Текст книги "The Journeyer"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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“Romm? The Jew said you were Domm.”

“Not the Domm!” she protested fiercely. “I am a Romni! I am a juvel, a young woman, of the Romm!”

Since I had no idea what either a Domm or a Romm was, I avoided argument by getting on with what I had come for. And I soon discovered that, whatever else the juvel Chiv might be—and she claimed to be of the Muslim religion—she was anyhow a completejuvel, not Muslimly deprived of any of her female parts. And those parts, once I got past the dark-brown entryway, were as prettily pink as those of any other female. Also, I could tell that Chiv was not feigning delight, but truly did enjoy the frolic as much as I did. When, afterward, I lazily inquired how she had come to this brothel occupation, she did not spin me any tale of having been brought low by woe, but said blithely:

“I would be doing zina anyway, what we call surata, because I like to. Getting paid for making surata is an extra bounty, but I like that, too. Would you refuse a wage, if it were offered, for every time you have the pleasure of making water?”

Well, I thought, Chiv might not be a girl of flowery sentiments, but she was honest. I even gave her a dirham that she would not have to share with the Jew. And, on my way out through the grinding shop, I was pleased to be able to make a snide remark to that person:

“You were mistaken, old Shimon. As I have found you to be on other occasions. The girl is of the Romm.”

“Romm, Domm, those wretched people call themselves anything they take a mind to,” he said uncaringly. But he went on, more amiably talkative than he had been when I came in. “They were originally the Dhoma, one of the lowest classes of all the Hindu jati of India. The Dhoma are among the untouchables, the loathed and detested. So they are continually seeping out of India to seek better situations elsewhere. God knows how, since they have no trades but dancing and whoring and tinkering and thieving. And dissimulation. When they call themselves Romm, it is to pretend descent from the Western Caesars. When they call themselves Atzigàn, it is to pretend descent from the conqueror Alexander. When they call themselves Egypsies, it is to pretend descent from the ancient Pharaones.” He laughed. “They descended only from the swinish Dhoma, but they are descending on all the lands of the earth.”

I said, “You Jews have also dispersed widely about the world. Who are you to look down on others for doing the same?”

He gave me a look, but he answered with deliberation, as if I had not spoken spitefully. “True, we Jews adapt to the circumstances in which our dispersal puts us. But one thing the Domm do which we never will. And that is to seek acceptance by cravenly adopting the prevailing local religion.” He laughed again. “You see? Any despised people can always discern some more lowly people to look down on and despise.”

I sniffed and said, “It follows, then, that the Domm also have someone to look down on.”

“Oh, yes. Everyone else in creation. To them, you and I and all others are the Gazhi. Which means only ‘the dupes, the victims,’ those who are to be cheated and swindled and deceived.”

“Surely a pretty girl, like your Chiv yonder, need not deceive—”

He gave an impatient shake of his head. “You walked in here yammering about beauty as a basis for suspicion. Were you carrying any valuables when you came?”

“Do you take me for an ass, to carry anything of worth into a whorehouse? I brought only a few coins and my belt knife. Where is my knife?”

Shimon smiled pityingly. I brushed past him, stormed into the back room and found Chiv happily counting a handful of coppers.

“Your knife? I already sold it, was that not quick of me?” she said, as I stood over her, fuming. “I did not expect you to miss it so soon. I sold it to a Tazhik herdsman just now passing at the back door, so it is gone. But do not be angry with me. I will steal a better blade from someone else, and keep it until you come again, and give it to you. This I will do—out of my great esteem for your handsomeness and your generosity and your exceptional prowess at surata.”

Being so liberally praised, I of course stopped being angry, and said I would look forward to visiting her soon again. Nevertheless, in making my second departure from the place, I slunk past Shimon at his wheel, much as I had slunk from another brothel at another time in female raiment.

