by Marlon James
and neither was neither.
And the Wolf Eye, he rest his head in Mossi lap.
Mossi, he be rubbing the Wolf Eye’s chest.
They just stay there looking at each other,
eye studying eye.
Face at rest
maybe they sharing a dream.
One day Wolf Eye call them all together.
Children, he say, come out from the river
and present yourselves
you not raised by the jackal or the hyena.
And each child present me his name,
but their names I have all forgotten.
This is what Wolf Eye say.
He say, Mossi I am Ku,
and a Ku man can only be one kind of man
and Mossi said to him, How are you not a man
what do I grab between the legs
Mossi make joke
Wolf Eye not making joke.
He say
I been running, I been hiding, I been looking for
something that I don’t know, but I know I looking for it
And I don’t know, but every Ku find it
but there is blood between me and the Ku
and I could never go back.
So he call the Gangatom
And the Gangatom chief say, Nobody ever wait so long,
I’ve been waiting all my life, Wolf Eye say.
And Wolf Eye pull his tunic and say,
Look at me, look where there is woman,
And when I cut it off I will be a man
and Mossi he catch a fright, for he think if this is what make him love him,
But Wolf Eye say, Everything between me and you,
eastern man, is not down there, but up here,
he say and point to his heart.
And the chief say,
What you asking for not old,
what you asking for new.
You is Ku
and you have no father.
In this way you enrage the gods.
Says the Wolf Eye:
The ceremony to become a man
is in praise of the gods, and so
how could any god be mad.
So Wolf Eye,
The Gangatom prick the cow and spill the blood
in a bowl
Wolf Eye drink one then two
he drink and wipe his mouth.
The next day come,
For him to jump the bulls.
They line them up, twenty strong
plus ten more for he take too late to be a man
You have to run on the backs of bulls and you cannot fall,
For if you fall, the gods laugh
So Wolf Eye,
He naked in oil and shea butter.
Then praise the gods, he run
bull back to bull back, one two three four
five six seven more.
And the people cheer and rejoice
The elder say all these moons you in the in-between place
and there is no shame,
but middle is nowhere.
But some of the elders, they say
he not coming from the enki paata.
He not been wandering for four moons
as a boy supposed to do before he become man
where on him be the mark that he kill the great lion?
And the chief, he say, Look on him
and you see the mark of him killing lion and everything else.
So the elders, they sit quiet, though some still grumble,
and the chief, he say to Wolf Eye
You never wander for four moons
So stay for four nights
in the open and with the cows, sleep in grass, stand on dirt.
And on the five morning
they come for him
and they bathe him from the bucket, with an ax head in it
to cool the water
And now as be the custom, the men say,
big man fitting in boy skin
to become a man, but look he is a fool.
As be the custom, the men say,
look at him little boy kehkeh, it not ready to be a man yet.
He can’t work a woman koo, better he dig an anthole.
As be the custom, the men say.
Is that why you have husband and not a wife?
Is you the wife?
Strength now, Wolf Eye. Anger is weakness.
So in come the cutter ready for the event
sharp with one knife
the Wolf Eye, he have no mother,
so the chief wife, she be the mother.
She send ox hide for him to sit on
and that way not shame the gods.
They lead him, yes they lead him
past the cattle kraal
past the houses of great elder
up to a little hill where on top is a hut
and he say
Kick the knife, and we will kill you.
Run from the knife
And we disown you
The grand cutter, he take chalk and mark a line
from forehead to nose.
The grand cutter, he take milk and pour all over the Wolf Eye.
The grand cutter, he grab the slain and pull, and pull
he say, One cut!
Kick the knife and we will kill you.
Run from the knife and we will disown you.
He say, One cut!
And the Wolf Eye, he grab the cutter arm
and he say, No.
Listen to me, he say No.
The man in the mountain and the women in the river
hear a whisper that drop like thunder
and everybody quiet.
The Wolf Eye say, The sum of my days
is all about cutting the woman out
Cut her out of me
cut her out of my mother
cut her out of all who walk and carry the world
And he look down at him maleness
crowned at the top by femaleness
and say
What in this make wrong,
how is this not the will of the gods
and if it’s not the will of the gods
then it is the will of me
he look at Mossi and say
You tell me I cut all woman out
from my mother to whoever pass the house
when it is I who leave my mother
and I who would now cut away my own self
and with this he get up
and with this he leave the knife
and he walk away
and the people silent for he still a fierce man
But Mossi trouble him more
Soon as they come back to the tree
this he say,
Stop thinking you have peace
you know what I mean
and Wolf Eye say he don’t know. So stop
and Mossi say, Why tell me stop if you don’t know
And in this way Mossi nag Tracker
And nag and nag and boy he nag
and Tracker raise his hand to strike Mossi
and Mossi say, Nobody has ever loved you finer
but lay that hand on me and you will see it cut off
and shoved in your mouth.
