‘Phil!’ I said sharply. ‘Are you feeling anything?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Phil!’ I went. ‘Where are you?’
It was Mart who answered: ‘He’s back in the crowd.’
‘Did you feel anything just then?’
‘Cold,’ said Mart. ‘Freezing cold, horrible.’
‘I got it too,’ I told him. ‘It was deadly. How about pulling out?’
‘I’m okay.’ Mart sounded solid. ‘D’you want to?’
‘No, I’m okay to stay.’
That was what I said. But in fact I was shuddering and felt sick, as if gripped by fever. What surprised me most was that Phil had quit. Phil, the least scared of all our people, the toughest, the most punchy.
Through those unnerving seconds the twittering had kept up unabated. Then I heard Mart exclaim, ‘Shit! He’s gone!’
‘Who?’
‘The kid. No pulse. Breathing’s stopped. I’ll try mouth-to-mouth.’
‘No, for Christ’s sake!’ I told him. ‘If the people see you doing that, they’ll think you’re killing him.’
‘They think that anyway.’
‘Try it,’ I said. Then instantly I changed my mind and ordered, ‘Cancel that. Leave him!’
The crowd outside seemed to sense what had happened. The tide of voices swelled again. I heard more drums going in the distance, and at our feet the woman began to wail. Joss called out something in Nyanja, and a man came through from the back of the hut carrying another lamp.
Light showed that neither the witch doctor nor his assistant had moved. Both held exactly the same posture: the giraffe tail was still thrashing the air; spirit messages were still arriving. The woman was on the deck, with Mart on his knees beside her. Apart from Phil having vanished into the crowd, nothing had changed. Certainly there was nobody close behind me who could have flicked a garment or shawl over my shoulders.
The back of my neck was crawling. What was it that put the lamp out? What had produced that icy chill?
‘He says, white men must leave Kamanga,’ Joss translated.
‘Tell him we had nothing to do with the accident,’ I said. ‘It was a Kamangan driving the truck.’
‘He knows that. But he says white men bring evil to our country.’
‘We’re trying to help. The only reason we’re here is that your government invited us.’
That information produced a long pause. The witch doctor transferred the buffalo horn to his left hand and clawed at the air with his right, fingers spread, drawing in handfuls of air towards his head, as if plucking at the spirits who were talking to him. Several times he turned his hand slowly and brought it back towards his face, palm-first. But in the end his message was the same: ‘All white men must leave Kamanga.’
‘What happens if they don’t?’ Mart demanded.
‘They will die.’
‘All of them?’
Another pause, then, ‘Some.’
‘How many?’
‘To find this out, the sin’ganga needs to consult his bones.’
‘Okay, then,’ I agreed. ‘Tell him to do it.’
Later, I wished to hell I’d never issued the challenge. But at the time, in the heightened atmosphere of that stinking hut, one question seemed to lead on from another so fast that there was no time to think of possible consequences. Before I could start worrying, the acolyte was ordering the woman out, shooing her backwards as if she were a sheep.
‘She will have to pay for the consultation,’ said Joss.
‘It’s all right,’ I told him. ‘I’ll pay. How much is it?’
The answer came back, ‘Four thousand kwatchas. One dollar US.’
‘Okay. We’ll see to that.’
The woman rolled her dead child in its blanket and disappeared into the crowd with her pathetic burden. Wailing broke out, but the anger seemed to have given way to grief. The people began to move off, back into the middle of the village, leaving us alone.
The witch doctor was coming out of his trance. Convulsive shudders ran through his body, and he gave a few loud gasps. Red froth still hung around his mouth, but at last he opened his eyes and looked about, as if trying to get his bearings.
The acolyte, who’d disappeared into the blackness behind him, came out again into the light without his bible, holding a small, pear-shaped bag made of leather, with a draw-string gathering the neck. The witch doctor handed over his horn and giraffe tail, took the bag, then abruptly sank down on his haunches, his knees cracking as they bent. Then he started sweeping the flat of his right hand across the earth floor in front of him. Once again the helper stood at his master’s right shoulder.
A high-pitched humming started up, like the drone of bees. At first I thought it was coming from the helper, then I saw that the witch doctor had his lips pressed tight together as he produced the sound, which had a slight beat in it, so that it seemed to come and go. Shaking the bag, he tweaked the cord at the neck and shook out the contents. With a light, dry pattering about a dozen bones landed on the beaten earth. They were brown with age and use, and must have come from a small animal about the size of a hare.
After a few seconds’ scrutiny, he said something, speaking now in a normal voice, surprisingly deep.
‘Death,’Joss translated. ‘He sees death.’
‘Fucking roll on!’ went Mart under his breath.
‘We’ve had a death already,’ I said.
‘More now.’
‘Who?’
‘Wait.’
After a pause and more humming, the wrinkled old hands gathered the bones, shook them like dice and threw them again, harder than before, so that they clicked on each other and spread out over a wider area of earth. I saw that the man’s right-hand index finger was missing.
This time the pattern seemed to give an immediate answer.
‘Ten will die,’ Joss translated.
‘Ten what?’
‘Ten white persons.’
‘Men?’
‘And women. Either.’
‘Why ten?’
As the questions were relayed through our interpreter, the witch doctor never glanced in our direction, but kept his eyes down, fixed on the bones, his right hand, with its missing finger, stretched out downwards over them. There was a long silence before he gave his next answer.
‘Because the boy was ten years old. One death for every year of his life.’
Mart, who’d been squatting still and silent beside me, suddenly asked, ‘Why’s he putting this spell on us?’
Joss answered that one off his own bat, without translating the question: ‘The spell is not from the sin’ganga. He’s only telling you about it. It is from a fiti, a sorcerer. Very bad man. The sin’ganga can feel the spell coming.’
‘Where’s this fiti then?’
Joss shrugged and gestured outwards into the darkness. ‘He lives in the village, but now I think he is hiding in the bush.’
‘How the hell can he put a spell on us if he hasn’t seen us?’
‘He has seen you. In the past few days he has watched you all. He is a powerful man, very dangerous.’
‘Can’t this guy make up a counter-spell?’ Mart gestured at the witch doctor. ‘Put something on the other bastard?’
I knew the question was meant to be sarcastic, but Joss took it seriously, translated it, and passed back the answer: ‘He will give you medicine, to stop you being witched.’
‘Medicine!’ snorted Mart. ‘Medicine against evil spells? For fuck’s sake!’
I felt just as cynical, but I reckoned this was a game we had to play.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll have some. How much will it cost?’
‘Twenty thousand kwatchas. Five dollars.’