Black Leopard, Red Wolf

by Marlon James

He pressed his finger into the map, at a star between mountains right below the center.

  “Dolingo.”

  4

  WHITE SCIENCE AND BLACK MATH

  Se peto ndwabwe pat urfo.

  —

  EIGHTEEN

  We are in the great gourd of the world, where the God Mother holds everything in her hands, so that which is at the bottom of the round never falls away. And yet the world is also flat on paper, with lands that shape themselves like blots of blood seeping through linen, of uneven shape, that sometimes look like the skulls of ill-born men.

  I traced the rivers of the map until my finger took me to Ku, which lit nothing in me. I wondered about it, that once I wanted more than anything to be Ku, but now I don’t even remember why. My finger took me across the river to Gangatom, and as soon as I touched that symbol of their huts I heard a giggle from my memory. No, not a memory but that thing where I cannot tell what I remember from what I dream. The giggle had no sound, but was blue and smoky.

  The day was going, and we were setting to leave at night. I went to the other window. Outside, the prefect ran up to a mound, making himself black against the sunset. He pulled off a long djellaba I had never seen him wear, and stood on a rock in a loincloth. He bent down and took up two swords. He squeezed the handles in his hands, looked at one, then the other, rolled them around his fingers, until he had a firm grip. He raised his left hand, holding the sword in blocking position, dropped on one knee, and swung the right so swift it was if he was swinging light. He let the swing throw him up in the air, where he spun and sliced and landed on his left knee. He jumped up again and charged with the right and blocked with the left, sliced his left sword to the right side and right to left, stabbed both in the ground and flipped over, landing in a crouch like a cat. Then he went back up on the rock. He stopped and looked this way. I could see his chest heaving. He could not have seen me.

  The old man shuffled again. He took out a kora, larger than I thought it would look. The base a round, fat half of a gourd that he steadied between his legs. The great neck tall as a young boy, and strings to the right and to the left. He took it by the bulukalos, the two horns, and sat by the window. From his pocket he pulled what looked like a large silver tongue rimmed with earrings.

  “Great musicians from the midlands, they stick the nyenyemo to the bridge so the music leaps buildings and pierces through walls, but who needs house jumper and wall piercer in open sky?”

  He tossed the nyenyemo to the ground.

  Eleven strings to the left hand, ten strings to the right, he plucked on and it hummed deep into the floor. I have not been this close to music such as this in many years. Like a harp in the many notes rising at once, but not a harp. Like a lute, but not sharp with melody like a lute, and not so quiet.

  Outside Sogolon and the girl, she on a horse, the girl on the buffalo, rode out west. Footsteps shaking the floor above us meant the Ogo was moving around. I could feel the floor shake under him until I heard a door slam open. The roof, maybe. I went back to the maps. The old man built a rhythm with his right fingers and a melody with his left. He cleared his throat. His voice came out higher than when he spoke. High like a cried alarm, still higher, with the top of his tongue clicking the top of his mouth to make rhythm.

  I it is who is speaking

  I am a southern griot

  We now few we was once all

  Hide in dark I come out of

  The wilderness, I come out of

  The cave, I come out and see

  I was looking for

  A lover

  I want get

  A lover

  I did lose

  Another

  I want get

  Time make every man a widow

  And every woman too

  Inside him

  Black like him

  Black that suck through the hole in the world

  And the biggest hole in the world

  Be the hole of loneliness

  The man lose him soul give it ’way

  For he was looking for

  A lover

  He want get

  A lover

  He did lose

  Another

  He want get

  A man when he eat like glutton

  Look like a man when he starve

  Tell me can you tell one from two

  You glutting by day

  Then you starving by night, yeah

  Look at you, fooling you

  You want find

  A lover

  You want get

  A lover

  You did lose

  Another

  You did lose

  A lover

  You did lose

  A lover

  You did lose

  Another

  You did lose

  Then he plucked the strings and let the kora alone speak, and I left before he sang more. I ran outside because I was a man, and string and song should never affect me so. Outside, where nothing could suck all the air out of one place. And where I could say it was wind that made my eyes wet, truth it was wind. Out on the rock the prefect stood, wind running past him, whipping his hair. The kora was still playing, riding air, sending sadness all the way down the trail we came. I hated this place, I hated that music, and I hated this wind, and I hated thinking about mingi children, for what were children to me and what use was I to children? And that was not it, that was not it at all, for I never think of children, and they never think of me, but why would they forget me and why would I care that they forget? For what good it be that they remember and why did I remember, and why did I remember now? And I tried to stop it. I felt it coming up, and I said, No, I will not think of my brother who is dead, and my father who is dead and my father who was my grandfather, and why should anybody want anybody? Just have nothing, just need nothing. Fuck the gods of all things. And I wanted day to go and night to come, and day to come again new and cut off from everything before, like a shit stain on cotton that comes out in the wash. Mossi was still standing there. Still not looking at me.

