The Ghosts of Eden Read online

  She filled the returning herdsmen’s gourds in turn from the largest pot, which she rested on her forearm, skilfully directing the silky white ribbon into each gourd without spilling, her upper limbs as lithe and skilful as her lower limbs were squat and slow. A pipe hung limply from her mouth, the stem slotting comfortably into a permanent depression in her lower lip formed from years of pressure.

  Without removing her pipe she gave the boys the greeting to keep harm away. ‘How have you spent the day?’

  Stanley waited for Zachye to answer with the reply to keep harm away: ‘We’ve spent it well.’

  ‘I’ve smoked the pots today. Eh! Your milk will taste as good as the King’s.’ Nearby were the black traces of a fire of scented grasses, where she had smoked the pots.

  Stanley and Zachye squatted on the floor of the compound with their backs against their family hut. The kraal smelt homely and sweet, of dried cow-dung and fermenting millet. They filled their stomachs with the scented milk.

  As Stanley let the last drips fall on his tongue, panic bubbled up again like the hot spring of Kitagata. ‘Will they give me milk at school?’ he cried.

  ‘Eh! So, your father has decided.’ His mother was frowning. She sat down on a low wooden stool, enveloping it, and started vigorously rotating a milk gourd back and forth to make butter.

  ‘You’ll eat potatoes, bananas and sorghum. They’re not so bad; I’ve tried them,’ Zachye said. ‘But you’ll have to eat eggs. Those are bad,’ he added, with hardly disguised pleasure.

  Stanley felt nauseous; chicken eggs were an excrement.

  ‘They clean themselves with water instead of clay or cow’s urine,’ his mother said, confirming how filthy were the practices of the outside world.

  ‘But that will offend the spirits.’ Stanley felt aghast at the thought of being thrown into a place where he was to be made to break every taboo.

  His mother said, ‘The spirits have some respect for a man with the Education, but never think that you can ignore them completely like the Twice Born. Remember how Nyabutyari died after failing to make offerings in the ghost huts.’

  Nyabutyari was a clan member who had converted to Christianity. Still, Stanley found it curious when he was told that the red people, who did not leave offerings in ghost huts, or follow rituals as precautions against the spirits, were little troubled by the ghosts. He had heard it said that the red people’s curious appearance made the spirits leave them alone. Perhaps the cruelly thin lips, maize-yellow teeth, pinched nose, pallid eyes and limp hair were repellent to the spirits. Or maybe it was their sickly-sweet odour. Or could it be true what an old man had told him: that the Bazungu were themselves the embodied spirits of his own ancestors, the Bachwezi, who had been prophesied to return from the North?

  ‘But why aren’t the Bazungu troubled by the spirits?’ Stanley asked.

  ‘The ghosts of our own dead have no business with them; but they have their own spirits. They’re afraid of a spirit of the sun for they wear hats on their heads. Eh! I have heard that not to do so curses them with death. And they have their own taboos; such as a married woman may not lie with her husband’s brother or his friends.’ She smiled to herself.

  Stanley burned with a desire to talk to his mother about the Education; she would likely give him some notion as to what to expect (he knew how she loved to talk, although just to the children and the other women, never to the men lest they beat her for her forward opinions). She knew everything about appeasing the spirits and how to avoid curses and spells whatever the circumstance. She despised the new ways but that did not mean she was not quick to see advantage where it might be gained.

  She stopped her churning to rest.

  ‘You’ll learn the wisdom of the Bazungu, but their wisdom is for living in their own lands and in the towns amongst their own people. In other matters the Bazungu are not as wise as us. In the lands of our fathers the wisdom of our elders exceeds the wisdom of the Bazungu.’

  She took her pipe from her mouth and put it down, as she always did if she was to tell a story. ‘There was the burning of the skins before I was given by my father to your father. The British said that the skins the people wore were full of lice that caused itching and disease, and that these lice were contaminating the hospitals and schools that they were building. The skins must all be burnt and the people must wear cloth. The chiefs took counsel among themselves and asked the augurs what the ancestral spirits desired. It was agreed, although the people did not itch much, that the British were scratching terribly and firmly believed that their suffering was due to the people wearing skins, and because cloth was not difficult to obtain, and skins were not of ceremonial importance, and the auguries were favourable, and this matter was of great concern to the British, the wisdom lay in agreeing to burn the skins. Eh, we’re a shrewd people and our understanding is deep. We’ll one day have herds that cross the horizon.’

