Black Leopard, Red Wolf

by Marlon James

  “No, there is no smell of Miss Wadada,” he said.

  “Are you hearing my words unsaid?”

  “If you think them so loud, Tracker.”

  “Is this how you know the secrets of men?”

  “What I hear is no secret. All the girls can hear them too.”

  Laughter burst out of me. Who else would be expert at reading the minds of men?

  “You are on the roof of a gold merchant from the Nyembe quarter.”

  “I smell Miss Wadada’s perfume south of us.”

  Ekoiye nodded. “Some say it was murder, some say it was monsters.”

  “Who? What do you speak of now?”

  “What happened to your friend, Basu Fumanguru. Have you seen the men who gather now, in our city?”

  “The Seven Wings.”

  “Yes, that is what they are called. Men in black. The woman who lives beside Fumanguru said that she saw many men in black in Fumanguru’s house. Through the window she saw them.”

  “Seven Wings are mercenaries, not assassins. Not like them to kill just one man and his family. Not even in war.”

  “I didn’t call them Seven Wings, she did. Maybe they were demons.”

  “Omoluzu.”

  “Who?”

  “Omoluzu.”

  “I do not know him.”

  He went over to the edge of the roof and I followed him. We were three floors up. A man rolled in the road, palm wine smell coming of his skin. Other than him, the street was empty.

  “Such a swarm of men, who want this man dead. Some say Seven Wings, some say demons, some say the chieftain army.”

  “Because they share a love for black?”

  “You the one seeking answers, wolf. This is known. Somebody entered the house of Basu Fumanguru and killed everyone. Nobody see no bodies and there were no burial rites. Imagine an elder of the city of Kongor dead with no tribute, no funeral, no procession of lords with a man of royal blood leading it, nobody even declaring him dead. Meanwhile thornbush sprung wild around the house overnight.”

  “What do your elders say?”

  “None come to me. Do you know he was killed on the Night of the Skulls?”

  “I do not believe you.”

  “That it was the Night of the Skulls?”

  “That none of those chatty child-fuckers have seen you since.”

  “I think the Seven Wings assemble for the King.”

  “I think you dance away from the question.”

  “Not how you think.”

  “Lowly people all seem to know the ways of kings these days.”

  He grinned. “I know this, though. People visit that house, including one or two of the elders. And maybe one or two Seven Wings. One not from here, they call him Belekun the Big, because that is how men around here joke. He was one who could not keep any of his holes shut, his mouth the worst. He came here with another elder.”

  “How do you remember after three years?”

  “It was last year. As they both took turns fucking a deaf girl, Miss Wadada heard also. Them saying that they need to find it. They need to find it now, or it will be the execution sword for them.”

  “Find what?”

  “Basu Fumanguru wrote a long writ against the King, they said.”

  “Where is this writ?”

  “People keep breaking in his house and not finding anything, so not there mayhaps?”

  “You think the King killed him over a writ?”

  “I think nothing. The King is coming here. His chancellor is in the city.”

  “His chancellor visits Miss Wadada?”

  “No, stupid Tracker. I have seen him, though. Kinglike but not the King, skin blacker than you and hair red like a new wound.”

  “Maybe he will come sample your famous services.”

  “Too pious. Holiness itself. As soon as I saw him I forgot when I first saw him and it was as if I was always seeing him. Do I sound like the fool?”

  A dark man with red hair. A dark man with red hair.

  “Tracker, you look gone.”

  “I am here.”

  “As I say, nobody can think of a time when he was not chancellor, but nobody can remember when he became so, or what he was before.”

  “He was not chancellor yesterday, but has been chancellor forever. Did they kill all in Fumanguru’s house?”

  “Maybe you should ask a prefect.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  He turned to look down in the street and wrapped the cloth over his head.

  “One more thing. Come closer, one-eyed wolf.”

