Black Leopard, Red Wolf

by Marlon James

  * * *

  —

  Sadogo almost skipped all the way to this lord’s dwelling. Then he went to his room and fell to snoring in a blink. The buffalo was in the courtyard eating grass, which must have been foul tasting but he seemed to like it. He looked up and saw me wearing the curtain and snorted. I hissed and tugged at it, pretending that I could not take it off. Again, he did something that sounded like a laugh, but none of these horned animals can laugh, although who knew which god was working mischief through him.

  “Good buffalo, has anyone come around to this man’s place? Any dressed in black or blue?”

  He shook his head.

  “Any in the colour of blood?”

  He snorted. I knew he could not see the colour of blood, but something in this bull made me want to have sport with him.

  “Alas, I think we might be watched.”

  He turned around, then turned back on me and grunted long.

  “If any man shows up in black and blue, or in a black cape, raise alarm. But do what you wish with him.”

  He nodded up and down and gargled.

  “Buffalo, before the sun goes we shall go back to the riverside for better bush.”

  He gargled and swished his tail.

  Inside the Leopard’s room was only a trace. If I wanted to, I could smell deep into the rugs, past the shit and sperm and sweat of him and the boy, and know where they went and would go. But here is truth: I did not care. All that was left in the room was what they did, nothing of theirs. Here is another truth. I did have some trace of care, enough to know they were going southwest.

  “They leave before day burst,” said the lord of the house behind me. He wore a white caftan that did not hide that he wore nothing underneath. Old shoga? That was a question I did not wish to ask.

  He followed me as I walked to Sogolon’s room. He did not try to stop me.

  “What is your name, sir?” I asked.

  “What? My name? Sogolon said there would be no names. . . . Kafuta. Kafuta it is.”

  “Great thanks for the room you give us and the food, Lord Kafuta.”

  “I am no lord,” he said, looking past me.

  “You are the lord of this magnificent house,” I said.

  He smiled but it quit his face quick. I would have said, Take me to her room, this is still your house, if I thought to enter her room was what he wished. He was not afraid of her; instead they seemed like brother and sister or sharers of old secrets.

  “I shall go in,” I said. He looked at me, then past me, then at me, pressing his lips to appear unconcerned. I headed for her door.

  “Will you follow?” I asked as I turned around to see him gone.

  Sogolon did not lock her door. Not that any of the doors had locks, but I would have thought so of hers. Maybe every man believes that all an old woman has is secrets, and that was the second time I thought of secrets when I thought of her.

  The smells in the room hit me first. Some I knew that took me out of the room, some I have never smelled the like. In the center of the room, a black-and-red rug with the curved patterns of textiles from the eastern kingdoms, and a wood headrest. But on the walls, painted, scrawled, scratched, and written, were runes. Some as small as a fingertip. Some taller than Sogolon herself. From them came the smells, some in coal, some in wood dye, some in shit, and some in blood. I saw the rug and the headrest and paid no attention to the floor. That was covered in runes as well, the freshest ones in blood. The room was so covered in marks that I hesitated to look at the ceiling, for I knew what I would see. Runes but also a series of circles, each wider than the one before. Truth, had I the third eye, I would have seen runes written in air.

  One smell in the room, fresher than the rest, moved on the wind and grew stronger.

  “You scare the lord of the house,” I said.

  “He is no lord to me,” Bunshi said as she poured herself down from the ceiling to the floor.

  I stood still and stiff; there was no way a black mass moving down from the ceiling was going to trouble me.

  “I don’t think I want to know who are your lords,” I said. “Maybe you are a lord yourself that nobody worships anymore.”

  “And yet you are so gentle with the giant,” she said.

  “Call him Ogo, not giant.”

  “That was a noble thing, hearing a man as he empties the whole world of his conscience.”

  “Have you been spying on us, river witch?”

  “Is every woman a witch to you, Wolf Eye?”

  “And what of it?” I said.

  “All you know of women is your mother jumping up and down your grandfather’s cock, yet you blame all of womandom for it. The day your father died was the first day of freedom your mother ever saw until your grandfather enslaved her again. All you ever did was watch woman suffer and blame her for it.”

  I walked to the door. I would not hear any more of this.

  “These are protection runes,” I said.

  “How do you know? The Sangoma. Of course.”

  “She covered the tree trunks with them, carved some, branded some, left some hanging in air and on clouds and on the ground. But she was Sangoma. To live as her is to know that evil forces rise day and night to come for you. Or wronged spirits.”

  “Who did the Sangoma do wrong?”

  “I mean Sogolon, not her.”

  “What a story you have made of her.”

  I went by the window and touched the marks all around the frame. “These are not runes.”

  “They are glyphs,” Bunshi said.

  I knew they were glyphs. Like the brands on that attacker who came in the whore’s window. Like the note wrapped around the pigeon leg. But not the same marks exactly; I could not tell for sure.

