9. PARTY TIME

A decision needs to be made...

The real truth is that people have always loved a party, and in the distant days that are, sadly, even mostly lost to archaeology it was just as true as it is now. In fact, with fewer distractions like television and social media excesses, it was almost certainly many times more true and consequently pleasurable.

The River Bank community had celebrated the ending of the summer several weeks earlier, and then had come (and hurriedly gone) the orange man of whom they had heard barely distant rumours since his ignominious departure. The weeks rolled by as weeks do, and came the coldest season of the year with even the odd sprinkling of snow to add a little texture to the bleak woodlands where Owongo still had to go hunting.

And one day they all knew one thing, sort of spontaneously and without any forward planning other than the accumulation of stocks of fermented liquor and poppy-dust together with any foodstuffs fit for eating. It was party-time.

It was the right sort of day, and the unplanned (yet annual) celebrations began.

This time, unlike on other years, though, there was still the memory of the orange man with the flaxen hair and the dangers his kind of self-aggrandisement might mean to the happy community should he or others lime him ever return.

“We must be warned and prepared,” muttered Gondut.

Now, Gondut was a mighty man. In the summer when he went naked all the females could see just how mighty he was as he strolled manfully about the place and it was not not only his arms that swung as he went about his business. He was, indeed, a great advertisement for clean living and a healthy diet, though in actual fact he didn’t actually pursue either course through life. It was enough that people thought that he did.

There was the ritual blast on a tribal horn, one taken from a mighty beast in a titanic battle in a long-forgotten time and yet still resonated in tales told round the bonfires when old gaffers chose to do the only thing they were still good at, and tell tall stories. That blast was the signal, and the crowds, as suggested with no prior notification, gathered in the open space by the river where there was still scorched charcoal from the autumnal celebrations of several weeks earlier.

Things started quietly as things always did on such occasions. Young men contributed harmonies to a kind of prehistoric skiffle ensemble in which home-made and often tuneless instruments combined to create the most magical of sounds, children danced and shouted, ran hither and thither in crazed excitement, especially after the first few sprinkles of poppy-dust started smoking where they lay in the glowing embers at the edge of the gigantic fire, and young women, yet to be chosen by a red-blooded lad, opted to advertise their wares by exposing a great deal of them to public scrutiny despite the cold. Things, then, haven’t changed much in the millennia since then.

But it was when the party was well under way, just after a mighty cheer went up as a few specks of snow wafted down from the heavens, that things got serious. And it was Gondut who started it.

“We remember the orange menace?” he asked loud enough to be heard by even the twosomes canoodling in the shadows.

“Will I ever forget?” shuddered Mirumda, who by this time was showing the start of a bump indicating her pregnancy. Only ten and five summers old, this was her second, her first ending prematurely in disaster several months earlier.

“He may come again,” said Gondut, “Or if not him, others like him, with their eyes fixed on our lovely womenfolk and hatred in their greedy hearts.”

“Surely there can’t be too many in the wilderness like him?” feared Binflo.

“Or as evil,” muttered Owongo.

“It would take only one,” said Gondut clearly, “and we must guard against it, starting with now.”

“How can we do that?” asked Owongo, “when such creatures arrive unannounced and start taking without first giving us notice?” he added.

“We will have to have a means in place,” replied Gondut, now that everyone, even the canoodlers, was listening. “We must elect one of us to be a leader...”

There was a howl of objections when he used the word leader. That had been the objective of the hated Fart-fart, to move in and be their chief, to tax them and rape their economy and grow fat whilst they grew thin, and anyway they had never liked the idea of promoting one of their number above the others.

Gondut held up one hand, and such was the power of his presence that even in mid-winter when he was draped in furs his mighty manliness shone forth, and the gathering hushed again.

“I know what you mean,” he said clearly. “And am in accord with it. One man or woman, and I include women in my thoughts, must never be given power over his neighbours, for it is a short journey from that to tyranny. The orange stranger demonstrated that well, for he planned to take three parts out of every four that men hunting in the forest and across the grasslands made, and for what? To fill his wretched stomach and add to his farts a hundred-fold?”

There was laughter at that, for the stranger had, indeed, suffered from a profusion of noxious farting and it was still joked amongst them that he was well-named, though others suggested it might be more polite if had been named Trump-trump, for everyone knew that fart and trump were synonyms, the one being considerably more polite than the other.

“What do you suggest then, Gondut?” asked Owongo. “For is a leader not one placed above his peers? Does he not have power over them and demand reward from them?”

“A leader,” said Gondut, “must be one among equals. If Owongo goes hunting for meat, then so must the leader and not demand a tithe from Owongo, who has already worked hard enough in order to feed the lovely Mirumda...”

“You’ve got that right,” giggled Mirumda.

“What the leader must be,” said Gondut loudly and clearly, “is a conduit along which news of danger, of the possibility of future oppression, of anything new that may be unwelcome, is channelled. He … or she, I allow that it might easily be she … must be no more than that. He or she has no lordship, I repeat, over his peers. His or her role is defensive only.”

That had been a long speech even for one as skilled with words as Gondut, and the crowd gathered in the mists of poppy smoke and snow turned, in an instant as it fell, into steam, cheered until there wasn’t one of them who wasn’t hoarse.

“So who shall it be?” asked Gondut.

Owongo stood up tall and strong himself, and grinned at Gondut. “Why,” he said, “it must be you, Gondut, for of all the men on the river bank you are the greatest.”

A great cheer went up. Everyone, it seemed agreed with Owongo, and piles of poppy dust were sprinkled into the embers whilst the women carried out great wooden flagons of what, next morning, they would, groaning and grinning simultaneously, refer to as witch’s brew.

And the music started again when it was quite clear that a decision had been made. For the first time in memory they had a leader and that leader was Gondut the Great.

TO BE CONTINUED…

© Peter Rogerson 18.04.17