T REQUIRED ten, perhaps twelve, minutes for Gogoma's information that no man had ever escaped from Motobatl really to register on Lassiter. A sort of shocked questioning formed in the New Yorker's mind. He felt he had not heard distinctly.
“No man ever got out?”
“Your kinsman failed, señor.”
“And no one else tried?”
“No one.”
Lassiter stared at the head set down in the immense shoulders. The promoter drew in a breath to ask if there were any way to communicate with New York. The query was too idle. He let the air out softly.
The ponderous brown man waddled on into a grove of immense trees. It was really a jungle partially cleared of undergrowth. In some places were park-like clearances canopied with leaves, hung with and columned by those huge and grotesque boles into which trees contort when forced by the perpetual stimulus of an equatorial sun.
Here a paddlewood flung out radial but tresses twenty or thirty feet from the huge core of the tree. There a kind of palm piled up a series of swollen nodules. A banyan drove a hundred piles into the earth; a ceiba flung out a hollow circle of wood that preempted the space of a city lot. A hot, green smell filled the air, bird shrieks and the whine of insects. Gnats flew into Gogoma and drowned themselves.
For about an hour the great fleshy blob of a man led the way among the foot paths and at last paused before a huge tree so much like a baobab that Lassiter believed it to be one. The vegetation about the tree was worn smooth, and a kind of mud oven stood to one side. Red peppers and some big drying calabashes were hung up on the outside.
The place smelled of garlic. A fairly large hole, squared into a door by human labor led into the hollow trunk. Gogoma drummed on this entrance and waited. Came a shuffling from the interior and a moment later a baggy old woman appeared in the opening.
Gogoma made a gesture of salutation; the fat of his arm swayed and dripped.
“A kinsman of yours, Prymoxl. He has come to inquire about your grandfather, who was his great-grandfather.”
“A kinsman—” She looked at Lassiter out of rather fine old eyes set in a sadly withered face.
“A cousin of yours, your primo."
“How did he get here?”
“Over the cliff, as your grandfather came, Prymoxl, and he already speaks of going back as your grandfather spoke—you can talk to him yourself. I commend him to your care.”
The woman approached Lassiter curiously, and when she came quite close, he saw, after all, she was not aged. She had the withered sagginess of women whom the tropic sun has forced into intense fruition, and swifter . Indeed, in her decay, she retained traces of her fugitive blossoming.
Her eyes were finely set; her ears maintained their delicacy of design; her hair was more finely spun than that of the unmixed Indians. All this, no doubt, harked back to that Spanish ancestor who dropped by a miracle into Motobatl a hundred and fifty years ago, and today gave Lassiter a spurious claim to her kinship.
The old woman shrugged as Lassiter appraised her shapelessness.
“I am afraid, señor, you will find little of your blood in my veins.”
“Kinship lies in the heart, señora," flattered the agent of the Stendill lines.
It pleased her.
“I am a Spaniard here.” She tapped her withered breast. “Do you see in me the sister you seek, primo (cousin)?”
There was a kind of raillery in her cackle.
“I only hope I am not disappointing, señora."
The old crone quacked in laughter, came closer with that familiarity a sense of kinship lends, seized his arm and drew it about her waist.
“Behold us, Gogoma,” she paraded in ironic gaiety, “brother and sister from a line of brave men and beautiful señoras!"
She shook with laughter at her own satire, and the American perceived with surprize that his shapeless companion was again about to become a mother.
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Sister Prymoxl,” quoted Birdsong with comforting intent.
The old baggage ceased laughing abruptly at this kindly meant apology for her ugliness.
“Primo, your criado (servant) is insolent.”
Gogoma smoothed her temper over with a massive gesture.
“I begged you to preserve your wonderful beauty, Prymoxl, just as I ask you to preserve Tilita's loveliness. She is as like her beautiful grandmother as two
He wagged his fat jowls and said in a different key:
“What I came for, señora, was to show you your kinsmen. I have them a sleeping place, and you can send their fare.”
The crone turned with the duty of a kinswoman in her manner.
“Surely, señores, my daughter Tilita will bring your cena (supper).”