by Marlon James
“Justice could have come for your kidnapper.”
“Justice did come. When I learn a spell and the wife pregnancy devour her from the inside. Something else go up inside the man.”
“A spell.”
“My knife.”
“When you last pass through Kongor?”
“Amadu debt to me doubling just by me coming back.”
“When last, Sogolon?”
“I already tell you.”
Noise bounced up to the window, but it had order, and rhythm, beat and shuffle, the clap of sandals and boots, the trot of hooves on hard dirt, and people who oohed to other people’s aahs. I joined her by the window and looked out.
“Coming from all corners of the North and some from the South border. The border men wear a red scarf on the left arm. Do you see them?”
The street stretched behind the house, several floors below. Like most of Kongor, it was built of mud and stone, mortar to stop the rains from beating the walls away, though the side wall looked like the face of man who suffered pox. Six floors high, ten and two windows across, some with wood shutters, some open, some with a platform outside for plants but not people to stand, though children stood and sat on many. Indeed the whole house looked like a large honeycomb. Like all buildings in Kongor, this looked finished by hand. Smoothed by palms and fingers, measured by the old science of trusting the god of skill and creation to measure what is good weight and what is good height. Some of the windows were not in line, but up and down like a pattern, and some were taller than others, and not perfect in shape, but smooth, and done with either the care of a master or the crack of a master’s whip.
“This house belong to a man from the Nyembe quarter. He be in my debt for many things and many lives.”
I followed Sogolon’s eyes as she looked down from the window. In the winding snake of a street, men approached. Groups of three and four walking so in step it looked like marching. Coming from the east, men on white and black horses with red reins, the horses not covered head to tail like the stallions of Juba. Two men passed below us, side by side. The one closer to the street wore a helmet of lion hair, and a black coat trimmed in gold with splits to the sides, with a white robe underneath. He carried a longsword in his belt. The second man kept his head bald. A black shawl draped his shoulders, covering a loose black tunic and white trousers, and a shiny red sheath for a scimitar. Three men on horseback went back up the snake street, all three in black wraps to hide their faces, chain mail, black robes over legs in armour, with a lance in one hand and the bridle in the other.
“Whose army assembles?”
“No army. Not King’s men.”
“Mercenaries?”
“Yes.”
“Who? I spend little time in Kongor.”
“These be the warriors of the Seven Wings. Black garments on the outer, white on the inner, like their symbol the black sparrow hawk.”
“Why do they assemble? There is no war, or rumor of war.”
She looked away. “None in the Darklands,” she said.
Still looking at the mercenaries gathering, I said, “We came out of the forest.”
“The forest don’t lead into the city. The forest don’t even lead to Mitu.”
“There are doors, and there are doors, witch.”
“These sound like doors I know.”
“Wise woman, do you not know everything? What kind of door closes on itself and is no more?”
“One of the ten and nine doors. You talk of it in your sleep. I didn’t know of a door in the Darklands. You smell it out?”
“And now you have mirth too.”
“How you know there be a door in the Darklands?”
“I just knew.”
She whispered something.
“What?” I said.
“Sangoma. It must be the Sangoma’s craft on you why you can see even when you eyes blind. Nobody know how the ten and nine doors come to pass. Though old griots say each make by the gods. And even the elder of elders will look at you and say, Fool, nothing never go so in all the worlds above and below sky. Other people—”
“You speak of witches?”
“Other people will say that it is the roads of the gods when they travel this world. Step through one and you in Malakal. Step through one in the Darklands and look: You in Kongor. Step through another and you even in a South kingdom like Omororo, or out in the sea or mayhaps a kingdom not of this world. Some men spend till they gray just to find one door, and all you do is sniff one out.”
“Bibi was of Seven Wings,” I said.
“He was just an escort. You smelling a game that nobody playing.”
“Seven Wings works for whoever pays, but nobody pays more than our great King. And here they assemble outside this lookout.”
“You tracking small matters, Tracker. Leave the big things to the big people of the world.”
“If this is why I woke myself I will go back to sleep. How are the Leopard and the Ogo?”
“Gods give them good fortune, but they recover slow. Who is this mad monkey? He rape them?”
“Strange how I never thought to ask that. Maybe he was going to suck their souls, and lick their feelings.”
“Ba! Your sour mouth tire me out. The Ogo of course stand because he never fall.”
“That is my Ogo. Does the girl still ride with you?”
“Yes. Two days I slap out this foolishness about running back to Zogbanu.”
“She is dead weight. Leave her in this city.”
“What a day when a man tell me what to do. Will you not speak of the child?”
“Who?”
“The reason we come to Kongor.”
“Oh. In these twenty and nine days gone, what news have you of the house?”
“We did not go.”
This “we” I left for another day. “I do not believe you,” I said.
“What a day when I care what a man believe.”
“What a day when these days come. But I am tired, and the Darklands took my fight. Did you go to the house or no?”
“I bring peace to a girl that monsters breed to make breakfast of her flesh. Then I wait for usefulness to return to you. The boy not more missing.”
“Then we should go.”
“Soon.”
