Beneath the Darkening Sky
Page 11
I clench my teeth, shutting my eyes. I force the tears back. I want to go home.
On the way to the barracks, I see Akot walking back from the Captain’s house. My heart burns with anger. Although we’re not meant to talk to our brothers, I step in his way.
‘You’re an animal!’ I yell.
He stops.
‘I saved your life,’ he replies in calm voice.
‘You’re a monster,’ I shout. ‘If Papa still lived —’
‘But he is dead.’
‘You will rot in hell.’
‘You should stop reading that bible with your friend. You’re just a baby, Obinna.’
I’m not even listening to him any more because my head expands and the world starts to spin. I breathe in and out, in and out, my chest rises and falls rapidly.
I’m still very weak, and when I walk it feels like a gentle breeze could knock me down, but I can’t see or think. In a leopard leap, I jump at him. He shoves at my chest and punches me in the head. The blow lands like thunder. I fall backwards and land in the dirt.
‘You better stay down,’ he says, pointing at me.
I get back up and charge at him again. I throw a couple of punches but he just keeps laughing. He grabs my arms and holds them together and then forces me to sit down. We sit on the hard ground, in silence.
After a while, he gets up and pulls me up with him. We walk separate ways for a short distance and then I hear footsteps running behind my back, charging at me. I begin to shrink away. I don’t want to be punched any more. Every muscle in my body screams. But instead of running I will just let him kill me. Better him than the Captain. So I stop and wait for him.
Akot throws himself at me and hugs me.
I don’t know what I’m feeling. It is the second time in his life he has hugged me. The first time was back in the village, when we were out in the field herding goats. Akot went up to some other boys who were carrying a dead guinea fowl. He told those boys that he wanted to see the dead bird and take some feathers, but after he got hold of it he yelled at me to run. He held on tight to the neck of the bird as we raced across the fields with the boys yelling after us. We ran past the sheep in the grazing field, jumping over the fence around the garden, and then made our way home. When Papa asked us where we found the bird, I told him Akot killed it with a stone. My brother was happy. I was sad that I’d lied to Papa, but Akot hugged me.
Now he holds me tight and squeezes. I feel my bruised elbow crack. I cry, but I don’t know if it’s pain or love or surprise or habit. He shushes me. I cry into his shirt and he pats my back like I’m a child. We break and then we hold hands, facing each other like girls do. He has a few little tears in his eyes too.
‘I’m a soldier,’ he says, ‘and I will have to go all the way.’
He hugs me again.
‘You better survive!’ he says.
‘I will try, but I keep getting into trouble.’
‘You’re smart. Be smart.’
He breaks away and then salutes me. I salute him back. He goes to his barracks and I go to mine. As I walk away I think maybe it would be easier if I still thought he hated me, if I was on my own. But Akot is going all the way. I don’t know what he means, but my heart bleeds.
Celebration to Ruin
On my second day news comes. Another town has been captured from the government forces. The revolutionary nation has grown. It’s big news, the whole camp cheers. It seems like such a great thing to me, though I don’t understand how we capture towns. All I know about is the capturing of people, and leaving the towns.
Even though I don’t understand, I know that a cheering camp is a good camp. If we lose a mission, or someone is captured, or a squad takes heavy losses, the officers work us extra hard. We can never run fast enough or shoot straight enough or suffer enough pain. ‘Sacrifices have been made for the cause,’ they’d say. ‘You don’t deserve to carry on their legacy,’ they’d shout. ‘You’re too weak to call yourself a soldier of the revolution,’ they’d yell. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Victories, on the other hand, mean festivities and brotherhood. Even the hospitality girls come out of their house and dance. The little gangs inside our big army embrace you and chant the slogans of the cause with you. There are no beatings, and if you’re late for something you just say you’ve been hearing about the battle. The captains put all their energy into yelling at the new kids, and leave those into their second day alone.
Today we are all gathered in the yard to salute the hero of the victory – the Captain.