  He pointed down into the street. I came up beside him as the clothes fell from him. He arched his back, his body was saying I could have him again right there. I turned to face him and he smiled a smile, all black. He blew it all in my face, black dust. Kohl dust, a large cloud in my eyes, nose, and mouth. Kohl dust mixed with viper poison, I could smell it. He looked at me deep, not with any malice, just with great interest, like he was told what would happen next. I punched him in the neck bump, then grabbed his throat and squeezed.

  “They must have given you the antidote,” I said, “or you would have been dead by now.”

  He coughed and groaned. I squeezed until his eyes bulged.

  “Who sent you? Who gave you kohl dust?”

  I pushed him hard. He fell back from the edge of the roof screaming and I caught his ankle. He kept flailing and yelling and almost slipped from me.

  “By the gods, Tracker! By the gods! Mercy!”

  “Mercifully release you?”

  I eased my grip and he slipped. Ekoiye screamed.

  “Who knew I would come to you?”

  “No one!”

  I let his ankle slip again.

  “I don’t know! It’s an enchantment, I swear it. It must have been.”

  “Who paid you to kill me?”

  “It was not to kill you, I swear.”

  “There is venom in this kohl. An ingenious thing like you must know of enchantments, so learn this. Nothing born of metal can harm me.”

  “It was for anybody who ask. He never said kill you.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know! A man in veils, more veils than a Kongori nun. He come in Obora Dikka moon, in the Basa star. I swear it. He said blow kohl breath in the face of anyone who asks of Basu Fumanguru.”

  “Why would anyone ask you of Basu Fumanguru?”

  “Nobody ask until you.”

  “Tell me more of this man. What colour his robes?”

  “B-black. No blue. Dark blue, his fingers blue. No, blue in the fingernails like he dyes great cloths.”

  “Are you sure he was not in black?”

  “It was blue. By the gods, blue.”

  “And what was to happen next, Ekoiye?”

  “They said men would come.”

  “You said he before.”

  “He!”

  “How would he know?”

  “I was to go back to my room and release the pigeon in the window.”

  “This story grows more legs and wings by the blink. What else?”

  “Nothing else. Am I a spy? Listen, I swear by the—”

  “Gods, I know. But I do not believe in gods, Ekoiye.”

  “This was not to kill you.”

  “Listen, Ekoiye. It is not that you lie, but that you don’t know truth. There was enough venom spewing from your mouth to kill nine buffalo.”

  “Mercy,” he said, weeping.

  Sweat made him slippery in my hand.

  “The ever-dry Ekoiye breaks into sweat.”

  “Mercy!”

  “I am confused, Ekoiye. Let me retell this in a way that adds up to sense, for me and perhaps you. Even though Basu Fumanguru has been dead
three years, a man in blue robes hiding his face still approached you, little more than a moon past. And he said, Should anyone speak of Basu Fumanguru, a man you would have no reason to know, take this antidote, then blow viper-soaked kohl dust in his face and kill him, then send word for me to pick up the body. Or not kill him, just put him to sleep as we can collect him as garbage mongers do for a fee. Is that all?”

  He nodded, over and over.

  “Two things, Ekoiye. Either you were not supposed to kill me, only leave me helpless so they can squeeze fact from me themselves. Or you were supposed to kill me but ask deeper questions before.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don—”

  “You don’t know. You don’t know anything. You don’t even know if the antidote, the poison killer, kills the poison. Here I thought you were a wise boy trapped in an unwise life. No antidote ever kills the poison, Ekoiye, it only delays it. The most you live is eight years, maybe ten, pretty one. Nobody told you? Maybe there is not too much venom in you, and you live ten and four years. I still don’t understand why they came to you.”

  Now he laughed. Loud and long.

  “Because everybody comes to the pleasure monger later or sooner, Tracker. You cannot help yourselves. Husbands, chiefs, lords, tax collectors, even you. Like a pack of hungry dogs. Later or sooner you all come back to who you are. Like you pushing me down and fucking the little he-whore rough because you were a dog even before that eye. You know what I wish, man-fucker? I wish I had venom to kill the whole world.”

