African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441)

by Solomon, Barbara H. (EDT); Rampone, W. Reginald, Jr. (EDT)

  The old man looked into the coffee tin into which they were putting the worms and said, “Should be enough for me one day. There is always some other place we can get some more when these are finished. No need to use more than we should.”

  “But if they should get finished, Sekuru? Look, the tin isn’t full yet.” Zakeo looked intently at his grandfather. He wanted to fit in all the fishing that he would ever do before his mother discovered that he was playing truant from school. The old man looked at him. He understood. But he knew the greed of thirteen-year-olds and the retribution of the land and the soil when well-known laws were not obeyed.

  “There will always be something when we get where these worms run out.”

  They walked downstream along the bank, their feet kicking up clouds of black and white ash.

  The sun came up harsh and red-eyed upstream. They followed a tall straight shadow and a short stooped one along the stream until they came to a dark pool where the water, though opaque, wasn’t really dirty.

  “Here we are. I will get us some reeds for fishing rods while you prepare the lines. The hooks are already on the lines.”

  The old man produced from a plastic bag a mess of tangled lines and metal blue-painted hooks.

  “Here you are. Straighten these out.”

  He then proceeded to cut some tall reeds on the river bank with a pocket knife the boy had seen him poking tobacco out of his pipe with.

  “Excellent rods, look.” He bent one of the reeds till the boy thought it was going to break, and when he let go, the rod shot back like a whip!

  “See?” the old man said.

  The boy smiled and the old man couldn’t resist slapping him on the back.

  The boy then watched the old man fasten the lines to the rods.

  “In my day,” the old man said, “there were woman knots and men knots. A woman knot is the kind that comes apart when you tug the line. A knot worth the name of whoever makes it shouldn’t fall apart. Let the rod break, the line snap, but a knot, a real man’s knot, should stay there.”

  They fished from a rock by a pool.

  “Why do you spit on the bait before you throw the line into the pool, Sekuru?”

  The old man grinned. “For luck, boy, there is nothing you do that fate has no hand in. Having a good hook, a good line, a good rod, good bait or a good pool is no guarantee that you will have good fishing. So little is knowledge, boy. The rest is just mere luck.”

  Zakeo caught a very small fish by the belly.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “A very good example of what I call luck! They aren’t usually caught by the belly. You need several all-way facing hooks in very clear water even without bait—for you to catch them like that!”

  The boy laughed brightly and the old man suddenly heard the splash of a kingfisher as it flew away, fish in beak, and this mixed with the smell of damp-rotting leaves and moisty river clay made the old man think: nothing is changed since our time. Then, a little later: except me. Self-consciously, with a sly look at the boy to make sure he wasn’t seeing him, the old man straightened his shoulders.

  The boy’s grandfather hooked a frog and dashed it against a rock.

  “What’s that?” the boy asked.

  “Know why I killed that—that—criminal?” he asked the boy.

  “No, Sekuru.”

  “Bad luck. Throw it back into the pool and it’s going to report to the fish.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Uncle Frog.”

  “A frog!” The boy was surprised.

  “Shhh,” the old man said. “Not a frog. Uncle Frog. You hear?”

  “But why Uncle Frog, Sekuru?”

  “Just the way it is, boy. Like the rain. It comes on its own.”

  Once again, the boy didn’t understand the old man’s grown-up talk. The old man saw it and said, “That kind of criminal is only good for dashing against the rock. You don’t eat frogs, do you?”

  The boy saw that the old man was joking with him. “No,” he said.

  “So why should we catch him on our hook when we don’t eat him or need him?”

  “I don’t know, Sekuru.” The boy was clearly puzzled.

  “He is the spy of the fish,” the old man said in such a way that the boy sincerely believed him.

  “But won’t the fish notice his absence and wonder where he has gone to?”

  “They won’t miss him much. When they begin to do we will be gone. And when we come back here, they will have forgotten. Fish are just like people. They forget too easily.”

  It was grown-up talk again but the boy thought he would better not ask the man what he meant because he knew he wouldn’t be answered.

  They fished downriver till they came to where the Chambara met the Suka River.

  “From here they go into Munyati,” the old man said to himself, talking about his old hunting grounds; and to the boy, talking about the rivers.

  “Where the big fish are,” the boy said.

  “You know that too?” the old man said, surprised.

  “Maneto and his father spent days and days fishing the Munyati and they caught fish as big as men,” the boy said seriously.

  “Did Maneto tell you that?”

  “Yes. And he said his father told him that you, Sekuru, were the only hunter who ever got to where the Munyati gets into the big water, the sea. Is that true?”

  The old man pulled out his pipe and packed it. They were sitting on a rock. He took a long time packing and lighting the pipe.

  “Is it true?” the boy asked.

  “I was lost once,” the old man said. “The Munyati goes into just another small water—but bigger than itself—and more powerful.”

  The boy would have liked to ask the man some more questions on this one but he felt that the old man wouldn’t talk about it.

