Children of the Moon

by Anthony De Sa

—

  Climbing out of the jungle’s shadow, we reach a tea plantation, the pickers in the distance, half their bodies lost in a green sea of leaves. Farther off, smoke billows from what must be their village. Warmth surges through my body; it reaches the tips of my fingers and my toes. There will be people and families and prayer. I allow myself the hope that Papa Gilberto is alive and may be waiting in the village for me. Mother Anke will be with him and she’ll run to me, her rough hands will draw me near.

  The rains come down hard and the soil turns to mud. It doesn’t take long before my boots sink in deep, releasing the sharp odour of soaked soil. If I drop any deeper I’m afraid I’ll disappear. The skin on my feet will pucker and rot. All I think of is the warm fire that will greet us in the centre of the village. There will be food in a large pot and they will welcome us because we are tired and hungry and we are fighting for them.

  I shiver, and Armando, by my side, wraps his arms around me to keep me warm. He nods, tells me he understands with his silent smile, and I lean into him. Every so often when he is sleeping, he kicks out in a panic, stabs out a word or two, and it is my turn to calm him.

  I mark my days with knots in my bootlaces. Three months on and there is no more room for knotting. I pull thread from the hems of my pants—one strand for each day. Forty knots and eighty-six threads of frayed cotton so far. I am beginning to let go of the world I came from. I cannot reclaim Mother Anke and Papa Gilberto.

  “You can never go back,” Armando whispers as if reading my thoughts. “Believe me,” he says.

  The day these men came and walked into the clearing has washed away like the rains erase the track of animals. Another night falls. I will hold my gun to my chest and keep moving.

  A dozen or so huts are scattered in the village. No villagers welcome us with food and drink. I see a prayer house next to a kraal. I shiver as a light wind shakes the thatched roofs. I cannot see any footprints and there are no livestock. The birds and the crickets have gone silent. I can hear my heart beating. My body tingles, every part of me alert. Behind me I sense danger, but I refuse to look back. Figures dash from behind a hut into the jungle. Macaco is the first to raise his gun and shoot. All the other men in our group scan the horizon and shoot blindly into the trees. Since being on the march I have yet to shoot. I raise my gun; my hands tremble. The shaking is coming from my insides.

  Macaco lifts his hand in the air. The men stop firing, but they do not lower their guns until the forest has grown quiet.

  “Why do you hide? You must help us in the fight!” Macaco yells out.

  I hear the low call of a woman’s voice: “Zabere. Zabere.” She rises from the bush near the trees. She has been shot in the leg. She leans against a tree and holds out her hand in Macaco’s direction. A frightened young girl, ten or eleven years old, appears. She looks at Macaco as if to ask permission to go to her mother. “Zabere!” The cry is shrill and urgent. The girl takes a few steps. Macaco catches her around the waist. She kicks, tries to reach back and grab hold of Macaco’s head or bandolier. His dirty hand muffles her screams. The woman limps out from the edge of the jungle.

  “Shoot her,” Macaco says to me, spit spraying from his mouth. “You are a soldier now. Shoot!”

  The woman looks straight at me, holds out her hands. Her eyes are large and white. “Give me my daughter.”

  “Shoot her!” Macaco yells. “Or I’ll kill them both!”

  The words ring in my ears, and I am taken back to my home at the mission, back to the clearing by the well and the old acacia tree. I glance at the girl struggling against Macaco’s hip. I raise my rifle to my shoulder to look through the rear sight. I aim. My arm burns with the weight of the gun. My finger feels for the trigger. The woman staggers, places one foot in front of the other before catching a branch to steady herself. I am only now aware that I am sobbing.

  “Shoot!”

  My fingertip touches the curve of the trigger.

  “Shoot! SHOOT!”

  I open my eyes and through the smoke’s haze the woman stands still, a bullet hole through her neck. There is so much blood.

  Zabere’s mouth will not close. Out of it comes a silent cry. Macaco suddenly drops her. He presses the sides of his head until his hands tremble. He disappears into the hut, and the girl scrambles to her feet and goes to her mother.

