by Various
The father knelt. His daughter woke and he lifted her in his arms. Laughing rapturously, he spun the child around, held aloft for the crowd to see—her chin and neck were sharply defined, the swelling gone.
So they made petition, one after another, until the enthroned sat knee-deep in flowers. There came grievous wounds and mortal illnesses. A woman bared a breast purple and deeply ulcered, a man held his testicle, gigantic and misshapen, cradled heavily in both hands. Infection turned brown-skinned toes, a golden shank, one damaged cheek the dark twin of which was perfect, into smelly black and verdigris sponge, all nibbled at by gangrene. For them, no, the beating drums, the crowd raised to unison chant, the proffered flowers, and even rum for the Summer King weren’t enough. “Hold on,” the Summer King bade these petitioners: “For this, I need some love.” And Gian’s role in the proceedings came clear: he must give the Summer King his kiss. At night on the long pillow, with the shutters closed and portieres drawn, naked in the midst of love, Gian felt passion for this man so surpassing fondness or desire he’d felt before, what else but to admit he’d known nothing of love whatsoever, was learning now. And those lessons had their time and place … … surely not here? Yet, here, the merest brush of his lips to His raised the same ecstasies in Gian as the most intimate acts, and if the sacred kiss should become wet, and the Summer King slip His tongue ……
It fell to lovely La Pablo to distract the sick and wounded. With the kindest fluency, his chatter did so whenever kisses ran long. Finally, the Summer King would free Gian to sit upright, then pass His hand over the crown of Gian’s head to draw off the blazing overspill of emotion, heady and hot and half-brokenhearted, stoked by their kisses. With the aid of “love” He could make even the worst-off well.
By the dozens they were healed, only four or five turned away.
To one of these the Summer King said, “No, grandfather. You belong to the Crow Sisters. I can’t give you but a little comfort. Want it?”
The old man wept, and said, “Yes.”
The Summer King whispered in the old man’s ear, and whatever He said smoothed a few hard lines of pain from the old man’s brow, and raised a wavering smile to his mouth. That petitioner went away content.
All those others denied had had truck with witches: they’d entered into pacts from which they now sought escape. All of them made the same report, that the price of witchcraft proves too high …… everything! Each in turn, the Summer King suffered to speak her piece, or cry his repentance, but always He shook His head at the end and said, “No.” Here was neither comfort nor aid, for man or woman who’d gone to witches.
Third of those refused was a woman frail and aged, her scalp darkly gleaming beneath wisps of cotton. Oh, she moved Gian! The hunched carriage of her shoulders, her haunted eyes, the hopeless slackness of her mouth, half-open and gasping: all was reminiscent of soldiers who’d come through the hottest action alive, yet afterward could find no good in life. Haltingly, the woman gave an account of the perfidy of witches that raised the hair on Gian’s arm. To hear how they’d tricked her turned his stomach—they’d taken so much for just a little luck in finances! Sent unsuccored back to the arms of her two wives, the woman let go such rough sobs Gian couldn’t bear them. He turned, and his own eyes full, said, “Won’t you?”
In the dusty courtyard were hundreds, and none missed this petition. The drums fell off, all noise from the crowd, saving the wives who wept together. In that lull, only after he’d asked, did Gian recall that every favor comes at some cost.
Sweeping Gian off His knee and embracing him close, the Summer King whispered in an ear: “To help her, say yes: before midnight, you’ll tell me what happened When the River Ran Red”—Gian’s stomach clenched painfully—“and the whole truth of your service to Marshal Jaqash, peer of the Kingdom, wasn’t he, who fell in the river. Of course he did! Cruel but no coward, Milord always led the corps from the front, didn’t he, and you there right beside him. The lesser soldiery said about you corpsmen: ‘Spilling blood gets ’em drunk.’ Yeah, you few up in the van they called Blood Drunkards. Heaven has plans for you, Gianni-mi, but you’re no good to yourself or the world all walled up in secrets.”
Afraid of questions—afraid of his own answers, rather—Gian never spoke about the years of his conscription. It was a horrible shock, then, hearing unuttered confidences pour from another’s mouth. Bitterly he said, “You know everything already!”
“No,” whispered the Summer King. “This is your own heart talking to you—your poor lover knows nothing.”
It was Gian’s pleasure to be handled and grabbed by these hands; but sometimes his body must signal the contrary, for the grip always knew when to loosen, as now. Gian stood and met the gaze of the accurst woman, needing his eyes full of the sight of her suffering, if his mouth were to say yes. She stood between wives, gripping their hands, her eyes terrible with hope. Neither wife was older than Gian, yet the toll of tribulations had croned the woman who’d gone to witches.
