The Fever Tree

THE FEVER TREE

Far across the golden savannah the horizon lifted its yellow head and opened its mouth. The roar could be heard for miles around. A grey rock in a river located miles away opened its mouth in return and let out a joyful grunt. I listened to the wild voices of the world beyond our first campfire and marveled at the knowledge that there were beasts of the jungle that prowled among the sickle bushes, pranced, and pounced below the mysterious baobabs just out of the flickering firelight's reach that wavered in the rarefied air before me.

Knowing that I was camped in the backyard of hundreds of wild beasts made it hard to concentrate on the voices of my seven new-found friends who chattered in neighborly conversation punctuated by bouts of laughter which rippled like an eddy around the fire-ring.

As I stared into the fire, shadows leapt out and screamed into the night where they quickly disappeared into the black sky. Sardius, alizarin, and lemon flames followed snapping and spitting as they hissed into the open air.

Elbows and knees, brightened, then dimmed, blurring in and out of the fire’s reach. They wandered past, beside, behind, as our new-found friends meandered to and from the fire. Flashing teeth smiled across licking flames. Were they beast or human I wondered as twinkling eyes flickered through the burning embers.

The animals were out there. I could feel the rusty breath of them and taste the stinging odor of their hides as their thick paws padded secretly beneath the branches of the horn-pods and red bush willows, and other giant beasts sharpened their tusks against the boles of the wild seringa trees.

A swarthy man approached from behind and I tried not to jump at his unexpected presence as he carried a large gunny over his shoulder into the firelight. He dropped it at my feet and proceeded to pull the contents out one by one into the breathing night. I could see enough to recognize they were musical instruments. For some reason the words ariose artillery came to mind and I wonder, now, if the thought had been a kind of premonition.

The man’s black fingers, like little snakes, slithered into the nankeen maw of the burlap bag, closely followed by his python arm which was swallowed up to the elbow. When they returned to view again, his fingers were clasped around a series of drums which were pulled from the Hessian womb and given whacks like newborns being welcomed into the late hour.

These drums were passed along lap to lap, stopping to take up residence here and there while men adopted one after another as each took its turn around the fire. Various wooden instruments were taken up by greedy hands as sticks, blocks, assorted rattles, and whistles appeared and disappeared, passing from hand to hand in and out of the heaving light.

The very last instrument was a small guitar. It had six strings that gleamed like gold in the glow of the crackling fire.

The black sack-bearing man towered over me. His eyes sparkled in the pulsating air as his face eerily reflected the snarling flames. He peered down at me and nodded. To be singled out of the crowd in such a way was frightening, and I froze, shuddering, as a chill shinnied up my back.

Before I could look away, he said something in his native tongue while his fingers flew into the air, painting a scene with wild gestures which I could not understand. I felt as though I had been caught up in a game of charades. Sounds like, sounds like, sounds like, I kept thinking over and over, as I tried to make sense out of the strange pantomime.

I looked at my husband for help, but he raised his shoulders and shook his head. I gave the strange man a quizzical look but he only showed me his dead-white smile and nodded again. Then he lifted the guitar and offered it to me.

Without thinking I inhaled a deep breath, took it from his ophidian hands and as I placed it on my fire-warmed lap, he gripped the head of the instrument. The action caused some resistance and before I could make another move, and only when he was sure he had my full attention, he slowly slid his hand away. As it withdrew, the image of a dark green tree appeared with one word emblazoned across it in carmine and gold: “Koors”.

Again, I gave the man another quizzical look but before I could ask him what the word meant, he bent down and placed his head so close to mine that I could smell the wild scent of his umber skin and the warm earthy smell of his breath. Again I shuddered, terrified, as he opened his lion-like mouth and ran his tongue over his purple lips. Then he spoke one word as if he had been rehearsing it for this precise moment in time: “Fever”.

The word caused a reaction I could feel through the sonorous instrument which started from the head and worked its way like a fire down the neck. I tilted the guitar and looked once again at the bright emblem and the graven image of the tree upon which it was embossed. The colorful letters seemed to be flickering. I looked closer. Were those eyes between the “K” and the “R”? I could have sworn the letters winked.

Instinctively I slid a weary thumb over the strings and they jumped at my touch as they vibrated off the well-made instrument and the resounding music took wing through the air like an arrow.