Fine, Tracker say, I will go
just to stop you from being the cockatoo.
And the day come when he turn to go
And he stagger, and he fall, and he say
Come with me or I will fall in the bush
And Mossi go, and the children go
and even me go for Tracker say, Don’t act as if you
don’t belong to this house
And in this way
Tracker and his kin set off for his mother
What a sight we must be in Juba!
But that is not the story
For Tracker stagger ten times before we get to the gate.
And Mossi hold him up ten times strong
So they get to the door
and a girl open the
door who look like him
that is what me and Mossi think
And she don’t say nothing, but she let them in
and jump out of the way when the Ball Boy
roll through, and the Giraffe Boy had to duck
and in a blue room
she sit
looking old and weak but her eyes look young
When did he die? Tracker ask.
When a grandfather was supposed to die, she say.
And he look at her like he have something to say
And his mouth quiver like he have something to say
And Mossi start to move we out of the room
like he have something to say
But Tracker stagger again and this time he fall
And she stoop down and touch his cheek
One of your eyes didn’t come from me, she say
and what come out his mouth was a wail
And he wail for his mother
And he wail for his mother
And night come for day
And day come for night
And still he wail.
Hear me now,
I stay in the monkeybread tree ten and nine moons.
The day I was leaving the children cry,
and Mossi hang his head down low
and even the Wolf Eye said, But why do you leave your home?
But a man like me, we are like the beast,
we must roam,
or we die.
Listen to me now.
The day before I leave,
A black Leopard come to the tree.
Stop him.
Stop him now. Stop him or I will find a way to end everything this very night. And then you will know nothing about how anything ended.
I will tell you what happened next.
I will tell you everything.
TWENTY-THREE
I want it known that you made me do this. I want to see it written in a tongue that I recognize. Show me. I will not speak until you show me. How will you write it? Will you note what I said, or just say, The prisoner said this? Stop talking about truth—I fed you truth all along, but as I said before, what you want is story. I have given you many, but I will give you a final one. Then you can talk to her and send us to burn.
In this story I see her. She walked like somebody was following her.
Why do you stop me?
Did you not hear the griot?
The Leopard came to visit me and seduced me with talk of adventure. Of course he was all cunning—he is a leopard. And I went with him to find a fat and stupid man who sold gold and salt and smelled of chicken shit, who had vanished. But he had not vanished. Fuck the gods, inquisitor, which story do you wish to hear? No I will not tell you both. Look at me.
I will not tell you both.
So.
She walked as people who think they are followed walk. Looking ahead when she reached the mouth of each lane, looking behind when she reached the foot of it. Slipping from shadow to shadow, as she moved down a still street. Floating overhead the raw burn of opium, and flowing on the ground, the overspill of shit water. She tripped and grabbed her cargo tight, ready to brace for the fall rather than let it go. The sky had a ceiling in this place, a hundred paces high in some parts, with holes burrowed through to let in the white light of the sun and the silver light of the moon. She stooped below a torch beside a door, shifted underneath, stood up again, and scraped her back along the wall like a crab, to the corner.
The Malangika. The tunnel city, somewhere west of the Blood Swamp but east of Wakadishu, about three hundred paces below the ground and as big as a third of Fasisi. Hundreds of years ago, before people wrote accounts, the first people from above had a quarrel with the gods of sky over rain, and the gods of earth gave them this place to hide from sky wrath. They dug wide and deep, and the caverns rose high to hold buildings of three, four, and even five floors. Columns from chopped-down trees and stone to brace the tunnels so that they never collapsed, though two sections collapsed twice. Throughout the tunnels, builders carved out holes above to let the sun and moon light the street, like the lamps of Juba. People in the Malangika were the true first ones to unlock the secret of metals, some say. But they were selfish and greedy, and became the first blacksmith kings. They died holding on to their iron and silver. And some working other kinds of art and craft dug even deeper. But the people of this city soon died out, and the city itself was forgotten. And only in a place forgotten could a new city arise, a city with no notice, a city that was a market. A place that sold what could not be sold aboveground, not even at night. The secret witches market.
The market cleared out. Somebody had woven powerful magic to make everyone forget the street. Most lanes showed the backside of inns where nobody stayed, taverns where nobody left, and sellers of things of all kinds of uses. But in this lane darkness hung low. She walked many steps before stopping, looking around as two spirits pulled themselves from a wall and came at her. Another rose out of the ground, stumbling as if drunk. In the quick, she pulled the amulet from between her breasts. The spirits squealed and backed away; the ground spirit went back under. All the way down the lane, she held out the amulet, and voices squawked, muttered, and hissed. Their hunger was huge, but not bigger than the fear of the nkisi around her neck. Through the mist, at the end of the lane, she pressed herself against a fresh mud wall on the right, then turned around the corner right into my blade.