  “You aren’t angry, Sekuru?” the boy asked, looking up earnestly at his grandfather.

  The old man looked at him, surprised again. How do these milk-nosed ones know what we feel about all this?

  “Let’s get back home,” he said.

  Something was bothering the old man, the boy realized, but what it was he couldn’t say. All he wanted him to tell him was the stories he had heard from Maneto—whether they were true or not.

  They had caught a few fish, enough for their supper, the boy knew, but the old man seemed angry. And that, the boy couldn’t understand.

  When they got back home the boy lit the fire, and with directions from the old man helped him to gut and salt the fish. After a very silent supper of sadza and salted fish the boy said he was going.

  “Be sure to come back tomorrow,” the old man said.

  And the boy knew that whatever wrong he had done the old man, he would be told the following day.

  Very early the following morning the boy’s mother paid her father-in-law a visit. She stood in front of the closed door for a long time before she knocked. She had to collect herself.

  “Who is there?” the old man answered from within the hut. He had heard the footsteps approaching but he did not leave his blankets to open up for her.

  “I would like to talk to you,” she said, swallowing hard to contain her anger.

  “Ah, it’s Zakeo’s mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what bad winds blow you this way this early, muroora?”

  “I want to talk to you about my son.”

  “Your son?”

  She caught her breath quickly. There was a short silence. The old man wouldn’t open the door.

  “I want to talk about Zakeo,” she called.

  “What about him?”

  “Please leave him alone.”

  “You are telling me th
at?”

  “He must go to school.”

  “And so?”

  She was quiet for a minute; then she said, “Please.”

  “What have I done to him?”

  “He won’t eat, he won’t listen to me, and he doesn’t want to go to school.”

  “And he won’t listen to his father?” the old man asked.

  “He listens to you.”

  “And you have come here this early to beat me up?”

  She swallowed hard. “He is the only one I have. Don’t let him destroy his future.”

  “He does what he wants.”

  “At his age? What does he know?”

  “Quite a lot.”

  She was very angry, he could feel it through the closed door.

  She said, “He will only listen to you. Please, help us.”

  Through the door the old man could feel her tears coming. He said, “He won’t even listen to his father?”

  “His father?” he heard her snort.

  “Children belong to the man, you know that,” the old man warned her.

  And he heard her angry feet as she went away.

  Zakeo came an hour after his mother had left the old man’s place. His grandfather didn’t say anything to him. He watched the boy throw his school bag in the usual corner of the hut; then after the usual greetings, he went out to bring in the firewood.

  “Leave the fire alone,” the old man said. “I am not cold.”

  “Sekuru?” The boy looked up, hurt.

  “Today we go mouse-trapping in the fields.”

  “Are we going right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll make the fire if you like. We can go later.”

  “No. Now.” The old man was quiet for some time, looking away from the boy.

  “Are you all right, Sekuru?”

  “Yes.”

  “We will go later when it’s warm if you like.”

  The old man didn’t answer him.

  And as they came into the open fields with the last season’s corn crop stubble, the boy felt that the old man wasn’t quite well.

  “We can do it some other day, Sekuru.”

  His grandfather didn’t answer.

  They looked for the smooth mouse-tracks in the corn stubble and the dry grass. Zakeo carried the flat stones that the old man pointed out to him to the places where he wanted to set up the traps. He watched his grandfather setting the traps with the stone and two sticks. The sticks were about seven inches long each. One of them was the male and the other the female stick. The female was in the shape of a Y and the male straight.

  The old man would place the female stick upright in the ground with the forked end facing up. The male would be placed in the fork parallel to the ground to hold up one end of the stone across the mousepath. The near end of the male would have a string attached to it and at the other end of the string would be the “trigger”—a matchstick-sized bit of straw that would hold the bait-stick against the male stick. The stone would be kept one end up by the delicate tension in the string and if a mouse took the bait the trigger would fly and the whole thing fall across the path onto the unfortunate victim.

  The boy learned all this without words from the old man, simply by carefully watching him set about ten traps all over the field that morning. Once he tried to ask a question and he was given a curt, “Mouths are for women.” Then he too set up six traps and around noon the old man said, “Now we will wait.”

  They went to the edge of the field where they sat under the shade of a mutsamwi tree. The old man carefully, tiredly, rested his back against the trunk of the tree, stretched himself out, sighed, and closing his eyes, took out his pipe and tobacco pouch and began to load. The boy sat beside him, looking on. He sensed a tension he had never felt in his grandfather. Suddenly it wasn’t fun any more. He looked away at the distant hills in the west. Somewhere behind those hills the Munyati went on to the sea, or the other bigger river which the old man hadn’t told him about.

  “Tell me a story, Sekuru,” Zakeo said, unable to sit in his grandfather’s silence.

  “Stories are for the night,” the old man said without opening his mouth or taking out the pipe. “The day is for watching and listening and learning.”