The crowd fell silent as I plucked the instrument a second time. The sound it made was delectable against the stark blackness outside the throbbing shadows. It floated in the air, dropping into the bush upon the waiting jaws of the veldt below.

A woman rose from the fire and put a flute to her lips and blew a chilling note to chase the hum off my quivering strings. They met together just before they died, so I built a chord with my left hand and strummed another arpeggio for a third time. I didn’t stop there. I strummed again and again, keeping time with the wind, tapping my foot, closing my eyes, sending another round of chords in a progression to the sky.

Each round grew stronger than the one before. The amazing tremolos off the portentous strings sprang up into the sky, galloping like gazelles across the ethereal plains until they collided with the melodious yodel of the glittery silver flute.

My husband lifted a palm and thoughtfully smacked his drum, nodding in rhythm as the hide echoed solemnly into the blazing pit. Soon the other musicians began to find their way around their instruments and as the air filled with rattling gourds and clapping sticks, the natives put their heads back and filled their lungs with air then exhaled with songs that charmed the ears of those who had them and danced in the twitching rock fig leaves that hovered overhead.

As the flautist continued to pipe, her lips glowed in the firelight, and the music that resulted rang through the fire, dipping in the red burning flames, catching, parrying, disentangling from their hot fingers weaving a pattern of life and death in the listening savannah beyond.

The air filled with euphony that shook, blew, smacked, strummed, or rattled. High pitched tones were shoved off their haunches, and went pouncing over the bush like springboks as the deeper blows and wallops lifted off taut cowhide drums and leapt like leopards after them. Time and time again the more powerful euphonious predator attacked the lesser mellifluous prey. The dying cries wept across the fire and rose to the sky above us as we continued to play the eternal music of precious breath and the ceasing of it.

My strumming took a life of its own, decussating into a million sounds that frittered frantically over the flames gesticulating before me. I watched the roaring scene alternate in an amytal blur from molten ambers to chilly blues, and the more I stared at the chewing fire, the more other things began to change.

Suddenly the floutist turned, her face a mask in the oscillatory kaleidoscopic light, her musical weapon pointing at me. Nails turned claws, ever-tapping their ringing tunes from the silver keys that created diaphanous quarry for the rattlers and sticks to beat upon and devour.

I played harder, trying to disguise the transformations taking place opposite and beside me as once acquaintances, now hirsute strangers began to appear behind their chosen instruments.

Man turned ape, and with every lift of elbow, fur flew. With every nod and thrust of maw, yellow fangs scintillated in the chaotic cacophony.

The fire fed by the cantabile ambiance leapt higher, hotter, beating the air with powerful limbs that climbed and snatched and groped, gobbling tunes note-by-note, ripping each phrase apart. Canorous claws, once retracted, now shooting out, pulled descants in half while ravenous jaws crushed one diapason after another as the raging concert wailed in the night.

Unable to stop, my toe tapped idiotically as my hands sailed over the strings. The scent of rich timber wafted out of the instrument and not for the first time I wondered from whence the guitar had originated. A shout interrupted my reverie before I could do much speculation, however. "Do something!" The voice vaulted over the mayhem and it took me a while to realize the command was directed at me.

Do something?

Just then the fire gathered itself together. Flames folded back upon flames, lowering, huddling, calculating, recalling a lick from the kindling here, reclaiming a fiery finger there. Blue flames, slithering along sticks and twigs, writhed and swirled as they were sucked up and pulled over the churning logs.

Then, abruptly, as if on a silent cue, the fire exploded. It leapt up higher and higher, extending flaming arms that curled at the tips into a fan of claws; sparks flew into the air, coming down champing and gnawing, as a pair of burning eyes appeared over a baking snout that breathed above an array of sizzling tongues that smacked against its snapping teeth.

This animated nightmare lunged out of the firepit and came at me. Instinctively, I plucked the strings that came to life in my hands and twanged a dart into the ring where the fire-beast catapulted over the furious logs. I plucked again and again, as arrow after arrow soared into the living flames.

The more I played the more the monster grew and the angrier it became. In a split second the ignited brute sprung out of the fire-ring and jumped off the rocks that were strung along its edge. It loomed over me, growling and spitting. Without thinking I rose to my feet, stretched out my arms, and in one swift motion lifted the guitar above my head. Then, with a shriek, I threw the instrument at the slavering fire.