She jumped. I grabbed her hand, yanked it behind her back, pressing my knife to her neck. She tried to scream but I pressed the knife harder. Then she started to utter a whisper I knew. I whispered something back and she stopped.
“I am protected by a Sangoma,” I said.
“You pick here to rob a poor woman? You pick this place?”
“What is it you carry, girl?” I asked.
For she was a girl and thin, her cheeks hungry. Her hand, which I still held, was near down to bone, something I could break with just a twist.
“Curse you if you make me drop it,” she said.
“What shall you drop?”
“Take your eyes out of my bosom, or take my purse and go.”
“Money is not what I look for. Tell me what you carry or I will stab it.”
She flinched, but I knew what it was before the dried milk vomit smell came to me, and before it gurgled.
“How many cowries buys a baby in the Malangika?”
“You think I selling my baby? What kind of witch sell her own baby?”
“I don’t know. What kind of witch buys one, that I know.”
“Let me go or I going scream.”
“A woman’s scream in these tunnels? That is every street. Tell me how you come by the baby.”
“You deaf? I say—”
I twisted her arm behind her back, right up almost to her neck, and she screamed, and screamed again, trying to not drop the child. I released her hand a little.
“Go slip back in your mother cunt,” she said.
“Whose baby?”
“What?”
“Who is the mother of the baby?”
She stared at me, frowning, thinking of something to say that would make a lie out of the sound of this baby waking up and hating the rough cloth he was wrapped in.
“Mine. Is mine. Is my own baby.”
“Not even a whore would take her child to the Malangika unless she goes to sell it. To a—”
“I not no whore.”
I let her go. She turned away from me as if to run, and I pulled one of the axes from my back.
“Try to run and this will split the back of your head before you reach fifty paces. Test me if you wish.”
She looked at me and rubbed her arm.
“I look for a man. A special man, special even in the Malangika,” I said.
“I don’t mess with no man.”
“And yet you just said this is your baby, so messed with a man, you did. He is hungry.”
“He not no concern for you.”<
br />
“But hungry he is. So feed him.”
She pulled the cloth from the baby’s head. I smelled baby vomit and dried piss. No shea butter, no oil, no silks, nothing that graces a baby’s precious buttocks. I nodded and pointed my ax at her breasts. She pulled her robe and the right breast slipped out, thin and lanky above the baby’s face. She shoved the breast into the baby’s mouth and it started sucking, pulling so hard she winced. The baby spat out her breast, and cried into a scream.
“You have no milk,” I said.
“He not hungry. What you know about raising a child?”
“I raised six,” I said. “How were you going to feed him?”
“If you didn’t interfere, we would reach home long time now.”
“Home? The nearest village is three days away on foot. Can you fly? The child would starve by then.”
She dug into her dress for the pouch, and tried to pull it open with both hands while still holding the child.
“Look here, dog-fucker or whatever you be. Take the coin and go buy yourself a girl so you can kill and eat her liver. Leave me be, me and my child.”
“Hark those words. I would say raise your child around better folks, but it is not your child.”
“Leave me be!” she shouted, and pulled the pouch open. “Here, see it here. Take it all.”
She held it out, but then dashed it. I swung my ax to knock it out of the way and it hit the wall and fell to the ground. Little vipers came out and grew big. She ran but I chased her, gained on her, grabbed her hair and she screamed. She dropped the baby. I pushed her hard, and picked up the child as she staggered to a fall. She shook her head and wobbled as I pulled the boy out of the nasty cloth. His body, dark as tea, she had marked with white clay. A line around the neck. A line at each joint in the arms and legs. A cross at his navel, and circles around his nipples and his knees.
“What a night you were planning for yourself. You are no witch, not yet, but this would have made you one, maybe even a powerful one, instead of someone’s apprentice.”
“Get you cock sting by a scorpion,” she said, sitting up.
“On the art of cutting up a child, you have no expertise, so he drew where to cut. The man who sold you the baby.”
“All coming out of your mouth is wind.”
The boy wiggled in my arms.
“Men in the Malangika, they sell wretched things, unspeakable things. Women do this too. But a baby, alive, untouched, is no easy thing to find. This is not bastard or foundling. Only the purest child could give you the most powerful magic, so you bought yourself the purest child. Stolen from a noblewoman. And no easy thing to buy, three days from the nearest city. So you must have given him something of great value. Not gold, or cowries. You gave him another life. And since merchants can only appreciate things of value, that life must have been valuable to you. A son? No, a daughter. Child brides go for even more than the newborn here.”