  When I let him go he screamed all the way down. He would not be dead—the fall was not high enough. But he would break something, maybe a leg, maybe an arm, maybe a neck. I went back the way we came, passed under the same sounds of men fucking every last coin into wet rugs, and bolted the hatch behind me. The pigeon that he kept in a bamboo cage by the small window I took out and held gentle. The note wrapped around her left foot I removed. At the window I let it loose.

  The note. Glyphs, the like I had seen before, but could not remember it. I pushed the birthing chair into the darkest corner of the room and waited. The window looked large enough. The door would mean that others knew about this arrangement, among them, Miss Wadada. I thought on this hard. Nothing could have happened under Miss Wadada’s roof without her knowing of such. But this too is so of the Kongori. If I did kill Ekoiye tonight, she would still welcome me tomorrow with a Take off those robes so I can see you, big stiff prince, and then send me off with her newest girl-boy.

  Even as night grew deep the heat still crawled around, leaving my back sticking to the seat. I peeled off the wood and almost missed it, the kick of feet on the wall. Climbing without ropes, a man perhaps under enchantment, where whatever the foot touched became floor. Hands at the windowsill first, knuckles ashy. Hands pulled up the elbows, which pulled up the head. Black head wrap around the forehead and the mouth. Eyes, an opium-lover red, sweeping the room, locking with my eyes, but not seeing me. Shoulder robes in blue, a leather sash over the left shoulder. One leg in, and at the bottom of the sash, two sheaths for two swords and a dagger dangling. I waited until all of him was in and his long blue robes swept the floor.

  “Hail.”

  He jumped. He grabbed for his sword. My first dagger cut his neck, my second plunged under his chin, killing his head before his legs knew he was dead. He fell, his head slamming into the floor right at my foot. Undressing him felt more like unwrapping him. Scars on his chest, a bird, lightning, an insect with many legs, glyphs that looked in the style of the note. Top joints of both index fingers missing. He was not Seven Wings. And he had the knotty, violent crotch scar of a eunuch. I knew I did not have much time, for whoever sent him was either awaiting his return or followed him here. He had no fragrance other than sweat of the horse he rode on whatever journey led him to be lying dead on Miss Wadada’s floor. I turned him over and traced the glyphs on his back to remember. Two thoughts came to me, one just gone and one now come. Now come: that there was no blood, though where the knife stabbed him, blood usually bursts forth like a hot spring. Just gone: that the man really had no smell. The only scent coming from him was his horse, and the white clay from the wall he’d climbed.

  I rolled him over again. Two glyphs on his chest matched the note. A crescent moon with a coiled serpent, the skeleton of a leaf on its side, and a star. Then his chest rumbled, but it was not the rattle of the dead. Something hitting against each bone of his ribs, pumping up his chest and his heart, making his eyes pop open. Then his mouth, but not like he was opening it, but as if someone was pulling his jaws apart, wider and wider until the corners of his lip began to tear. The rumble shook him all the way to his legs, which hammered into the floor. I jumped back and stood up. Ripples rose from his thighs, moved up to his belly, rolled under his chest, and then escaped through his mouth as a black cloud that stank of flesh much longer dead than the man. It swirled like a dust devil, getting wider and wider, so wide that it knocked over some of Ekoiye’s statues. The spinner closed in tight on itself and turned to the window. In the spin of cloud and dust it formed and then broke apart back into dust, the bones of two black wings. It might have been a trick of poor light, or the sign of a witch. The spinning cloud left through the window. Back on the ground the man’s skin turned gray, withering like a tree trunk. I stooped. He still had no scent. I touched his chest with one finger and it caved in, then his belly, legs, and head crumbled into dust.

  Here is truth. In all the worlds I have never seen such craft or science. Whoever sent the assassin would certainly be coming now. The man, or spirit, or creature, or god behind such a thing would not be stopped by two daggers, or two hatchets.

