by Marlon James
NINE
But everybody knows of your mad King, inquisitor. I say better a mad king than a weak one, and better a weak king than a bad one. What is evil anyway, a sad soul infected with devils who take his will, or a man thinking that of all his mother’s children he loves himself the best? You wish to know how I’ve come by two eyes when I just said I lost one. Here I thought your ears would have been pricked by our glorious Kwash Dara entering the story.
Do you know Bunshi? She never lies, but her truth is as slippery as her skin, and she twists it, shapes it, and lines it up straight beside you, like a snake does when she decides it is you she should eat. To tell true, I did not believe that the King had an elder’s family murdered. I wanted to go back to my room and ask the innkeeper if she had ever heard of the Night of the Skulls, and what happened to Basu Fumanguru, but I still owed her rent and, as I said, she had way too many notions on how I could pay other than in coin.
And yet what Bunshi said about the King lined up with the little I knew, and heard. That he increased taxes on both the local and the foreign, on sorghum and millet and the transport of gold, tripled the tax on ivory, but also of the import of cotton, silk, glass, and instruments of science and mathematics. Even the horse lords he taxed for every sixth horse, and hay came at a cost. But it was the aieyori, the land tax, that made men grimace and women fret. Not because it would be high, for it always was. But because these northern kings have a way that never changes, where each decision tells the keen observer what decision will come next. A king used an aieyori for only one reason, and that is to pay for war. Things that seem like water and oil were in truth something that was a mix of the two. The King demanding a war tax, in truth a tax to pay for mercenaries, and his chief opponent, maybe even enemy, the one who could turn the will of the people against him, now dead. Killed three years ago and vanished perhaps from the books of men. Certainly no griot have sung of the Night of the Skulls.
You look at me as if I know the answer to the question you have yet to ask. Why would our King want war, especially when it is your own, the shit eater of the South, who last started it? A smarter man could answer that question. Listen to me now.
That morning, after Bunshi left, I set out on my own, to the northwest of the third wall. I did not tell the Leopard. When I was walking away, the sun was just rising, and I saw Fumeli sitting in the window. I neither knew nor cared if he saw me. In the northwest slept many elders, and I was looking for one I knew. Belekun the Big. These elders were fond of describing themselves as if locked out of their own joke. There was Adagagi the Wise, whose stupidity was profound, and Amaki the Slippery, but who knew what that meant? Belekun the Big stood so tall that he lowered his head before walking through every door, though to tell truth, the doors were high enough. His hair was white and grained, and stiff like a head plate, with small flowers he liked to wear on top. He came to me three years ago, saying, Tracker, I have a girl you must find for me. She has stolen much coin from the elders’ treasury, after we showed her kindness by taking her in one rainy night. I knew he lied, and not because it had not rained in Malakal for nearly a year. I knew of the elders’ ways with young girls before Bunshi told me. I found the girl in a hut near the Red Lake, and told her to move to one of the cities of the midlands with no allegiance to North or South, maybe Mitu or Dolingo, where the order of elders had no eyes in the street. Then I went back to Belekun the Big and told him that hyenas got to the girl, and vultures left only this bone, an ape’s leg bone I threw at him. He leapt out of the way like a dancing girl.
So. I remembered where he lived. He tried to hide that he was annoyed to see me, but I saw the change in his face, quick as a blink, before he smiled.
“Day has not yet decided what kind of day it seeks to be, but here is the Tracker, who has decided to come to my house. As it is, as it should be, as it—”
“Save the greeting for a more worthy guest, Belekun.”
“We will have manners, boy bitch. I have not yet decided if I should let you pass this door.”
“Good thing I won’t bother to wait,” I said, and walked past him.
“Your nose leads you to my house this morning, what a thing. Just another way you were always more like a dog than a man. Don’t sit your smelly self on my good rugs and rub your stinking skin on it and—milk a god’s nipple and what evil is that in your eye?”
“You talk too much, Belekun the Big.”
