Shadowplays

by W. D. Gagliani

  I shake my head, hoping the vision will dissipate or resolve into something I can honestly accept, but the old man continues to inhabit two spaces on the hillside before me, as if he has become two separate individuals. Dizziness intensifies and overwhelms me until the tendons in my neck lock and I feel my head solidify as if it’s being turned to stone, as if the veins are drying like concrete tendrils, and then I’m on my knees at the sandaled feet of the old man, one half of whom seems to be whipping the crowd into further chanting and one half of whom is reaching out a long, delicate and yet calloused and muscled hand toward my face as if about to caress it.

  I can hear the long chant, the awe-inspiring power of so many throats tuned to the same exact pitch.

  “Oooooooooooooooooooooooh!”

  As the fingers reach my skin and cradle my chin in a cup of living tissue, I see my brothers around me. They face the bottom of the slight hill and hold up their assegais like waves of bronze wheat waving gently in the breeze, firelight glinting off the honed double edges and fierce points of the weapon fabled to have been designed by King Shaka himself. Their other hands hold black-and-white spotted izihlangu, the war-shields which are capable of hiding a warrior’s entire torso. The headdresses signifying an unmarried impi flutter in the air above their heads, the full splendor of the massed amabutho catching in my throat. I look up and the old man is not old at all. Instead he is now the strapping induna of his regiment, his tight head-ring grasping the feathers which mark his office in the king’s own army guards.

  The fingers slowly push my chin upward and I am raised to the height of my brothers. With gentle firmness I am turned to face our common enemy.

  And when the long and frightening chant lifts above us again, I add my own voice, softly at first and then with abandon.

  “Usuuuuuutuuuuuuuu!”

  The moment lasts forever, or that’s my wish.

  The chant’s cadence comes to an abrupt halt, as if every throat were stilled at once, and silence gathers above us like woolly thunderheads. I wait for the voices - our voices - to rise again, but first we stare and allow the threat to set in. The hand on my head warms and I feel its heat radiate until I think I can smell my skin sizzling beneath the induna’s fingers.

  A thunderclap crashes above and I lower my head, closing my eyes when the pain at the back of my skull lances through my brain and seems to burst outward through my eyelids, then rippling down my spine like a wave breaking deep inside my marrow.

  The evening air, redolent with the stench of burned rubber and stale sweat, seems to waver in my vision when I open my eyes again. I blink and the sky seems lighter, an afternoon light, and I blink again. Suddenly I feel my gorge rising and I am sick, bending over to retch violently onto the ground.

  Warm hands help me straighten and I hear the voice, close by, muttering a cleansing prayer. I don’t know how I know, but I’m certain that I have just cast out negative spiritual influences, including any supernatural efforts the enemy might make against the impi, and even though I have not vomited into a hole along with the entire army, the requirements of the ritual have somehow been met. I am a purified warrior now, and able to avoid the enemy’s sorcery along with my brothers, bonded to me in ritual. The taste of the medicine is still on my tongue, bitter reminder of the ceremony and its symbolism - the warriors’ vomit is the essence of the nation and the army itself, and must be protected as is the sacred coil of the Zulu nation.

  My head spins, and I must lean against he who supports me. Thin tendrils of sour vomit hang from my chin, and I wonder how I came to be a part of this.

  “You are not so far removed, child,” a voice whispers in my ear. “Look upon those who invade our homeland, and fear not their weapons, for we have thousands of warriors to their meager number, and the hills are covered with the glory of our herds. Our wives are fat and happy with child, and our young boys dream of washing their spears like men.”

