Strange flesh

In this shocking final installment from Russell Banks' new novel, Hannah meets Woodrow's family in their jungle village.

By Russell Banks

Oct 20, 2004 | In seconds, the path had joined a wider path, a trail, actually, that soon broadened and swept beneath a head-high, earthen trestle overgrown with ferns and tall grasses. As I passed beneath the bridgelike structure, I glanced up and saw the high palisade above it and realized that in my search for an entrance to the village I had simply walked across the top of it and had missed the gate entirely. I followed my lissome guide under the bridge and entered the village of Fuama.

It was a large, circular compound of ten or twelve daub-and-wattle, whitewashed, windowless huts, each with a single, low doorway facing a packed dirt yard the size of a basketball court. A crowd of people, which I recognized as the same crowd that had greeted us when we first stepped from the car, was loosely gathered around a fire pit. Two large, skinned, piglike carcasses, headless and without hoofs, were slung across the red coals alongside a fifty-gallon drum whose steaming contents I could not see but assumed was a soup or stew, made no doubt from the heads, hoofs, and innards of the beasts roasting on the fire. While the children mostly held hands and watched in silence from the edge of the crowd, men and women of all ages drank from gourds and soda pop bottles, laughing and talking excitedly with one another and every few seconds breaking into scraps of song. It was a party, a drunken celebration. Off to one side were the drummers -- four sweating, muscular, young men -- eyes closed, heads thrown back, as if each were chained to a private, throbbing world of sound. And there, behind the drummers, rising above the crowd on a dais at the entrance to a hut significantly larger than the others, stood a very tall, elderly man in a white, short-sleeved shirt and trousers, four older women in colorful wraps, and Woodrow.

Standing next to Woodrow and slightly behind him, yet making herself visible to the crowd, was a young woman with a thick, pouty upper lip. A naked baby was perched on her wide, outslung hip. The woman was very dark, almost plum colored, with glistening hair that was braided and coiled like a nest of black snakes and wore a bright yellow-and-white sash across her bare breasts. She stared at me unblinking. Everyone else seemed not even to notice my presence.

Woodrow, too, ignored me. Or perhaps he just hasn't noticed my arrival yet, I thought. Or maybe he didn't notice my absence in the first place.

I flipped a small, discreet wave in his direction. Over here, Woodrow! He saw me. I know he saw the tall white woman standing at the edge of the crowd. How could he have missed me, for heaven's sake? But he seemed to look right through my body, as if it were transparent, a pane of glass between him and his people.

I didn't know what to do. I turned to my guide, the boy who had brought me here, and said, "What should I do?"

He smiled sweetly and shrugged.

"Do you speak English?"

He nodded yes and said, as if reciting from a textbook, "I learn it at missionary school. I go to missionary school."

"Like Woodrow. Mr. Sundiata."

"Yes."

"What's your name?"

"Albert," he said. "I am Sundiata, too. Same like Woodrow. My father and Woodrow's brother the same-same."

"Should I go over there?" I asked. When I pointed towards Woodrow and the others on the dais, they were stepping down from the low platform and entering the hut, one by one.

Albert shrugged again. Smoke from the fire bit at my eyes, and my nostrils filled with the smell of roasting meat. The women in the crowd had resumed their high-pitched singing, and the drumming rose in volume with them. A wizened, toothless old man shoved a gourd in front of my face, and the vinegary smell of palm wine momentarily displaced the smoke and the aroma of the meat. I grabbed the gourd and took a sip from it and shivered from the sudden effect, felt my heart race, and found the courage to make my way quickly through the lively crowd towards the hut.

I passed through the low doorway and stood inside. It was dark, and I thought I was alone in the room. Tricked. A prisoner. The hut was stifling hot, the air heavy with the sour smell of human sweat. I stepped away from the entrance, let in a band of sunlight, and saw Woodrow seated on a low stool against the far wall. On either side of him, also on low stools, sat the tall, elderly man and the eldest of the four women. The others, including the young woman with the baby, lay on mats on the floor nearby, watching me.

"Woodrow, I hope -- "

"Please sit down," he said, cutting me off. "Welcome."

I looked around in the dimly lit space and followed the example of the other women and lay my long body down on a mat by the door. There was silence for a moment, an embarrassing, almost threatening silence, until finally Woodrow said, "This is my father, and this is my mother. They don't speak English, Hannah," he added.

Next Page: It was as if I were being tested

• View blog reactions