2

I think Nostril could have produced for us, if we had required it, a fish in a desert. When my father asked him to seek out a physician to give us an opinion on the seeming improvement of Uncle Mafìo’s tisichezza, Nostril had no trouble in finding one, even on the Roof of the World. And the elderly, bald Hakim Mimdad impressed us as being a competent doctor. He was a Persian, and that alone certified him as a civilized man. He was traveling as karwan keeper-of-the-health in a train of Persian qali merchants. In just his general conversation, he gave evidence of having more than just routine knowledge of his profession. I remember his telling us:

“Myself, I prefer to prevent afflictions, rather than have to cure them, even though prevention puts no money in my purse. For example, I instruct all the mothers here in this encampment to boil the milk they give their children. Whether it be yak milk, camel milk, whatever, I urge that it first be boiled, and in a vessel of iron. As is known to all people, the nastier jinn and other sorts of demons are repelled by iron. And I have determined by experiment that the boiling of milk liberates from the vessel its iron juice, and mixes that into the milk, and thereby fends off any jinni that might lurk in readiness to inflict some childhood disease.”

“It sounds reasonable,” said my father.

“I am a strong advocate of experiment,” the old hakim went on. “Medicine’s accepted rules and recipes are all very well, but I have often found by experiment new cures which do not accord with the old rules. Sea salt, for one. Not even the greatest of all healers, the sage ibn Sina, seems ever to have noticed that there is some subtle difference between sea salt and that obtained from inland salt flats. From none of the ancient treatises can I divine any reason for there being such a difference. But something about sea salt prevents and cures goiters and other such tumorous swellings of the body. Experiment has proven it to me.”

I made a private resolve to go and apologize to the little Chola salt merchants I had laughed at.

“Well, come then, Dotòr Balanzòn!” my uncle boomed, mischievously calling him by the name of that Venetian comic personage. “Let us get this over with, so you can tell me which you prescribe for my damned tisichezza—the sea salt or the boiled milk.”

So the hakim proceeded to his examination diagnostic, probing here and there at Uncle Mafio and asking him questions. After some while he said:

“I cannot know how bad was the coughing before. But, as you say, it is not very bad now, and I hear little crepitation inside the chest. Do you have any pain there?”

“Only now and then,” said my uncle. “Understandable, I suppose, after all the hard coughing I have done.”

“But allow me a guess,” said Hakim Mimdad. “You feel it only in one place. Under your left breastbone.”

“Why, yes. Yes, that is so.”

“Also, your skin is quite warm. Is this fever constant?”

“It comes and goes. It comes, I sweat, it goes away.”

“Open your mouth, please.” He peered inside it, then lifted the lips away to look at the gums. “Now hold out your hands.” He looked at them front and back. “Now, if I may pluck just one hair of your head?” He did, and Uncle Mafio did not wince, and the physician scrutinized the hair, bending it in his fingers. Then he asked, “Do you feel a frequent need to make kut?”

My uncle laughed and rolled his eyes bawdily. “I feel many needs, and frequently. How does one make kut?”

The hakim, looking tolerant, as if he were dealing with a child, significantly patted a hand on his own backside.

“Ah, kut is merda!”roared my uncle, still laughing. “Yes, I have to make it frequently. Ever since that earlier hakim gave me his damned purgative, I have been afflicted with the cagasangue. It keeps me trotting. But what does all this have to do with a lung ailment?”

“I think you do not have the hasht nafri.”

“Not the tisichezza?” my father spoke up, surprised. “But he was coughing blood at one time.”

“Not from the lungs,” said Hakim Mimdad. “It is his gums exuding blood.”

“Well,” said Uncle Mafio, “a man can hardly be displeased to hear that his lungs are not failing. But I gather that you suspect some other ailment.”

“I will ask you to make water into this little jar. I can tell you more after I have inspected the urine for signs diagnostic.”

“Experiments,” my uncle muttered.

“Exactly. In the meantime, if the innkeeper Iqbal will bring me some egg yolks, I would have you allow the application of more of the little Quran papers.”

“Do they do any good?”

“They do no harm. Much of medicine consists of precisely that: not doing harm.”

When the hakim departed, carrying the small jar of urine with his hand capping it to prevent any contamination, I also left the karwansarai. I went first to the tents of the Tamil Cholas and said words of apology and wished those men all prosperity—which seemed to make them even more nervous than they always were anyway—and then wended my way to the establishment of the Jew Shimon.

I asked again to have my tool greased, and asked to have Chiv do it again, and I got her, and as she had promised, she did present me with a fine new knife, and to show my gratitude I tried to outdo my former prowess in the performance of surata. Afterward, on my way out, I paused to chide old Shimon yet again:

“You and your nasty mind. You said all those belittling things about the Romm people, but look what a splendid gift the girl just gave me in exchange for my old blade.”

He humphed indifferently and said, “Be glad she has not yet given you one between your ribs.”