The guitar sailed through the air as if in slow motion, landing upon the throbbing ground intact. Astonishingly, the flames did not consume the instrument. Instead, the instrument began to consume the fire. Writhing twists of red hot tongues began to twitch and die as the musical box created a vacuum and began to suck the fire up. Flames shuddered in their tracks, halted, and trembling, shortened and slunk lower, lower, like cowed curs backing off, crouching, slinking, and finally disappearing into the open soundhole tornado-style.

The instrument recalled every beast that had gathered for the night; carcasses, dead or alive suddenly sprung back in mid-slink as if caught by their collars as they were pulled into the vortex that swallowed each whole, with no time wasted on chewing.

My fire friends were grabbed at the ankles, yanked by their elbows, jerked and tugged until hides and hair, pelts and hirsute skins were released into the wooden maw that lay at the fire's edge upon the scorched ground. Human once again, they stuttered and stared, wondering and marveling.

Every delirious sound and nadir smell, every growl and hoof and paw lurched out of the night to feed the hungry woody grotto. Snapped out of trees, extracted from hiding holes and shrouding shadows, every wild shape was dragged over glossy strings and led down the neck into the bowels of the shapely wooden belly.

Finally, the rattles gave their last shake, the breathless whistles, stoppered by the smoke-filled air, choked silently while the drums, beaten, and crushed, and the sticks, broken, sprung to life in the unsuspecting palms of their captors. They, then, were tossed into the air by once fur-clad hands and summoned to their doom that lay beside the dying embers of a once roaring fire. They ricocheted, clattered, and banged their way down the timber trap as if obeying some high command that could only be imagined by those who stood, now, empty-handed and gaping.

The last sound that could be heard was the dying breath of the once argent flute as it played its final dirge to the bereft night. Then it shot, suddenly, down the hole like a frightened rabbit, clangoring against the hard sides until silence shut it up.

Wide-eyed, I watched the blackamoor gently stoop before the guitar, knees cracking loudly against the now gentle hiss of the tame campfire. He scooped up the exhausted fetish into his big hands and slipped it lovingly inside the burlap sack from whence it had come. People made way as he slung the sack over his shoulder and carried it off.

When the man reached the fire’s edge, he slowly turned. The tips of the sweet thorns that lined the fire-ring gleamed softly in the now whispering fire. His eyes, like searchlights, scoured the crowd until they came to rest upon me. Was that a hint of muzzle I saw licking the curve of his jaw in the dying tongues that still snacked on the charred remains of the skimpy fire? Perhaps the slope of his chin had caught just right in the firelight and the night's excitement had turned my eyes crazy for one last fleeting moment.

“Die koors boom,” he said quietly, his voice rising above the defeated din like a thin thread of smoke, “The fever tree.” Then he pointed to the sack and held it up.

“I think he’s trying to tell you the guitar was made from the fever tree,” my husband whispered.

“Die koors boom,” I repeated softly.

As the man took his first step into the blackness beyond, the fire glinted off the whites of his eyes and he flashed his ivory teeth at me, then he vanished for the last time into the waiting jungle.

One after another seven bemused people retired from the circle as they said their final good-nights and traipsed back to the cots in their tents. Likewise, in the fire-ring, the seven last remaining embers winked out one-by-one.

A breeze lifted the smoke that still lingered in the air and disseminated it across the savannah, beyond the waterholes and the grasslands where in a few short hours the timorous prey would return to graze as they kept a wary watch upon the edges of the red grass, for instinctively they would know that this is where the drama of life and death begins and ends.

The smoke, meanwhile, continued to soar ever-upward to the highveldt where it finally dissipated over the highest branches of the fever tree.

THE END

Fever Tree (Acacia xanthofloea)

This tree from South Africa has a beautiful yellowish colored trunk and sulfur yellow flowers. Early pioneers of the area thought this tree caused a fever, since people traveling or living in the areas where it grew contracted bad fevers. Therefore, they associated the fever with the tree. This, however, was erroneous as the swampy places where fever trees grow are also ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which carry malaria. Through these early settlers, the myth was born and the plant acquired its name, the fever tree.




























































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