  I nod, for it is true. In my own ikhanda, we thirty-year-olds brag of the wives we will impregnate when allowed to put on the headring of marriage. Even last night, as the entire iNdluyengwe regiment squatted over the hillside and quietly prepared for the battle, there was joking among us as each young man told of his prowess, both with the assegai and his other, fleshier stabbing spear. I recall clearly now, how many of us under the hasty command of Prince Dabulamanzi shared in his desire to wash our spears after the big battle won by our brothers and fathers the day before left us without a field to fight on. Indeed, it was the stories told to us by the older men, the veterans of the uVe and the uKhandempemvu, who camped near us as they left to head back to their own residences and the cleansing rituals which would heal their bodies and spirits. Even though they had suffered under the few big British guns able to operate, these warriors had avenged their pain and rage upon our enemies and slaughtered them in the hundreds, visiting the enemy corpses afterwards and slitting their stomachs open to release the spirits of the brave white warriors and thus avoiding the possibility of being haunted long after their victory.

  I recall now that, as we waited for the order to attack the mission station and its garrison, we took snuff from our gourd pouches and reclined upon the grass like beasts after a dinner, though our stomachs growled their emptiness. There had been little food for our ibutho since the war began, and all the men seemed on the verge of gauntness. Soon the crops would be ready for harvest

  - but the enemy had invaded our land with his guns and his wagons and his hard white headgear, intentionally causing the army to be mustered at the worst time of year. King Cetshwayo found no choice, so our induna told us, but to put off harvesting our crops and instead we unrolled and stiffened our shields and honed our assegais, knowing we would soon join in the fighting. But when our impi arrived too late to the great rocky crag of Isandhlwana, site of the great Zulu victory over the invaders, and was directed to serve as reserves, it did not take long for Dabulamanzi, the King’s half-brother, to decide that we would find our glory not far away, where the river Mzinyathi - the Buffalo - rages past the drift they call Rorke. Never mind that this was an unauthorized raid into the colony called Natal by the whites, for what would the king do to punish his own half-brother? Anyone else might well be speared in front of the amabutho, to serve as an example, but Prince Dabulamanzi was such a thorn that could hurt either going in or coming out!

  “You know what I don’t understand?” my friend and companion uNsuzi Mandla said. He had just inhaled a pinch of tobacco mixed with powdered aloe and fine flakes ofthe cannabis plant, which had been portioned out by our isangoma, he who could touch the shadow-world with thoughts and fingers both. The mixture would help us keep to this side of the shadow-world, and it would make us impervious to pain. Thus are great warriors made even greater.

  I didn’t have to answer, for uNsuzi was not one to wait for me to speak. “These English soldiers of the great white queen. Well, they call themselves white, yet they seem pink to me - except when they have sampled our sun for a while. Then they become red! Especially their trunks.” He made the sign of the elephant and we laughed together.

  “But then their trunks peel and they return to being pink,” I pointed out, bringing quiet laughs from our fellows nearby. But one, Mtshayankomo, shook his head somberly. “You are foolish,” he said. “You think about their color, while they throw their bullets at us like hailstones. Their color does not matter when they are the enemy.”

  “Their hail cannot touch me,” uNsuzi said, and I knew it was not just the tobacco talking through his mouth, but also the pungent drugs therein. His eyes were wide, reflecting the light of the moon. He stroked the long edge of his assegai, and I shuddered with sudden cold.

  “Stop all this talk of hailstones,” I said, “and share your snuff with me. Mine was dampened when we crossed the Buffalo river.”

  “Yes, stop this talk of our enemies,” whispered Mtshayankomo as he rolled onto his side. “We do not want to aid their spirits! Go back to talking of women
and our impending weddings. I’d much rather hear about that.”

  As uNsuzi spoke of the rumors he had heard from a friend in the king’s ikhanda, I felt my mind expand and wander the hillside, looking down upon the cream of Zululand’s army, and a fierce stab of pride and yet sadness took my breath and made the heart pound quickly inside my chest. I looked upon the loss of our country and I mourned our old ways, but I know not how I knew. Tears stung my cheeks.

  Now it is many hours later and we wait for the order to approach the tiny post and its defenders, whom our counters have told us are as few as fifteen groups of ten. We see their ragged red tunics in the afternoon light, and the last strong rays of the sun glint on the tips of their rifle-knives, which they call bayonets. Their spirits and ours are mingling above us in the early evening air, and already I can smell blood and fire and death. I take the last of the snuff uNsuzi gave me and let the herbs calm me, make me strong and fierce. A lion.