Gian said, “All right, pop.”
The Summer King beckoned the woman back. He said, “Lean close,” and the words whispered into her ear dried up every tear, and straightened her back, and her hands clenched and opened as she listened. Her countenance was no longer woebegone, but became charged with fearful awe. After the whispers, much-shaken, the woman gave the promissory nod. The Summer King accepted her flowers and drank her rum and she stepped away, that Gian could give the kiss. Tasting only of the fruit juices Johnnys mixed into rum and called Jaúndi mar libre, there was no breath of spirits in the Summer King’s mouth.
Gian had been waiting for this so long.
Thirteen years old, and taught marksmanship by shooting bound felons full of arrows, the boy he’d been had thought, A long time from now when I get home to Sea-john, I won’t kill again or hurt anybody. I’ll have friends. I won’t be alone. Eighteen years old, and favorite of the Marshal himself, Gian had been the corpsman most envied of the vanguard, despite the hard use everyone saw, and the harder still none did: that Gian had dreamed, This won’t be for always. I’ll go home one day, and there’ll be some Johnny man, better and kind to me …… Later on, under hard black rain, the torrents made of iron and each drop some man’s death in the river, Gian had splashed on past the upreaching hands of drowners, the faces breaking the surface with a gasp only to go down again, and across the river on the far shore he’d caught sight of enemies who would die once he and this spear reached them—and they reached them, and they killed them, as many falling at his hand, quite possibly, as legend claimed. This is your work now, Gian had thought, strewing death about him, but only live and some day, home again, turn your hand to something better, and in Sea-john life will be good, and safe, and full of love—
The kiss broke. Gian sat up dazed and the Summer King gathered up the heart’s hot surfeit in His hand. With it, he broke the witches’ curse upon the woman.
Catastrophe, it’s said, can bleach a suffering head overnight. What Gian saw then was hair, sparse and white, turn instantly black and thick, blooming about the woman’s head heavy and dark as some thundercloud. Her brow smoothed, and the corners of her eyes. Her hands softened, and gaunt limbs grew plump and strong. Everyone in the temple courtyard knew the moment her baby, fallen quiet these last days, kicked with sudden life: the woman clapped both hands to her heavy belly, and joy beyond joy lit up her face. In the arms of her wives again, she cried still, but not as before. Gian wept too.
Lastly there came a petitioner uncalled-for. This man smiled, wholesome of aspect, and handsome. In his hand he bore a lily rich in color as the deepest tissues of the body laid bare. When he set the flower down, its petals brushed Gian’s ankle, soft and downy, only a little cooler than living flesh. A hue and cry broke out among the congregation, for no few at the bembe knew this man. He was Sea-john’s greatest villain. How had he passed unseen in the courtyard until this moment? The drums quieted and none would sing for him. Sing? “Throw him out!”
“Strike him down!” “You be careful there, Summer King. Watch him close, beware!” The fulminations of the people went on and on, until at last the Summer King said, “Be still, all you! I’ll hear him just the same as anybody.” Deep was the hush that fell then, and all hearkened to the hideous truths spoken before the throne.
This man had once been the lover of a famed beauty who in the end had chosen to marry others. So the man had gone to witches for a vengeance. Before the next dark-of-the-moon, both husband and wife of his former lover had met with gruesome misadventure: the one scalded dead when a vat of boiling laundry overturned, the other caught out some night without talisman by the wild dog packs. Indeed, the famous beauty too was dead now: throttled and drowned, by this man, while bathing. Crimes enough, anyone would have thought, when the man owned up to these murders, then quieted. Yet indignant voices from the crowd picked up the tale, and called out further iniquities. The mamas-and-papas of the beauty: found mutilated and dead. An orphaned infant: snatched from aunty’s arms; dashed against a wall. And more, and worse.
When the chorus had at last rendered a full accounting, the man hung his head. “Those things ……” he said sorrowfully, “… … happened. It’s true”; but all this evil owed to the whispering devil perched on his shoulder, the man said. The witches had put it there, and even now he felt hot breath blowing on his ear. Though no one else could glimpse it, and none but him hear, the fiend was always with him, suggesting fresh abominations. That lickle child, your knife: kill her, it might say, or, Sex that man there; choke him dead in the throes of love. Only to make amends for past evils did he now beg freedom from this demon, goading him always deeper into damnation. You were hard of heart not to suffer some doubt then, not to wonder whether this man could really author such grisly wrongs, seeing his soft brown eyes glitter so, full of tears.
And yet to him, as to those others, the Summer King said, “No.”