I showed him the knife. “I never saw one like this before. It resembles any ordinary dagger, yes? A single wide blade. But watch. When I have stabbed it into some prey, I squeeze the handle: so. And that wide blade separates into two, and they spring apart, and this third, hidden, inner blade darts out from between them, to pierce the prey even more deeply. Is it not a marvelous contrivance?”

“Yes. I recognize it now. I gave it a good sharpening not long ago. And I suggest, if you keep it, that you keep it handy. It formerly belonged to a very large Hunzuk mountain man who drops in here occasionally. I do not know his name, for everyone calls him simply the Squeeze Knife Man, because of his proficiency with it and his ready employment of it when his temper is … . Must you dash off?”

“My uncle is ailing,” I said, as I went out the door. “I really should not stay away too long at a time.”

I did not know if the Jew was just making a crude jest, but I was not confronted by any large and ill-tempered Hunzik man between Shimon’s place and the karwansarai. To avoid any such confrontation, I stayed prudently close to the inn’s main building for the next few days, listening, in company with my father or uncle, to the various bits of advice dispensed by the landlord Iqbal.

When we loudly praised the good milk given by the cow yaks, and loudly marveled at the bravery of the Bho who dared to milk those monsters, Iqbal told us, “There is a simple trick to milking a cow yak without hazard. Only give her a calf to lick and nuzzle, and she will stand still and serene while it is being done.”

But not all the information we got at that time was welcome. The Hakim Mimdad came again to confer with Uncle Mafio, and began by suggesting gravely that it be done in private. My father and Nostril and I were present, and we got up to leave the chamber, but my uncle stopped us with a peremptory flap of his hand.

“I do not keep secret any matters that may eventually concern my karwan partners. Whatever you have to tell, you may tell us all.”

The hakim shrugged. “Then, if you will drop your pai-jamah …”

My uncle did, and the hakim eyed his bare crotch and big zab. “The hairlessness, is that natural or do you shave yourself there?”

“I take it off with a salve called mumum. Why?”

“Without the hair, the discoloration is easy to see,” said the hakim, pointing. “Look down at your abdomen. You see that metallic gray tinge to the skin there?”

My uncle looked, and so did all of us. He asked, “Caused by the mumum?”

“No,” said Hakim Mimdad. “I noticed the lividity also on the skin of your hands. When next you remove your chamus boots, you will see it on your feet as well. These manifestations tend to confirm what I suspected from my earlier examination and from observation of your urine. Here, I have poured it into a white jar so you may observe for yourself. The smoky color of it.”

“So?” said Uncle Mafio, as he reclothed himself. “Perhaps I had been dining on the colored pilaf that day. I do not remember.”

The hakim shook his head, slowly but positively. “I have seen too many other signs, as I said. Your fingernails are opaque. Your hair is brittle and breaks easily. There is only one other confirming sign I have not seen, but you must have it somewhere on your body. A gummatous small sore that refuses to heal.”

Uncle Mafio looked at him as if the hakim had been a sorcerer, and said in awe, “A fly bite, away back in Kashan. A mere fly bite, no more.”

“Show me.”

My uncle rolled up his left sleeve. Near his elbow was an angry and shiny red spot. The hakim leaned to peer at it, saying, “Tell me if I am wrong. Where the fly first bit, the bite healed and a small scar formed, in the natural manner. But then the sore erupted anew beyond the scar, and then healed again, and then erupted again, always beyond the old scar …”

“You are not wrong,” my uncle said weakly. “What does it mean?”

“It confirms my conclusion diagnostic—that you are suffering from the kala-azar. The black sickness, the evil sickness. It does indeed proceed from the bite of a fly. But that fly is, of course, the incarnation of an evil jinni. A jinni who cunningly takes the form of a fly so small that it would hardly be suspected of bearing so much harm.”

“Oh, not so much that I cannot bear it. Some mottled skin, some coughing, a little fever, a little sore …”

“But unhappily it will not for long be not so much. The manifestations will multiply, and worsen. Your brittle hair will break and you will go bald all over. The fever will bring emaciation and asthenia and lassitude, until you have no will to move at all. The pain below your breast bone proceeds from the organ called your spleen. That will hurt even more, and begin to bulge frighteningly outward, as it hardens and loses all function. Meanwhile, the lividity will spread over your skin, and it will darken to black, and it will pouch out into gummata and blebs and furuncles and squamations until your entire body—including your face—resembles one great bunch of black raisins. By then, you will be ardently wishing to die. And die you will, when your splenic functions fail. Without immediate and continuing treatment, you are sure to die.”