  When the royal assegai is raised, we leap to our feet in the tall grass and cry out: “Usutu!” Drawing the sound out until it becomes a chant from the throat of thousands. Down below, I see that they have taken a step back behind their barricades, for we are so many as to line the whole of their horizon. As one we stamp our feet and rhythmically crash assegai onto shields, then advance a hundred long strides in groups of ten. With our feathers, we resemble waves of summer grain rippling rapidly in one direction.

  When we reach the halfway point to our enemies’ stronghold, their gunfire strikes our line like a scythe and ten, twenty of us disappear underfoot. Beside me, uNsuzi’s head is shattered like a ripe gourd by a hailstone. His bone and blood anoint my forehead and I cry out, in anger and pain, as his limp body disappears behind us. Now the rage is upon me and I truly see nothing but red, the red of Zulu blood now and forever spilled across hillsides like this one, the red of the tunics worn by the invaders, and the red of their blood as our throwing assegai fly over their meager barricades and meet soft, yielding flesh.

  “You are not so far removed, child,” a voice whispers in my ear.

  Then we hurtle the bodies of our friends and brothers, those who have fallen in waves like grain at harvest-time, and bring our assegai to bear on the defenders, whose furious fear is written on their faces as clearly as if chiseled in stone. Metal strikes metal, wood, bone, skin. I see my fellows pierced by the bayonets, skewered sometimes into the chests of those behind them, and still their arms reach forward for a stab at the heart of these red-covered pink warriors from some empire far away.

  I leap over a pile of my companions, feet sinking into open wounds made by bullets, and pick out an opponent, a thin male younger than me and with fear in his blinking eyes and blood streaming from a cut above them. We dance on the barricade, he and I alone for a moment, my wide-blade assegai seeking his life’s blood even as his long, thin blade parries my thrust and finds the flesh of my neck. I feel the wetness and cold of steel scraping past and then my blade finds his side even though his reach is far longer than mine - for his thrust has carried him closer to me, closer to his lover, and my blade enters him like a lover’s phallus and we cry out together although my word is “Usutu!” while his ends in a strangled syllable I’ll never decipher. I withdraw my washed blade and seek another lover, for my rage has become the love shared by warriors as they engage in one last embrace.

  Smoke hangs over us as we falter on the barricades, finding the pink warriors tougher than we expected, their bayonets far-reaching and unyielding. We hear the cry and fall back, our ears ringing from the shouting and the sound of guns, and then we are like a receding tide, leaving on the beach the remains of our first foray.

  My ibutho has been reduced by a third, and we rally into a shorter line as we await the result of a similar thrust on the opposite side of the perimeter manned by these beasts in red tunics. Who thought they would roar so loudly, and with so much effect?

  Behind us, Dabulamanzi raises his spear and we once again rattle our shields and await the signal. When it comes, we approach rapidly, but more cautiously, seeking the cover of tall grass whenever the flames from the rifles lick out at us. This time we reach the barricades in greater numbers, and the pink warriors break and retreat before us, their guns exacting a toll but not causing us to falter.

  One fellow stands his ground, puny as he is before my great height, and I spear him once, twice, before he can bring his gun to bear. Instantly my fellows are there, sharing in the glory of my kill - hlomula - each stabbing his shell once. I nod to Mtshayankomo, who has somehow ended up at my side, and while he guards my flank I perform the ritual of qaqa, slashing open the pink warrior’s stomach to release his spirit so he will not haunt me, his killer. I bow my blade-point to his memory, and we two move on to fight yet another duel. Backed into a corner, this one swings his gun like a club, having lost his bayonet. I harry him from one side, while Mtshayankomo slides his blade into the warrior’s chest from the other, twisting it to sever the lifelines within him. I smile at my friend, taking glory in his win by washing my spear, then letting him slit the stomach. This one was brave, facing two greater than he, so I shave off his nose and his spear hand, placing them in my pouch - ingredients for our inyanga‘s next batch of intelezi medicine, which will grant us the power and courage of our enemy. If his legs were bare I would take his manhood, as so many did upon yesterday’s great Isandhlwana victory field. But there will be plenty to feed the medicine pot after this great battle!