  His name, Basu Fumanguru, walked into my thoughts right then. Not only did they kill him, but they that did so wanted him to remain dead. I had questions, and Bunshi would be the one to answer them. She left the child with an enemy of the King, but many men challenge the King in great halls and in notices and writs, and they are not killed for it. And if the child was marked for death, why not kill him before? I have heard nothing that would push anyone to get rid of Fumanguru that would not have done so before, certainly no King. As a man he was no more than a chafe on the inside of the leg. Then the thought you knew you would be left with, but denied because one would never wish to be left with such a thought, announced itself. This Bunshi said the Omoluzu came to kill Fumanguru and she saved his child as his dying wish. But it was not his child. Somebody told Ekoiye to send word as soon as someone came asking of Fumanguru, because somebody knew one day a man would come to ask. Somebody has been waiting for this, for me, for someone like me all along. They were not after Fumanguru.

  They were after the child.

  TWELVE

  Flying outside my window was the flag of the black sparrow hawk. My return to Kongor disturbed no one, my waking earlier than the sun caught nobody, so I went outside. The flag flew two hundred, maybe three hundred paces away, at the top of a tower in the center of the Nyembe quarter, flapping wild, as if the wind was furious with it. Black sparrow hawk. Seven Wings. The sun was hiding behind clouds fat with rain. It was near the season. So I went outside.

  In the courtyard, pulling up the few shrubs from the dirt, stood a buffalo. Male, brown-black, body longer than one and a half of me lying flat, his horns already fused into a crown and dipping downward to curve back upward like a grand hairstyle. Except I have seen a buffalo kill three hunters and rip a lion in two. So I gave this buffalo wide space as I walked to the archway. He looked up and moved right into my way. I remembered again I needed new hatchets, not that either hatchet or knife could win against him. I did not smell urine; I was not stepping into his boundary. The buffalo did not snort and did not kick his hooves in the dirt, but he stared at me, from my feet all the way up to my neck, then down, then up, then down, then up and slowly annoying me. Buffalos cannot laugh but I would swear to the gods that he did. Then he shook his head. More than a n
od, a rough swing left then right, then right and left again. I stepped aside and walked but he stepped right in my way. I moved to the other side and so did he. He looked up and down again and again and I would again swear to the gods, demons, and river spirits that he laughed. He came in closer, and stepped back once. If he wanted to kill me I would have been walking with the ancestors already. He came closer, hooked his horn in the curtain I wore, and pulled it off, making me spin and fall. I cursed the buffalo, but did not grab the curtain. Besides, it was early morning—who would see me? And if anyone did see me, I could claim that I was robbed by bandits as I bathed in the river. Ten paces past the arch I looked back and saw that the buffalo followed me.

  Here is truth: The Buffalo was the greatest of companions. In Kongor even old women slept late, so the only souls on the street were those who never slept. Palm wine drunkards and masuku beer fools, falling down more than they got up. My eye jumped over to their side each time we passed one of them, looking at them looking at a near-naked man walking alongside a buffalo not the way some walked with dogs, but how men walked with men. A man flat on his back in the road turned, saw us, jumped up, and ran right into a wall.

  The river had flooded the banks four nights before we came, and Kongor was an island again for four moons. I marked my chest and legs with river clay, and the buffalo, lying in the grass and grazing, nodded up and down. I painted around my left eye, up to my hair and down to the cheekbone.

  “Where are you from, good buffalo?”

  He turned his head west and pointed with his horns up and down.

  “West? By the Buki River?”

  He shook his head.

  “Beyond? In the savannah? Is there good water to be had there, buffalo?”

  He shook his head.

  “Is that why you roam? Or is there another reason?”

  He nodded yes.

  “Were you called upon by that fucking witch?”

  He shook his head.

  “Were you called upon by Sogolon?”