Chapter IX: An Interview with a Sorceress

That afternoon, for a change, the weather was soft and clement. Side by side, abreast, they descended towards the plain at the easy-going pace of their mounts. Between the trees below them they saw the Moï village, its straw roofs, long and pointed, piercing the forest like gold arrows, while, rising from one of the cabins, a thin column of smoke, straight and blue, stood in the motionless air.

Suddenly breaking the silence, the girl asked him:

"Don't you think that that village must be one of the haunts of Jieng?"

"It is possible, Father Ravennes thinks so, but he is no more sure of it than we are."

Wanda flung him a sharp glance.

"You speak of it as if it did not matter! Doesn't that interest you in any way? For my part, I should like to discover the mysterious power that this woman represents and of which Father Ravennes obtained proof that night in the forest. And then perhaps she could tell us something about what has happened to Michael. Ah! if only I could catch her."

Lursac with a shrug of his shoulders signified lack of interest.

"What good would that do you? You don't imagine that she would tell you her secrets?"

Wanda remained thoughtful.

"Who knows?" said she, after a moment's thought. "And, anyway, what should I risk? She might say nothing or she might tell me things that weren't true."

"Yes," said Pierre, "certainly, and also perhaps you might get an unexpected spear-thrust or a dagger in your back!"

The young girl made a motion of scorn.

"She would not dare," said she, "and, besides, this is a very excellent chance! Let us try it together!"

"Wanda!" cried Pierre, "Wanda!" He stretched out his hand to try to hold her back, but on the word she had pushed forward her horse and was galloping down the slope.

He immediately realized that it was too late to stop her; and he then had only one thought, to protect her. He whipped up his horse mercilessly.

They arrived abreast at the entrance to the village. Pierre recognized the path of brush by which he and Father Ravennes had a week earlier penetrated into the settlement.

Flat down on the neck of his pony he took the lead of Wanda and passed the three gates one after the other. At his side he heard the heavy breathing and the hoof-beats of Wanda's horse galloping close behind, and when, on coming out on the village square, he stopped, he found the girl beside him. He took her by the arm and brought her to a standstill.

"For the love of Heaven!" he cried, "let me do it!"

Jumping to the ground he ran towards a cabin, whose wide-open door showed a black rectangle in the midst of which flickered the flame of a hearth-fire.

On the threshold of the single room reeking with bitter smoke he stood still, searching the shadows before him. Squatted before a fire of branches some twenty savages, with long Moï pipes in their mouths, were silently smoking. A stupor seemed to hold them all motionless in their places. Seated on the bench before the semicircle of warriors a woman had just that instant stopped speaking.

Pierre, taking no notice of the men, strode towards her and, by chance remembering the description which Father Ravennes had given him, he said, in Banhar:

"I greet you, O Jieng!"

Wanda, biting back an exclamation, examined the sorceress eagerly. Her bent, crouching body appeared that of a child. Ragged and filthy cotton drawers, rolled round her waist and descending below the knee, left in plain sight thin, bony shoulders, a withered skin creased with wrinkles and hacked with scars. On the hearth a little log was burning. In the dancing light the hideous face of Jieng could be plainly seen; under her gray hair and narrow forehead showed the bloody marks of an outlandish tattooed design gashed into the skin. A single eye was alive, half-closed, dull and blinking: the other with its bleared, corroded lids gave the effect of a running abscess. A cut, still unhealed, disfigured the chin, stretching up towards the cheek, and, circling the lips, gave to the toothless mouth, stained with betel-nut, the aspect of a raw wound slashed across the face.

Alone in the middle of her dumbfounded people she remained unmoved. She turned her mutilated face towards the young folk and regarded them with her single eye without showing any emotion whatever.

"I greet you," she replied.

She raised her hand, showing on her arm rings of copper which glistened in the dusk. Pointing to the door, she said to the men:

"Go!"

They got up doubtfully. The fire on the hearth lit up their thick, bony forms, brought out their strong arms and thighs and revealed their red bodies in which the supple, powerful muscles rippled under the skin. Pierre noted that they were equipped for war, their faces painted white, hatchets on their shoulders, curved daggers stuck into the belts of their loin-cloths and their long hair plaited up into knots, while collars of animals' teeth rattled round their necks, and their ankles and knees were ornamented with copper rings. Already they were in the act of taking down their bows and quivers that hung on the wall.

But the young man, with a brusque gesture, signed to them to stop.

"No!" he ordered, "no one is to move."

In her flat level voice Jieng asked:

"Why do you want them?"

And as he hesitated she looked straight into his face.

"Those who sit by our hearth, however they came there," said she in the same calm indifferent tone, "have nothing to fear. Were you not aware of that?"

And once more pointing to the door, she repeated:

"Go!"

One by one they filed out without Pierre attempting to prevent them. On the threshold each stood still for a moment and bowed towards the _Bo Jaou_. The salute revealed a wild and haughty servility, a sort of fanaticism mixed with fear and suppressed rage. Their supple, gliding walk, as of animals in captivity, at once crafty, obedient and ready for revolt, suggested the idea of wild animals which give way before the tamer, crouching, bent double, kept down by fear, but nevertheless, always waiting and ready to give a deadly blow of the paw.

