Black Leopard, Red Wolf

by Marlon James

  Sadogo killed everyone as directed by the master. Family, friend turned foe, rivals, men who would not sell land, for the master saw himself a chief. He killed, and killed, and killed again, and the day when he went into the hut of a stubborn man who sold his millet instead of giving it as tribute, and broke the necks of his entire family, including three children, he saw himself in the shiny iron shield on the wall, the last little girl dangling like a limp doll from his hands. So tall that his head was above the shield and it was his monstrous arms and that little girl. And he was not a man, but a beast wearing beast skin, doing something that not even beasts do. Not a man who had heard the griots speak poetry to the master’s wife and wished that he could sing himself. Not the man who would let the butterfly and the moth land on his hair and leave them there, sometimes to die, and in his hair they would still remain, like bright yellow jewels. He was lower than a butterfly, he was the killer of children.

  Back at the master’s house the master’s wife came to him and said, He beats me every night. If you kill him you can have some of his coin and seven goats. And he said, This man is my master. And she said, There is no master and no slave, only what you want, what you desire, and what stands in your way. And when he wavered, she said, Look at how I am still comely, and she did not lie with him for that would be madness, for not only was he already big, but he had a young man’s vitality, ten times over, for he was a giant in every way, but she took him with the hands until he yelled, and burst a spray of man milk that hit her in the face and knocked her back four steps. He entered their chamber that night, when the master was on top of the wife, grabbed the back of his head and ripped it off, and the wife screamed, Murderer! Rapist of women! Help me! And he jumped through the window, for the master had many guards.

  Second story.

  Years grew old, years died, and the Ogo was executioner for the King of Weme Witu in the richest of the South Kingdoms, and who was in truth just a chief who answered to the King of all the South, who was not yet mad. He was called Executioner. There came a time when the King grew tired of wife number ten and four, and spread many lies about her loins spreading for many, like a stream split in two directions, and that she lay with many a lord, many a chief, many a servant, maybe a beggar, and had even been witnessed sitting on the flitting tongue of a eunuch. In this way the story ended. When many gave case against her, including two water maids who claimed to see her take a man in every hole one night, the night itself they could not remember, the court of elders and mystics, all of whom had new horses, and litters, and chariots provided by the King, condemned her to death. A quick death, at Sadogo the executioner’s sword, for the gods smiled on mercy.

  The King who was but a chief said, Take her to the square of the city so all may learn from her death, that the woman shall never make a fool of the man. The Queen, before she sat in the execution chair, touched Sadogo on the elbow, the softest touch, like fatty cream touching his lips, and said, In me there is no malice to you. My neck is beautiful, unsmeared, untouched. She took off her gold necklace and wrapped it around his machete hand, a machete made for an Ogo, wider at its widest point than a man’s chest. By the mercy of the gods make it quick, she said.

  Three bamboo stalks stuck out of the dirt. The guards pushed her to the ground, forced her to sit up, and tied her to stalks stuck in the ground. She lifted her chin, but tears ran down her cheek. Sadogo took a branch stripped of leaves and pulled it down till it bent tight like a bow. The branch is angry, it wishes to be straight again not bound, but bind it he did, bind it to grass rope, then he tied it around the head of the wife. She flinched, tried to brace against the branch’s hard pull. The branch squeezed around her neck and she cried in pain, and all he could do was look at her and hope his look said, I shall make this quick. His ngulu was sharp, so sharp that even looking at it would make one’s eyes bleed. His blade caught light and flashed like lightning. Now the wife bawled. Now the wife wailed. Now the wife screamed. Now she called for ancestors. Now she begged. They all beg, did you know? Every day they talk of how they will rejoice the day of meeting the ancestors but nobody has joy, only crying and pissing and shitting.

  He swung back his arm with the sword, then yelled, and swung, and chopped straight into the neck, but the head did not chop off. The city and the people, they watch an execution for a quick cut that makes them laugh. But the blade lodged in the middle of her neck and her eyes popped open and her mouth spat blood and she make a groan like ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahhhhuck, and the people screamed, the people looked away, the people smelled disgust at people looking at killing, and the guard yelled make it quick. Before he could swing the blade again the impatient branch tore the rest of her head off her neck and flung it away.