The man turned to Gian. “Ó Sãozinho, will you speak for me?”
Uneasy, Gian shook his head slowly.
The breathable ethers grew spiteful, pungent to the tongue and nose and eyes, as when chilies strike hot oil. La Pablo si beau screamed; for the man’s face convulsed with demoniacal rage. A hidden dagger drawn, a hand thrown back only to stab down—and the villain lunged. (Gian had in fact shifted weight from his perch already, and set his feet in readiness, watching this man hawkishly all along. Gentlier, he might have caught the murderer’s hand in its descent, crushed the fine wrist bones in his grip until the fingers sprang apart, loosing the blade, or else wrenched the man forward faster still and sent him hurtling past the throne to a stunning fall. More roughly, there were easy openings for a killing blow to the throat, or else for slitting it wide, should he swipe out the knife from his own belt. But in the event, rough or gentle wasn’t Gian’s to choose.) Some dry leaf blows into a campfire well-stoked and drawing well. What follows? That leaf catches at once, swiftly is consumed, a shadow withering briefly in the fierce light, and thereafter little remains, not cinder and ash so much as smudges of char. Thus for that man bewitched: where he’d stood, a whorl of soot came floating down, a scorched funk already dispersing from the air. The mortal whole of him had burned, unto teeth, bone, and the knife.
The Summer King lowered his shining hand, and it fell dark. Become Cianco the man again, he stood up with Gian, and celebrations began.
The hymns and holy drumbeats turned worldly, the dancing fast and loose. Everyone feasted. Long after dark, beloved hands plucked Gian mid-dance from amidst a sweaty grind of women, and he clung to Cianco as the dizzy world spun still, he’d drunk so much. Overhead, his lover said to the wives: “Getting late, y’all. Me and baby need to head out.” After some hugs and kisses for Gian, they left.
Cianco walked with purpose while Gian straggled after, a finger hooked in his lover’s belt. They came over the hill, seaside, where breezes freshened off the waters—this wasn’t the way to Cianco’s house. Nor were they heading down to the beach to sleep, as they did every so often.
“Where we going?” asked Gian.
“I want you to meet somebody” was the answer.
Salty air stirred and Gian stopped. He closed his eyes and stood, swaying as wind cooled the rummy sweat slicking his skin. That thunder in the distance, rolling and rolling, was only the ocean downhill: with loud-mouth Johnnys all gone to bed, the sounds of breakers hitting the beach reached up into the hills. An arm encircled him. “Come on now.” A deep voice, warmly fond. “Come on, with your drunk ass.” Basso and arm chivvied him into motion and kept him moving. “Moon’s setting,” Cianco said.
“Mmm,” said Gian, keeping his eyes closed; he trusted to the arm’s guidance. Gulls cried overhead.
“We’ll hear ’em ring soon—midnight bells from over in the Kingdom.”
At midnight, the memory of his promise returned. Gian’s eyes sprang open.
“Ready to tell me what you got to say?” Cianco said. “It’s a long walk.”
Stopping sometimes for Gian to catch his breath, they walked the length of several parishes. When he’d told everything, though expecting to feel lighter and unburdened, Gian felt only tender and undone, none the better.
“Sit here,” Cianco said, with hands upon Gian’s shoulders to urge him down beside some parish well. With satiric looks—inspiring shy smiles—Cianco made a parody of the nuptial rite. He drew up water and gave it to Gian to drink; kneeling, he rinsed Gian’s hands and feet. But whom did the joke mock? Hard to say, with nothing but the real thing in his care. Gian’s heart knocked painfully. He must still carry the past with him and the river might never run clear again. Love doesn’t take the burdens away, only makes them worth bearing.
In a temple across the square, drums of a nighttime bembe had this whole parish bumping; and suddenly they ceased. Behind the walls, a voice spoke in the silence, pure and clear as ocean shallows, that woman’s voice—until it turned, mid-word, to smoke and gravel, the deepest bass of the most ancient grandfather. If they were only just getting to the invocation, this other congregation would be all night, Gian thought. He yawned. And it finally dawned on him to ask, “Pop, where are you taking me? And who we dropping in on, this late?”
“End of the block, right there.” Cianco pointed. “And she’s a nightbird. ‘I’ll be up whenever you get here,’ she said.” He pulled Gian to his feet. “My woman I go see every day I ain’t with you.” Midnight bells rang over in the Kingdom. “About time the both of you met. It’s something all three of us together got to talk about.”
Copyright (C) 2013 by Kai Ashante Wilson
Art copyright (C) 2013 by Wesley Allsbrook