“But there is a treatment?”

“Yes. This is it.” Hakim Mimdad produced a small cloth sack. “This medicament consists principally of a fine-powdered metal, a trituration of the metal called stibium. It is a sure vanquisher of the jinni and a sure cure for the kala-azar. If you start now to take this, in exceedingly minute amounts, and go on taking it as I prescribe, you will soon start to improve. You will regain the weight you have lost. Your strength will return. You will be again in the best of health. But this stibium is the only cure.”

“Well? Only one cure is needed, surely. I will gladly settle for the one.”

“I regret to tell you that the stibium, while it arrests the kala-azar, is itself physically harmful in another particular.” He paused. “Are you sure you would not prefer to continue this consultation in private?”

Uncle Mafio hesitated, glancing about at us, but squared his shoulders and growled, “Whatever it is, tell it.”

“Stibium is a heavy metal. When it is ingested, it settles downward from the stomach into the splanchnic area, working its beneficial effects as it goes, subduing the jinni of the kala-azar. But being heavy, it precipitates into the lower part of the body, which is to say the bag containing the virile stones.”

“So my cod dangles heavier. I am strong enough to carry it.”

“I assume that you are a man who enjoys, er, exercising it. Now that you are afflicted with the black sickness, there is no time to waste. If you do not yet have a lady friend in this locality, I recommend that you hie yourself to the local brothel maintained by the Jew Shimon.”

Uncle Mafio barked a laugh, which perhaps I or my father could better interpret than the Hakim Mimdad. “I fail to see the connection. Why should I do that?”

“To indulge your virile capability while you can. Were I you, Mirza Mafio, I should hasten to make all the zina I could. You are doomed either to be horribly disfigured by the kala-azar, and eventually to die of it—or, if you are to be cured and kept alive, you must begin immediately taking the stibium.”

“What do you mean, if?Of course I want to be cured.”

“Think on it. Some would rather die of the black sickness.”

“In the name of God, why? Speak plainly, man!”

“Because the stibium, settling in your scrotum, will instantly start exercising its other and deleterious effect—of petrifying your testicles. Very soon, and for the rest of your life, you will be totally impotent.”

“Gèsu.”

No one else said anything. There was a terrible silence in the room, and it seemed that no one wished to brave the breaking of it. Finally Uncle Mafio spoke again himself, saying ruefully:

“I called you Dotòr Balanzòn, little realizing how truly I spoke. That you would indeed present me with a mordant jest. Giving me such a comical choice: that I die miserably or I live unmanned.”

“That is the choice. And the decision cannot be long postponed.”

“I will be a eunuch?”

“In effect, yes.”

“No capability?”

“None.”

“But … perhaps … dar mafa’ul be-vasilè al-badàm?”

“Nakher. The badàm, the so-called third testicle, also gets petrified.”

“No way at all, then. Capòn mal caponà. But … desire?”

“Nakher. Not even that.”

“Ah, well!” Uncle Mafio surprised us all by sounding as jovial as ever. “Why did you not say that at the first? What matter if I cannot function, if I shall not even want to? Why, think of it! No desire—therefore no need, therefore no nuisance, therefore no complicated aftermath. I ought to be the envy of every priest ever tempted by a woman or a choirboy or a sùccubo.” I decided that Uncle Mafio was not really so jovial as he was trying to sound. “And after all, not many of my desires could ever have been realized, anyway. My most recent one dwindled away in a trembling land. So it is fortunate that this jinni of castration assailed only me and not someone of worthier desires.” He barked another laugh, with that horrid false joviality. “But listen to me—raving and maundering. If I am not careful, I may even become a moral philosopher, the last refuge of eunuchdom. God forfend. A moralist is more to be shunned than a sensualist, no xe vero? By all means, good hakim, I shall choose to live. Let us commence the medication—but not until tomorrow, eh?” He picked up and put on his voluminous chapon overcoat. “As you have also prescribed, while I still have desires, I ought to squander them. While I still have juices, wallow in them, yes? So excuse me, gentlemen. Ciao.” And he left us, slamming vigorously out the door.

“The patient puts a brave face on it,” murmured the hakim.