  Here are some true words. Every road an Ogo takes lands him in Kalindar. The Kalindar that stands between the Red Lake and the sea, and which the King of the North and the King of the South both claim as theirs, is only half of the territory. The rest of the land snakes in forgotten grounds outside the citadel’s walls, and in those grounds, men make bets on dark arts and blood sports. There comes a time when the Ogo thinks, If killing is all I do, then killing is all I shall do. And he will hear on warm winds and on secret drums of where there shall be sport, for those who want to play and those who want to watch, in the arena’s underground, where the walls are splashed with blood and guts are swept up and fed to dogs. They called it the Entertainments.

  Soon Sadogo found himself in this city. Two guards who sat out by Kalindar’s gates saw him and said, Walk one hundred man paces, turn left, walk enough paces until you pass a blind man on a red stool, then go south until you come upon a hole in the ground with steps that take you down.

  You look ready to die, the Entertainments master said when he saw Sadogo. The man let him into a vast underground courtyard and pointed to a cell.

  “You fight two nights hence. And there you shall sleep. You shall not sleep well, all the better you wake with a temper,” he said.

  But Sadogo was not ill-tempered, but weighed by melancholy. During training the Entertainments master had him whipped with sticks, but all the sticks broke and all the men fell from exhaustion before Sadogo even rose from the floor.

  As for Ogos, know this. Most will never feel joy, or melancholy. The Ogos have little understanding and tempers that swing from cold to hot in a blink. Two Ogos who will say, If you kill him you kill my brother, will still smash the head of that brother right down to the stump. Nobody trains an Ogo. Nobody needs to. One only makes him mad, or hungry. And Sadogo is friends with no Ogo, and none are friends with him, and one is taller than trees and built bigger than elephants, and one is short but wide and thick like a rock, and one has muscles in his back and shoulders that rise above his head and people say that one is an ape. And one who paints himself blue, and one who will eat meat raw.

  And the master says, Look, I have no chains on you. I am no master of men. You come when you come, you go when you go, and whatever I bet for you, you get half and whatever I bet against you, you get a third and if you win, those who come to watch will shower you with cowrie and coin, of which I only keep a fifth. Ko kare da ranar sa. What do you wish for money to do, my melancholy Ogo?

  “Enough money to sail on a dhow that can hold me.”

  “Sail to where?”

  “It does not matter. I sail from, not to.”

  The night of the first fight, seven Ogos and Sadogo marched to the killing ground. It was nothing but a hole deep in the ground, the remains of a well that went down perhaps two hundred arm lengths, maybe more. With rocks pushing out of ragged dirt, and ledges at uneven heights all the way around where men, nobles and chiefs, stood, along with a few women. They had cast their bets for each fight, four for the night. At the bottom of the well, a dry mound rose out of water.

  The master put Sadogo in the second bout, saying, This one, he new, he fresh, we call him Sadface. Sadogo came down wearing a
red macawii around his waist, and stood before the master. May gods of thunder and food give him strength, because look, here be coming another, the master said, and dashed off into the water, where he pulled himself up on a ledge. The men shouted, cheered, and fussed. A woman in a bucket was lowered to collect all the bets. The master said, Oho, what now, here he come, the backbreaker, and men on the lowest ledge scrambled to higher ground.

  Backbreaker was the nastiest, for he ate flesh raw from the beast he killed. Tusks grew out of his mouth. Somebody painted his huge body in red ochre. The master said, Make your bets, dignified gentlemen. But before he finished, Backbreaker swung a punch and knocked Sadogo into the water. The girl screamed, Pull up the bucket! For the red Ogo eyed it as soon as he came in. Backbreaker faced the crowd and bellowed. Sadogo rose from the water and knocked him down, and grabbed a rock to bash in his head, but his grip was wet and Backbreaker slipped out, rolled over, and punched him straight in the chin. Sadogo spat blood. The red Ogo grabbed his club with spikes and swung it at Sadogo’s feet. Sadogo dodged and jumped up to a lower ledge. Backbreaker swung his club but Sadogo ducked and kicked him in the balls. The red Ogo dropped to his knees and his own spiked club slammed into his left eye. Sadogo took the club to Backbreaker’s head and smashed and smashed. And then he lifted the headless body and threw it at the men on the lowest ledge.

