Forest of the Pygmies by Isabel Allende Page A

inquired.
    Beyé-Dokou struggled to understand the question, but finally with Brother Fernando’s help he got the idea.
    â€œOurs,” he clarified, pointing to his companions and using gestures to indicate that the spirits were short.
    â€œDo Kosongo and Mbembelé also stay away from the ghost village of the Pygmies?” Nadia insisted.
    â€œNobody go there. If the spirits are disturbed, they take revenge. They enter the bodies of the living, they control they will, they cause sickness and suffering, sometimes death,” Beyé-Dokou answered.
    The Pygmies motioned to the foreigners that they must hurry, because the spirits of animals also come out at night to hunt.
    â€œHow do you know if it’s the ghost of an animal, not just an ordinary animal?” Nadia asked.
    â€œBecause ghost don’t have smell of animal. Leopard that smell like antelope, or serpent that smell like elephant, is ghost,” he explained.
    â€œThen I guess you need a good sense of smell, or else have to get real close, to tell the difference,” Alexander joked.
    Beyé-Dokou told them that at one time they hadn’t been afraid of the night or the spirits of animals—only those of their ancestors—because they’d been protected by Ipemba-Afua. Kate wanted to know if that was some god, but he corrected her misimpression; he was referring to a sacred amulet that had belonged to their tribe since time immemorial. The way he described it, they understood that it was a human bone that contained a never-ending powder that cured many ills. They had used the powder more times than they could count and through many generations, and it never ran out. Every time they opened the bone, they found it filled with the magical substance. Ipemba-Afua represented the soul of their people, they said; it was their source of health, strength, and good fortune for the hunt.
    â€œWhere is it?” asked Alexander.
    The Pygmies told them, with tears in their eyes, that Ipemba-Afua had been seized by Mbembelé and was now in Kosongo’s power. As long as the king had the amulet, they had no soul; they were at his mercy.
    Foreigners and guides entered Ngoubé with the last light of day, when the villagers were beginning to set fires to light the village. They passed some scrawny plantings of cassava, coffee, and banana, a pair of high wood corrals—perhaps for animals—and a string of windowless huts with sagging walls and ruined roofs. A few long-horned cattle were cropping grass, and half-bald chickens, starving dogs, and wild monkeys were poking around among the huts. A few yards farther along, the path widened into a sort of avenue or large central square; there the dwellings were more reputable looking, as they were mud huts with corrugated zinc or straw roofs.
    The arrival of the strangers caused a commotion, and within minutes the people of the village had gathered to see what was going on. From their appearance they seemed to be Bantu, like the men in the canoes who had brought them as far as the fork in the river. Women in rags and naked children formed a compact mass on one side of the square, through which four men taller than the other villagers, surely of a different tribe, made their way. They were dressed in ragged army uniforms and outfitted with antiquated rifles and ammunition belts. One was wearing an explorer’s pith helmet adorned with feathers, a yellowT-shirt, and plastic sandals; the others were naked to the waist and barefoot. Strips of leopard skin circled their biceps or heads, and rows of ritual scars adorned cheeks and arms. The lines of the scars were raised dots, as if small stones or beads were implanted beneath the skin.
    With the appearance of the soldiers, the Pygmies’ attitudes changed instantly: The confidence and happy camaraderie they had shown in the forest disappeared in a breath. They dropped their loads to the ground, lowered their heads, and backed away