The last of them, a great big fellow with massive shoulders and thick hands, cast on the young man a look of hate so heavy, so threatening, that the latter felt it cover him almost like something tangible. They looked each other up and down for a second, and then, when the warrior disappeared, Lursac turned back to the sorceress. Her legs folded under her, her body rigid and her hands flat upon her withered thighs, she continued to preserve her attitude of a Buddhist idol and her expressionless face of a statue. She pretended to ignore the presence of the young man, just as she did Wanda sitting beside her on the bench, and this indifference, at once haughty and careless, worried Pierre.

"This lady," he explained, pointing to Wanda, "wanted to see you."

The sorceress turned her head slightly and, with a glance, she examined Wanda:

"She is beautiful," she said simply.

The girl smiled.

"I wanted to know you," said she. "They have talked to me about you so much."

Jieng remained unmoved. A short cough shook her and made her hunch her shoulders.

"Who, then, talks of an old woman like me?"

"Everyone," said Wanda.

And abruptly she challenged her:

"Do you not reign over this country?"

A light, immediately veiled, flashed in the dull eye of the sorceress.

"How could I?" she asked. "Look at me. Death is waiting for me. For a long time I have seen him beckoning to me. The gate is open for me...."

A second attack of coughing tore her skinny chest; choking and suffocating, she spat, gasping and twisted with pain.

Already Wanda, full of compassion, was beginning to sympathize with her.

An exclamation from Pierre, however, turned the current of her thoughts and reawakened her curiosity.

"Look, Wanda, more prehistoric remains."

She cast a glance at the corner of the cabin at which he was pointing. Against a partition of split bamboo, on a large wooden stand, round a tiny hearth where a few live coals were gradually dying, flint hammers and axes and some bones were set out in a semicircle. A skull dominated them, set upon a block of wood; and the red glow from the little hearth flecking the ivory of the bones with red, created two pools of shadows in the empty eye-sockets.

Wanda examined the peculiar altar with passionate interest. Then her attention, up to that time concentrated on the sorceress, passed to the entire cabin. On the walls blackened with smoke she noticed the heads of animals and the skins of wild beasts; yellow skeletons and tawny furs; elephants' ears; monkeys' hands, twisted and brown, showing red palms stretched towards the bundles of bows and lances.

Triumphantly, she jerked out:

"And what is that? This skull and these flint weapons?"

The sorceress made an evasive gesture.

"Yes!" said she, "trifles ... that we find in ... in the mountain...."

Wanda imperiously demanded particulars:

"Why do you put them on an altar, as if they were sacred things?"

"These ... these are fetiches, ... the fathers of our fathers did this ... and in our turn we...."

The girl recognised the hopelessness of her question. She took the sorceress by the arm.

"Don't you know? Who, then, is the high-priestess of this religion? Aren't _you_?"

Jieng parried the question adroitly.

"We worship everything that seems strange to us--strange ... yes ... and above us,--a fire, thunder.... Is that what you mean?"

She had pulled away her arm, but not quickly enough to prevent Wanda feeling the shiver which had shaken it: at the same time, with her single eye persistently upon him, she watched Pierre standing in front of her.

"No," said Wanda, "I am talking of the religion which everywhere brings together all the Moï women in mysterious pilgrimages. Where do they go? And why only the women?"

The sorceress started. She twisted herself slightly. Once more her eye was riveted on the young man. With a sort of tired obstinacy, she repeated:

"I don't understand. Really, I don't understand...."

As if crushed, trembling, she began to cough again.

A cruel bronchial rattling seemed to choke her: she groaned, pressing her emaciated sides with her two hands.

Pierre shrugged his shoulders angrily.

"I told you," said he, "that you would not get anything out of her."

Wanda rose. A thought had just come into her mind, while a sentence of Father Ravennes' sounded in her ears: "A mysterious religion reserved for women, and of which no man must penetrate the secret."

Her look fell in turn on Jieng and Pierre de Lursac.

And to herself she murmured:

"No man ... no man...."

Aloud she said:

"You are right. Let us go. Look and see if the horses are there!"

Standing in the middle of the hut, she followed him with her eyes. On the threshold, he turned back and looked at Jieng for an instant.

"Poor old woman!" he said, "she can't last very much longer; in any case, she is nothing to be afraid of."

With a doubtful smile on her lips, Wanda remained silent, but directly he had gone out she walked resolutely up to the sorceress.

"Jieng," said she, "have you really nothing to tell me?"

The old woman raised her head. Her glance met that of the young girl--a new glance, intelligent, acute and deep, which seemed to want to penetrate the most secret thoughts of the stranger.

She made no answer.

"Nothing?" ... insisted Wanda. "Not even to me who am a woman. To me alone?"

A flash shone from the eye of the sorceress and made it glitter strangely. Her entire face seemed to reflect doubt and hesitation.

"To you alone?" she said, uncertainly, "to ... to you, alone?"

Suddenly her visage became stone and took on its mask of passive indifference.

"Your companion is calling for you," she said.

Through the open door could be heard the sounds of the approaching horses, and the voice of Pierre:

"Wanda, are you coming?..."

The young woman bent over and whispered, quickly:

"If I come back alone, two days from now, at sunset, will you be here?"

Jieng hung her head, her single eye closed.

"Perhaps," she said simply.

But a meaning grin flickered over her mouth and twisted her lips almost imperceptibly.