  She looked askance at Zachye. ‘Zachye, what’s the matter?’ He was rubbing his little toe hard in the dirt.

  ‘I have a jigger.’

  ‘Let me get it out,’ Stanley said, anxious to please Zachye. He ran into the hut to find the stick splinter kept for removing jiggers.

  While Stanley was absent his mother looked sharply at Zachye.

  ‘Are you going to let him? He cannot hold a steady hand.’

  ‘Let him cause me further pain. It doesn’t matter,’ Zachye answered, and spat at an ant. He missed it. He smeared it with his heel.

  ‘What troubles you?’ his mother asked.

  ‘My father has forgotten his eldest son. He’s sending my young brother for the Education before me.’

  ‘Eh! Don’t you see that your father has trusted you with the wealth of our family? Hasn’t he given you his own spear to defend our cattle? Aren’t you the one to bring us an increase of our herd? So isn’t your father favouring you over the younger boy?’

  ‘My mother, I don’t wish to leave our cattle. They are my brothers and my sisters but, even so, my father shouldn’t be sending Stanley away. If there’s merit in the Bazungu’s Education he should’ve instructed his eldest son to go. If Stanley goes he’ll become like one from a foreign tribe. He’s like milk – he’ll be easily soured. He’ll come back and speak ill of us and look down on us like my cousins Felice and Kabutiiti.’

  His mother sighed. ‘When you go and live with fly eaters you eat flies.’

  Stanley returned with the sharp stick. He knelt at Zachye’s feet and lifted his brother’s foot onto his lap. He could see the white swelling under Zachye’s little toe, tense with eggs. He started picking at the overlying skin. Zachye sat impassive, letting the weight of his leg rest on Stanley. Stanley drew blood but Zachye did not flinch.

  Stanley was filled with a hunger to hear old stories, stories he had heard before, to be certain that they had not changed; that the new walk could not change the old walks. ‘Mother, please tell me again why I’m called Stanley.’

  His mother never tired of repeating the tales of the clan and so she spoke without hesitation, rocking the churn back and forward in a rhythmic accompaniment to her words.

  ‘Your father’s father lived in the days of a great king.’ She did not speak his name for, like all the kings of the Bahima, his name had been erased from the language after his death. ‘Your father’s father remembered the seasons before the coming of the Bazungu. At that time there came a certain Muzungu, the first red man to make passage through these lands, these very lands that you see when you look out from this very place.’

  She pointed out from the kraal with her chin.

  ‘That Muzungu’s name was Stanley. He was powerful for he had fought our enemy Kabarega and prevailed. The King sent Buchunku, a prince of the royal clan, to make blood brotherhood with this Stanley, for a brother cannot fight a brother. That Muzungu, the one whom they called Stanley, feared our spears and wished to make passage in peace. So he also wished to become a brother to our clans. In this way blood was mixed and
from that time on, to this very day, the clans of the Bazungu do not fight with the clans of the Bahima and neither do the clans of the Bahima fight with the clans of the Bazungu. In this way your father gave you the name of Stanley to make remembrance of the mixing of our blood with the Bazungu.’

  She stopped to bend her ear to the churn that she rotated and rocked in her supple hands, listening for the slap of the whey as it thinned.

  ‘And your father remembers the passing of the Bazungu by his father’s kraal when he was a small boy and thought them most strange, but wonderful. When your brother Musa and your sister died, he named you after a Muzungu because he believes the ghosts of the Bazungu will protect you.’

  Stanley had not seen a red person. The kraal was far from a road and although Stanley, the first Muzungu, had walked through their lands, the Bazungu now stayed in their cars. Stanley wanted to meet a Muzungu and say to him, ‘Greetings! I’m your blood brother.’ He became excited to think that there might be Bazungu children at school.