Belekun the Big was indeed large, with a massive waist and flabby thighs, but very thin calves. This too was known of him: Violence, the hint of it, the talk of it, even the slightest flash of rancor made him flush. He almost refused to pay me when I came back without a living girl, but did so when I grabbed those little balls through his robes and pressed my blade against them until he promised me triple. This made him a master of double-talk; my guess was it made him think himself not responsible for whatever nasty business he paid people to do. The King, it has been said, has no eye for riches, something the elders more than made up for. In Belekun’s welcome room he kept three chairs with backs that looked like thrones, cushions of every pattern and stripe, and rugs in all the colours of the rain serpent, with green walls covered in patterns and marks and columns that went all the way to the ceiling. Belekun dressed himself like his walls, in a dark green and shiny agbada outer robe with a white pattern on the chest that looked like a lion. He wore nothing underneath, for I smelled his ass sweat on the seat of his robes. He wore beaded sandals on his feet. Belekun threw himself down on some cushions and rugs, waking up a pink dust. He still did not invite me to sit. Laid out on a plate beside him were goat cheese and miracle berry, and a brass goblet.
“You truly are a hound now.”
He chuckled, then laughed, then laughed into a brutal cough.
“Have you had miracle berry before lime wine? It makes the whole thing so sweet, it is as if a flower virgin spurted in your mouth,” Belekun said.
“Tell me about your brass goblet. Not from Malakal?”
He licked his lips. Belekun the Big was a performer, and this show was for me.
“Of course not, little Tracker. Malakal went from stone to iron. No time for the fineries of brass. The chairs are from lands above the sand sea. And those drapes, only precious silks bought from eastern light traders. I am not confessing to you, but they cost me as much as two beautiful slave boys,” he said.
“Your beautiful boys who didn’t know they were slaves before you sold them.”
He frowned. Somebody once warned me about loving to grab fruit low to the ground. He wiped his hand on the robe. Shiny, but not silk, for were it silk he would have told me.
“I seek news of one of you, Basu Fumanguru,” I said.
“News of the elders be only for the gods. What be they to you that you should know? Fumanguru is—”
“Fumanguru is? I heard he was.”
“News of the elders be only for the gods.”
“Well you need to tell the gods he is dead, for news on the drum did not reach the sky. You, though, Belekun …”
“Who seeks to know of Fumanguru? Not you, I remember you as just a carrier.”
“I think you remember more than that, Belekun the Big,” I said, and brushed my bulge on the way to grabbing my bracelet.
“Who is it that will know of Fumanguru?”
“Relations near the city. It seems he has some. They will hear what became of him.”
“Oh? Family? Farmer folk?”
“Yes, they are folk.”
He looked up at me, his left eyebrow raised too high, goat cheese lodged in the corner of his mouth.
“Where is this family?”
“They are where they should be. Where they have always been.”
“Which is?”
“Surely you know, Belekun.”
“Farming lands are to the west, not Uwomowomowomowo, for there are too many bandits. Do they farm the slopes?”
“What is their livelihood to you, elder?”
<
br /> “I only ask so that we may send them tribute.”
“So he is dead.”
“I never said he was alive. I said he is. We are all is, in the plan of the gods, Tracker. Death is neither end nor beginning, nor is it even the first death. I forget which gods you believe in.”
“Because I don’t believe in any, elder. But I will send them your very best wishes. Meanwhile they wish for answers. Buried? Burned? Where is he and his family?”
“With the ancestors. We should all share their good fate. That is not what you wish to know. But yes, all of them, dead. Yes they are.”
He bit into some more cheese and some miracle fruit.
“This cheese and miracle fruit, Tracker, it is like sucking a goat’s teat and sweet spices come out.”
“All of them are dead? How did this happen, and why do people not know?”