The Great General struts out in his full uniform. A cheer goes up.
He stands front and centre before the assembled camp. The cheer is reborn. My stomach turns to stone. The Captain is being promoted. As a captain, he’s been the terror of my life. What will he be like as a commander, with even more power?
Every bruise that has turned blue then yellow, every scratch that has healed, every wound that has closed, every injury on my body at his hand cries out. And how will he celebrate his promotion? Will he sing and dance? Will we at last learn that he has a beautiful voice?
That is the fear rolling around my mind the next afternoon, when Priest and I are coming up from the stream. I carry my dummy rifle and Stella, Priest has his AK-47 and his bible. We’ve been reading and playing in an old crater, too far from camp to be a latrine. As the path back into camp comes in sight, we see the Captain – no, he’s the Commander now – leaning against a tree with one foot in the water, his trouser legs rolled up his calves. Smiling. He looks so peaceful, chewing his stick and listening to a little radio with one broken speaker.
He sees us and raises a hand, not beckoning or saluting, but waving, like we are school friends meeting up to watch the girls come in from drawing water. As we approach, we salute and congratulate him.
The Commander smiles and laughs. A laugh over a funny story from your childhood, a chuckle when you accomplish something you never believed you would – I still don’t believe he is capable of those. All I’ve ever heard is a sneering laugh, an animal basking in the joy of another’s pain.
‘Sit,’ he says gently, deeply friendly. Like an uncle. That makes me even more nervous. ‘Sit down, boys.’
‘Yes, sir,’ we say, and he laughs again, as if there’s something terribly old-fashioned about how we’re acting. Priest and I sit on a log next to the stream.
‘Well, my brave boys, you’ve heard the rumours?’
It takes me a second to focus on his words well enough to answer. ‘I saw your promotion, sir.’
He leans forward and squints at me. He’s going to hit me, I just know it. ‘Are you talking, Baboon’s Ass?’ A return to the familiar dark menace. ‘Because all I hear is . . .’ He makes three farting noises and bursts out laughing.
Priest laughs too, but not his real laugh. He sees I’m not laughing and slaps me on the back until I follow. It is terrifying, the Commander making jokes. If we join in we might offend him and get beaten. If we don’t he might suspect that we don’t really think his promotion is such a great thing and beat us.
‘No, no, no. The rumour I’m talking about is the party.’ The Commander wipes away tears from his eyes from laughing so hard. ‘Tonight! Tonight we celebrate the decrease of government power and the increase of . . . me.’
We laugh.
‘Ah,’ he says, glancing back in the direction of the camp. ‘Speaking of myself getting bigger . . .’ He winks as Christmas comes into view, carrying a tea tray which she sets next to him. She nods to me and Priest.
‘Sweetheart,’ the Commander says in a sugary voice. ‘Two more cups, if you please.’
She kisses his forehead and trots off again.
‘You know,’ the Commander begins, staring down the stream. ‘That poor girl was going to be trapped in an arranged marriage with a spineless bureaucrat. Then I swooped in, chopped him in half and took her away to the Promised Land.’
‘Lucky girl,’ Priest says.
‘Yes, sir,’ I say.
‘The future is ours, sir,’ Priest adds.
Christmas returns with two more cups and pours us some tea. We call it tea, anyway. Jungle tea. No milk, no sugar, no leaves. It’s just honey boiled in water. That’s jungle tea. I’ve never actually had it before and nearly spray my first sip back out because it’s so hot. Christmas and the Commander laugh at me. Even Priest chuckles. I hardly blame him.
The Commander keeps talking about everything being readied for the party tonight. He tells us how long it has been since the last one, and what a glorious night that had been. I let myself get caught up in the fantasy. I remember the great feasts of the village.
Lost in that hope I walk back up with Priest to his hut. Priest frowns. I ask him what he’s thinking.
‘ “There is an evil upon the earth,’ he says. ‘That it may happen unto righteous men according to the deeds of the wicked and that it may happen unto wicked men according to the deeds of the righteous.” ’
Two boys run between us carrying a banner that reads ‘Congratulations Commander’.
