Twelve O'Clock Tales

by Felice Picano

  The woman’s physical health was fine. However, she told him that she was vexed and oppressed, anxious and discontent. Although she and the Postman had now passed more than two years together, he had made no marriage proposal, neither in person, nor by proxy. Nor did he seem about to do so. Indeed, she’d heard talk—much of it envious rumor, she suspected, but some shreds of it bound to be true—that Veato already had a wife in Porto de Alexandre. More than once he’d told her of his wish to return there, and on no occasion did he ever ask her to accompany him.

  The woman was proud. She would never ask him to marry her. She would never plead with him. But she was unable to live without the Postman, she told the doctor. She wanted him to be her husband all the time, not one day out of seven. She had borne him two male children. Together they were strong, healthy, handsome, and wealthy. It was time for them to take their place in the community. Yet the Postman felt none of the opprobrium that gnawed at her. He scoffed at her complaints, even jeered at them. The woman had already attempted to win him over with various love potions. The drinks had made him more amorous, but he’d always returned the next morning to the cocoa plantation. What she needed, she told the doctor, was a spirit-binding between them.

  The doctor’s attempts at marriage counseling fell upon deaf ears. He too had heard the various rumors about Veato having a life back on the coast. But the woman would not heed any of his possible explanations for the couple’s difficulties—she was too stubborn.

  Having failed at psychology, he switched into his role of spirit-mender.

  He sent the woman outside his hut to wait. He quaffed an herbal tea that caused him to enter into a light trance, and he meditated. When he called the woman inside again, he told her that the trouble between her and Veato was a result of their own spirits being at war. The Postman’s spirit—that of the great owl—understood that her guiding spirit was too strong. As strong as his own spirit. Furthermore, her own spirit—that of the lioness—was displeased with the woman, who wished to forsake her life as an independent female, provider for herself and her offspring, and instead to act like a woman whose spirit was that of an okapi or a warthog. Somehow or other, the woman must sever the link that existed between herself and the spirit that had so far intuitively guided her life. Sever it, and hope that a new and hopefully more domesticated spirit would enter her life. Once the Postman’s spirit recognized this change, his own strong sprit would no longer fight against marriage.

  As to how the woman might accomplish this breach, the doctor could not yet say. Her spirit was strong and knowledgeable and it would find the correct course.

  The woman paid him with the calf and went home. Many days after that she pondered how to do what had to be done. Sometimes she trembled at her own thoughts. The lioness was a formidable adversary, and although the woman knew in her heart that its spirit had indeed always accompanied her life, she also knew that she must begin to destroy that link.

  Lions are not common in the area, but after the rains come to the Etosha Pan, small prides of lions follow herds of plentiful game into what becomes a four-month-long paradise of grass and flowers. The male lions usually keep to the center of the Pan where game is thickest, for they are lazy creatures. But, especially as the wet season ends, lionesses with cubs are known to wander far beyond the grassiest area in search of prey. Over the years, many of the woman’s relatives had lost yearlings from their flocks to the hungry marauders. Within weeks, the current dry season would begin: The woman might begin to search for her spirit.

  The doctor had told her she would know what to do when the time arrived: All she need do was wait. She waited in a somewhat revived attitude, and as though the Postman already sensed her secret intention, he began to spend more time at her kraal. This fueled her desire for marriage all the more.

  The summer, the rainy season, passed over the Etosha Pan longer than in other years, and the woman still waited. Only after three separate complaints had been made public at the market day did she believe that her spirit-link was actually on the prowl. A lioness with two cubs, but no apparent mate, had attacked three times so far in three weeks. From one she’d taken a kid, from another a newborn calf, and from the farm of the woman’s youngest aunt, she’d taken a yearling calf. Unafraid of men, the lioness had been interrupted during this last kill by two boys tending the herd. They’d barely escaped with their lives. One boy’s shoulder bore claw marks where she’d swatted him away as he tried to save the calf.