“Blood plague, but the people do know. After all, it was Fumanguru who angered the Bisimbi in some way—he must have, yes he did, of course he did—and they cursed him with infectious disease. Oh we found the source, who was also already dead, but nobody goes near the house for fear of the spirits of disease—they walk on air, you know. Yes they do, of course they do. How could we have told the city that their beloved elder or anyone died of blood plague? Panic in the streets! Women knocking down and trampling their own babies just to get out of the city. No, no, no, it was the wisdom of the gods. Besides, no one else had contracted the plague.”
“Or the death, it seems.”
“It seems. But what is this? Elders have no obligation to speak of the fate of elders. Not even to family, not even to the King. We tell them of death only as a courtesy. A family should regard an elder as dead as soon as he joins the glorious brotherhood.”
“Maybe you, Big Belekun, but he had a wife and children. They all came to Kongor with him. Fled, I heard.”
“No story is so simple, Tracker.”
“Yes, every story is. No story resists me cutting it down to one line, or even one word.”
“I am lost. What are we talking about now?”
“Basu Fumanguru. He used to be a favorite of the King.”
“I would not know.”
“Until he angered the King.”
“I would not know. But it is foolish to anger the King.”
“I thought that was what elders do. Anger the King—I mean, defend the people. There are marks on the streets, in gold, arrows that point where the King shall stop. One lies outside your door.”
“Wind can blow a river off course.”
“Wind blows shit right back to the source. You and the King are friends now.”
“All are friends of the King. None are friends of the King. You might as well say you are friends with a god.”
“Fine, you are friendly with the King.”
“Why should any man be an enemy of the King?”
“Did I ever tell you of my curse, Big Belekun?”
“We have no friendship, you and I. We were never—”
“Blood is the root. Like it is with so many things, and we are talking about family.”
“My supper calls me.”
“Yes it does. Of course it does. Eat some cheese.”
“My servants—”
“Blood. My blood. Don’t ask me how it would get there but should I grab my hand”—I pulled my dagger—“and cut my wrist here, not enough that life runs out, but enough to fill my palm, and—”
He looked up at the ceiling, even before I could point in that direction.
“And yours is very high. But it is my curse. That is, if I throw my own blood up in the ceiling, it breeds black.”
“What does that mean, breed black?”
“Men from darkest darkness—at least, they look like men. The ceiling gets unruly and spawns them. They stand on the ceiling as if it is floor. You know when the roof sounds like it is cracking.”
“Roof—”
“What?”
“Nothing. I said nothing.”
Belekun choked on a berry. He gulped down lime wine and cleared his throat.
“This, this Omoluzu sounds like a tale your mother told you. Sometimes the monsters in your mind burst through your head skin at night. But they are still in your mind. Yes.”
“So you have never seen one?”
“There is no Omoluzu to be seen.”
“Strange. Strange, Belekun the Big. This whole thing is strange.”
I walked over to him; the knife, I put back in the sheath. He tried to roll himself up to a seat but fell back down harder on his elbow. He grimaced, trying to turn it into a smile.
“You looked up before I said ceiling. I never said Omoluzu, but you did.”
“Interesting talk always makes me forget my hunger. I just remembered I am hungry.” Belekun stretched his fat hand out to a cushion with a brass bell on top, and rang it three times.
“Bisimbi, you say?”
“Yes, those little devil bitches of the flowing waters. Maybe he went to the river on the wrong night for a divination and annoyed one or two, or three. They must have followed him home. And the rest, they say, is the rest.”
“Bisimbi. You are sure?”
“As sure as I am that you annoy me like a scratch on the inside of my asshole.”
“Because Bisimbi are lake spirits. They hate rivers; the flowing water confuses them, makes them drift too far when they fall asleep. And there’s no lake in Malakal or Kongor. Also this. The Omoluzu attacked his house. His youngest son—”
“Yes, that poor child. He was of age to bull-jump his way to a man.”
“Too young for a bull jump, is this not so?”
“A child of ten and five years is more than old enough.”
“The child was not long born.”
“Fumanguru has no child not long born. His last was ten and five years ago.”
“How many bodies were found?”
