Daniel squatted with them and filmed their sombre faces. All of them were looking up into the silk-cotton tree.
This is the home of the Molimo, Sepoo whispered softly. We have come to fetch him. Somebody in the ranks called out a name. Grivi! And a man stood up and moved to the base of the tree.
From another direction another name was called. Sepoo!
And Sepoo went to stand with the first man chosen.
Soon there were fifteen men at the base of the tree. Some were old and famous, some were mere striplings. Young or old, callow or proven, all men had equal right to take part in the ceremony of the Molimo.
Suddenly Sepoo let out a shout and the chosen band swarmed excitedly up into the tree. They disappeared into the high foliage and for a time there was only the sound of their singing and shouting. Then down they came again, bearing a length of bamboo.
They laid it on the ground at the foot of the tree and Daniel went forward to examine it. The bamboo was not more than fifteen feet long.
it was cured and dried out, and must have been cut many years before.
There were stylised symbols and crude animal caricatures scratched on it, but otherwise it was simply a length of bamboo. Is this the Molimo?
Daniel whispered to Sepoo while the men of the tribe gathered around it reverently.
yes, Kuokoa, this is the Molimo, Sepoo affirmed.
What is the Molimo? Daniel persisted. The Molimo is the voice of the forest, Sepoo tried to explain. It is the voice of the Mother and the Father. But before it can speak, it must be taken to drink. The chosen band took up the Molimo and carried it to the stream and submerged it in a cool dark pool. The banks of the pool were lined with ranks of little men, solemn and attentive, naked and bright-eyed.
They waited for an hour and then another while the Molimo drank the sweet water of the forest stream, and then they brought the Molimo to the bank.
It was shining and dripping with water. Sepoo went to the bamboo tube and placed his lips over the open end. His chest inflated as he drew breath and the Molimo, spoke from the tube. It was the startlingly clear sweet voice of a young girl singing in the forest, and all the men of the Bambuti shuddered and swayed like the top leaves of a tall tree -kit by a sudden wind.
Then the Molimo changed its voice, and cried like a duiker caught in the hunter's net. It chattered like the grey parrot in flight and whistled like the honey chameleon. it was all the voices and sounds of the forest. Another man replaced Sepoo at the tube, and then another.
There were voices of men and ghosts and other creatures that all men had heard of but none had ever seen.
Then suddenly the Molimo screamed like an elephant. It was a terrible angry sound and the men of the Bambuti swarmed forward, clustering around the Molimo in a struggling heaving horde. The simple bamboo tube disappeared in their midst, but still it squealed and roared, cooed and whistled and cackled with a hundred different voices.
Now a strange and magical thing took place. As Daniel watched, the struggling knot of men changed. They were no longer individuals, for they were pressed too closely together.
In the same way that a shoal of fish or a flock of birds is one beast, so the men of the Bambuti blended into an entity. They became one creature.
They became the Molimo. They became the godhead of the forest.
The Molimo was angry. It roared and squealed with the voice of the buffalo and the giant forest hog. It raged through the forest on a hundred legs that were no longer human. It revolved on its axis like a jellyfish in the current. It pulsed and changed shape, and dashed one way and then the other, flattening the undergrowth in its fury.
It crossed the river, kicking up a white foam of spray, and then slowly but with awakening purpose began to move towards the gathering place of the tribe below the waterfall at Gondola.
The women heard the Molimo coming from a long way off.
They left the cooking-fires and seized the children and ran to their huts, dragging the little ones with them. Wailing with terror, they closed the doors of the huts and crouched in the darkness with the children clutched to their breasts.
The Molimo rampaged through the forest, its terrible voice rising and falling, crashing through the undergrowth, charging one way and then the other, until at last it broke into the encampment. It trampled the cooking-fires and the children screamed as some of the flimsy huts were knocked askew by its ungoverned anger.
The great beast raged back and forth through the camp, seeming to quest for the source of its outrage. Suddenly it revolved and moved purposefully towards the far corner of the camp where Pirri had built his hut.
Pirri's wives heard it coming and they burst from the hut and fled into the jungle, but Pirri did not run. He had not gone to the silk-cotton tree with the other men to fetch the Molimo down from its home. Now he crouched in his hut, with. his hands over his head and waited. He knew there was no escape in flight, he had to wait for the retribution of the forest god.
The Molimo circled Pirri's hut like one of the giant forest millipedes, its feet stamping and kicking up the earth, screaming like a bull elephant in the agony of a ruptured bladder.
Then abruptly it charged at the hut in which Pirri was hiding. It flattened the hut, and trampled all Pirri's possessions.
It stamped his tobacco to dust. It shattered his bottles of gin and the pungent liquor soaked into the earth. It kicked the gold wristwatch into the fire and scattered all his treasures. Pirri made no attempt to fly its wrath or to protect himself.
The Molimo trampled him; squealing with rage it kicked and pommelled him.
It crushed his nose and broke his teeth; it cracked his ribs and bruised his limbs.
Then suddenly, it left him and rushed back into the forest from whence it had come. Its voice had changed, the rage was gone out of it. It wailed and lamented as though it mourned the death and the poisoning of the forest and the sins of the tribe that had brought disaster upon them all.
Slowly it retreated and its voice became fainter, until at last it faded into the distance.
Pirri picked himself up slowly. He made no effort to gather up his scattered treasures. He took only his bow and his quiver of arrows.
He left his elephant spear and his machete. He limped away into the forest.
