by Marlon James
“Oh. No, boy boy boy. Prefer the other way when your big Tracker just stiff up and point up to the one he like. I don’t know why you in that curtain. I feeling all the offense you should be feeling for yourself.”
Miss Wadada’s House of Pleasurable Goods and Services was not for people who were not themselves. Illusion was for who smoked opium. She let a shape-shifter fuck one of her girls as a lion once, until he swatted her in a fit of ecstasy and snapped her neck. I left my curtain on the floor and went upstairs with the one she said came from the land of the eastern light, which means an emissary raped a girl and left her with child to go back to his wife and concubines. The girl left the child with Miss Wadada, who looked at his skin and bathed him every quartermoon in cream and sheep butter. She forbade him to do any work so that his muscles would stay thin, his cheeks high and hips much wider than his waist. Miss Wadada made him the most exquisite of all creatures, who had all the best stories of all the worst people, but preferred that you fucked each tale out and paid him a fee on top of Miss Wadada’s for being the best information hound in all Kongor.
“Look, it is the wolf eye,” he said. “No man has made a woman of me since you.”
His room smelled like the room I just left. I never asked if saying “him” brought offense since I only called him Ekoiye or “you.”
“I can’t tell if you live with a civet or have its musk all over you.”
Ekoiye rolled his eyes and laughed. “We must have nice things, man-wolf. Besides, what man wants to enter a room where he can smell the man who just left?”
He laughed again. I liked that he only needed himself to laugh at his jokes. I saw it in people who had to endure other people. With Ekoiye it mattered not if you were a fine or a foul lover, or if you were a man of much or little sport. He took pleasure for himself first. Whether you shared in it was your business. He crowded his little room with terra-cotta statues, even more than I remember last. And this, a cage with a black pigeon I mistook for a crow.
“I change every man into one before he leaves this room,” he said, and pulled a comb from his hair. Curly hair fell down like little snakes.
“Indeed. Your shows deserve an audience. Or at least a griot.”
“Man-wolf, don’t you know the verses about me?”
He pointed to a stool with a back like a throne. A birthing chair, I remembered.
“Where is your friend? What name did they give him, Nayko?”
“Nyka.”
“I miss him. He was a man of great light and noise.”
“Noise?”
“He made the greatest noise, something like a loud cat’s purr, or the coo of a rameron pigeon, when I put him in my mouth.”
His hand grabbed me as he said that.
“You little liar. Nyka was never one for the company of boys.”
“Good wolf, you know I can be whatever you want me, even the girl you’ve never had … under certain wine and in a certain light.”
His robes fell down all around him, and he stepped out of the pile on the floor. He straddled me and winced as he lowered himself and I rose up inside him. This is how he always played. Sinking down on me until his ass sat on my thighs, then, without climbing off, turning around so that his back was to me. I told him once that only men who tell lies to their wives need to fuck from behind; he still did it this way. He asked what he always asked: Do you want me to fuck you? And I said what I always said: Yes. Miss Wadada always asked if he’d injured me when I left.
“Fuck the gods,” I said in a hiss, and curled my toes so tight they cracked like knuckles.
I pushed him down on the floor and jumped on top. After, with me out of him, but him straddled on top of me, he said, “You follow the eastern light now?”
“No.”
“Ghost walkers of the West?”
“Ekoiye, the questions you ask.”
“Because, Tracker, all men under the sky, men who love to think they are different from each other, perhaps to make sense of when they war, are all the same. They think whatever troubles them here”—he pointed to his head—“they can fuck it out into me. This is foreign thinking, that I did not expect from a man from these lands. Maybe you wander too much. You’ll be praying to only one god next.”
“I have nothing in my head to fuck out.”
“Then what does the Tracker want?”
“Who needs more after this?” I said, and slapped his ass. The move felt hollow and we both knew so. He laughed, then leaned until his back was on my chest. I wrapped my arms around him. I dripped sweat. Ekoiye was ever dry.
“Tracker, I lied. Men from the eastern light never fuck anything out. They always want to get sticked in the ass. So again, what does the Tracker want?”