I wanted to say that nobody seemed too earnest in completing our mission and finding this boy, nobody meaning her, but she went to the doorway and I noticed there was no door, only a curtain.
“Who owns this house? Is it an inn? A tavern?”
“I say again. A man with too much money, and too many favors he owes me. He meet us soon. Now he running around like a headless chicken, trying to build another room, or floor, or window, or cage.”
She was already beyond the curtain when she looked back.
“This day is already given. And Kongor is a different city at night. See to your cat and giant,” she said. Only then did my head remember that she was saying she was over three hundred years old. Nothing said old more than an old woman thinking she was even older.
The Ogo sat on the floor, trying on his iron gloves, punching his left palm so hard that little lightning sparked in his hands. It was all over his face, blankness. Then as he punched his hand, he worked up into a rage that made him snort through his teeth. Then he went blank again. Standing in front of him as he sat there was the first time our eyes met on the same line. Sun was running from noon, but inside his room dimmed to evening. Things were stored in this room as well. I smelled kola nuts, civet musk, lead, and two or three floors below, dried fish.
“Sadogo, you sit there like a soldier itching for battle.”
“I itch to kill,” he said, and struck his palm again.
“This might happen soon.”
“When do we go back to the Darklands?”
“When? Never, good Ogo. The Leopard you should have never followed.”
“We would have slept there still, if not for you.”
“Or be meat for
the mad monkey.”
Sadogo roared lion like, and punched the floor. The room shook.
“I shall rip his tail from his shit-smeared ass, and watch him eat it.”
I touched his shoulder. He flinched for a blink, then rested.
“Of course. Of course. As you say, it will be done, Ogo. Will you still go with us? To the house. To find the boy, wherever it takes us?”
“Yes of course, why would I not?”
“The Darklands leave many changed.”
“I am changed. Do you see that? That on the wall.”
He pointed to a blade, long and thick, iron brown with rust. The grip wide for two hands, a thick straight blade right down to halfway, where it curved to a crescent like a bitten-out moon.
“Do you know it?” Sadogo said.
“Never seen the like.”
“Ngombe ngulu. First I grab the slave. The master bred red slaves. One ran away. The gods demanded a sacrifice. He struck the master. So I set him before the execution floor. Three bamboo stalks sticking out of the ground. I push him down, force him to sit up, lean him against the stalks, and tie both hands back. Two small stalks, I drive in right by the feet and bind the ankles. Two small stalks I drive in right by the knees, and tie the knees to them. He’s stiff, putting on bravery, but he’s not brave. I take a branch from the tree and strip it of leaves and pull it down so it bends tight like a bow. The branch is angry, it wishes to be straight again not bound, but bind it I do, bind it to grass rope, then I tie it around the head of the slave. My ngulu is sharp, so sharp that looking at it will make your eyes bleed. My blade catches sunlight and flashes like lightning. Now the slave starts to scream. Now he calls for ancestors. Now he begs. They all beg, do you know? Men all talk of how they rejoice the day of meeting the ancestors but nobody has joy when it comes, only crying and pissing and shitting. I swing back my arm with the sword, then I scream and I swing and I chop off the head right at the neck, and the branch breaks free with the head and flings it away. And my master is happy. I killed one hundred, seventy and one, including several chiefs and lords. And some of them were women too.”
“Why did you tell me this?”
“I do not know. The bush. Something about the bush.”
Then I saw the Leopard. In his room, lying on rags bunched up as if he’d slept as a cat. Fumeli not there, or gone, or whatever. I had not thought of him, had not, I just realized, even asked Sogolon of him. The Leopard tried to turn behind him, craning his neck.
“There are holes in the ground, baked clay and hollow like bamboos.”
“Leopard.”
“They take your piss and shit away when you pour water from the urn in the hole after.”
“Kongor is unlike other cities in what she does with piss and shit. And bodies as—”
“Who put us in this place?” he said, pulling himself up to his elbows, frowning at being watched.
“Take that up with Sogolon. This lord seems to owe her many favors.”
“I wish to leave.”
“As you wish.”
“Tonight.”
“We cannot go tonight.”
“I never said we.”
“Leave? You can’t even stand. Change form and a half-blind bowman could kill you. Find your strength, then go where you wish. I will tell Sogolon—”
“Don’t speak for me, Tracker.”
“Then let Fumeli speak for you. What does he not do for you?”
“Speak again and—”
“And what, Leopard? What poison has come over you? Everybody sees you and that little bitch of a boy.”
This made him angrier. He rose from the rugs but stumbled.
“What makes you laugh so? Nothing is funny.”
“Nobody loves no one. Remember? Verse I learned from you. I have heard of warriors, mystics, eunuchs, princes, chiefs and their sons, all wither from futile love for the Leopard. And who is it, that finally clips your balls? This little clump, who wouldn’t be worth saving if he was the only man on the boat. Hark, everyone in this house. Hark how your bitch turns the great Leopard into an alley cat.”
“And yet watch this alley cat find the boy on his own.”
“Another great plan. How went the last one? And yet it is I, the man whose love you have forgotten, who rode in to save you. And the little bitch. And lost all our horses doing so. Maybe I saved the wrong animal.”
“You want thanks?”