  I let my gun fall to the ground. The flesh of my palms and fingertips tingle. I remain on my spot in the clearing, the village around me going up in flames and smoke. The prayer house burns bright. The other men begin to sack the huts—stealing what little money they can find, clothes, food, radios, any other supplies they think might be useful, including rope and wire. Then they light the thatched roofs. The world is blurred by the smoke and embers that float and swirl in the air.

  Pó

  A FEW WEEKS BEFORE Serafim’s arrival, I had stopped getting up in the morning to greet the sun. I spent those hours rubbing the aches from my bones, closing my eyes to push back at the searing pain from open sores across my shoulders and neck. But Serafim’s visits have sent a charge of electricity coursing through my veins.

  Serafim opens his bag before sitting in his chair. I am happy to share with him today’s story, but I have only ever shared it with Amalia and I know I must recount the story in a very different way for him. All night I was anxious about sharing this part of my life. I kept playing it over in my head, trying to manage my recollections in a way that he would understand. He is a sensitive man and he will have questions.

  Serafim tucks a pencil above his ear and lights a cigarette. He leans forward. I take it as his eagerness to hear my first words.

  “I think I was eleven when the river overflowed, its thick brown waters drowning the bushes and vines that grew along its bank. I loved the river. I removed the big hat Simu made me wear under the sun, the shuka that covered my arms. I wiggled my toes in the rusty water and dug my feet into the mud.

  “I turned around to see if Lebo stood where I’d told him. I could see his shape, standing with my hat on top of his head, balancing on one foot, holding his spear as if tending the cattle. He was eight. His head was big, the elbows and knees like knots on a stick. When he smiled, and if I was close enough, I could see the gap between his front teeth. I would warn him to keep his mouth closed, not to giggle too much, or else lizards would enter between the gap and make a home. He liked the idea of it.

  “‘Do not move!’ I yelled to him, before closing my eyes and slipping into the river.

  “My head went under and a thousand thorns pricked at my skin. I broke the surface and floated on my back. No one taught me to swim. I learned by doing. Lebo’s name meant ‘born in the bush.’ He was my cousin, but Simu said that I was to treat him as my brother. The other children my age did not speak to me. Their parents told them that if they looked me in the eyes they would turn to dust that I would then smear over my face and body to make myself stronger.”

  “Did everyone believe this? Or did your aunt have any success dispelling the myth?”

  “She tried. And I had Lebo. Other than Simu, he was the only other person I loved, or who loved me more. He was gentle, but he was a Maasai, and he would have to learn.

  “Simu, whose name meant ‘the gentle one,’ told me she would never lie to me—that knowing things would give me my voice. She did not want me to grow angry. She told me bitterness would eat away at me like a death worm. Majuto, her husband, was angry when she brought me to live with them. He said I was a curse. Simu told him Enkai had decided I should live and that I was special. ‘I will raise my sister’s child as my own,’ she told Majuto, but he reminded her that she already had a child to look after. Koinet, my cousin, was older and more serious than me, and acted like he was much smarter too. But Simu persisted. The curse would be upon us if she left me to be eaten by animals. And Majuto listened.

  “When Koinet had seen fourteen long rains, he told me he was a warrior and I must do things for him or he would punish me.

>   “‘You are a boy,’ I said.

  “‘You are not my sister. You are nothing but a ghost,’ he replied.”

  Serafim stretches his writing hand. He lifts his eyeglasses over his head, traps his hair in their frames. “Do you mind if I tape the rest of your story?”

  I don’t answer him; I simply continue. “Coming up for air, I checked on Lebo. I knew I would not be allowed to watch over Lebo much longer. He would be taken away from me. ‘Boys must learn to herd cows and goats,’ Majuto was always saying. I never called Majuto father.

  “My mother died the morning I was born. My father was found soon after. The villagers said the same cattle intended to kill me had trampled him. Simu said something else. She said my father drank ‘the soup’ and demons visited his brain. He bashed his head with his rungu, his throwing club.