“I seek old news.”
“How old?”
“Three years and many moons.”
“Three years, three moons, three blinks are all flat to me.”
“I ask about one of Kwash Dara’s elders. Basu Fumanguru is his name.”
Ekoiye rolled away from me, stood up, and went to the birthing chair. He stared at me.
“Everyone knows of Basu Fumanguru.”
“What does everyone say?”
“Nothing. I said they knew, not that they would talk. They should have burned that house down, to kill the plague, but none will step near it. It is a—”
“You think the house fell to disease.”
“Or a curse from a river demon.”
“I see. How powerful is he, the man who pays you to say such?”
He laughed. “You paid Miss Wadada to fuck.”
“And I pay you far above your sum to talk. You saw my pouch and you know what is in it. Now talk.”
He stared at me again, then. He looked around, as if more were in the room, then wrapped himself in a sheet. “Come with me.”
He pushed away a pile of chests and opened a hatch door no higher than my thigh.
“You will not be coming back to this room,” he said.
He crawled in first. Dark and hot, crumbly with dust, then hard from wood, then harder from mud and plaster, always too black to see. Hear much I did. From every room came men shouting and fucking in all ways and manners, but girls and boys who all moaned the same, saying fuck me with your big, your hard, your Ninki Nanka battering ram, and on and on. Training from Miss Wadada. Twice the idea ran through me that this was a trap, Ekoiye coming out first being a sign to kill the man who crawls out after. There might have been a man with a ngulu sword waiting for my neck, though Ekoiye did not hesitate. For we crawled even longer, long enough to make me wonder who built this, who traveled this long for Ekoiye’s bed. Ahead of him, the dark twinkled with stars.
“Where are you taking us?” I asked.
“To your executioner,” he said, then laughed. We came to a flight of steps, which led to the roof of a place I did not know. No smell of civet, no smell of Miss Wadada, no scent or stench of the whorehouse.
“No, there is no smell of Miss Wadada,” he said.
“Are you hearing my words unsaid?”
“If you think them so loud, Tracker.”
“Is this how you know the secrets of men?”
“What I hear is no secret. All the girls can hear them too.”
Laughter burst out of me. Who else would be expert at reading the minds of men?
“You are on the roof of a gold merchant from the Nyembe quarter.”
“I smell Miss Wadada’s perfume south of us.”
Ekoiye nodded. “Some say it was murder, some say it was monsters.”
“Who? What do you speak of now?”
“What happened to your friend, Basu Fumanguru. Have you seen the men who gather now, in our city?”
“The Seven Wings.”
“Yes, that is what they are called. Men in black. The woman who lives beside Fumanguru said that she saw many men in black in Fumanguru’s house. Through the window she saw them.”
“Seven Wings are mercenaries, not as
sassins. Not like them to kill just one man and his family. Not even in war.”
“I didn’t call them Seven Wings, she did. Maybe they were demons.”
“Omoluzu.”
“Who?”
“Omoluzu.”
“I do not know him.”
He went over to the edge of the roof and I followed him. We were three floors up. A man rolled in the road, palm wine smell coming of his skin. Other than him, the street was empty.
“Such a swarm of men, who want this man dead. Some say Seven Wings, some say demons, some say the chieftain army.”
“Because they share a love for black?”
“You the one seeking answers, wolf. This is known. Somebody entered the house of Basu Fumanguru and killed everyone. Nobody see no bodies and there were no burial rites. Imagine an elder of the city of Kongor dead with no tribute, no funeral, no procession of lords with a man of royal blood leading it, nobody even declaring him dead. Meanwhile thornbush sprung wild around the house overnight.”
“What do your elders say?”
“None come to me. Do you know he was killed on the Night of the Skulls?”
“I do not believe you.”
“That it was the Night of the Skulls?”
“That none of those chatty child-fuckers have seen you since.”
“I think the Seven Wings assemble for the King.”
“I think you dance away from the question.”
“Not how you think.”
“Lowly people all seem to know the ways of kings these days.”