  Zakeo stood up and went a little way into the bush at the edge of the field. Tears stung his eyes but he would not let himself cry. He came back a little later and lay down beside the old man. He had hardly closed his eyes in sleep, just at that moment when the voices of sleep were beginning to talk, when he felt the old man shaking him up.

  “The day is not for sleeping,” the old man said quietly but firmly. He still wasn’t looking at Zakeo. The boy rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and blinked.

  “Is that what they teach you at school?”

  “Sekuru?”

  The old man groaned in a way that told Zakeo what he thought of school.

  The boy felt ashamed that he had hurt his grandfather. “I am sorry.”

  The grandfather didn’t answer or look at him. Some time later he said, “Why don’t you go and play with the other boys of your own age?”

  “Where?”

  “At school. Anywhere. Teach them what you have learned.”

  The boy looked away for some time. He felt deserted, the old man didn’t want him around any more. Things began to blur in his eyes. He bit his lip and kept his head stiffly turned away from his grandfather.

  “You can teach them all I have taught you. Huh?”

  “I don’t think they would listen to me,” the boy answered, still looking away, trying to control his voice.

  “Why?”

  “They never listen to me.”

  “Why?”

  “They—they—just don’t.” He bit his lower lip harder but a big tear plopped down on his hand. He quickly wiped away the tear and then for a terrible second they wouldn’t stop coming. He was ashamed in front of his grandfather. The old man, who had never seen any harm in boys crying, let him be.

  When the boy had stopped crying he said, “Forget them.”

  “Who?”

  “Your friends.”

  “They are not my friends. They are always laughing at me.”

  “What about?”

  “O, all sorts of silly things.”

  “That doesn’t tell me what sort of things.”

  “O, O, lots of things!” The boy’s face was contorted in an effort to contain himself. Then he couldn’t stop himself, “They are always at me saying your father is your mother’s horse. Your mother rides hyenas at night. Your mother is a witch. Your mother killed so-and-so’s child. Your mother digs up graves at night and you all eat human flesh which she hunts for you.” He stopped. “O, lots of things I don’t know!” The boy’s whole body was tensed with violent hatred. The old man looked at him, amused.

  “Do they really say that, now?”

  “Yes and I know I could beat them all in a fight but the headmaster said we shouldn’t fight and Father doesn’t want me to fight either. But I know I can lick them all in a fight.”

  The old man looked at the boy intensely for some time, his pipe in his hand; then he looked away to the side and spat out brown spittle. He returned the pipe to his mouth and said, “Forget them. They don’t know a thing.” He then sighed and closed his eyes once more and settled a little deeper against the tree.

  The boy looked at him for a long time and said, “I don’t want to go to school, Sekuru.”

  “Because of your friends?”

  “They are not my friends!” He glared blackly at his grandfather, eyes flashing brilliantly and then, ashamed, confused, rose and walked a short distance away.

  The old man looked at him from the corner of his eyes and saw him
standing, looking away, body tensed, stiff and stubborn. He called out to him quietly, with gentleness, “Come back, Zakeo. Come and sit here by me.”

  Later on the boy woke up from a deep sleep and asked the old man whether it was time yet for the traps. He had come out of sleep with a sudden startled movement as if he were a little strange animal that had been scared by hunting dogs.

  “That must have been a very bad dream,” the old man said.

  Zakeo rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and blinked. He stared at the old man, then the sun which was very low in the west, painting everything with that ripe mango hue that always made him feel sad. Tall dark shadows were creeping eastward. He had that strange feeling that he had overslept into the next day. In his dream his mother had been shouting at him that he was late for school. A rather chilly wind was blowing across the desolate fields.

  “Sit down here beside me and relax,” the old man said. “We will give the mice one more hour to return home from visiting their friends. Or to fool themselves that it’s already night and begin hunting.”

  Zakeo sat beside his grandfather and then he felt very relaxed.

  “You see?” the old man said. “Sleep does you good when you are tired or worried. But otherwise don’t trust sleeping during the day. When you get to my age you will learn to sleep without sleeping.”

  “How is that?”

  “Never mind. It just happens.”

  Suddenly, sitting in silence with the old man didn’t bother him any more.

  “You can watch the shadows or the setting sun or the movement of the leaves in the wind—or the sudden agitation in the grass that tells you some little animal is moving in there. The day is for watching and listening and learning.”

  He had got lost somewhere in his thoughts when the old man said, “Time for the traps.”

  That evening the old man taught him how to gut the mice, burn off the fur in a low-burning flame, boil them till they were cooked and then arrange them in a flat open pan close to the fire to dry them so that they retained as little moisture as possible which made them firm but solidly pleasant on eating.

  After supper the old man told him a story in which the hero seemed to be always falling into one misfortune after another, but always getting out through his own resourcefulness only to fall into a much bigger misfortune—on and on without the possibility of a happily ever after. It seemed as if the old man could go on and on inventing more and more terrible situations for his hero and improvising solutions as he went on till the boy thought he would never hear the end of the story.