  His mother shook the butter from the churn into a wooden bowl. Stanley slid Zachye’s foot off his lap. He had de-roofed the nest of jiggers and squeezed out the eggs. Blood trickled down the sole of Zachye’s foot. ‘I’ve done it,’ Stanley said proudly, and looked up at Zachye hoping for an approving nod, but Zachye was looking crossly at his mother.

  ‘Stanley will need shoes. He’ll need cotton clothing. What are we going to do? Sell a calf? Diminish our herd for the sake of the youngest son? We’ll reduce our wealth to be thanked by his pity? That’s what’ll happen. I know it.’

  ‘Eh!’ his mother agreed. ‘He’ll need more than the Bazungu’s clothes – he’ll need school fees and books.’

  ‘Then let’s sell his own calf, She Who Lifts Up Her Horns Brown As The Enkurigo Tree. He’ll not be in need of her where he’s going.’

  With that Zachye picked up his spear and left, walking with no limp despite the pit in his toe. Stanley looked after him, still kneeling in the dirt. He felt alone – as if he was at school already.

  He heard his mother say sharply, ‘What are you sitting idle for? The herds are all entered. Go and do your duties.’ And then to emphasise that nothing had changed in the lands of their fathers, she added, ‘You’ll soon have to wait to drink your milk until the herds are finished milking, in the same manner as the men.’

  With that she got up and went to sit by the door of her hut, in readiness to receive each milker. They came to her and spoke the name of the cow they were to milk. She handed each man the pot belonging to that cow.

  Stanley picked himself up and moved off through the milling cattle and men. Smoke from the small fires burning around the kraal drifted into the dimming sky as if it was the smoke that darkened it. Soon the milking commenced, with each milker shouting ‘Shi!’ and then the name of a cow. Each cow answered her call, jostling her way forward between the other cows, and stood still before the milkers to be relieved of her pressure. Stanley led each calf to stand in front of its mother as she was milked. In this way the mother’s milk flowed rich and free. If a cow lowed for her calf then all the men shouted the name of their clan and their King, so the cow knew that she was not alone in her yearning but was one with the clan, and that the men stood with her, shoulder to shoulder. Before the udders of the cow were empty the calf was permitted to drink; then the teats were smeared with ash, and the men shouted ‘Shi!’ and the name of the next cow.

  As Stanley led his calf to its mother he thought of how he would be forgetting her name, of how Zachye would become a stranger to him. It was too much to bear. He would rather meet a Muzhwago – one who went out at night to transform himself into a beast of prey – than be estranged from his brother. He made a vow on all his ancestors that he would find a way to make it impossible for his father to send him away.

  That night he dreamt that his calf had fallen into an ant-bear hole and that he could not lift her out on his own. She was lowing pitiably. He called to Zachye for help, but as Zachye approached hairs sprung from his neck and he turned into a lion (as some men are said to do) and came at him. He woke just as he smelt the animal’s fetid breath, hot on his face. He sought comfort in listening to his mother’s soft snoring, and then turned to confirm that his brother slept peacefully by his side. But Zachye’s bed was empty. Stanley’s skin moved. His thoughts flew to the moon-shadowed plain beyond. Did his brother roam at night? Was he a Muzhwago? He lay thinking that it was going to be impossible to get back to sleep, but when the cock crowed for the second time he found Zachye beside him. He reeked of beer.

  Three

  On the morning of the second day of Stanley’s refusal to leave his calfskin bed his father came to speak to him.

  ‘It’s time to rise and help your brother with the cattle.’

  Stanley felt ill from deceiving his father by feigning sickness, but he said, ‘Father! I can’t rise. I’m sick. I’ve pains in my stomach.’ And in case that would not be enough, he added, ‘And in my back.’

  His father walked about the hut, restless. ‘My head as well.’

  His father continued to pace. Stanley knew what was on his mind: children died so readily – running about the kraal today, buried in the dung heap tomorrow.

  ‘If you cannot rise you may have offended the ghosts by an omission; or broken a taboo. Have you any wilful matter to divulge, or must I fetch the diviner to find the cause?’