“He may honestly mean it,” my father said speculatively. “The most dauntless mariner, after having many ships sink under him, may be thankful when he is finally beached on a placid strand.”

“I hope not!” blurted Nostril. He added hastily, “Only my own opinion, good masters. But no mariner should be grateful for being dismasted. Especially not one of Master Mafìo’s age—which is approximately the same as my own. Excuse me, Hakim Mimdad, but is this grisly kala-azar possibly … infectious?”

“Oh, no. Not unless you also should be bitten by the jinni fly.”

“Still and all,” Nostril said uneasily, “one feels compelled to … to make sure. If you masters have no commands for me, I too will ask to be excused.”

And off he went, and shortly so did I. Probably the fearful and superstitious slave had not believed the physician’s assurance. I did, but even so … .

When one attends a dying, as I have said before, one of course comes away grieving for the loss of the dead one, but even more—even if only secretly, even if only unconsciously—rejoicing at being oneself still alive. Having just now attended what might be called a partial dying, or a dying by parts, I rejoiced in still possessing those parts, and, like Nostril, I was anxious to verify that I did still possess them. I went straight to Shimon’s establishment.

I did not meet Nostril or my uncle there; most likely the slave had gone in search of some accessible boy of the kuch-i-safari, and possibly so had Uncle Mafio. I again asked the Jew for the dark-brown girl Chiv, and got her, and had her, so energetically that she gasped Romm words of astonished pleasure—“yilo!” and “friska!” and “alo! alo! alo!”—and I felt sadness and compassion for all the eunuchs and Sodomites and castròni and every other sort of cripple who would never know the delight of making a woman sing that sweet song.

3

ON my every subsequent visit to Shimon’s place of business—and they were fairly frequent, once or twice a week—I asked for Chiv. I was quite satisfied with her performance of surata, and had almost ceased to notice her skin’s qahwah color, and was not at all disposed to try the other colors and races of females the Jew kept in his stable, for they were all inferior to Chiv in face and figure. But surata was not my only diversion during that winter. There was always something happening in Buzai Gumbad that was of novelty and interest to me. Whenever I heard a burst of noise that was either someone stepping on a cat or someone starting to play the native music, I always assumed it was the latter, and went to see what kind of entertainment it promised. I might find just a mirasi or a najhaya malang, but it would as often be something more worth observing.

A mirasi was only a male singer, but of a special sort: he sang nothing but family histories. On request, and on payment, he would squat before his sarangi—which was an instrument rather like a viella, played with a bow, but laid flat on the ground—and he would saw at its strings, and to that wailing accompaniment he would warble the names of all the forebears of the Prophet Muhammad or Alexander the Great or any other historical personage. But not many requested that sort of performance; it seemed that everybody already knew by heart the genealogies of all the accepted notables. A mirasi was oftenest hired by a family to sing its history. Sometimes, I suppose, they indulged in the expense just to enjoy hearing their family tree set to music, and perhaps sometimes just to impress all their neighbors within hearing. But usually they engaged a mirasi when a matrimonial match was contemplated with some other family, and so would set forth, at the top of the mirasi’s lungs, the estimable heritage of the boy or girl about to be betrothed. The family’s head would write down or recite that entire genealogy to the mirasi, who would then arrange all the names into rhyme and rhythm—or so I was told; I never could preceive much other than monotonous noise—the singing and sarangi sawing of which could occupy hours. I assume this took a considerable talent, but after one stint of hearing how “Reza Feruz begat Lotf Ali and Lotf Ali begat Rahim Yadollah” and so on, from Adam to date, I did not exert myself to attend any other such performances.

The doings of a najhaya malang did not pall quiteso quickly. A malang is the same thing as a darwish, a holy beggar, and even up on top of the Roof of the World there were beggars, both native and transient. Some of these offered entertainment before demanding bakhshish. A malang would sit down cross-legged in front of a basket and tweedle on a simple wood or clay pipe. A najhaya snake would raise its head from the basket, spread its hood and gracefully sway, seeming to dance in time to the raucous tweedling. The najhaya is a fearsomely cross and venomous snake, and every malang maintained that none but he had such power over the serpent—a power acquired in occult ways. For instance, the basket was a special sort called a khajur, and could be woven only by a man; the cheap pipe had to be mystically sanctified; the music was a melody known only to the initiated. But I soon perceived that every snake had had its fangs drawn and was harmless. It was also apparent, since snakes have no ears, that the najhaya was simply swaying back and forth to keep its impotent aim fixed on the wiggling pipe end. The malang could have played a melodious Venetian furlàna and got the same effect.

