The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

II

Insidiously the occasion which she had looked for came. An ordinary attack of malaria, one of her brother’s usual ten-daily diversions, flamed suddenly into a condition which she could not understand. The babble of a night of delirium died away, and in the morning, with cheeks still flushed and all the signs of fever with which she was familiar, Eva found him becoming drowsy and yet more drowsy. Usually in this stage of the disease she knew him to be exacting and restlessly active. This time when she came to give him food she had difficulty in rousing him. He lay huddled on his side with his legs drawn up and his face turned away from the light. Even when she had wakened him he fell asleep again. The warm milk which she had brought him went cold under a yellowish scum at his bedside. All that afternoon she did not once hear him praying.

She became anxious. Perhaps Godovius would come. She wished that he would; for she knew that he could help her: all the Waluguru bore witness how great a medicine-man he was. But Godovius did not come. “Just because I want him,” she thought.

For a few moments in the afternoon James brightened up. He complained to her of the pain in his head, which he had clasped in his hands all day; but even as he spoke to her his mind wandered, wandered back into the Book of Kings and the story of the Shunammite’s son. “And he said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad: Carry him to his mother,” he muttered. Then he was quiet for a little. Eva sat by his side, watching. Now at last he seemed to be sleeping gently. She expected that this was what he needed, but in the early evening, when next she wanted to feed him, he would not wake. She spoke to him, and gently shook him. A terror seized her lest he should have died. No . . . he was still breathing. For so much she might be thankful.

Something must be done. In this extremity her mind naturally turned to Godovius. At James’s desk she scribbled a note to him, and ran out into the compound at the back of the house to the hut of galvanised iron in which the boys slept. She called them both by name, but no answer came. The mouth of their den was covered with an old piece of sacking, which she pulled aside, releasing an air that stank of wood-smoke, and oil and black flesh. Almost sickened, she peered inside. Only one of the boys was sleeping there. He lay curled up in the corner, so that she could not see which of them it was, his head and shoulders covered with a dirty red blanket. She had to shake him before she could rouse him. He stared at her out of the darkness with dazed eyes. Then he smiled, and she saw by his filed cannibal teeth that it was Onyango, the M’kamba . . . just the one whom she didn’t want. Hamisi, the Luguru, would have known the way to Godovius’s house.

“Where is Hamisi?” she asked.

Onyango still rubbed his eyes. He did not know. She told him that Hamisi must be found. He shook his head and smiled. Hamisi, he said, could not be found. It was useless to try and find him.

Eva was irritated by his foolish, smiling face. Why had Hamisi gone away, just when he was wanted most? she asked.

Onyango mumbled something which surpassed her knowledge of Swahili . . . something about the new moon. What in the world had the new moon to do with it? . . .

Very well, then, she decided—Onyango must take Godovius’s letter.