He grinned. “I know this, though. People visit that house, including one or two of the elders. And maybe one or two Seven Wings. One not from here, they call him Belekun the Big, because that is how men around here joke. He was one who could not keep any of his holes shut, his mouth the worst. He came here with another elder.”
“How do you remember after three years?”
“It was last year. As they both took turns fucking a deaf girl, Miss Wadada heard also. Them saying that they need to find it. They need to find it now, or it will be the execution sword for them.”
“Find what?”
“Basu Fumanguru wrote a long writ against the King, they said.”
“Where is this writ?”
“People keep breaking in his house and not finding anything, so not there mayhaps?”
“You think the King killed him over a writ?”
“I think nothing. The King is coming here. His chancellor is in the city.”
“His chancellor visits Miss Wadada?”
“No, stupid Tracker. I have seen him, though. Kinglike but not the King, skin blacker than you and hair red like a new wound.”
“Maybe he will come sample your famous services.”
“Too pious. Holiness itself. As soon as I saw him I forgot when I first saw him and it was as if I was always seeing him. Do I sound like the fool?”
A dark man with red hair. A dark man with red hair.
“Tracker, you look gone.”
“I am here.”
“As I say, nobody can think of a time when he was not chancellor, but nobody can remember when he became so, or what he was before.”
“He was not chancellor yesterday, but has been chancellor forever. Did they kill all in Fumanguru’s house?”
“Maybe you should ask a prefect.”
“Maybe I will.”
He turned to look down in the street and wrapped the cloth over his head.
“One more thing. Come closer, one-eyed wolf.”
He pointed down into the street. I came up beside him as the clothes fell from him. He arched his back, his body was saying I could have him again right there. I turned to face him and he smiled a smile, all black. He blew it all in my face, black dust. Kohl dust, a large cloud in my eyes, nose, and mouth. Kohl dust mixed with viper poison, I could smell it. He looked at me deep, not with any malice, just with great interest, like he was told what would happen next. I punched him in the neck bump, then grabbed his throat and squeezed.
“They must have given you the antidote,” I said, “or you would have been dead by now.”
He coughed and groaned. I squeezed until his eyes bulged.
“Who sent you? Who gave you kohl dust?”
I pushed him hard. He fell back from the edge of the roof screaming and I caught his ankle. He kept flailing and yelling and almost slipped from me.
“By the gods, Tracker! By the gods! Mercy!”
“Mercifully release you?”
I eased my grip and he slipped. Ekoiye screamed.
“Who knew I would come to you?”
“No one!”
I let his ankle slip again.
“I don’t know! It’s an enchantment, I swear it. It must have been.”
“Who paid you to kill me?”
“It was not to kill you, I swear.”
“There is venom in this kohl. An ingenious thing like you must know of enchantments, so learn this. Nothing born of metal can harm me.”
“It was for anybody who ask. He never said kill you.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know! A man in veils, more veils than a Kongori nun. He come in Obora Dikka moon, in the Basa star. I swear it. He said blow kohl breath in the face of anyone who asks of Basu Fumanguru.”
“Why would anyone ask you of Basu Fumanguru?”
“Nobody ask until you.”
“Tell me more of this man. What colour his robes?”
“B-black. No blue. Dark blue, his fingers blue. No, blue in the fingernails like he dyes great cloths.”
“Are you sure he was not in black?”
“It was blue. By the gods, blue.”
“And what was to happen next, Ekoiye?”
“They said men would come.”
“You said he before.”
“He!”
“How would he know?”
“I was to go back to my room and release the pigeon in the window.”
“This story grows more legs and wings by the blink. What else?”
“Nothing else. Am I a spy? Listen, I swear by the—”
“Gods, I know. But I do not believe in gods, Ekoiye.”
“This was not to kill you.”
“Listen, Ekoiye. It is not that you lie, but that you don’t know truth. There was enough venom spewing from your mouth to kill nine buffalo.”
“Mercy,” he said, weeping.
Sweat made him slippery in my hand.
“The ever-dry Ekoiye breaks into sweat.”
