The Ghosts of Eden Read online

  Stanley had seen a book when he was a little younger. It belonged to Felice, a distant cousin who had visited the kraal with her father. Felice stood apart on the edge of the compound in her unsoiled skirt of a burnished blue and oh-so-white blouse, her face deep-lustred with oil, lips subtly sheened, eyebrows symmetrical arcs under a high forehead from which arose her shaped hair like a headpiece of their far ancestors from Abyssinia.

  It was the first time Stanley had studied at close proximity what happened to a Bahima when they had the Bazungu’s Education. Looking at Felice he became aware, but without shame, that he was naked apart from a scanty wrap of red barkcloth below his protruding belly. His skin was matt grey from ingrained dust, except for the shiny scars on his legs. Felice’s ankles were like the buffed neck of the queen’s best gourd. Flies settled frequently on Stanley’s face but veered dizzily away from the scented Felice.

  He, Zachye and all the other children blended naturally with the kraal and the land, just like the cattle; as if they were merely different shapes of the same stuff. The soil-impregnated soles of their feet joined them to the earth. Dust to dust.

  Felice appeared to be made of something else; something synthesised by the supernatural, her parts generated from magical smeltings in the fires of distant and strange smiths.

  Stanley had been too shy to speak, but Zachye asked, ‘What is that?’ pointing to the glossy object which Felice clasped to her waist.

  Felice spoke with a coy confidence, like a woman much older than her years. ‘It’s a book called David and Mary. It tells a story.’

  ‘How can it tell without a mouth? Show me how it speaks,’ Zachye replied scornfully.

  Felice lifted the object in front of her unnaturally pointy chest, peeled it apart and said, ‘It tells of the courtship between a man and a woman in a big city.’

  She started reading in a tongue that Stanley did not understand, but learnt later was the Bazungu’s language. Her lips moved through absurd contortions, her voice becoming shrill.

  ‘Let it speak in Runyankore,’ Zachye said impatiently.

  Felice hesitated, and then, peering intently at the page, spoke in Runyankore, pausing before words that she could not easily translate – and some she perhaps believed should remain reserved for the Bazungu’s world – speaking those words in their language.

  ‘Mary left the . . . office at eleven o’clock. She waved goodbye to her friends and caught a taxi to the coffee shop. She was excited to see that the handsome young man in the smart suit was sitting at the same table on his own again. His sunglasses were next to his cup and saucer. He looked up and met her eye. She turned away, but not before she saw him beckoning to her to come over. Mary pretended she had not noticed and ordered a coffee with sugar, but without milk.’

  Zachye interrupted again. ‘Let it speak of cattle.’

  Felice looked up, and although she did not look directly at Zachye her smile held a hint of condescension. This shocked Stanley but Zachye didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Books do not speak of cattle,’ Felice said.

  Zachye pondered this. ‘Then what are they for?’

  ‘They tell stories from other lands where they have no cattle.’ She closed the book. ‘They want no cattle and they need no cattle.’

  Zachye shrugged and lost interest. He turned away and walked out of the kraal shouting, ‘Those people living far away are not Bahima.’

  Stanley wanted Felice to read further, but she was looking down at her shoe-clad feet as if embarrassed that she had been discourteous. Stanley agreed with her in silence but his curiosity soon got the better of him. ‘Why did the woman not want to speak to the man?’

  Felice continued to stare at her shoes.

  On Kwayana hill, Stanley stopped playing. He threw the model of She Who Lifts Up Her Horns Brown As The Enkurigo Tree into the fire, and watched the straw twist in an agony of heat and disappear.

  ‘I’ll be going away. I’ll not be able to come with you to look after our cattle.’

  Zachye was lining up all the cattle outside his own hut. ‘I’ll tell you what. Our cows won’t know you any more, but you’ll have a big car and you’ll work for the gavumenti. You should be very happy.’

  Stanley looked to the far hills that marked the edge of the only life he had needed. Through a thin watering of his eyes he saw a billow of dust moving along beneath the hills. He thought it might be from a vehicle making its way down the road that had been cut just a year before. Then, as he looked, the dust rose high into the air, becoming a pillar of cloud. It seemed to Stanley to signify some omen, but for what he could not tell. Zachye came beside him and stood silent, also staring at the dust. When Zachye spoke his voice sounded like that of an adult: solemn and fearful.

