The Tree of Life (Beadle)/Chapter 2

IOLET twilight stained with green died hurriedly, leaving the dented moon as if battered with the boredom of the chiliads to gaze incuriously upon microcosmical contortions. From the village of Basayaguru rose continuously, like puffs of invisible steam from an engine-exhaust, the rhythm of a drum above the murmur of the forest and the swirl of the river in the sulky air.

Like the red eye of a familiar, winking in masonic import to old Yamala, the witch-doctor, squatting like an idol carved in ebony, was the glow of the little doctor's cigar as he sat in the doorway of his tent in the lee of the greenwood fire. Half in shadow beside him was Ali, his robes a volume of carven turquoise supporting the dignity of his turbaned head, a cameo in lazulite.

"Now, Ali," said the doctor, "it's really about time you got to business. We've had a week of this fooling. We've got a general idea of the supply of ivory and that your confounded people ruined the vine rubber ages ago. But we could have got that almost anywhere. Now try to find out exactly what is the basis of their cult—whether it is the same in this part as down-country. Understand?"

"It most usually is so, Doctor," responded Ali.

"Well, but you don't know. I want facts, not suppositions."

"I still venture to doubt whether the moment be expedient yet," objected Ali tonelessly.

"Do as I tell you, confound you!"

"The Occidental and the Oriental"

"Shut up!"

"Very good, Doctor. But you will please note that I do not take the responsibility. I obey."

As tonelessly as an oracle Ali spoke fluently to the old man Yamala, who at length replied as monotonously.

"The witch-doctor states that they have a goddess who dwells in the woods."

"Well?"

"Please to contain your most natural emotions," reproved Ali. "It is not the custom of the Orient"

"Oh, the Orient!"

"Please to be patient," remonstrated Ali and began anew to talk with the witch-doctor.

The old man rumbled on in periods, punctuated by assenting grunts from Ali. The doctor finished his cigar and lighted another. Yet still the two voices blended as if in a liturgy to the rhythmic throb of the single drum and the faint anthem of the mosquitoes. The old man ceased and relapsed into immobility.

"Well, well? What is it?"

Ali was undoubtedly in a state of excitement indicated by a slight half-tone raise in the timbre of his voice.

"These peoples have, as you know, Doctor, been much influenced by the incursions of my own people. They were at one remote period the storehouse of our slaves, although in these days of your exquisite civilization one is compelled to take tribute in the form of merchandise only. I desire to point out that our ancient ruins have influenced even these savages."

"You have," interrupted the doctor dryly. "Get on."

"The Occidental are not the ways of the Oriental"

"Ali, shut up and get along with the yarn!"

"I hasten to obey, Doctor. I desire to state that these savages have confused an ancient philosophy with their own ignorant superstitions."

"Never mind that. What is the superstition?"

"As you will doubtless have read or learned, Doctor, each of these peoples have, with scarcely any exception, a belief in the spirits of the trees and the rivers. The correct word flees from me." "Animism."

"Thank you, Doctor. Animism. But in this case they have confused"

"Confound it," grumbled Herdwether, "never mind that!"

"They, as I wish to express, believe in the spirits of the wood and the plants. They have, the priest tells me, here a sacred and holy tree, which is the mother—I desire to express that it is the mother."

"Well, you have. What about it?"

"Because all other trees are male."

"The devil they are! Trees have sex as well as anybody else."

"Indeed true words as your exquisite education has taught me. But not with these peoples. It is that I wish to express that they have confused their superstition with the truths of my peoples, the Berbers. As may and yet may not be known to you, Doctor, the Berbers of the Atlas before the coming of the true believers"

"Meaning your crowd, eh?"

"Indeed surely, Doctor. The Berbers, I may state, had faith in the mother of the universe, the sun, which is, they said with admirable logic, the source of heat and therefore of all things and therefore was fecund and therefore was a female, the mother of all."

"What the devil's that got to do with this ju~ju idol?"

"THERE is no idol, Doctor. It is a tree."

"What?"

"Truly indeed what, Doctor. The priest here informs that upon the mother tree depends quite, and undoubtedly logically from their point of view, the crops and all that is grown and therefore their alimentation."

"Yes, yes, the old idea from Jack in the Green to the Flamen Dialis. Well?"

"And therefore, with exquisite logic, that it is necessary for the tree to be fertilized and therefore to be married. At the first moon of the sowing, which is close unto us now, is the ceremony of the marriage of the magic tree."

"Married? To whom?"

"To whom the sacred tree is married I can not say. Such is without doubt as in all religions a matter forbidden to infidels and the ignorant."

"Well, buy the information then."

"It is not possible to buy faith. With one thousand pardons I will express myself for the reason of my excitement," replied Ali as coldly as the liturgy. "According to my way of thinking, the priest is most friendly disposed toward us. Indeed, he has invited—even more in the limits of his language—he has prayed that we stop to see the ceremony of the marriage of the sacred tree."

"Um. Um," mumbled the doctor, scratching a mosquito-bite on his left ear. "But do they usually invite strangers to witness these sacred rites?"

"Undoubtedly not. Undoubtedly not, Doctor. That is also one reason for the state of excitement in which you see me."

"Um. Um." The red eye of the doctor's familiar glared ferociously at the carven image in ebony by the dull embers. The throb of the drum pulsed steadily. "It appears to me that there must be a reason behind the invitation. What can it be? Is it money? I mean more presents? Yet they've been most unusually lavish already, haven't they?"

"More than exquisitely lavish," asserted Ali. "The reason is known to Allah."

"Confound Allah!"

"The doctor is unconsciously blasphemous," reproved Ali.

"No; it's a gift, I assure you," grinned the doctor. "Um. Um. Well, about the ceremony business. What else did he say?"

"Is it not sufficiently astonishing that he should tell us these things? The doctor does not perceive the exquisite abyss between the Occidental and the Oriental."

"Exquisite twaddle. Is there a sacrifice? These devils invariably want lakes of blood to bathe their gods in." "That is unknown to me, Doctor."

"Well, ask him, confound it!"

"His lips will be tighter than the shell upon the ocean shore, but, if it amuses the doctor, I will hasten to obey."

Again there followed the solemn liturgical conversation. The doctor moved restlessly as if the continuous beat of the drum sought his pulse.

"The doctor will observe that my words are as true as the Koran. The tongue of the black priest is swollen, which is to say, as the doctor will perceive, that he refuses to speak concerning that which is to him sacred and forbidden."

"Tabu, eh? Um. Well, ask him directly why he wishes us to see the ceremony; whether all strangers are invited, or whether he has just taken a fancy to our pretty faces?"

"1 hasten to obey, but the product thereof will be excessively more lies than the leaves on the sacred tree. His ears, as I have intimated, are made deaf by the clamor of our words," reported Ali. "He intimates exquisitely politely that he would retire with the offerings of the while chief, saying that the bird of happiness will bang her wings in his breast so excessively that he will not be able to sleep, because the white chief has willingly taken the acceptance to the marriage-feast."

"Um. Well, tell Yamagulu to give him whatever you think, Ali, and bundle him off to bed."

Ali's voice raised to summon Yamagulu, then appeared muffled as if deliberately hushed by clammy hands of the air on which rolled, with the rhythmic certainty of an Atlantic swell, the somber notes of the drum.

"What the devil's that drum for, Ali?" inquired the doctor irritably as he gazed at the fire, pondering.

"It is designed to prepare the mind and the body for the marriage-feast upon the full moon, Doctor."

"Why, that's about tomorrow or the next day, isn't it?" observed the doctor, glancing up at the battered moon.

"Two nights more yet."