“Mercy!”
“I am confused, Ekoiye. Let me retell this in a way that adds up to sense, for me and perhaps you. Even though Basu Fumanguru has been dead three years, a man in blue robes hiding his face still approached you, little more than a moon past. And he said, Should anyone speak of Basu Fumanguru, a man you would have no reason to know, take this antidote, then blow viper-soaked kohl dust in his face and kill him, then send word for me to pick up the body. Or not kill him, just put him to sleep as we can collect him as garbage mongers do for a fee. Is that all?”
He nodded, over and over.
“Two things, Ekoiye. Either you were not supposed to kill me, only leave me helpless so they can squeeze fact from me themselves. Or you were supposed to kill me but ask deeper questions before.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don—”
“You don’t know. You don’t know anything. You don’t even know if the antidote, the poison killer, kills the poison. Here I thought you were a wise boy trapped in an unwise life. No antidote ever kills the poison, Ekoiye, it only delays it. The most you live is eight years, maybe ten, pretty one. Nobody told you? Maybe there is not too much venom in you, and you live ten and four years. I still don’t understand why they came to you.”
Now he laughed. Loud and long.
“Because everybody comes to the pleasure monger later or sooner, Tracker. You cannot help yourselves. Husbands, chiefs, lords, tax collectors, even you. Like
a pack of hungry dogs. Later or sooner you all come back to who you are. Like you pushing me down and fucking the little he-whore rough because you were a dog even before that eye. You know what I wish, man-fucker? I wish I had venom to kill the whole world.”
When I let him go he screamed all the way down. He would not be dead—the fall was not high enough. But he would break something, maybe a leg, maybe an arm, maybe a neck. I went back the way we came, passed under the same sounds of men fucking every last coin into wet rugs, and bolted the hatch behind me. The pigeon that he kept in a bamboo cage by the small window I took out and held gentle. The note wrapped around her left foot I removed. At the window I let it loose.
The note. Glyphs, the like I had seen before, but could not remember it. I pushed the birthing chair into the darkest corner of the room and waited. The window looked large enough. The door would mean that others knew about this arrangement, among them, Miss Wadada. I thought on this hard. Nothing could have happened under Miss Wadada’s roof without her knowing of such. But this too is so of the Kongori. If I did kill Ekoiye tonight, she would still welcome me tomorrow with a Take off those robes so I can see you, big stiff prince, and then send me off with her newest girl-boy.
Even as night grew deep the heat still crawled around, leaving my back sticking to the seat. I peeled off the wood and almost missed it, the kick of feet on the wall. Climbing without ropes, a man perhaps under enchantment, where whatever the foot touched became floor. Hands at the windowsill first, knuckles ashy. Hands pulled up the elbows, which pulled up the head. Black head wrap around the forehead and the mouth. Eyes, an opium-lover red, sweeping the room, locking with my eyes, but not seeing me. Shoulder robes in blue, a leather sash over the left shoulder. One leg in, and at the bottom of the sash, two sheaths for two swords and a dagger dangling. I waited until all of him was in and his long blue robes swept the floor.
“Hail.”
He jumped. He grabbed for his sword. My first dagger cut his neck, my second plunged under his chin, killing his head before his legs knew he was dead. He fell, his head slamming into the floor right at my foot. Undressing him felt more like unwrapping him. Scars on his chest, a bird, lightning, an insect with many legs, glyphs that looked in the style of the note. Top joints of both index fingers missing. He was not Seven Wings. And he had the knotty, violent crotch scar of a eunuch. I knew I did not have much time, for whoever sent him was either awaiting his return or followed him here. He had no fragrance other than sweat of the horse he rode on whatever journey led him to be lying dead on Miss Wadada’s floor. I turned him over and traced the glyphs on his back to remember. Two thoughts came to me, one just gone and one now come. Now come: that there was no blood, though where the knife stabbed him, blood usually bursts forth like a hot spring. Just gone: that the man really had no smell. The only scent coming from him was his horse, and the white clay from the wall he’d climbed.