  “Lebo had not wanted to come to the river. He wanted to catch chameleons. He would spend hours moving them from one spot to the next—bush to bark to rock—to see them change colour until they disappeared. He would never hurt them. Once, his father saw this and got angry. Majuto held a stone and smashed the lizard. ‘A boy must hunt and kill.’”

  “And how did Majuto and your tribe define you?” Serafim asks.

  “I do not understand,” I say, even though I know exactly what he is asking.

  “If Lebo was defined by his ability to—”

  “They could not name something they did not understand. They were afraid of me.”

  Surprised by the tone of my voice, I continue my story so that perhaps it will answer this question for Serafim—a question I am certain he already knows the answer to.

  “It felt good to let go in the current and float. When done, I sat at the river’s edge and looked down. Red-brown mud covered my legs. I rubbed more up my arms, onto my shoulders. I smoothed it over the tops of my feet and covered my chest and belly. I dug deep into the river’s edge and brought the sludge up to my face. It was warm and smelled of eggs. I smeared it on my cheeks and forehead, across the bridge of my nose, onto my neck. I dredged two large handfuls and pressed them into my hair. I used my fingers to push the mud deep so that it touched my scalp. I leaned over the river and caught my reflection in the water. My skin was now the right colour.

  “I could see that I had travelled some distance from where I had entered the bloated river and where I last saw Lebo running after me.

  “‘Lebo!’ I called. He needed to know that I was safe. I waved so he could see me. ‘Lebo?’ I screened my eyes so that I could look for him. My heart beat fast. I kept calling his name, first walking then running back up the river’s bank. The mud was drying quickly and it stretched tight across my skin. I stopped running and listened. That was when I heard a familiar song. I moved in the sound’s direction and my stomach began to untwist. I saw him sitting under the shade of a tree, humming his lullaby, the one blessing song Simu would often sing to us. I quickened my pace until I reached him and dropped to the ground. ‘Lebo, you scared me.’ He sat hugging his knees in a nest of tall grass. When he turned to me his eyes got big. He crawled over to me and drew his thumb across my cheek. Then he pressed his finger to his lips and directed me to a large rock by the river’s edge. I took a few steps towards the rock and saw the flap of a large ear. An elephant calf lay on its side in the dirt near the river. I took a few more careful steps towards the calf and reached back and pointed at Lebo for him to stay. Growing up in the savannah, there was nothing more frightening than to stand between an elephant calf and its mother. I looked around, searching for signs of a herd. I could see Lebo rocking faster. I was ten steps away from the elephant calf when it rolled from its side and struggled to stand on its feet. The elephant raised its trunk in the air and blew.”

  Serafim exhales loudly.

  “My story does not interest you.”

  “No. It’s not that. It’s just that I’ve heard it said that an elephant will not leave its young’s side. They often remain for days or weeks after one of their own has died. I guess what I’m wondering is—”

  “If what I am telling you is true.”

  Serafim shifts in his chair.

  “The calf’s skin was the colour of angry clouds,” I say. “The hair on its tail was almost golden, the same colour as my hair. It struggled, but there was no sign of injury. Something about it drew me closer. I had never touched an elephant before. Its body was covered in fine hair. Its skin was tough, and it surprised me that a spear could pierce it. ‘You are lost,’ I whispered, looking into its eye.

  “Lebo’s lullaby grew louder. I mimicked his song. Lebo came and stood next to me. He was brave and touched the elephant’s head. I smiled at him. I went to the river’s edge and cupped water in my hands. By the time I reached the elephant there was little water left, only muddied hands. I wiped the mud on the elephant’s leg and the sound it made told me its skin was soothed. It was there for a mud bath, but the river-bank’s steep drop and the swift current must have frightened it. Or perhaps it had slipped into the river upstream and had been carried by the water to this place.

  “‘Lebo, go fill my hat with mud!’ He scampered off to the river’s edge and when he hobbled back we turned the hat over onto the elephant’s side. I returned for more mud and left Lebo to smooth the muck over the elephant’s head. “Abák,” he called her, as he spread the sludge over the animal and I swept my shuka across its body. Large patches of clay had flaked off my own skin, but some other parts had only cracked and still clung to me. Lebo laughed and called me hyena.