  The woman of Ohopoho knew her waiting was over. Gathering up her two infants and a pure white kid from her flock, she went to visit this aunt.

  The family was surprised to see her but nevertheless feasted the woman and dandled the boy children. The aunt expected to hear news of the Postman’s marriage proposal: in vain. Equally hopeless was her curiosity about the milk-white kid. In her heart, the aunt had hoped her niece would leave it as a peace offering. This was one reason why she’d feted the woman so well.

  The woman of Ohopoho asked the two herd boys about the lioness that had attacked them. How large was it? How fast? The boys were eager to tell her that it was very large and very fast and very cunning. They also told her a strange fact: the lioness had a single handful of almost black mane across her nape, as though it were partly male and partly female. The animal was a demon, the mauled boy insisted. Because of this unexpected hank of mane, the men on her aunt’s farm referred to the beast sometimes as a he-lioness, but more frequently as a she-lion.

  They did not expect it to return. Believing it to be something more than a mere creature of the savanna, each farmer in the area expected to lose one of their herd to the she-lion before the drought set in for good. Their spring harvests had been abundant, and their herds had been considerably enriched by many new births. They thought that the world spirit had sent the she-lion to exact tribute from each of them. The next target would be either the woman’s first brother’s flock—his farm abutted her aunt’s—or the small coffee plantation owned by an elderly white woman.

  The next morning, the woman left her children in the care of her aunt. She took the kid and walked to a place between the old woman’s coffee trees and her brother’s pumpkin patch. There, she flattened the brush along a path in the savanna, littering it with kid dung. She tied the kid to a stout tree near a bush of sweet marjoram, so the animal would not attempt to get away. Then, without telling anyone what she had done, the woman went to stay the night at her brother’s house.

  Her brother had naturally heard of the woman’s visit to their aunt and he too welcomed her. He’d also heard that she was traveling with a milk-white kid, but when he asked about it, the woman casually mentioned that while she had napped, the kid had somehow gotten off its halter and away. Secretly, the brother believed the animal still roamed his land. He and his wives thought his sister’s lost kid might be compensation for the loss from their own flock they were certain would occur once the she-lion came to their property to feed.

  After a generous morning meal, the woman left her brother’s kraal and went out to find the kid. She found part of its carcass still attached by a line to the tree where she had left it. The woman shouted in joy, freed now, she believed, from the spirit-link to the she-lion. She returned to her young aunt’s farm, took up her infants, and went home without further incident. All the way home through the savanna, she sang.

  Less than a week later, the doctor was startled to be revisited by the woman of Ohopoho, more troubled than before. She reminded him of his words to her on the first visits. She told him of her recent actions. Why then, she wanted to know, had the she-lion’s spirit remained linked to hers? Indeed, it seemed linked even more closely than before. Hadn’t Veato only the day before visited her farm as usual and still not made a marriage proposal? Worse, hadn’t Veato told the woman of a new plan to leave his work at the cocoa plantation and to return for good to Porto de Alexandre? All the woman’s resolve had broken down then. She’d wept, she’d entreated him. When she beg
ged the Postman to remain with her and their children one more night, he’d grown taciturn and morose. Without answering her, he’d left the hut and the farm.

  The doctor had of course heard from others of the marauding she-lion, and he now cautioned the woman. If the creature’s spirit was stronger than her own, the sacrifice she’d made to it was probably useless. The woman became desperate. She reasoned that if the offering had merely bound her spirit closer to the she-lion, perhaps she must now do something to harm the she-lion, and that would break the link? Once again the doctor warned the woman, suggesting she meditate rather than rush headlong into deeds whose consequences neither of them could foresee. Unpersuaded by his prudence, she returned to her farm.

  The woman waited several days, awaiting news of a new attack by the lioness. On market day, Bl’oma dramatically narrated to anyone who would listen the story of his close escape from the she-lion’s claws.