  ‘I don’t like it, Stanley – it foretells fire.’

  Two

  After the pillar of dust had dispersed in the heat haze Stanley and Zachye rested, lying on top of the rock in the inadequate shade of a stunted tree. Today they would not return to rest on their mats in the kraal at abantu baza omu birago, to avoid having to retrace their steps for abeshezi baza aha maziba, the occasion for taking the cattle to the watering places. Wispy clouds formed in the dry-season sky, tried to puff themselves up, failed and disappeared. The cattle stood motionless between occasional twitches of their flanks and flicks of their tails; futile spasms of will, trying to free themselves of the tireless flies. Stanley felt the hardness of the rock beneath and the passivity of the sky above. Even the ghosts of the dead, ever present in the wind, were still. His world seemed inert and had forever been. Until today.

  He put his arms out and tried to grip the rock beneath with his fingertips, as if he could hang on to what he knew. He thought that the vulture hanging high above him, wings outstretched on a column of sultry air, had twisted its head to look at him.

  He became desperate to speak to his brother. ‘Zachye?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What will happen at the school? How is the Education given?’

  Zachye was silent. Eventually he said, ‘How would I know?’ and got up and walked away.

  Zachye’s ignorance disturbed Stanley. His brother had always known everything: how to treat sickness in the cattle, where to find good grazing, the ways of the hyena and the jackal, which snakes were poisonous, all the stories of the clan, how to captivate the other children with heroic recitations. Now he saw that the Education was so alien that even Zachye knew nothing of it. He could not think of anyone who lived nearby who had gone to school, for on the plain they were all late in taking the Education. The closest relatives at school were his cousins Felice and Kabutiiti, but they lived far away and had fathers who worked in the towns. How could a herdsman like his own father, who was still suffering from the effects of the rinderpest outbreak that had decimated the family’s herd a generation ago, find enough shillings to pay the school fees?

  Stanley saw that Zachye was standing watching the cattle, perfectly still, resting on his spear. He was looking intently at three of the youngest calves, as if memorising the details of their colouring, the form of their growing horns; as if gaining an understanding, by the calves’ interest in him, of their intelligence. He heard Zachye murmuring their names. Later the calves would know their own names and would wait patiently to be called each morning for milking.

  Stanley fell back again, knocked down by the realisation that no one he had heard of had returned from the Education to tending cattle, drinking blood and milk, and living in a thatched dwelling on skins. They left forever for the town. They forgot the names of the cattle. It was unimaginable. He tried to picture himself pleading with his father to let him stay, leave him be. That was just as unthinkable.

  Soon he heard Zachye saying, ‘Lift yourself, Stanley. Get moving, you dreamer.’

  Stanley scattered the embers of the fire and the remains of the model kraal with his foot. He understood Zachye’s haste for he could see that other cattle were already approaching the gully wh
ere the tepid waters from an underground spring formed pools that, in a good year, sustained herds of five hundred. Space was limited, and herders fought to secure drinking for their charges.

  At Zachye’s word the cattle needed no further encouragement to start out. As they neared the gully they quickened their pace so that Stanley had to trot to keep up. Zachye ran on ahead. Stanley heard a grunt behind him and something stung his ear. He turned to find a boy, about his age but broad in body and skull, flicking him with his switch. He recognised him as one of the Abaitenya clan, whose totem was a house burnt down and a yellow cow.

  ‘Shift your cattle out of the way or you’ll feel my spear,’ the boy said with a snarl. Dried trails of spittle on his chin struck Stanley as particularly threatening.

  Zachye was well ahead now with the leading cattle. The Abaitenya boy’s cattle were already passing Stanley, pushing up against and overtaking his own cows: a disturbing mixing and dilution of his precious herd. The boy shoved him aside and lashed at She Who Lifts Up Her Horns Brown As The Enkurigo Tree. Stanley attempted to grasp the switch but the boy was quick and kicked him in the thigh, overbalancing him. He fell heavily, bruising himself on the pot for charcoal that hung off his shoulder as the boy set himself on him. The hooves of the cattle thundered around them like drums, drowning the noise of the boy’s fists pounding at his head and chest.

  ‘You Who Is Puny, face the wrath of The One Who Is A Breaker Of Bones,’ panted the boy in a parody of the recitations of the tribe.

