‘The mother,’ said Joss.
Mart knelt beside her and tried the boy’s pulse again. In his big, square hand the little black arm looked skinny as a bone.
‘He’s fading,’ he announced. ‘Not going to last long.’
The woman began screaming and shouting, repeating the word sin’ganga, sin’ganga again and again.
‘What’s she saying?’
‘Take him to the doctor,’ Joss translated.
‘I didn’t think there was a doctor.’
‘It’s the witch doctor she means.’
‘Jesus, that will kill him. Tell her he’s got a better chance if we just keep him quiet.’
Joss spoke forcefully to the woman, but she kept on with her shouts. The crowd backed her. Out in the darkness the drums were getting louder. I began feeling the sheer level of noise would finish the child off.
‘Where is he, this doctor?’ I yelled.
‘Here, in the village.’
‘How far?’
‘Two minutes’ walk. Three minutes.’
‘What’ll he do?’
Joss shrugged. ‘How do I know? Consult the spirits for a remedy.’
I shot Mart a glance. ‘What d’you reckon?’
‘Better go. There’s nothing I can do for the kid. As long as we handle him gently, a short carry won’t hurt. This crowd could turn nasty any moment.’
‘Right, then. You carry him. Phil and me’ll come with you as escort.’
Joss put a hand on the mother’s shoulder, restraining her, and said something to her while Mart took the boy from her. So we set off in an amazing procession, Mart leading, the mother wailing at his elbow, myself and Phil immediately behind with Joss, then half the village. Some of the people had oil lamps, and several were carrying torches of burning reed bundles. Any moment, I thought, these grass huts are going on fire, and the whole village will be up in smoke.
Above the hubbub, I shouted, ‘Hadn’t somebody better warn the guy we’re coming?’
‘He knows,’ Joss called back. ‘The drums have told him.’
As we advanced between huts huddled under mango trees, I liked the feel of things less and less. The crowd was so hostile that I was glad we had pistols on our belts. I was happy to have Phil with me, too. In the flickering light, with his close-cropped dark head and hollow cheeks, he looked quite dangerous. The impression wasn’t misleading, either: he was the most hawkish member of the team, always keen to get out there and top somebody.
‘Whatever happens,’ I shouted to Mart, ‘we’re going in with the boy. I’m not leaving him alone with the witch doctor. I want to see what gives.’
In less than three minutes we were outside a big, circular hut with a thatched verandah running round it. The crowd dropped back and fell silent as we approached over beaten earth, leaving us alone outside the open doorway. The hut was pitch dark, but I was aware of movement and rustling noises inside, as if someone was making rapid preparations. Then a lamp flared, a curtain was drawn aside, and a voice said something in Nyanja.
‘Go inside,’ said Joss quietly. ‘The mother must hold the child.’
Mart handed over his burden. I think he felt the same as I did: that we’d better do what we were told. Phil was more sceptical. Even though he said nothing, I could sense him seething with indignation just behind me. But when the woman stepped forward, we all followed.
The air inside was full of a powerful smell, half animal, half acrid human sweat. A single, primitive oil lamp flickered on the ground to our right. Towards the back of the hut there was a kind of cubicle, walled in with hanging black material, wide enough to accommodate two standing figures. The left-hand one was ordinary: a man dressed in normal, scruffy clothes, bare-headed, bare-footed, using both hands to hold a book open in front of his chest. It was the right-hand figure that made me catch my breath: a tall man, six foot at least, dressed in a blood-red robe that reached almost to the ground, with a zebra skin slung over his left shoulder and diagonally across his chest. On his head was a hat like a big muffin, also of zebra skin. His face was dead white, covered in paint or ash, so that his mouth and eye sockets showed up black on a pale background. In his left hand he was flicking what looked like an animal tail vertically up and down, and in his right he held a curved black horn.
‘The tail is from giraffe, horn from buffalo,’ Joss whispered in my ear.
I could see how scared the mother was from the way she cringed in front of the doctor, especially when he began to grunt and moan and whisk his giraffe tail with a faster, jerking motion. But the helper spoke sharply, obviously ordering her to come closer, and she moved forward a step, so that the boy in her arms was only a couple of feet from the hissing hair.
As the witch doctor’s hand flew up and down, and shadows leapt about the grass roof like huge bats, the mask of a face began to twitch and gibber in a high-pitched, squeaky voice, letting out staccato bursts of sound that reminded me of machine-gun fire. I shot a sideways glance at Mart and saw his eyes switch from the doctor to his helper and back. Phil was still behind me.
Suddenly, the helper spoke, in a normal voice, and Joss translated for us: ‘The spirits are talking.’
‘What are they saying?’
Joss relayed the question, but all he got for a reply was an irritable shake of the head.
‘Eh,’ I muttered to Mart. ‘The helper guy’s a fraud. He’s pretending to read from that book, but it’s that dark he can’t see a bloody word.’
‘Fucking ridiculous!’ muttered Phil, but Mart, who was closer to the acolyte, said, ‘Fuck me, it’s a bible.’
I stared at the tattered edges. Sure enough, one title page was hanging open towards us, and the flickering light was strong enough for me to make out, in big type, THE BOOK OF DANIEL.
The gibbering outbursts rose even higher. The witch doctor’s eyes were tight shut. His head was rolling on his shoulders. Beads of sweat flew off his forehead. There was a touch of red about his lips. Blood? No, it was crimson froth. He was chewing something, leaves or roots or berries. Suddenly a shudder ran through his body and he stood stock still, holding the narrow end of the horn to his right temple. For a few seconds he remained motionless and silent. Then his lips moved and the twittering broke out again, this time in a steady stream.
The helper began to interpret.
‘He says evil spirits have come into the boy,’ Joss translated. ‘The trouble is in his head… His brain is damaged… He has bad pressure in his head… He is very sick.’
I bit back the impulse to say, ‘We know that,’ and asked, ‘What can he do about it? Can he give him anything?’
‘Wait, there is something else.’
The sin’ganga rolled his head and gibbered, the acolyte interpreted, Joss translated. ‘The boy will die. There is no medicine for this condition.’
There followed a pause of maybe half a minute, during which I found I was holding my breath. Then came the message. ‘His spirit is leaving him now.’
The mother, who’d been standing still and quiet, gave a sudden hoarse cry and sank to the ground, decanting the child out of its blanket on to the earth at the witch doctor’s feet.
What happened next, I’ll never be sure. I saw Mart go down on his knees to recover the boy, but then something soft brushed across my shoulders and a sudden draught put out the lamp. In the darkness I felt an intense chill close in on me.
Behind me, Phil gave a sharp exclamation of ‘Fucking hell!’ I heard a movement, looked round, and found he’d disappeared.