‘What does that mean?’ I ask, looking after them.
Priest keeps staring straight ahead. ‘Ecclesiastes. Chapter eight, verse fourteen.’
The party isn’t like the celebrations in the village, all feasts and flowing wine. It’s just a night to let loose, with no duties, with drugs and moonshine and the thought of being elsewhere. A field carved out of the jungle, long ago cleared of landmines, serves as the grazing grounds for the camp’s few goats. They wander the field, penned in by the thick trees and guarded by the half-men.
This night, the animals have been moved into a tight, makeshift pen. The half-men have even cleaned out the goat dung. With the last colour of sunset in the treetops, a whistle blows. Hundreds of soldiers and recruits run for the empty field. We move like a herd of zebras, we thunder and cheer, whooping and laughing. We run to celebrate by indulging ourselves the way we’re never allowed to on normal days. For one night we are free, happy children.
At some point in the revolution’s past, they commandeered a big speaker and a microphone. The speaker pops and one of the sides is open, but we have never seen such things and thrill when the sound hits our bones. The speaker has been hooked up to a car battery, and is set on the short platform they’ve built on one end of the field. We mill about, shouting, playing and wrestling. Priest takes the stage, marching with digging steps up the few stairs. People cheer.
With a smile, he sets the microphone on a chair at the level of his guitar. The cheer dies down, and he hits the strings and sends the entire field into a frenzy. I know the tune – one of the difficult songs that I’m not quite ready to learn. As Priest plays, his eyes are tightly shut, his body swings with the music. Screaming cheers and swinging heads and mad, rhythmless dancing. The lights are dim and at the edge of the crowd, so it’s midnight in the centre. The outlines of hands swing around me, edges of eye and tooth flash in the dark.
On the second song, Mouse leads her girls into the field. They dance much better than the boys. Mouse moves like a wave, her body rolling like she is made of wheels covered by skin. I watch Akidi, her eyes flickering in the twilight and the small lanterns near the stage. She’s more like a tree in the summer wind. I wonder where she is going to in her mind.
A few of the girls push forward and jump up next to Priest. Beyond the reach of the wild crowd, they swing their hips and run their hands across their skin. The shouting and howling gets louder. All the world is sweat and dark skin and whipping hair. I dance wildly, pushed by the crowd to the front, very near the officers’ table, off to the side of the stage. The commanders sit drinking beer and talking politics. To them, politics is little more than where to attack next, and how many boys to recruit and where to find girls who are brand-new. Their politics decides the fate of the rest of us.
The officers’ wives band together and start their own dance, away from the crowd but near enough to be seen. I see the dim outlines of their bodies, wrapped in the bright fabrics their husbands have acquired for them. I can’t see Christmas among them, but she will be there.
These women live well. They cook and clean like any other wife, but they eat better than anyone in the camp. All the goat steaks they want. When they join their husbands out in the villages, they just point to some fat goat and their dear hubby sends soldiers out to fetch it. It might be a family’s only animal, on the way to market to feed them for another season. Or a merchant’s prize goat for auction. It doesn’t matter. No one asks. The officer’s wife wants it, so it’s hers. Many eat better than their husbands, taking all the back meat while the men eat thigh and brisket. We dance because, for one night, our world is gone. They dance because the world is theirs.
I turn away from the dim swaying of the spoiled wives and watch the hospitality girls dance. I watch them for a long time.
When someone grabs my arm and pulls me towards the stage, where the crowd is thinner, I scream. Of course, no one notices, everyone is screaming or shouting or singing words made up for Priest’s song. Who has grabbed me? I look down and stop moving. It is Christmas. I yank my arm away.
‘Hey,’ she says, looking a little hurt. ‘I just want to dance.’
‘I can’t dance.’ Which had not been true ten minutes ago, but is true now, with fear crowding out every other thought.
‘Are you kidding?’ she says, hands on hips. ‘You play the guitar!’