  Stanley tasted blood. Panic swelled in his gullet like stuck meat. Spittle flew. He twisted and flailed his arms but the boy was strong, spitting words at him, one for each blow, ‘When . . . ever . . . you . . . see . . . me,’ more pounding about his head, ‘and my cattle, step . . . out . . . of . . . my . . . way.’

  Then out of the dust familiar feet appeared, the flaying fists were gone and the boy was crying out, face in the dirt. Zachye’s foot pressed with firm precision against the boy’s neck as he twisted his arm behind him.

  ‘I Who Heap Up The Dead repulsed them at Kwayana with The One Who Seeks No Help,’ Zachye boomed.

  Stanley loved Zachye for that recitation: even as he picked himself up he planned to expand the line into a full poem that evening and insist the younger boys learn it to ensure the mini-triumph lived on. Zachye pulled the boy’s arm back further, making him cry out. Stanley found himself anxious that Zachye was going to dislocate the boy’s shoulder. When Zachye became angry he could lose control of his actions; there had been the incident when he threw a spear at a group of boys who were leering at his cousin. Luck prevented the spear finding flesh.

  ‘I’m not hurt. Let’s leave,’ Stanley said.

  Zachye released the boy, after giving his shoulder one last pull, and said, ‘Now go, fly eater! And if we see your pocked cattle take water first we’ll drown you in the milk of a yellow cow.’

  As the boy ran on ahead, his arm cradled, Stanley walked again with Zachye. Who would come to his aid at school? There might be hundreds of Abaitenya boys. His whole class might be Abaitenya.

  When they caught up with their cows at the pools they found the boy frantically separating his bewildered cattle from theirs.

  Thirst quenched, the cattle and brothers dawdled back to the kraal, leaving a frenzy of flies on fresh cowpats in the gully and parties of pale-cream butterflies sipping delicately from the hoof-print hollows.

  As they approached the kraal Stanley saw their father waiting on the track to inspect his cattle. Looking at his father standing tall, his kumzu of brightly coloured cloth in vertical bands of red ochre, black and green hanging in straight folds from his shoulders, Stanley knew he could no more ask his father to change his mind about sending him for the Education than he could ask the diviner to retract a revelation. He prepared himself to show respect, averting his eyes as they drew close.

  When they were within three cattle lengths the boys stopped and knelt. Their father asked them to rise, examined Stanley and said, ‘I see the cattle are good but you are scuffed. You must give me explanation for this.’

  ‘I was beaten by another boy coming to water,’ Stanley said, still looking down.

  ‘How was the matter finished?’ his father asked.

  ‘Zachye came and beat the boy.’

  His father said, ‘Zachye, continue with the cattle into the kraal. I wish to speak to Stanley.’

  Zachye, head still bowed, obeyed. Kaapa Katura walked out along the track, Stanley following.

  ‘That another boy struck you is no great matter. If it becomes your teacher, and you learn that it’s our kinsmen that give you help, you have learnt well.’ His father continued walking. ‘In matters more serious we’ve had the council of the clans, or the King himself, who take into account the tradition of our ancestors. But now there are new ways. Disputes are taken to the courts in the town where a man who has no knowledge of our families and clans, and the ways of our fathers, makes judgement on the basis of books of rules from the British, or even the Baganda.’ Their father had always been suspicious of their tribal neighbours the Baganda – agriculturalists with powerful kings. ‘Then there are those who call themselves the Twice Born. These people say that retribution is not for this life and that a man must turn the other cheek if he is struck.’

  Stanley found his father hard to understand when he spoke in riddles and without regard to his young age but he listened carefully. His father stopped walking and turned to look out over the plain.

  ‘I do not say these words to condemn the passing of our own courts. I tell you because I know that our clan will not go back to the old ways. Those who do not learn the new ways will grow old with bitterness. They will depart without peace.’

  Stanley risked glancing up. His father looked out into the far distance as if watching for the arrival of someone; or perhaps for some portent. He spoke again. ‘Many seasons ago our people walked here from the North. They left what they knew and travelled through dangerous lands until they found the place that gave them, and their cattle, comfort again.’ He was gently nodding his head as if he had seen what he was looking for and it confirmed his expectations. ‘We have to walk again. That is why I’m sending you to school. This is your walk.’

