The Ventriloquist's Tale by Pauline Melville

Author:Pauline Melville
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

The Dirty Face of the Moon

Father Napier was in high spirits as he packed up to leave St Ignatius and set off on his mission to convert the Wai-Wai. Although he was several months later than he had intended, at last he was ready. Happily, his chafed neck, caused by the rubbing of his priest’s collar, had been cured just in time by a woman who gave him a concoction of aloes to rub on it.

He planned to cross Wapisiana country, go through Taruma territory, although there were few Taruma left now, and from there strike into the deep forest of the far south, if necessary into Brazil, to bring news of Christ to the Wai-Wai. He hoped to be back by the end of May.

On the journey, he was taking with him Titus, a lugubrious Macusi with a dry sense of humour, and Titus’s two young sons, both of whom had the brown, slanting eyes of young agouti. He was also bringing three rather silent Taruma Indian brothers to translate the Wai-Wai language for him and a cheerfully energetic Wapisiana man called Siriko who wanted to make the journey to acquire some of the famed Wai-Wai graters.

The party set off. From Aishalton, they walked quickly through the last part of the savannahs. The two youngsters went running on ahead, always able to find the trail even though they had never been there before. When the trail forked, they would split up and each would take one of the forks until one or the other was certain he had hit the right track and would then call out to his brother.

The two boys walked in single file, chattering, always able to distinguish horse tracks from cattle or deer tracks and to tell how old the tracks were. The older boy was telling the younger one why the sun is supposed to be so pale at that time of year.

‘He goes a long way away on a trading journey to a place where some rivers meet. He’s looking to buy milk and salt. He gets drunk and weak and he’s vomiting and spitting.’ The boy, who was leading the way, jumped and staggered around imitating the drunken sun and the younger one grinned. ‘Then he’s captured and put in an upturned pot. His sons, Macunaima and Chico, are searching everywhere for him when Chico sees the light just glinting out from under the rim of the pot. He takes a gun and shatters the pot – “pow” – to set his father free. The sun goes up to the sky again but he’s still pale and it takes a while for him to get his strength back.’

As they plunged into the gloom of the forest, Father Napier noticed that the Taruma men seemed to cheer up. It turned out that they did not entirely trust the Wapisiana through whose territory they were travelling.

Now the men went ahead of the boys and told them to stop chattering. Every stream had dried up and the only way to find water was to dig in a dried bed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.