‘Yes. That’s all.’
She grabs my hands and starts to move. ‘Just move to the rhythm. I know you can. That’s all a dance is.’
I am barely listening. My eyes are searching for the Commander. Even talking with Christmas is pretty much the most dangerous thing I can do, let alone dancing with her. I tear my hands away and stumble backwards, against the stage. Priest’s song has ended. The crowd is cheering and I feel Priest’s hand grabbing my arm, dragging me up into the lantern light, away from Christmas. Before I understand what’s happening, the guitar is in my hand.
Now I am on stage, safely behind the guitar. The entire camp stares at me, quietening down, trying to work out why Priest has stopped playing. How many are there? They stretch on into the darkness.
All I can see is their eyes, waiting for me.
‘Go ahead, Baboon,’ Priest says loudly. ‘Give the boys what they want.’
My thoughts have stopped. The stage, which had seemed so short when I looked up at it, now feels a hundred feet high as I look down.
‘What are you doing, Priest?’ I hear a voice call. ‘Are you just trying to embarrass him?’
They boo me. ‘Baboon doesn’t play guitar!’
‘Wait a minute,’ Priest replies. ‘Wait a minute. Patience. Give him a second.’
‘Get off the stage!’
My eyes scan the sneering crowd and I see Christmas. She doesn’t look angry that I escaped and she isn’t booing. She looks curious, wondering what will happen.
I am not a great guitar player and I have never performed for a real audience, just the Captain and Christmas, and the birds at home. But in this moment, the stage is the safest place I can be.
So I close my eyes, feel the smooth strings and strum.
Finally, I am back in my village. I walk the paths, pass the huts, smell the air. I am in the garden, playing on the wall that makes us such good neighbours, chasing away birds. I am with my goats, guarding them on the narrow road, keeping them out of the crop fields. I am with my mother, smelling the maize flour as it boils, dropping twigs in the cooking fire. I am in a field, playing hide-and-seek with Pina, dancing with a thousand bodies around me.
The drums throb
in my bones and the horns call to my blood. In the firelight of a hundred torches, bare feet pound the earth. A chant rises to the stars. Hands clap and fly, they cut the air and grab at the wind. An arm turns in a great circle. A waist rolls, flexing and folding back in on itself. A thigh rises, every sinew clear in a moment of tension, and then descends. A heel digs into grassy earth.
No map for these roads. This is my village. Everyone in the village knows each other, and I know every route through every street to and from every house. My feet and those ways are old friends. I know where every one of my sweet potatoes is in the garden and every tree with a beehive. The roads of the lions and the trails of the snakes, every line of the village and every tangle of the jungle, they’re all in my head. Even after so long, they are still right there. Still vibrant and clear. Every animal my family owned and all the best spots for sugarcane.
I remember the hut I shared with Akot. Just one big room with two bamboo beds and a cooking spot on the far right. In the evening, we’d see the smoke coiling in the air above our family’s corner of the village and we’d all come running. We’d sit in a big circle and eat with our hands and tell stories to pass the time.
I remember all the games we played. Climbing trees or hide-and-seek in the bushes. We sat by the watering hole and ate wild fruit. We ran around half naked and unashamed. Just children, running free through the trees and fields like gazelles. That I miss.
I remember everything I’ve forgotten.
My eyes snap open and my fingers buzz with the gentle pain of releasing the guitar strings, their soft tones still hang in the air. Everyone is looking at me, every soldier, every officer, every wife, every woman shared. Their eyes are fixed on me, but I can’t tell what they’re thinking. Christmas looks shocked. A sudden burst of adrenaline hits my blood. My breathing heaves. If I don’t move, perhaps I won’t wake up.
Everything is silent. One little boy shouts at the top of his lungs, ‘I love you, Mama!’ Not that his mother can hear. Priest claps and is joined, at first like dewdrops, then like rain and then a storm, one pair of hands at a time, by the entire field. People scream and hoot.