  Six took him on, six he killed with that club.

  And so his fame spread throughout Kalindar, and so more and more men came to see, and bet. And since the well was small and could never hold all, they placed more wood beams across the top so more men could see, and the master charged three times, four times, five times, then battle by battle even if they paid before, for the chance to see and bet on the sorrowful Ogo.

  “Look upon him, look how his face never changes,” they would say.

  He faced them all, he killed them all, and soon the lands were running out of Ogos. But the girl in the bucket who collected the bets, she was a slave with eyes sad as his. She brought food though many Ogos tried to rape her. One grabbed her one night and said, Watch how it grows, and pushed her down, and as he climbed on top, Sadogo’s hand grabbed his ankle, yanked him out of his cell, swung him like a club, and slammed him into the ground over and over and over until there was no sound from this Ogo. Through all this the girl said nothing, but the master said, “Curse you to the gods, sad one, surely that giant was worth more than that foolish little girl.”

  Sadogo turned to him. “Do not call us giants,” he said.

  The girl would come and sit by his cell. She sang verse but not to him. That last one is from lands north, then east, she said.

  “We should go there,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  No man is bound to me and I am bound to no man,” the master said when Sadogo said he would soon leave. “Killing has made you rich. But where shall you go? Where is there home for the Ogo? And if there is a home, good Ogo, do you not think someone here would have left for it?”

  That evening she came to him and said, I have spoken my fill of verses. Give me new words. He walked to the bars that were not locked and said:

  Bring words to voice and

  Meat to this verse

  Coal and ash

  Flicker a flame

  Brilliant

  She stared at him through the bars.

  “What I tell you is a true word, Ogo, you have an awful voice, and that is terrible verse. The griots do get their gifts from the gods.” Then she laughed. “Give me this word. What they call you?”

  “I am called nothing.”

  “What does your father call you?”

  “A curse from the demons who fucked my whore of a wife and killed her.”

  She laughed again.

  “I laugh, but it makes me very sad,” she said. “I come here because you are not like the rest.”

  “I am worse. Three times as many I have killed, compared to the bravest fighter.”

  “Yes, but you are the only one who does not look at me like I am next.”

  He walked right up to the bar and pushed at it, opened it a little. She shifted a little, tried not to look as if she jumped.

  “Truly, I will kill anything. Cut past my skin to find my heart and it will be white. White like nothingness.”

  She looked at him. He was almost three times her height.

  “If you were for true heartless, you would not have known it. Lala is my name.”

  When he told the master that he wished to leave, he did not tell him that he wanted to go north, then east, for whoever speaks such verses that the girl recites will not care that he towers over the biggest of men. He did not ask to buy Lala, but he did plan to take her. But the master learned that this new thinking was the doing of his bet collector. For sure they are not lovers, for not even the hugest of women can take an Ogo, and she is small as a child and frail as a stick. This Ogo was growing close to her head and speaking like her.

  The next morning Sadogo woke up to see the blue Ogo, in the middle of the courtyard, pull himself out of her body, leaving her smashed, ripped, and wrecked in a full moon of her own blood. Sadogo did not run to her, he did not cry, he did not leave his cell, he did not speak of it to the master.

  “I will pit you against him finally so you can avenge her,” he said.

  Later that night, another slave girl came to his cell and said, Look at me, I am now the wagers maid. They will lower me in the bucket.

  “Tell the old men it would be foolish to bet against me.”

  “They have already betted.”

  “What?”

  “They have already cast bets, most for you, some against you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The word was you were the smart Ogo.”

  “Speak plain and true, slave.”

  “The Master of Entertainments, he send bets, by slave, by messenger, and by pigeon, from seven days before, saying you will be pit against the blue one in a fight to the death.”

  Before the fight, noise from the well rose loud and thick and bounced off dirt and rock. Noblemen in noble gowns, and gold-streaked slippers, and because this was a special night of special entertainment, they brought several noblewomen with heads wrapped like tall flowers pointing up to the sky. They were impatient, even though many battles left men with broken limbs, smashed heads, and a neck yanked out like from a chicken. Some men started cursing and some women too. Bring the sad-faced one, they chanted. Sad Ogo, sad Ogo, sad Ogo, they said, and shouted, Sad.