  ‘Eh, he’s far too young to have offended the ghosts himself,’ said his mother. ‘We’d better look to ourselves for the cause of his illness.’

  There was no ailment that was not derived from the supernatural. Indeed, if it were not for the interference of the ghosts a man might live forever, excepting perhaps that he might die of a great age having lived his allotted time.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve done anything to offend the spirits, Father,’ Stanley said, and then groaned quietly because he lied. He became fearful that the ghosts of his ancestors would find him out and strike him down. He had heard that sometimes the spirits caused the issue of putrid fluids from the nostrils of those who caused them offence, so they were driven mad by a stench that they could never escape.

  His father turned to his mother. ‘We’ll prepare him blood today that he may regain his strength. Perhaps his beating hangs heavily on him.’

  He took the metal tipped ekirasho to lance the cow, the wooden eichuba for collecting the flow and the leather thong to aid the filling of the vein, and went outside. Stanley heard him gathering men to help hold the cow’s horns while he pierced a vein in her neck. The cow lowed and stamped. His father returned with the wooden pail of blood and gave it to his mother.

  ‘If he’s not regained his strength by the evening we’ll seek out the diviner,’ he said as he left.

  Stanley’s mother heated the blood on the fire in the hut and added milk. ‘Drink it, my son.’

  Stanley sat up eagerly and sucked it up; not quite as good as dried blood cakes with butter and salt, but good enough to want to run his finger around the bottom of the gourd to wipe it clean. He stopped himself, for to show such eagerness would hardly befit his sickened state.

  ‘Cho! You’ve strength for drinking, certainly,’ his mother said, a little coldly.

  Stanley did not know how long he would have to lie on his bed before his father concluded that he was not only a weakling but was also too sickly to send to school; that he would be risking scarce cash on a frail child; a child who might not stay the course to complete the Education. Just as unpredictable was the attention of the diviner. Would the diviner have the power to smell his deception or detect it in the auguries? But without another means to frustrate his father’s plans he would have to see this through.

  All day Stanley lay on his bed, stubbornly determined, but feeling as reckless as the flies that traced crazed tracks around the hut, and as daring as the lizards that darted in and out of the thatch above his head. He lulled his mind listening to the soft flow of milk from churn to churn, the sma
ll snappings of brushwood to stoke the fires and the familiar voices of the women as they went about their duties. He closed his eyes, as if sleeping, when his mother came in to check on him and when Zachye looked in after herding.

  In the evening he smelt the smoke from the men’s pipes and listened to the trading of riddles around the fire: ‘Shakushaku!’ cried the challenger, ‘Shamba igira,’ cried the contestant. The stakes were high, for a calf was wanted of the loser. Later he heard an uncle make recitation, and could picture him standing with his spear held horizontal in his right hand. He spoke each verse with speed and without drawing breath, making quick stabbings with his spear for emphasis, the gradually falling pitch of his voice punctuated with the regular beat of high-toned syllables, while his words made play with meaning and rhyme. As each verse ended he snapped his fingers and the men chorused ‘Eee!’ Stanley heard of the sufferings of their ancestors, the Marvellous Ones; of scorching drought when hoes replaced cows as bride price; of those who fought all night until the cock crowed; of Bagyendanwa, the royal drum and its wives and cattle; of the days when the king would drink poison on finding his first white hair; of when the cattle played with antelopes; of night-grazing under a full moon when the heat of the season made day-grazing hard on the cattle; of recent events such as the risible advice given by the vet from the gavumenti, and of the ignorance of those hangers-on of the Europeans. At this the men laughed, some nervously for they had been tempted to go and seek employment: slashing grass or moving stones in the service of the gavumenti in order to pay the hut tax; or had kin in distant kraals that had sent their children to school, or been appointed to positions of influence in offices, churches and schools. But tonight all the clansmen and their cattle were united and strong. Stanley heard a child ask Zachye to recite, for he had a rare ability for one so young. Zachye matched his uncle in speed and rhythm, and the men, the children and the women all made appreciative ‘Eees’ when he had finished. A calf lowed loudly. Everyone laughed.