“I have truth. Join Nyka and his woman, or make trails with your bitch.”
“Call him that one more … By the gods I will …”
“Find your strength and go. Or stay. Your malcontent is no mystery to me anymore. You are always the Leopard. But maybe you stay out of bushes you don’t know. I won’t be there to save you next time.”
Fumeli stood in the doorway. He carried bow and quiver and straightened, trying to puff his chest out. Whether to laugh or slap him I could not decide. So I passed him close enough to knock him out of the way. The Ogudu was still in him, a weak trace, but he stumbled and fell. He yelled for Kwesi and the Leopard jumped to a crouch and wobbled.
“Deal with him,” Fumeli said.
“Yes, deal with me, Leopard.”
I scowled at the boy.
“Either he’s marking the room as his, or he can’t even rise to go piss somewhere else,” I said.
In the hallway the girl walked up to me. She had found white clay and covered her body in patterns underneath a red-and-yellow sheath. A headdress hung on her head, little ropes with cowries, and iron loops, with two ivory tusks down each temple. Something wicked came upon me to say something about man- and woman-eaters. But she was just looking through clothes and tusks and scents to find herself. The thought was a wild animal.
Night in Kongor. This city with a most brazen love for war and blood, where people gathered to see man and animal rip flesh, still shuddered to see anyone bare it. Some say this was the influence of the East, but Kongor was far west and these people believed in nothing. Except modesty, a new thing, a thing that I hope never reached the inner kingdoms, or at least the Ku and Gangatom. I grabbed a long strip of Ukuru cloth lying in a bundle on the floor of my room, wrapped it around my waist and then over my shoulder, like a woman’s pagne, then tied it with a belt. I lost my hatchets in the Darklands, but still had my knives, and strapped them to each thigh. Nobody saw me leave, so nobody knew where I was going.
The city, almost surrounded by the great river, never needed a wall, only sentries along the banks. Along with fishermen, trade ships, and cargo boats coming from north and south to the imperial docks. Leaving by anything that will take them. During the wet season, in the middle of the year, rain floods the river so high that Kongor becomes an island for four moons. The city rises higher than the river, but some roads in the South were so low that you traveled by foot in the dry season and by boat in the wet. They ate the crocodile here, something that would make the Ku scream in fear and Gangatom spit in disgust.
Down the steps and out the building I looked at this lord’s house. The children had left and nobody stood by any window. None of the Seven Wings gathered in the street. He lived in the south of the Nyembe quarter. The matanti winds flew up and rolled through the roads, leaving a dusty haze all over the city.
I took the cloth on my shoulder and wrapped it over my head, like a hood.
Kongor split itself in four. Quarters not equal in size and divided by professions and livelihood and wealth. Northwest lay the wide, empty streets of the nobles of the Tarobe quarter. Beside them, for one served the other, was the Nyembe quarter—artists and artisans who made crafts for the homes of the nobles—all that was beautiful. And metalworkers, leatherworkers, and blacksmiths who made all that was useful. Southwest was the Gallunkobe/Matyube quarter, free people and slaves both laboring for masters. Southwest was the Nimbe quarter, with streets for administrators, scribes, and keepers of logs and records, with the great hall of records standing tall in the center.
I went
down a wide street. A butcher shop on the left tried to trap me with carcass smells, antelope, goat, and lamb, but dead flesh all smells the same. A woman went into her house when she saw me approach and yelled at her son to come inside right now lest she call his father to fetch him. He stared at me as I passed, then ran in. I forgot that even the poorest house in Kongor had two floors. Packed close together, leaving a sense of space for the courtyard behind their walls. Also this, each house had its own entrance door, made by the finest artisans your pocket could afford, with two large columns and a cover to shield from sun. The two columns reached past the ground floor all the way to the roof, with a little window right above the entrance canopy. A line of five or ten toron sticks jutting out of the wall above that. Turrets on the roof like a line of arrows. It was not yet night, not even late evening, but barely anyone walked the streets. And yet music and noise came from everywhere.
“Where go the people?” I asked a boy, who did not stop walking.
“Bingingun.”
“Oh?”
“To the masquerade,” he said, shaking his head at speaking to such an imbecile. The curse of all so young. I didn’t ask him where, since he walked, skipped, then ran south.
This too about Kongor. Everything will be as you last left it.
The temple to one of the supreme gods was still there, though now dark and empty, with the doors open as if still hoping someone would come in. The ornaments along the roof in bronze, the python, the white snail, the woodpecker—robbers stole long ago. Not even ten paces from the temple was another place.
“Come, pretty boy boy, how you get it up? How I goin’ know which one you like when you wearing some grandmother death shroud?” she said as men lit wall torches behind her.
Still tall as the doorway, still fat from crocodile meat and ugali porridge. Still wearing a long wrap around her waist to squeeze her breasts to almost pop out, but showing her meaty shoulders and back. Still leaving her head bald and bare, a thing not liked by the Kongori. Still smelling like expensive incense because “Us girls must have one thing out of the reach of other girls,” she said every time I told her she smelled like she just bathed in a goddess’s river.
“I can just tell you who I want, Miss Wadada.”