  Ogo.

  Sadogo.

  Sadogo.

  The blue Ogo threw off a black hood and leapt from a high ledge to the mound. He puffed his chest out. The women hissed and called for Sadogo. I will ram an iroko branch up his ass till it bursts through his mouth and cook him on a spit, the blue Ogo said.

  Sadogo came in from the west, a tunnel no man had used before. He had wrapped his knuckles in straps of iron. The master followed him and began to shout.

  “Lightning strike and thunder roll, even the gods stealing a look on this right now. Mark it, good gentlemen. Mark it, good wives and virgins. This day not going to be a day anyone soon forget. Who didn’t bet, bet now! Who bet, bet again!”

  The new slave girl came down in the bucket and men threw satchels and coins and cowries at her. Some fell in the bucket, some hit her face.

  Sadogo saw the new slave girl, lowered to the lowest ledge, then raised from ledge to ledge and swung around to take the bets. Just then it came to him, poetry sung by the girl in a language he did not understand. A language that might have said, Look at us, we speak of melancholy, and melancholy no matter the tongue is always the same word. The blue Ogo’s fist clobbered him right on the cheek and he spat the thought out. He fell back down in the water, which rushed into his nose and made him choke.

 
The blue Ogo waved into the crowd as some cheered and some hissed, clear when Sadogo’s ears rose out of the water, murky when he fell back in. The blue Ogo stomped around the mound, shoved his crotch out, and fucked the air. He looked down on Sadogo and laughed so loud that he coughed. Sadogo thought of lying there, hoping the water would rise, perhaps in a tide, and swallow him. The blue Ogo backed up and lowered his head like a bull. He ran three steps and leapt high. He clasped his hands together to bring them down on Sadogo’s head. Sadogo jammed his elbow into the mud and pulled himself into a right-hand swing, which punched right through the blue Ogo’s chest and burst through his back. Blue Ogo’s eyes popped wide. The crowd fell quiet. Blue Ogo fell, and rolled, pulling Sadogo up. Blue Ogo’s eyes still popped wide. Sadogo bellowed into the walls, pulled his hand and tore Blue Ogo’s heart out. Blue Ogo stared at him quick, spat blood, fell dead. Sadogo stood up, threw the heart at the middle ledge, and all the men dodged.

  The Master of Entertainments ran out and addressed the crowd.

  “Was ever a champion so, so melancholy, my brothers? When will he be beaten? When will he be stopped? Who shall stop him? And whose death—I said whose death, my brothers—will make him smi—”

  The people right in front of the master saw it. Iron knuckles as they burst out of the master’s chest. The master’s eye flipping up into white. The Ogo’s hand pulling back in the quick and wrenching out his backbone. The master crumpled like fabric. The slave looked down from her bucket. The whole well fell quiet until one woman screamed. Sadogo dashed to the first ledge, punched away the wood brace supporting it, and screaming men slid right into his punching fist. First, second, third. The fourth tried to run through the water, but he grabbed her leg and swung her into another ledge full of men, knocking them all off. Men and women screamed to the gods and scrambled up ladders. More men scrambled on people scrambling up ladders. But Sadogo pulled away another brace and two ledges fell, and in one blow, one punch, one rip, one bludgeon, bodies piled on bodies. A man he punched flew into the mud and was swallowed by it. Another he stomped into the water until it went red. And so he pulled down ladder after ladder and ledge after ledge. He leapt onto one of the few ledges left, slamming, jamming, and knocking men off, and jumped from one to another, then another till he was so high that to kill, he just threw people off. He jumped to the top of the well and caught two as they ran, grabbed them both by the head and slammed them into each other. A boy climbed up and ran into him. A boy nowhere near a man, a boy dressed in rich robes like his father, a boy who looked at him more curious than afraid. He touched the boy’s face with both hands, gentle, soft, like silk, then grabbed him and threw him down the well. Then he roared like the beast. The slave girl in the bucket was still hanging above. She said nothing.