  When Stanley had been told earlier that he was going to school, he had been shocked that he would no longer be able to tend the cattle with Zachye. Now his father had added immeasurably to the enormity of what was to come. His walk was to be of the same importance as that of those far ancestors. Would his great-grandchildren tell of it in recitation around the fire? But where he was walking, would there still be fires in the evening and recitations under the night sky? His father’s decision to give him preference over his older brother was in itself a break with tradition. The old customs were being trampled.

  His father was waiting for him to speak. All Stanley could say was, ‘What is Zachye to do?’

  ‘I don’t have the fees for both of you to go to school and I need Zachye to tend the cattle.’ He spoke with finality. Stanley waited. ‘You may return now.’

  As he approached the kraal Stanley saw that Bejuura, who as head herdsman had responsibility for inspecting all the cattle on return in the evening, was flailing his spear about in front of Zachye. Zachye was listening in sullen silence to his agitated questions.

  ‘You goat-minder, you should have returned at abantu baza omu birago. Did you sleep while the cattle wandered? Are you to join your crippled dog-brother in disgrace? Ah, here comes the little runt now.’

  Bejuura stabbed his spear into the ground to indicate where Stanley should stand to receive his admonition. Then he noticed the brothers’ father walking back to the kraal. For a moment his wandering eye stopped revolving as if trying to focus on their father and judge his distance.

  Then he said, ‘Just go – both of you!’

  As they hurried away, Stanley said, in a surprised voice, ‘You didn’t answer Bejuura.’

  ‘If I had answered Bejuura he
would have struck me and then I would have struck him back. No! I would have driven my spear into his eye. The eye that can see us.’

  Stanley nodded enthusiastically and said, ‘He would have deserved it.’ He always expressed agreement with Zachye, although he was nervous of violence, to defuse Zachye’s anger and to be a good brother.

  Zachye swung around on him. Stanley stepped back for he could see how the sinews in the arm that held Zachye’s spear were tight and how his chest swelled.

  ‘Are you stupid? Do you think I wouldn’t do such a thing? And don’t you know what calamity would come on us if I did? Listen to me, my innocent brother!’ Stanley watched Zachye’s arm. ‘I’m going to tell you something you’d better believe. One day I’ll kill a man. Yes, I feel it. I won’t be able to stop myself.’ Zachye’s sinews still strained. ‘In our grandfather’s days I would have brought great wealth to the clan. I would’ve raided and brought back cattle. Men would’ve made recitation about me. Now I can’t let my spear leave my hand for fear of the gyoogi, in case they come and take me away, put me in a prison with hard walls.’ Zachye turned away. ‘I should have been born my great grandfather.’

  Stanley could not think of anything to say that would not blow on the fire in Zachye’s heart, for he himself would soon be joining the world of the gyoogi. He would soon be going to houses with hard walls, the cattle would no longer determine the occasions of his day, he would be walking a new walk. But most of all he feared that he would no longer be able to protect Zachye from himself. Although he was small and not strong, Stanley found that he could cool Zachye’s heart – smother flames that might light the very thatch of their dwellings.

  They saw their mother come out of the hut to fill the milk pots and Stanley was glad of a reason to walk on; he was thirsty and hungry, and he needed comfort. As he approached he thought with some pride that his mother resembled the milk pots in form. Her slender neck and narrow head emerged smoothly from a truly bulbous body, the whole, including her head, covered in a white robe, for it was the custom for those women still following the traditional ways to cover themselves from the men. Her proportions made moving around the kraal an effort; she appeared to propel herself by swaying, with difficulty, backwards and forward, as a pot might were it alive. All the girls in the clan, as soon as their bodies started to lengthen and a long time before their womanhood became apparent, were filled with milk and kept from expending energy by seclusion in their huts, forbidden all activity. By the time they had their first menstruation they had become softly plump Bahima beauties, and none more so than his mother who had been a highly desirable bride to Stanley’s father, fetching a high bride price considering the relative poverty and low status of her family. If she had been of royal lineage she would have been carried on a pallet from place to place. The passage of many rains had not diminished her proportions and charm. Stanley considered her a fine dancer, sitting on the floor with the other women, her arms and head weaving a complex pattern while a mesmerising sound, between hissing and buzzing, came from her lips, evoking the cattle moving through tall grasses.