The astounded friends were beside themselves with delight — for the first time since that fatal day of the battle, Pandion had smiled. The magic effect of the wonderful nuts was beyond all shadow of doubt. Pandion sat up and asked his friends about everything that had happened since the day he was injured, interrupting them with rapid questions, like those of a man in a state of inebriation.
Iruma went hurriedly away, promising to make inquiries concerning the progress of the patient that evening. Pandion ate a lot and ate with great satisfaction, all the time interrogating his comrades. By evening, however, the effect of the medicine had worn off and he was again overcome by drowsy apathy.
Pandion lay inside the house and the Etruscan and Kidogo were discussing whether or not to give him another portion of the nuts but before doing so decided to ask Iruma.
The girl came, accompanied by her father, a tall athlete with scars on his shoulders and chest where he had been slashed by a lion’s claws. Father and daughter talked together for a long time. Several times the hunter waved his daughter disdainfully aside, shaking his head angrily; then he laughed noisily and slapped her on the back. Iruma shrugged her shoulders in annoyance and approached the two friends.
“My father says that he must not be given too many nuts,” she explained to the Negro, apparently regarding him as the sick man’s closest friend. “You must give him the nuts once at midday to make him eat well…”
Kidogo answered that he knew the effect of the nuts and would do as she told him.
The girl’s father looked at the sick man, shook his head and said something to his daughter that neither Cavius nor Kidogo could understand. Iruma immediately changed into something like an infuriated cat — so brightly did her eyes flash; her upper lip curled, showing a row of white teeth. The hunter gave her a kindly smile, waved his hand and went out of the house. The girl bent over Pandion <and looked for a long time into his face, then, seeming to remember herself, also hurried towards the door.
“Tomorrow I’ll treat him myself according to the customs of cur people,” she announced with decision as she stood in the doorway. “There’s a way that the women of our tribe have long used to heal the sick and the. wounded. The spirit of joy has left your friend — without it no man wants to live. That spirit must be returned to him!”
Kidogo thought over the girl’s words and decided that she was right. After all the suffering he had experienced Pandion had lost his interest in life. Something had given way inside him. Nevertheless Kidogo could not imagine what sort of treatment the girl was talking about no matter how hard he tried. And so he lay down to sleep without having thought of anything.
Next day Kidogo again fed the nuts to Pandion. The latter sat up, talked and, to the joy of his friends, ate with a good appetite. He kept looking from side to side and at last asked about the girl of yesterday. Kidogo pulled a grimace of pleasure, winked at Cavius and warned Pandion that on that evening the girl would give him treatment of a kind unknown to anybody. Pandion was at first interested, then, apparently when the effect of the nuts began to wear off, again fell into his usual apathy. Still Kidogo and Cavius were of the opinion that their friend’s appearance had greatly improved during those last two days. Their young friend tossed about more on his bed and his breathing was stronger.
No sooner had the sun sunk in the west than the village was, as usual, filled with the acrid smell of burning brushwood and the monotonous thud of heavy pestles in huge mortars in which the women crushed millet for the evening meal. Black porridge from this millet, eaten with milk and butter, was the staple food of the villagers.
The short twilight turned rapidly into night. Suddenly the dull rumble of a tom-tom swept across the village. A noisy crowd of young people approached the. house of the three friends. In front of the crowd were four girls bearing torches and surrounding two bent old crones in wide dark cloaks. Young men took up the sick Pandion and, accompanied by the deafening shouts of the crowd, carried him to the other side of the village, close to the cleared edge of the forest.
Cavius and Kidogo followed the crowd, the former looking from side to side in disapproval as though he wished to say that nothing good was to be expected of the performance.
Pandion was carried into a big empty house, no less than thirty cubits across, and laid down beside the centre pole with his back to the wide door. A number of torches made of tinder wood soaked in palm-oil and fastened to the pole threw a circle of bright light over the centre of the house. The walls under the low eaves were hidden in darkness. The house was full of women, young and old; they sat along the walls talking in rapid tones. Some dark liquid, that an old woman gave Pandion to drink, immediately cheered him up.
A sharp trembling sound came from a hollow elephant tusk — silence fell on the house and all the men hurriedly left. The Etruscan and Kidogo tried to hang back but were unceremoniously thrust out into the darkness. A group of ugly old hags stood around the entrance screening the proceedings from the eyes of the curious. Cavius sat down near the house, determined not to go away till the end of the mysterious rites. He was joined by Kidogo, who bared his teeth in a smile — he had faith in the methods of treatment used by — the peoples of the south. Two girls carefully lifted the sick man and sat him with his back propped up against the centre pole. Pandion looked round in astonishment, seeing everywhere in the semi-darkness the whites of the eyes and the teeth of smiling women. Inside, the house was hung with festoons of some aromatic plant. Wide garlands hang around the inner cornice of the roof and thin branches of the same bush were wound around the pole against which Pandion had been placed. The branches filled the whole house with a sharp, invigorating aroma that worried and alarmed Pandion, reminding him of something infinitely close and alluring and at the same time irretrievably forgotten.
Several women took up their places immediately in front of the Hellene. The curved lines of two trumpets made of hollow elephant’s tusks shone white in the light of the torches, beside them were fat-bellied torn-toms made of hollowed tree-trunks.
Again the trembling note of the horn sounded. The old women placed before Pandion the wooden statuette of a woman crudely carved in powerful lines and worn black with time.
Women’s high-pitched voices started a soft song — they poured forth slow modulations of guttural sounds and sorrowful sighs, growing faster and louder, expanding and rising higher and higher in an impetuous rush. Suddenly a heavy and resonant stroke on the drum made Pandion give an involuntary shudder. The song ceased, at the edge of the circle of light a girl in a blue mantle appeared, a girl with whom Pandion was already acquainted. She stepped into the circle of torchlight and stopped hesitantly. Again the horn sounded and several of the old women added their howls to its furious moans. The girl threw off her mantle and stood there naked except for a girdle of branches from the same aromatic bush.
The light from the torches flickered dully on her shining “dark bronze skin. Iruma’s eyes had been heavily made up with blue-black paint; polished copper bangles shone on her arms and legs; her tightly curling hair tumbled on to her smooth shoulders.
The tom-toms rumbled dully and rhythmically. In time with the drums the girl, stepping softly on bare feet, drew near to Pandion and with lithe, animal-like movements bowed before the statuette of the unknown goddess, stretching out her hands before her in exhausting and passionate anticipation. In admiration Pandion followed Iruma’s every movement. There was no trace of mischief left on the girl’s face — serious, stern, her brows raised in a frown, she seemed to be listening to the voice of her own heart. She would relax and then stretch herself to full height, throwing out her arms and standing on the tips of her toes as though every particle of her body were striving upwards. Pandion had never seen anything like it — the mysterious life of her hands merged with the bursts of soulful inspiration on her upturned face.