  Tied together by our tactics, Mtshayankomo and I join in the effort to breach a long, low building in which more pink warriors have retreated. Rifle muzzles stick out of holes and windows, spewing their hailstone death, but brave members of our glorious ibutho bring the regiment much glory by wrapping their hands around the hot metal and pulling the weapons from the hands of the defenders inside. Then we others spear the inside of the hole and watch for fresh blood to flow down our blades to tell us we have succeeded, also attacking the wall and door so as to enter and free more spirits. When we break through, I see a pink warrior disappearing through a hole in the opposite wall. I shout, “Usutu!” and the others take up the chant and a well-thrown assegai brings a scream from our enemy. Someone has started a blaze, and smoke is filling the close quarters of these warriors; breathing becomes difficult. I cough as the smoke invades my nostrils and eyes and intrudes far down my throat, and I stop my attack to bend over and gasp until my eyes bleed tears.

  I turn and flee the burning building. The cool evening air will wash out the smoke and I will engage more warriors out in the open. Outside the battle continues, though it appears that my fellows, hundreds of whom seem to have fallen, have driven the enemy behind one final wall. The blazing building from which I’ve come lights the rapidly advancing night, but I still cannot replace the smoke with clean air.

  Can it be? I wonder. Can the angered spirits of the dead here today choke the air from those still living?

  My coughing brings pain from the wound in my neck, where the pink warrior’s bayonet made a deep furrow which has leaked blood over my whole body. Suddenly I hear my name called. Mtshayankomo! I turn to see him entangled with a pink warrior who wears grey, not red, and who brandishes a bayonet without a rifle. Mtshayankomo has lost his assegai, and his shield has had its spine broken, and at any moment the pink warrior will pierce my friend’s skin and release his spirit much too soon.

  I must save him! I swallow the smoke still in my mouth and ignore the tears, racing to save my friend from his fate. I scream to steal the warrior’s attention, but it’s too late and I see the long blade slip into and out of Mtshayankomo’s chest twice as he thrashes, pierced through like a snake. My leap carries me onto the pink warrior, shield slashing at his face even as my blade seeks his underbelly. He manages to withdraw the bayonet, releasing a gout of Mtshayankomo’s blood to wash over us both, and then my metal strikes his and we are like lovers who alternate thrusts and parries in a flurry of flirting. His eyes are locked with mine as his point
invades my thigh, my side, my shoulder, but cannot find my torso.

  But my rage is too great, and even through the pain and with the blood flowing from my wounds I find the strength to first stun him - a blow with the flat side of my shield - and then skewer him to the wall with my assegai, which then snaps in two. I watch the life drain from his widened eyes, and I drink in the glory as I wrestle the broken haft downward and release his spirit in a rush of slippery intestines.

  “We were like lions, you and I. But you will not haunt me!” I command his corpse. He makes no reply.

  “You are not so far removed, child,” a voice whispers in my ear.

  I turn, quickly, but there is no one there.

  And then I am wracked with cough, as smoke again enters my nose and eyes, and my ears feel as though they are about to burst. I squint through the black smoke of the bonfires, and see the bodies of the fallen, and sink slowly to my knees, vomiting my guts out onto the hillside - how have I returned up the hill? - and crying-screaming-chanting words I don’t even understand. I look up to see the old man - induna! - facing me.

  “You are not so far removed, child,” he says softly, and even through the sirens I can hear him. “But you are nowhere near.”

  “What?” I gasp. “What do you mean? What’s happened?”

  He turns and walks away, uphill, his leopard band rotted and streaked with grime.

  For a moment his image blurs and in the fires’ glare he is a beaten warrior, head down and shield laying flat on his back. His regiment is in ruins and their blood has run into the ground. But then the image solidifies and he is just an old man, part of something once great but now greatly diminished.