Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн бесплатно полностью без .TXT) 📗

Pirri asked guardedly, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.  Is it another elephant?  No, said Chetti Singh.  It is a man.  You want me to kill a man!  Pirri stood up with alarm.  if I do that the wazungu will come and take me and put a rope around my neck.  No, said Chetti Singh.

The wazungu will reward you as richly as I will.  And be turned to Captain Kajo.  Is that not so?  It is so, Kajo confirmed.  The man we wish you to kill is a white man.  He is an evil man who has escaped into the forest.

We, the men of the government, will reward you for hunting him.

Pirri looked at Kajo, at his uniform and gun and dark glasses and knew he was a powerful government wazungu, so he thought about it carefully.

He had killed white wazungu before in the Zaire war when he was a young man.  The government had paid him for it then and it had been easy.  The white wazungu were stupid and clumsy in the forest.  They were easy to follow and easy to kill.  They never even knew he was there until they were dead.

How much tobacco?  he asked.  From me, as much tobacco as you can carry, said Chetti Singh.  From me also, as much tobacco as you can carry, said Captain Kajo.  Where will I find him?  asked Pirri, and Chetti Singh told him where to begin his search, and where he thought the man was heading.

You want only his head?  Pirri asked.  To eat?  No.

Chetti Singh was not offended.  So that I know you have killed the right man.  First I will bring you this man's head, said Pirri happily.

Then I will bring you the teeth of the elephant and I will have more tobacco than any man in the world.  And like a little brown ghost he disappeared into the forest.

In the early morning, before the heat built up, Kelly Kinnear was working in the Gondola clinic.  She had more patients than usual, most of them suffering from in tious tropical yaws, those great suppurating ulcers that would eat down to the bone unless they were treated.

Others were malarial or had swollen eyes running with flyborne or hthalmia.  There were also two new cases of AIDS.  She didn't need blood slides to recognize the symptoms, the swelling of the lymph glands and the thick white thrush that coated their tongues and throats like cream cheese.

She consulted Victor Omeru and he agreed that they should try the new treatment on them, the herbal extract of the selepi tree bark that was looking so promising.  He helped her prepare the dose.  The amount was necessarily an arbitrary decision, and they were discussing it when there was a sudden commotion outside the clinic front door.

Victor glanced out of the window and smiled.  Your little friends have arrived, he told Kelly, and she laughed with pleasure and went out into the sunshine.

Sepoo and his wife Pamba were squatting below the verandah, chatting and laughing with the other waiting patients.

When they saw her they both squealed with delight and came running, competing with each other to take her hands and tell her all the news since their last meeting, trying to shout each other down to be the first to impart the choicest morsels of scandal and sensation from the tribe.

One on each hand they led her to her usual seat on the top step of the verandah and sat beside her, still chattering in unison.  Swilli has had a baby.  It is a boy and she says she will bring it to show you at the next full moon, said Pamba.  There will be a great net hunt soon, and all the tribes will join.  . . said Sepoo.

I have brought you a bundle of the special roots I told you about last time we met, shrilled Pamba, not to be outdone by her husband.

Her bright eyes were almost hidden in a cobweb of wrinkles and half her teeth were missing.  I shot two colobus monkeys, boasted Sepoo. And I have brought you one of the skins to make a beautiful hat, Kara-Ki.

You are kind, Sepoo, Kelly thanked him.  But what news from Sengi-Sengi? What about the yellow machines that eat the earth and obble up the forest?

What news of the big white man with curly hair and the woman with hair like fire who looks into the little black box all the time?

Strange, said Sepoo importantly.  There is strange news.

The big man with curly hair has run away from Sengi-Sengi.

He has run into the forest to hide.  Sepoo was gabbling it out to prevent Pamba from getting in before him.  And the government wazungu at Sengi-Sengi have offered Pirri my brother, vast treasure and reward to hunt the man and kill him.

Kelly stared at him in horror.  Kill him?  she blurted.  They want Pirri to kill him?  And cut off his head, Sepoo confirmed with relish.

Is it not strange and exciting?  You have to stop him!  Kelly sprang to her feet, dragging Sepoo up with her.  You must not let Pirri kill him.

You must rescue the white man and bring him here to Gondola.  -Do you hear me, Sepoo?  Go, now!  Go swiftly!  You must stop Pirri.  I will go with him to see that he does what you tell him, Kara-Ki, Pamba announced.  For he is 2 stupid old man, and if he hears the honey chameleon whistle or meets one of his cronies in the forest, he will forget everything you have told him.  She turned to her husband.

Come on, old man.  She prodded him with her thumb.  Let us go and find this white wazungu and bring him back to Kara-Ki.  Let us go before Pirri kills him and takes his head to Sengi-Sengi.  Pirri the hunter went down on one knee in the forest and examined the tracks.  He adjusted the hang of the bow on his shoulder and shook his head with reluctant admiration.  He knows that I am here, close behind him, he whispered.  How does he know that?  Unless of course he is one of the fundis.

He touched the spoor where the wazungu had left the water.

He had done it with great skill, leaving only traces that someone as good as Pirri could detect.  Yes, you know I am following you, Pirri nodded.

But where did you learn to move and cover your tracks almost as well as a Bambuti?  he muttered.

He had picked up the wazungu's tracks where he had crossed the broad road that the big yellow earth-eating tree-gobbling machine had left through the forest.  The earth there was soft and the wazungu had left tracks that a blind man could follow on a dark night.  He was heading westwards towards the mountains, as Chetti Singh had said he would.

Pirri thought immediately that it would be an easy hunt and a quick kill, especially when he had found where the wazungu had broken off a piece of poisonous fungus from a dead tree and eaten a little of it.

He found the man's teeth marks in the piece of fungus that he had discarded, and Pirri laughed.  Your bowels will turn to water and run like the great river, O stupid wazungu.  And I will kill you while you squat to shit.  Sure enough, he had found the place where the wazungu had slept the previous night and close by where he had voided his bowels for the first time.  You will not go far now, he chuckled, before I catch you and kill you.  Pirri glided onwards, softly as a wisp of dark smoke blending with the gloom and shadows and sombre colours of the deep forest, following the easy trail at twice the speed of the man who had laid it.  At intervals he found dribbles of his poisoned yellow dung, and then the trail reached the bank of a small stream and went into the water and vanished.

Pirri worked for almost half a day, casting both banks for a mile both upstream and down before he found where the wazungu had left the water again.  You are clever, he conceded.  But not as clever as Pirri.

And he took the spoor again, going slowly now, for the man he was following was good.  He laid back trails and false sign and used the water, and Pirri had to unravel each of his tricks, frowning while he worked it out and then grinning with approbation.  Ah yes, you will be a worthy one to kill.  You would long ago have got clean away from a lesser hunter.  But I am Pirri.  In the late afternoon of the second day he had reached a clearing and he caught his first glimpse of the wazungu.  At first he thought it was one of the rare forest antelope on the opposite hillside.