  “Have you seen them before?” she said.

  “No. She writes runes to keep spirits from coming in. For what does she need glyphs?”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  “I need no answer. But I leave today, before the sun goes.”

  “This day? Do you need me to tell you that is too soon?”

  “Too soon? It has been a moon and several days. A moon already wasted in a forest that nobody should have gone into. Me and the Ogo leave this evening. And anyone else who cares to. Maybe the buffalo.”

  “No, Wolf Eye. There are more things to learn here. More things to—”

  “To what? I am here to find a child, collect my gold, and go find the next lost husband who is not lost.”

  “There are things you don’t even know that you don’t know.”

  “I know where goes the child.”

  “You keep this secret?”

  “I tell who I feel needs to know. Maybe you sent us on a mission expecting us to fail. Good . . . whatever you are, for truly I know not . . . how stands your fellowship now? Nyka and his woman—”

  “She has a name.”

  “Fuck the gods if I care to remember it. Besides, they took off first, before we even left the valley. The Leopard is gone, and so is Fumeli, not that the boy had much use, and now your Sogolon is gone to wherever. Here is truth. I saw no reason for a group to find one child anyway. Nor did any of us. Not Nyka, not that cat, and not your witch.”

  “Think like a man and not a child, Tracker, this is no task for one, or two.”

  “And yet two is what you have. If Sogolon returns and is willing then we will be three.”

  “One, three, or four might as well be none. If all I needed was someone to find the child, Tracker, I could have hired two hundred trackers and their dogs. Two questions, you can choose which to answer first. Do you think his abductor will hand him to you just because you say, I am here, hand me the boy?”

  “They will—”

  “Is the tracker such a fool to think I am the only one looking for
this child?”

  “Who else seeks him?”

  “The one who visits you in dreams. Skin like tar, hair red, when you see him you hear the flutter of black wings.”

  “I don’t know this man.”

  “He knows you. They call him the Aesi. He answers to the North King.”

  “Why would he visit my dreams?”

  “They are your dreams, not mine. You have something he wants. He too might know that you have found the child.”

  “Tell me more of this man.”

  “Necromancer. Witchman. He is the King’s adviser. From an old line of monks who started working secret science and invoking devils and were thrown out of the order. The King consults him on all things, even which direction to spit. Do you know why they call Kwash Dara the Spider King? Because in everything he moves with four arms and four legs, except two of each belong to the Aesi.”

  “Why does he want the boy?”

  “We have spoken on this. The boy is proof of the killings.”

  “Are bodies not proof enough? Or do they think the wife cut her own self in two? Who is the boy?”

  “The boy is the last son of the last honest man in the ten and three kingdoms. I will save him if that is the last thing I do in this world or another.”

  “I will not ask a third time.”

  “How dare you ask me anything! Who are you that demands that I make things clear to you? Are you master over me now, is that how you will have it?”

  Her eyes bulged and the fin grew out of the back of her head.

  “No. I will have nothing but rest. I am tired from this.” I turned and walked out. “I leave in two days.”

  “Not today?”

  “Not today. It seems there is more I need to know.”

  “Where is the child? How many moons away is he?” she asked.

  “Don’t speak of my mother again,” I said.

  That night I was again in a dream jungle. A new kind of dream where I wondered why I was in it, and why a dream of trees and bushes and bitter raindrops. And moving but not walking, and knowing something would reveal itself in a clearing, or in the mirror of a puddle, or in the lonely cry of a lonely ghost bird. Reveal something that I already knew. The Sangoma once told me that the dream jungle is where you find things that are hidden in the waking world. And that hidden thing might be a lust. The knowledge is in leaves, and dirt, and mist, and heat thick like a ghost, and it is a jungle because the jungle is the only place where anything can wait behind the cover of a large leaf. The jungle finds you, you cannot seek it, which is why everyone in the jungle seeks why they are there. But looking for meaning will drive you mad, the Sangoma also said.

  So I did not ask for meaning when Smoke Girl was the first to run to me, then run past me, not ignoring me but so used to my presence. And in the jungle was a man I only saw by hair on his hands and legs. He touched my shoulder, and chest, and belly, leaned his forehead to touch mine, then grabbed two spears and walked away. And Giraffe Boy stood with his legs wide open, the boy with no legs curled into a ball and rolled right between them, and the patch of sand in the middle of the bush blinked, then smiled, and the albino rose out of the sand as if he came from it and was not just hiding in it. Then he grabbed a spear and went to find the man I had no name for, but still felt warm at the thought that I do know his name. I had stopped walking but I was still walking and Smoke Girl sat down on my head and said, Tell me a story with an ant, a cheetah, and a magic bird, and I heard every word she said.