But sometimes I would hear a sudden burst of music and follow it to its source and find a group of handsome Kalash men chanting in baritone, “Dhama dham mast qalandar …” as they put on their red shoes called utzar, which they donned only when they were about to charge into the stamping, kicking, pounding dance they called the dhamal. Or I might hear the rumbling drumbeat and wild piping that accompanied an even more frenzied, furious, whirling dance called the attan, in which half the camp, men and women alike, might join.

Once, when I heard music swelling forth in the darkness of night, I followed it to a Sindi train’s encampment of wagons in a circle, and found the Sindi women doing a dance for women only, and singing as they danced, “Sammi meri warra, ma‘in wa’ir … .” I found Nostril also looking on, smiling and beating time with his fingers on his paunch, for these were women of his own native land. They were rather too brawny for my taste, and inclined to mustaches, but their dance was pretty, being done by the light of the moon. I sat down beside Nostril, where he sat propped against a wheel of one of the covered wagons, and he interpreted the song and dance for me. The women were recounting a tragic love story, he said—the story of a Princess Sammi, who was a girl much in love with a boy Prince named Dhola, but when they grew up he went away and forgot her and never came back. A sad story, but I could sympathize with Prince Dhola, if his little Princess Sammi had grown meaty and mustached as she matured.

Every woman in the train must have been recruited into the dance, because, inside the wagon against which Nostril and I leaned, an unattended and restive baby was bellowing loud enough to drown out even the sonorous Sindi music. I endured it for some time, hoping the child would eventually doze—or strangle, I did not much care which. When after a long time it did neither, I grumbled irascibly.

“Allow me to hush it, master,” said Nostril, and he got up and climbed inside the wagon.

The child’s wails subsided to gurgles and then to silence. I was grateful, and bent all my attention on the dance. The infant remained blessedly quiet, but Nostril stayed in there for some time. When at last he climbed down to sit beside me again, I thanked him and said in jest, “What did you do? Kill and bury it?”

He replied complacently, “No, master, I had an inspiration of the moment. I delighted the child with a fine new pacifier to suck, and a creamier milk than its mother’s.”

It took me a little while to realize what he had said. Then I recoiled from him and exclaimed, “Good God! You did not!” He looked not at all ashamed, only mildly surprised at my outburst. “Gèsu! That miserable little thing of yours has been foully diseased, and filthily inserted in animals and backsides and—and now a baby! Of your own people!”

He shrugged. “You wished the infant quieted, Master Marco. Behold, it still sleeps the sleep of contentment. And I do not feel half bad myself.”

“Bad! Gèsu Marìa Isèpo, but you are the worst—the most vile and loathsome excuse for a human being that I have ever met!”

He deserved at least to be beaten bloody, and surely he would have got worse than that from the baby’s parents. But, since I had in a way incited him, I did not strike the slave. I merely scolded and reviled him and quoted to him the words of Our Lord Jesus—or Nostril’s Prophet Isa—that we should always treat tenderly little children, “for of such is the kingdom of God.”

“But I didit tenderly, master. Now you have peace in which to enjoy the rest of the dancing.”

“I will not! Not in your company, creature! I could not meet the eyes of the dancing women, knowing that one of them is the mother of that wretched innocent.” So I went away before that performance was concluded.

But happily, most such occasions were not spoiled for me by any such incident. Sometimes, when I heeded the call of music, it led me not to a dance but to a game. There were two kinds of outdoor sport popular at Buzai Gumbad, and neither could have been played in a much smaller area, for both involved a considerable number of men on horseback, riding hard.

One game was played only by the Hunzukut men, because it had been originally invented in their home valley of Hunza, somewhere to the south of these mountains. In that game, the men swung heavy sticks, like mallets, batting at an object they called the pulu, a rounded-off knot of willow wood which rolled on the ground like a ball. Each team comprised six mounted Hunzukut, who tried to strike that pulu with their sticks—meanwhile often and enthusiastically striking their opponents, their horses and their own teammates—in order to drive the pulu past the six opponents’ flailing defense until it rolled or flew beyond a winning line at the far end of the field.