In one hour the following, while I sat in a daze: Around fifty people ready for travel outside the wickiup, plus enough hovercraft to transport them to wherever it was. “Not the entire tribe,” Sequoya said. “Just the blood relations.” He had covered his face with terrifying warpaint and was unrecognizable. Behind the house a chorus of Erie braves, rejects, singing sad, angry songs. From the attic four Samsons carrying down an enormous cordovan trunk while sister seemed to be pleading for tender handling.
“Her dowry,” the Chief said.
“Dowry? I’ve got eleven million. I don’t—”
“Tradition. She can’t come to you empty-handed. Would you rather take it out in horses and cattle?”
I resigned myself to living with a trunkful of Cherokee homespun.
There must have been an inexhaustible larder somewhere. Mama was piling the relations with enough food to feed I.G. Farben Gesellschaft, despite the fact that they’d schlepped their own. Sister disappeared for a long time and reappeared wearing the traditional squaw’s dress, but not deerskin, the finest Mandarin silk. She also wore what I thought were turquoise headband, necklace, and bracelets. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered they were raw emeralds.
“Gung,” Sequoya said. “Let’s move it out.”
“May I ask where?”
“To your new house. Tradition.”
“I haven’t got a new house.”
“Yes, you do. My tepee. Wedding gift. Any more questions?”
“Just one, brother. I really hate to plague you when you’re so busy, but would you mind telling me my wife’s name?”
That really broke him up. Finally he managed to gasp, “Natoma — Natoma Guess.”
“Very nice.”
“What’s yours, incidentally? The one you started with.”
“Edward Curzon.”
“Natoma Curzon. Very nice. R. Let’s go and suffer through the ceremonies.”
More tradition on the way out of Erie. Natoma and I sat side by side with mama and papa behind us like guardians of virtue. The paths and roads were lined with people, all shouting and the small boys yelling things that sounded unmistakably vulgar in any language. When I started to put my arm around Natoma, mama made a noise that was an unmistakable no. Papa chuckled. My bride kept her head lowered but I could see she was blushing.
When we finally arrived at the tepee, Sequoya took a lightning survey and made emphatic Indian Sign. The blood relatives stopped where they were. “Where the hell are my wolves?” he asked in XX.
“They are in here with me, Dr. Guess,” M’bantu called. “We have been waiting for you most anxiously.”
The Chief and I darted in. There was M’bantu squatted cross-legged on the floor with the three wolves lounging all over him contentedly.
“How the hell does he do it? Those three are killers.”
“Don’t ask me. He’s been doing it all his life.”
“It couldn’t be simpler, Dr. Guess. All one need do is speak their language and a friendly rapport is established.”
“You speak animal language?”
“Almost all.”
When we esplained the situation to M’b he was delighted. “You will do me the honor of permitting me to be your second, Guig, I hope,” and out he went to join the relations, who had formed a circle around the tepee. They had thermal pots glowing and were singing something that sounded like enthusiastic Calypso with hands clapping in double time and feet stamping. It went on endlessly, building up a tremendous charge of excitement.
“Come on,” the Chief said. “Next ritual. Don’t worry. I’ll coach you. Gung?”
“R.”
“You can still abort.”
“N.”
“Sure?”
“Yyyy.”
Out we went where Natoma was handed over to me. She took my arm. The Chief stood behind her and M’bantu behind me. I don’t know where or how McB dug up the materials, but he’d white-clayed his face ceremonially and red-ochered his hair. All he needed was a shield and a spear. I can’t pretend to remember the involvements of the marriage ritual; all I do remember is Sequoya coaching me in XX while M’bantu kept up a running anthropological commentary which I suppose would have improved my brain if I’d listened.
Finally mama and papa escorted us into the tepee. Natoma seemed dissatisfied until the four braves lugged in her dowry and carefully put it down. Her head still hung low and she kept her distance from me until we were alone and I’d double-knotted the tepee flaps. Then the lightning struck. Watch out for those shy types; they turn into demons.
Her head came up, regal and smiling. She stripped in two seconds. She was an Indian and there wasn’t a hair on her translucent skin. She came at me like a wildcat — no, like the daughter of the most powerful Sachem in the Erie reservation — determined to catch up on ten years of waiting in ten seconds. She tore my clothes off, shoved me down on my back, threw herself on top of me, and began murmuring in Cherokee. She massaged my face with her custard breasts while her hands explored my crotch. “I’m being raped,” I thought. She arched and began driving her Prado against me. She was a tough virgin and it was painful for both of us. When we finally made the merger the agony ended it in a few seconds. She laughed and licked my face. Then she produced a linen cloth and dried us off.
I thought we’d lie quietly and fondle each other, but tradition, custom, ritual. She got up, opened the tepee flaps and walked out, proud and naked, holding the bloody napkin high like a banner. She made the complete circle and the Calypso got frantic. Then she handed the napkin to mama, who folded it reverentially, and at last returned to me.
This time it wasn’t frantic, no; warm, endearing, sharing. It wasn’t love. How could it be between strangers who didn’t even speak the same language? But we were strangers who’d been magicked into committing ourselves to each other, something I’d never experienced in the past two centuries. Y, I was committed, and it dawned on me that that this was the realsie love. Exit: Thrilling Romance Stories. Enter: passionate commitment.
And it was aura all the way. I don’t know how long it lasted but skewball thoughts flick through your mind, uninvited. I remembered a bod who used to time himself. A performer. I thought how similar the aura of passion is to the aura of epilepsy. Is this how we make love to the universe? Then we’re the lucky ones. I thought, I thought, I thought, until I was beyond thinking.
Damn a virgin; she wanted to start all over again and how do you explain that batteries need recharging when you don’t speak Cherokee? So we began talking in dumb show and even making jokes and laughing. At first I’d thought that Natoma was a serious, intent girl without much sense of humor. Now I realized that the traditional life on the reservation had compartmentalized her; she wasn’t accustomed to letting all her facets show at the same time, but she was loosening up. You don’t get intimate with crazy Curzon without some of the jangle rubbing off on you.
Suddenly Natoma held up a finger for silence and caution. I silence and caution. She tiptoed to the tepee flaps and flung them open as though to catch a spy. The only spy was one of the wolves guarding our privacy; no doubt instructed by M’bantu. She turned back to me, bubbling with laughter and went to the cordovan trunk, her dowry. She opened it as though she expected it to explode and motioned me to come and look. I looked, and it was what I expected: cockamamy homespun. She removed the homespun and I gasped.
There were velvet trays in which were nested a complete eighteenth-century Royal Sèvres dinner service for twelve. Nothing like it had existed for centuries, and fourteen point nine one seven percent of the world couldn’t buy it today. There were seventy-two pieces and how the Guess family ever got hold of the set would have to wait for another time. Natoma saw the awe on my face, laughed, picked up a plate, tossed it in the air, and caught it. I nearly fainted. Sequoya was right; I’d married out of my class.