  * * *

  —

  Sadogo, you go to sleep? The sun is not even done with the day.”

  He smiled. On the roof, he made a space, with rugs and rags and cloths, with several cushions for a pillow. “I witness only nightmares these few days,” he said. “Best I lie here and not punch a hole through a wall and bring the house down.” I nodded.

  “The nights grow cold in these lands, Ogo.”

  “The old man found me rugs and rags, besides I feel little of it. What do you think of Venin?”

  “Venin?”

  “The girl. She rides with Sogolon.”

  “I know who she is. I think we found the boy.”

  “What? Where is he? Your nose—”

  “Not through my nose. Not yet. There is much distance between us and him. Right now he is too far away for me to guess. They might be in Nigiki, on the way to Wakadishu.”

  “Both are half a moon away. And it will take days to get from one to the next. I may not be smart as Sogolon, but even I know.”

  “Who questions your mind, Ogo?”

  “Venin called me simple.”

  “That little girl who was never more proud when she was Zogbanu meat?”

  “She is different. Different from only three days ago. Before she never spoke, now she grunts like a jackal and is always sour. And she listens not to Sogolon. Have you seen it?”

  “No. And you are not simple.”

  I went over beside him and crouched down.

  “Deep in skill he is,” the Ogo said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The prefect. I watch him train. He is master of some art.”

  “Maste
r at arresting people and harassing beggars, yes.”

  “You do not like him.”

  “I have no feelings for him, like or dislike.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sadogo, I wish you to know what was spoken. The boy, he is with men not of this place, or any place of good men.”

  He looked at me, his eyebrows raised but his eyes blank.

  “Men who are not men, but not demons, though they may be monsters. One is the lightning bird.”

  “Ipundulu.”

  “You know him?”

  “He is not a real him,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “This Ipundulu, long years ago, he tried to cut my heart out. I worked for a woman in Kongor. Seven nights he spent, seven nights seducing her.”

  “So you have lived in Kongor. You never told me.”

  “It was ten and four days’ work. But Ipundulu. Those days plenty joy he found in taking slow. He had her every night, but this night I heard only sounds from him. When I walked in he already killed her, and was eating her heart. This is what he says—What a bigger meal you shall be—so he flies and jumps on me, and takes his claw and cuts through my skin. But my skin is thick, Tracker, his claw got stuck. I grab his neck. Squeeze, I did, until it started to crack. Indeed I would pop his head off, but his witch was outside the window. She threw a spell and it blinded me for ten and six blinks. Then she helped him escape. I saw him off in the sky, his wings white, his hanging neck loose, but still carrying her.”

  “He is no longer bound to that witch, or any witch. She left no heir, so now he is his own master.”

  “Tracker, this is no good thing. He would rip out a child’s throat and that was when he was under her. What will he do now?”

  “The boy is still alive.”

  “Not even I myself am that simple.”

  “If he is using the boy, then the boy is alive. You saw the ones with lightning blood. They could never hide it. And they have gone mad.”

  “You speak a true thing.”

  “There is more. He moves with others, four or five. We’ve heard accounts. All of them bloodsuckers, it seems they go to houses with many children. The boy knocks first, saying he ran away from monsters, and they let him in. Then deep in the night he lets them in to feed on everyone.”

  “But the boy is not one of them?”

  “No, but you know the Ipundulu, he must have bewitched the boy.”

  “We in these lands know of him bewitching girls, but never a boy. His head I will smash myself, before he can whip his wings. Those wings bring thunder, do you know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He flaps his wings and a storm blows with lightning and thunder, harder and wickeder than the wind Sogolon makes with magic.”

  “Then we shall clip his wings. I will tell you of the others later.”

  “And of wings, what of the man with black wings?”

  “The Aesi? He also seeks for the child, and he will not rest till he finds him. But he knows neither where we are, who has the boy, nor of the ten and nine doors, or he would have used them. This is simple. We save the child and hand him back to his mother, who lives in a mountain fortress.”

  “Why?”

  “She is the sister of the King.”

  “Confusing, is what this is.”

  “I make it simple.”

  “Like me?”

  “No. No, Sadogo. You are not simple. Listen to me, this is not about being simple. There are things I have been told that I have no words how to tell you, that is all. But know, this child is part of a bigger thing. A truly bigger thing, and when we find him, if we keep him safe, it will echo through all the kingdoms. But we must find him before these men do kill him. And we must find him before the Aesi, for he too will kill him.”

  “You said it was foolish to believe in magic boys. I remember.”

  “And I still believe it to be foolish.”

  I stood up and looked over the wall. The prefect was gone.

  “Sadogo, I like simple. I like knowing this is what I will eat, this is what I will earn, this is where I shall go, and this is who I shall fuck. And that is still how I choose to move in this world. But this boy. It is not even that I care so much as it is we are in so deep. Let us finish it.”

