a deep trance, shaking with seizures. Some lay rigid, like marble statues, and others began to bleed through the nose, mouth, and ears. Sombe would again spin like a top, stop, and annihilate someone with the power of a gesture. Within a brief time, a dozen men and women were flailing about on the ground, while the rest of the villagers were on their knees, shrieking, eating dirt, begging forgiveness, and swearing obedience.

About them an unexplainable wind blew through the village like a typhoon and, with one blast, lifted the straw from the huts, the food from the banquet table, the drums, the palm arches, and half the hens. The night was bright with a lightning storm, and from the forest came a horrible chorus of moans. Hundreds of rats scurried through the square like a plague and immediately disappeared, leaving a lethal stench in their wake.

Suddenly Sombe leaped into one of the bonfires where meat had been roasting for the feast and began to dance on the burning coals, picking them up with his bare hands to throw into the frightened crowd. From the flames and smoke surged hundreds of demonic figures, legions of evil that accompanied the witch man in his sinister dance. From the buffalo-horned leopard's head thundered a cavernous voice shouting the names of the deposed king and vanquished commandant. The people, hysterical, hypnotized, chorused in return:
Kosongo, Mbembelé, Kosongo, Mbembelé, Kosongo, Mbembelé . . .

Then, just when the sorcerer had the entire village in the palm of his hand and was triumphantly emerging from the bonfire where flames had been licking his legs—miraculously without burning him—a large white bird appeared in the south and circled the square several times. Alexander shouted with relief as he recognized Nadia.

The eagle had convoked forces that streamed into Ngoubé from the four cardinal points. The gorillas of the jungle led the parade, black and magnificent, great bulls in the lead, followed by the females with their young. Then came Queen Nana-Asante, glorious in the rags barely covering her nakedness, her white hair standing up like a halo of silver. She was riding an enormous elephant as ancient as she, its ribs striped with spear scars. Tensing was there, the lama from the Himalayas who had answered Nadia's call in his astral body, along with his band of fearsome Yetis in war attire. Walimai and the delicate spirit of his wife had brought thirteen fabled mythological beasts with them from the Amazon. Walimai had reverted to his youth, and was once again an impressive warrior arrayed in war paint and feather ornaments. And finally into the village trooped the vast shining throng of the jungle: the ancestors, and spirits of animals and plants, thousands and thousands of souls that lit up the village with the sun of midday and cooled the air with a clean, fresh breeze.

That fantastic light obliterated the evil legions of demons and the sorcerer was reduced to his true size. His bloody hides, his necklaces of human fingers, his fetishes, his claws and teeth, no longer seemed chilling, only a ridiculous disguise. The great elephant Queen Nana-Asante was riding swung its trunk at Sombe's head, sending the buffalo-horned leopard mask flying: The sorcerer was revealed. Everyone recognized that face! Kosongo, Mbembelé, and Sombe were the same man: the three heads of the same ogre.

The reaction was as unexpected as everything else that happened that strange night. A long, hoarse roar resounded through the tightly packed crowd. Those who had been convulsing, those who had been turned to statues, those who were bleeding, emerged from their trances, and those who lay prostrate got up from the ground, and they all moved as one, with terrifying determination, upon the man who had tyrannized them. Kosongo-Mbembelé-Sombe retreated, but in less than a minute he was surrounded. A hundred hands grasped him, raised him high, and bore him off toward the well of the executions. A bone-tingling howl shook the jungle as the heavy body of the three-headed monster fell into the jaws of the crocodiles.

For Alexander it would be very difficult to remember the details of that night; he couldn't write about them as easily as he had his earlier adventures. Did he dream everything? Was he caught up in the same hysteria that had entrapped all the villagers? Or had he seen with his own eyes the beings Nadia had assembled? He didn't have an answer for those questions. Later, when he compared his version of events with Nadia's, she listened quietly, then gave him a light kiss on the cheek and told him that each person has his own truth, and that all are valid.

Nadia's words were prophetic, because when he tried to get the true story from other members of the group, each one told him something different. For example, Brother Fernando remembered nothing but the gorillas and an elephant ridden by an ancient woman. Kate seemed to have perceived the glowing bodies in the air, among which she recognized the lama Tensing, although, she said, that was impossible. Joel said he would wait until he could develop his rolls of film before giving an opinion; if it didn't show up in the photographs, it didn't happen. The Pygmies and the Bantus described more or less what he had seen, from the witch man dancing amid the flames to the ancestors flying around Nana-Asante.

Angie captured much more than Alexander had: She saw angels with translucent wings and flocks of bright birds; she heard the music of drums; smelled the perfume of a rain of flowers; and witnessed a number of other miracles. And that was what she told Michael Mushaha when he arrived the next day in a motor launch, looking for them.

One of Angie's radio transmissions had been picked up in his camp, and Michael had immediately set wheels in motion to come after them. He couldn't find a pilot brave enough to fly into the swampy forest in which his friends had been lost; he'd had to take a commercial flight to the capital, rent a launch, and come upriver looking for them with nothing but instinct as a guide. He was accompanied by an official of the national government and four police officers who had been charged with investigating the illegal trade in ivory, diamonds, and slaves.

No one had questioned Nana-Asante's authority, and within a few hours she had restored order to the village. She began by effecting reconciliation between the Bantu population and the Pygmies and reminding them of the importance of cooperation. The Bantus needed the meat the hunters provided, and the little people couldn't live without the products they obtained in Ngoubé. That would force the Bantus to respect their former slaves and be reason for the Pygmies to forgive the mistreatment they had suffered.

“How will you teach them to live in peace?” Kate asked Nana-Asante.

“I will begin with the women,” the queen replied. “They have more goodness within them.”

Inevitably, the moment had come for them to leave. The friends were exhausted; they had slept very little, and all of them except Nadia and Borobá were sick to their stomachs. Joel, in addition, had been bitten by mosquitoes from head to foot; the bites had swelled, he had a fever, and he was raw from scratching. Discreetly, avoiding any show of pride or boasting, Beyé-Dokou offered him some of the powder from the sacred amulet. In only a couple of hours, the photographer was back to normal. He was very impressed, and asked for a pinch to cure his friend Timothy Bruce's mandrill bite, but Mushaha informed him that Bruce was totally recovered and waiting for the rest of the team in Nairobi. The Pygmies then applied the same treatment to Adrien and Nzé, who improved right before their eyes. When he witnessed the powers of that mysterious product, Alexander worked up the nerve to ask for a little to take to his mother. According to her physicians, Lisa Cold had conquered her cancer, but her son felt that a few grams of the miraculous green powder from Ipemba-Afua would guarantee her a long life.