  FIFTEEN

  A ghost knows who to scare. As the sun glides to noon, men and women grab their children and run home, close windows, and draw curtains, for in Kongor it is noon that is the witching hour, the hour of the beast, when heat cracks the earth open to release seven thousand devils. I have no fear of devils. I went south, then turned west along the border road to the Nimbe quarter. Then I turned south down a crooked street, west down an alley, then south again until I came upon the Great Hall of Records.

  Kongor was the record keeper for all the North Kingdom and most of the free states, and the Hall of Records was open to anyone who stated his purpose. But nobody came to these large rooms, five tall floors of scrolls stacked on shelves, stacked on top of each other, as tall as any palace in Kongor. The hall of records was like the palace of clouds in the sky—people were satisfied that it existed without ever entering, ever reading book or paper, or even coming close. On the way there I was hoping to meet a demon, or a spirit of someone who would feed the hunger of my two new axes. I truly wanted a fight.

  Nobody was here but an old man with a hunch in his back.

  “I seek the records of the great elders. Tax records as well,” I said to the old man. He did not look up from the large maps he stood over.

  “Them young people, too hot in the neck, too full in the balls. So this great King who is only great in the echo of his voice, which is to say not great at all, conquers a land and says this land is now mine, redraw the maps, and you young men with papyrus and ink redraw the old map for the new and forget entire lands as if the gods of the underworld tore open a hole in the earth and sucked in the entire territory. Fool, look. Look!”

  The library master blew map dust in my face.

  “Truth, I know not what I look at.”

  He frowned. I could not tell if his hair was white from age or from dust.

  “Look in the center. Do you not see it? Are you blind?”

  “Not if I see you.”

  “Be not rude in this great hall and shame whoever you came out of.”

  I tried not to smile. On the table stood five thick candles, one tall and past his head, another so down to the stub that it would set things afire if left alone. Behind him towers and towers of papers, of papyrus, of scrolls and books bound in leather and piled one on top of the other, reaching the ceiling. I was tempted to ask what if he desired a book in the middle. Between the towers were bundles of scrolls and loose papers that fell flat. Dust settled like a cloud right above his head and cats fat on rats scrambled.

  “Alert the gods, he is now deaf as well as blind,” the library master said. “Mitu! This master of map arts, which I am sure he calls himself, has forgotten Mitu, the city at the center of the world.”

  I looked at the map again. “This map is in a tongue I cannot read.”

  “Some of these parchments are older than the children of the gods. Word is divine wish, they say. Word is invisible to all but the gods. So when woman or man write words, they dare to look at the divine. Oh, what power.”

  “The tax and household records of the great elders, I seek. Where are—”

  He looked at me like a father accepting the disappointment of his son.

  “Which great elder do you seek?”

  “Fumanguru.”

  “Oh? Great is what they call him now?”

  “Who says he is not, old man?”

  “Not I. I am indifferent to all elders and their supposed wisdom. Wisdom is here.” The library master pointed behind himself without looking.

  “That sounds like heresy.”

  “It is heresy, young fool. But who will hear it? You are my first visitor in seven moons.”

  This old bastard was becoming my favorite person in Kongor who was not a buffalo. Maybe because he was one of the few who did not point to my eye and say, How that? A leather-bound book, on its own pedestal and large as half a man, opened up and from it burst lights and drums. Not now, he shouted, and the book slapped itself back shut.

  “The records of the elders are back there. Walk left, go south past the drum of scrolls to the end. Fumanguru will bear the white bird of the elders and the green mark of his name.”

  The corridor smelled of dust, paper rot, and cat. I found Fumanguru’s tax records. In the hall, I sat on a stack of books and placed the candle on the floor.

  He paid m
uch in tax, and after checking the records of others, including Belekun the Big, I saw he paid more than he needed to. His death wish that his lands be given to his children was written on loose papyrus. And there were many little books bound in smooth leather and hairy cowskin. His journals, his records, or his logs, or perhaps all three. A line here that said keeping cows made no sense in tsetse fly country. Another saying what should we do with our glorious King? And this:

  I fear I shall not be here for my children and I shall not be here soon. My head resides in the house of Olambula the goddess who protects all men of noble character. But am I noble?

  Here I was wishing I could slap a dead man. The old man had gone silent. But Fumanguru:

  Day of Abdula Dura

  So Ebekua the elder took me aside and said Fumanguru, I have news from the lands of sky and the chambers of the underworld that made me shiver. The gods have made peace, and so have spirits of nurture and plenty with devils and there is unity in all heavens. I said I do not believe this for it demands of the gods what they are not capable of. Look, the gods cannot end themselves, even the mighty Sagon, when he tried to take his own life only transformed it. For the gods there is nothing to discover, nothing new. Gods are without the gift of surprising themselves, which even we who crawl in the dirt have in abundance. What are our children but people who continue to surprise and disappoint us? Ebekua said to me, Basu I do not know by how this entered your head, but bid it farewell and let us never speak on such things again.