  No sooner had she heard Bl’oma’s tale than the woman closed her market stall, although it was barely midday, and returned home. She took another kid from her flock and went toward Bl’oma’s small farm. Once again she tamped down the grass to make a path and once again she laid out dry pellets of the kid’s dung upon the path. Once more she tied the kid to a tree in the midst of sweet herbs for it to snack on. This time, however, rather than going away, she remained hidden a short distance away. Hours later, near sunset, the woman was awakened from a nap by the shrill bleating of the kid and the snarling of the she-lion at its kill. She set out on foot to cross the lioness’s path. She did this easily enough, and after a short walk in the dry savanna, she found the she-lion’s temporary den and inside it the two sleeping lion cubs.

  Although the woman hadn’t formulated a plan beforehand, she acted in the spot. Seizing one sleeping cub, she ran off with it before it could awaken its sibling or cry out to its mother. She strangled the cub and threw it onto the path she was certain the mother would cross returning to her den from her kill. When the woman carefully edged her way past the place where she’d earlier tied the kid, the still-feeding she-lion belched and rolled over to drowse. It would awaken soon and tear off a leg to carry back to its den. On its way it would encounter its dead cub, and the spirit-link with the woman would be broken.

  The Postman’s next visit occurred two days later. His frowns were replaced by smiles. He told the woman he had thought much about the course his life ought to take and he had decided he preferred her to his wife in Porto de Alexandre, and he preferred his life in Ohopoho to his life in the Angolan city. He would remain in Etosha with her, but he would continue to work for the plantation owner. The woman and her children would come live with him in his house on the grounds of the plantation. It wasn’t so far from her farm that she couldn’t go there every few days, if she needed to. He outlined the beauties and conveniences of the house, and he convinced the woman that her happiness with him would be complete. She even agreed with his stipulation that the two of them marry legally—as was required by the plantation owner—in the government building at Tsumeb.

  The last detail later provided much merriment to the warriors and relatives in the woman’s tribe when they heard of it: You see, the government building at Tsumeb not only houses the county court and administrative offices, but also the post office.

  A boy was sent to the woman’s brothers’ farms with the formal marriage proposal. Carelessly, if secretly relieved, the brothers gave their consent. The first brother, whose farm had been spared loss of livestock due to the woman’s sacrifice of a kid, offered to hold a complete tribal ceremony for the couple after the marriage in Tsumeb, acting just as though he himself had received the marriage proposal from Veato and had negotiated with Veato’s elder relations in the time-old manner. He set a date for the event.

  Overjoyed, the woman sent off the oldest boys in her employ to announce the festivities to her neighbors, aunts, sisters, and cousins. She then dressed in her best clothing to accompany Veato to Tsumeb for the white man’s ceremony, leaving her infant children in the care of her other two boy employees, with her niece to care for them arriving at nightfall.

  The woman had only been in Tsumeb twice before and she marveled at its roads and buildings, at its bank and automobiles and telephones. But she remained haughty in manner and restrained in her wonder, so that she cut a dignified figure at the Tsumeb courthouse. That’s where I met her. My partner and I had been using some out-buildings at the plantation where Veato worked as our base of operations and we’d befriended the groom. We were happy to be official witnesses to the marriage. Delighted too by the extreme beauty of the couple. The woman of Ohopoho, especially, was the handsomest of a handsome people, and she wore her silks and jewelry like a great princess.

  After the ceremony, we joined them at a marriage feast held in the town by one of Veato’s colleagues and we were favorably impressed by the woman’s apparent devotion to the plantation manager and by her ability to gulp down large quantities of the local beer with little outward effect. Many toasts of this liquor were made by all of us in several languages, to the couple’s health, their fertility, their wealth and conjugal happiness.

  Just as our little party was breaking up, a runner came from the plantation to tell Veato that a lion had been reported on the farm’s outskirts. It was unclear whether or not it was the marauding she-lion, but just to be certain, the owner had taken men to hunt it down. Veato was needed back at the main house immediately.