  “Is that all that drives you?”

  “Should there be more?”

  “I don’t know. But I am tired of my hands called to fight when I don’t know what to fight for. The Ogo is not the elephant, or the rhinoceros.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. There is the money. And there is something I suspect, that this child, this boy, has something to do with what is right in this world. And as much as I don’t care for this boy or even this world, yet still I move in it.”

  “You care for nothing in this world?”

  “No, I do not. Yes, I do. I do not know. My heart jumps and skips and plays with me. Shall I tell you something, dear Ogo?”

  He nodded.

  “I am no father and yet I have children. I have no child here, yet they are around me. And I know them less than I know you, but I see them in dreams and I miss them. There is one, a girl, I know she hates me, and it bothers me, because I see with her eyes and she is right.”

  “Children?”

  “They live with the Gangatom, one of the river tribes, at war with my own.”

  “You have this girl and others?”

  “Yes, others, one as tall as a giraffe.”

  “You have them live with the Gangatom, though you are Ku and they war with the Ku. The Ku will kill you.”

  “As you say it, yes.”

  “You make me think, this ‘man is simple’ is no bad thing.”

  I laughed.

  “You may be speaking truth there, dear Ogo.”

  “You said the boy might be in Nigiki or Wakadishu.”

  “They use the same doors we used to escape the Darklands, but they use them in reverse. We had word of an attack on a household at the foot of the Hills of Enchantment that beat even their sacred magics. Twenty and four days ago, almost a moon. They spend seven to eight days in one place, killing and feeding, which means they have used the door to Nigiki. From Nigiki they kill and go to Wakadishu.”

  “They’re almost there.”

  “They are there already. It takes five days to get to Wakadishu on foot, maybe six, and they are on foot. My guess is that no beast can stomach the filth of them, so no horses. If they are in Wakadishu they will only be there for another two days, maybe three. Then they walk to the next door, the one we came through on the way to Dolingo.”

  “Shall we not meet them there?”

  “They will go through the citadel. They will want to feed, and who can resist such noble stock as the Dolingon? Besides, Sadogo, our numbers are few. We might need help.”

  “So we cut them off?”

  “Yes, we cut them off.”

  He clapped his hands and it echoed across the sky. Then he spread them and I walked right to him as if to embrace. He flinched a little, not sure what I was doing. I wrapped my arms around him, my head in his armpit, and inhaled deep and long.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Trying to remember you,” I said.

  Sadogo then asked me if I thought the girl was pretty.

  “Venin, I told you her name,” he said.

  “She is pretty as girls go, I think, but her lips are too thin as is her hair, and she is only a little darker than the prefect, whose skin is hideous. Do you think her pretty?”

  “I feel like half of an Ogo. My mother died when she had me, which is fine for she would have lived to curse me and my birth. But I feel like not the Ogo in many things.”

  “You are right and you are true, dear Ogo. And yes she is pretty.”

&n
bsp; The rest of my words I left to my own head, which might have been a crude joke. He nodded and pressed his lips together, satisfied with my answer, and lowered his head on his rugs.

  Downstairs, I passed the room with the prefect. “It is yet early, but good night, Tracker,” he said as I walked by.

  “Night,” was all that came out of my mouth.

  I only then noticed the old man had stopped playing and was in the room, staring at darkness, maybe. I went down to the ground floor and waited for Sogolon.

  * * *

  —

  Your old man, he was singing.”

  The girl had come in first, huffing and panting. Sogolon grabbed her hand and the girl pushed her away and pinned her against the wall. I jumped up but the girl let go, growled, and started up the stairs. Sogolon closed the door.

  “Venin,” she said.

  The girl cursed back in that language I did not know. Sogolon replied in the same tongue. I knew that Sogolon tone: I am here to speak and you are here to listen. I imagined the girl wishing her a thousand fucks from a man covered in warts, or something just as vicious. She cursed all the way up two flights and slammed the door shut.

  “Nobody in this house know what night is for,” Sogolon said.

  “Fucking? Or working witch magic? Sleep is for the old gods and who follow him, Sogolon. Your old man was singing.”

  “A lie.”

  “No great stake in lying to you, old woman.”

  “But great sport, maybe. You was right there in the room when only today he refuse to sing. The songs stay inside him mouth and none come out since Kwash Netu was King.”

  “I know what I heard.”

  “He don’t sing in thirty years, maybe more, but he sing in front of you?”

  “Truth, his back was to me.”

  “A silent griot don’t just open him mouth.”

  “Maybe he was biding time for you to leave.”

  “Your sting already duller than a moon ago. Maybe somebody giving him something new to sing about.”

  “He was not singing about me.”

  “How you know that?”

  “Because I am nothing. Do you not agree?”