  “Thunder rumbled in the distance. The elephant stood up. Lebo crouched behind me and we looked at the elephant with only half of its side covered in mud. The other half, the part of its body that had been touching the ground, was the deep purple of distant mountains. The elephant blinked from its wet eye. Its eyelashes were as long as my fingers. I nestled my fingers in the creases of its trunk. I felt the quiver of its skin.”

  “And when you returned to the village?” Serafim says.

  “We had come as two but went home as three, with Abák following us. We did not walk on the worn path—the mud there swallowed our feet up to our ankles. We cut through higher ground. The rain pelted us and washed my skin of mud, cooled the fire that was burning underneath. We hadn’t collected any olive wood and Simu would be angry. Lebo had gathered a few damp twigs, but they were useless.

  “We climbed over the hill, hand in hand. My legs ached from the effort. Lebo let go and pressed his hands to his thighs to keep them from shaking. Both of us looked on in silence, catching our breath. I wasn’t quite sure how we would explain it. But I was hopeful Simu would take our elephant in the same way she had me.”

  “What you’re saying is that the elephant followed you back to the village?” Serafim says, shaking his head.

  Part of me knew he would be skeptical, and a piece of me wants to stop the interview and send him home. He exhales before raising his hand. He fiddles with some buttons on his digital recorder. He presses a button and I continue with my story.

  “On a clear day, when I climbed up the old baobab at the top of the hill, I could only make out the stone shape of the manyatta from that place. That day the rains blurred our village. I did not see the huts from that distance, though I knew there were twenty-seven of them inside the fence. We had far more cattle and goats and chickens than people. Only the cattle had separate pens within our village. All the other animals roamed freely. No lions or hyenas could ever get to us, or our livestock. We were protected by a fence of acacia branches. The angry thorns pointed out to ward off hungry animals.

  “As we came down the hill, people emerged and disappeared in a grey space that did not belong to water or land or sky. A group of children, who had been running in the rain, stopped chasing their goats. Shouts were heard, villagers assembled at the main gate.

  “‘You have brought danger here,’ Majuto said. He reached for his son’s hand and pulled him tight. The crowd let Simu through. Silver circles of metal dangle
d from her headband. She was noble, beautiful. Koinet stood by his mother. Lebo tore away from his father’s hand and hugged Simu. Tonkei, the village healer, was there as well. He shook his gourd and the stones tumbled out onto earth. Many of the villagers ran back behind the safety of the fence. They understood something that I had forgotten. Abák’s small toot was echoed by a much louder reply. A female elephant stood at the top of the ridge. I heard the villagers shouting and shuffling behind me. Simu lifted Lebo to her chest. She attempted to drag me back with her, behind the safety of our fence. When I brushed her away, Simu tried to slap Abák’s hindquarters to see if it would go, but Abák would not move. I could make out the sounds of men calling out to arm themselves with spears and to prepare. The elephant, ears flapping, trumpeting, charged down on us.

  “‘Run, Liloe!’ Simu called to me, her voice cutting through the yells and cries.

  “I stood by the young elephant’s side and placed my hand on its head. The men all crouched, ready to fling their spears. Before they could, I opened my mouth and began to sing the song Lebo had sung earlier that day, the same blessing song Simu would sing to me that same night. I sang it the best way I knew and my voice never faltered. May the children greet her knees. May she grow to be lucky. Be oretiti tree with the spread-out roots. May God bring you back. I did not take my eyes off the mother elephant. Abák obeyed and ran to its mother. The calf was received with a sniff and a caress, before the mother scolded it with a lash of her trunk. The slap swept Abák underneath its mother’s front legs, where it began to feed. That is when the mother elephant curled her trunk and bowed her head. Both elephants turned around and trod off up the hill to join their herd.”

  “I don’t want to talk about the elephant,” Serafim says. “I was wondering if we could go back to something you said earlier.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “I’m interested in the villagers’ reaction when you returned with Lebo and the elephant. You stood your ground.” He leans forward in his chair.