  We shook hands with Veato and watched the woman walk off with her husband. He later told us that the two of them returned to the plantation, he to the main house, the woman to his smaller house nearby. Evidently, however, the woman felt discomfort being alone, for in the middle of the night, she gathered up her few things and started off for her farm. Nor was Veato too surprised when he returned to his cottage just before sunrise to find his new wife gone. Not until the tribal ceremony, the “real marriage,” would her leaving him be construed as divorce or abandonment. Clearly the woman missed her infants and wanted to be with them.

  It’s a walk from that coffee plantation to her farm, and the woman probably arrived home near dawn. All must have seemed quiet, with that eerie, delicious silence of pre-sunrise Etosha just before the place erupts into birdcall cacophony.

  Given the spiral design of the local kraals, it would have been only after the woman had gotten well inside the enclosure that she would have noticed the door to the sleeping hut open. Given the scare about the lion, she probably first checked the animal pens and, counting, found that none of her flock was missing. When she saw the open door, she must have called into the sleeping hut, and getting no answer, concluded that the two boys she employed had run off during the night. We later found out that her niece had developed some ailment of the stomach and never made the trip at all.

  When the woman of Ohopoho entered, all she could have made out in the still dimness of the sleeping hut would have been the bloodied corpses of her two infants, little of them recognizable. She probably didn’t have much time to weep over them. The she-lion must have lain in wait. It leapt at her from behind.

  The doctor later told us that it surely was the same she-lion who’d been marauding the Etosha, given the strings of long dark hair found clutched in the woman’s death-grip fingers. He also told us that during the attack, the woman had found enough strength to somehow manage to turn around, whether to fight off the creature or not, he couldn’t say. Claw marks on her breasts and the angle of the lioness’s bite through the woman’s jugular clearly show that the two must have looked into each other’s eyes, if only for a few seconds.

  One can only wonder what the woman of Ohopoho thought when she faced herself in that instant.

  A Guest in the Heavens

  The Age of Silver-Iridium Poetry is vanished, alas. For if only a single one of those geniuses—biological, cyber, or any combination thereof—still existed (no matter what media was being worked in, that Poet would be most perfectly suited to perform the t
ask assigned. And not myself, your correspondent/journalist, concerning the impending catastrophe.

  In vain did I attempt to over-sway my superior in this matter, explaining that I hardly have the best training as a “Universal Astrophysical Witness.”

  The bulk of my just completed sixty-seven years of Education & Development, after all, is in the Textual Analysis of Obsolete Classic Physics: Sub-string to Intra-Molecular—with minors in Late Second Matriarchal Bella-Arth Nineteen-Tone Music and in Post-Pha’arg-Era Delphinid Water-Sand-Wind Sculpture.

  They argued back that I may lay claim to a full 47 percent of actual human biological genetics, as well as another 26.75 percent of Un-adapted 7th Generation of the Cloned-Cyber-Zoon known as P’al Syzygy. (The balance, like most births, naturally enough, was “newly generated material for maximum effectiveness and endurance.”)

  This, they asserted, was a high enough degree for me to fit best in observing the upheaval and demise of this tiny system believed by many (59.79033 percent as of the latest poll taken) as the ancient home-world to one of the current Three Species, that is to say Humanity.

  To say I have had nothing to do with this non-serious area of the old Orion Spur would be a tautology: Who has? After all, I first saw the light of day in the 182th century, following the Great Reconciliation of “Vir” and “Matri,” upon wonderful planet Chrysophase-D, in the Center-Worlds Sag Arm system of Narcissus Terce.

  But Janiculus-Chase-onV was insistent. And so here I am, upon this madcap adventure about to approach this nondescript system and its indifferent end.

  Oh, Chase-onV was diabolical enough to allow an official witness and observer from another not quite competing organization to ours, the Consumer’s Republic of 76ExxonConSeCo66 & Neo-Walmartia, to attend upon this long and rather tedious journey.