“Ten and one—”
“How many were family?”
“They found as many bodies as there should have been in that house.”
“How are you so certain?”
“Because I counted them.”
“Nine of the same blood?”
“Eight.”
“Of course. Eight.”
“And the servants all accounted for?”
“We wouldn’t want to still be paying for a corpse.”
He rang the bell hard. Five times.
“You seem unsettled, Belekun the Big. Here let me help you u—”
As I bent over to grab his arm, air zipped past the back of my neck twice. I dropped to the floor and looked up. The third spear shot through, quick as the first two, and pierced the wall beside the other two. Belekun tried to scramble away, his feet slipping, and I grabbed his right foot. He kicked me in the face and crawled across the floor. I jumped up to a squat as the first guard ran at me from an inner room. Hair in three plaits and red as his skirt, he charged at me with a dagger. I pulled my hatchet before he got twenty paces and flung it straight between his eyes. Two throwing daggers passed over him, and I ducked to the ground again as another guard charged me. Belekun was trying to crawl to his door, but violence made even his fingers stiff, and he could barely move, like a tired fish too long out of water. My eyes on Belekun, I let the other guard get close to me, and as he swung a large ax I rolled to miss, before it hit the ground and sparked little lightnings. He swung it over his head and brought it down again, almost chopping my foot. Like a devil, this man. I pushed myself up on my elbows and jumped back right as he swung the ax to my face. He swung it right above me again, but I pulled my second hatchet, ducked under his swing, and chopped into his left shin. He screamed and the ax fell. He went down hard. I grabbed his ax and swung a chop to his temple. My blink blocked blood before it splashed my eye.
Belekun the Big pulled himself up. Somehow he found a sword. Just holding it made him tremble.
“I give you this, Belekun, for I give charity to all elders. You ma
y deliver the first blow. First parry. Stab me. Chop if that is what the gods tell you,” I said. He blubbered something. I smelled piss.
Belekun trembled so hard his necklaces and bracelets all rattled.
“Raise your sword,” I said. Sweat ran from his forehead to his chins. He raised the sword and pointed it at me. It dipped from his hands and I stopped it with my foot, lifted it up until it pointed at me.
“I give you one more charity, Belekun the Big. I’ll fall on it for you.”
I threw myself on the sword. Belekun screamed. Then he looked at me, still in the air, his sword below me, both of us suspended as if we were the backsides of magnets.
“A sword cannot kill you?” he said.
“A sword cannot touch me,” I said. The sword flew out of his hand and I fell. Belekun rolled himself up and ran for the door, screaming, “Aesi, lord of hosts! Aesi, lord of hosts!”
I yanked a spear from the wall, took three steps, and threw it. The iron tip burst through his neck, shot through his mouth, and lodged in the door.
Six days after Leopard and I met at Kulikulo Inn, we were in the Uwomowomowomowo valley. No Bunshi, but the slaver was there trying to show the boy Fumeli how to ride a horse. He gripped the reins too tight, told the horse clashing messages, so of course she jumped up on two legs and threw him off. Three other horses stood off near a tree, grazing, all dressed in the floral cotton quilt saddles of the northern horse lords. Two horses, harnessed to a chariot, red with gold trim, stood waiting off in the distance, their tails whisking away flies. I had not seen a chariot since I tracked a pack of stolen horses far north of the sand sea. The horse threw Fumeli off again. I laughed out loud, hoping he heard. The Leopard saw me and changed, trotting off as I waved to him. I thought I would feel nothing when I saw Nyka coming out of the bush, Nsaka Ne Vampi beside him, both in long blue djellaba, dark as black skin in the night. His hair plaited tight into one braid, and curved out and up at the back like a horn. She covering her hair in a wrap. His bottom lip red and swollen, and a soiled white linen strip above his brow. The slaver kept one caravan, the prettiest one left behind, and from it came Sogolon the witch. She looked angry that sunlight was in her eyes, but that might have been how her face always looked.
