The Ghosts of Eden Page 6

  ‘I thought you didn’t want the Education,’ Stanley said. But Zachye failed to reply. Stanley saw that he should not ask again.

  When they entered the kraal they saw their mother taking offerings of milk to the spirit hut dedicated to Mugenyi. She was still throwing spears of dissent at their father, the seriousness of the matter making her bold.

  ‘If we cannot attribute our misfortunes to the ghosts, then what can we blame our sufferings on? If there are no spirits to appease, then we’re at the mercy of that which does not see us and does not care: the rocks, the forests, the skies. Then we’re to be pitied indeed.’

  Their father appeared in a less belligerent mood, his head hanging a little as if lashed into submission. He had stopped replying and was fiddling with the tobacco in his pipe.

  Their mother said, ‘And do not be so sure of the wisdom of sending Stanley to school. Ten cattle in the kraal are better than a hundred prophesied.’

  She paused, gathering voice. ‘And what if Zachye is laid on his bed while Stanley’s at school? You’ll have to give our cattle to others to follow them out to pasture, or you’ll have to follow them yourself. He who has no dog must bark for himself.’

  When she saw the boys she signalled for them to follow her.

  In their hut, she said urgently to Stanley, ‘Get back on your bed. I’m going to tell your father that you’re ill again. It’s the only way to remove his madness; to make him give offering to Mugenyi and pay the diviner.’

  Stanley looked around for Zachye, but he had slipped away.

  He could not disobey his mother, so he climbed onto the skins and lay out stiff with his arms by his side, as if he was ready to be rolled up and taken off for burial. He lay rigid until his mother went to leave the hut, but she met his father coming in.

  ‘Get up, Stanley.’

  His mother intervened. ‘But he’s ill again – he’s had to take to his bed again.’

  His father was not to be deflected. ‘There’s a craftiness here. Now get up.’

  Stanley arose, with a helpless look at his mother. His father pushed him out of the door. ‘Go and groom the cattle.’

  He stumbled away, and found Zachye playing mweso in the dirt with his friend Erinesti. ‘You must have told our father that I pretended to be sick,’ Stanley said.

  Zachye made his move, scooping a stone from one of the hollows that they had dug in a grid-pattern in the dirt and placing it in an adjacent hollow.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘There’s been enough of this. Now leave us alone. Go and attend the cattle.’

  Stanley persisted. ‘Our father won’t pay the diviner.’

  Erinesti looked up at him and said, ‘Take a gift to Mugenyi. He may help you.’ He smirked at Zachye.

  Zachye said, ‘Erinesti is right; you should seek out the diviner – but they say he has a wild spirit. Remember Nuwa, who was never seen again.’ Both he and Erinesti shook with laughter.

  Stanley wandered away, troubled. Zachye was right; by his own hand he had brought difficulty to his family and by his own hand he must carry it away. He had to seek out the diviner.

  Five

  Stanley sat on the floor inside the hut of Merabu, his father’s other wife, casting millet seeds and studying the pattern of their fall, hoping to find out for himself the secrets of the diviners. His father sat on a stool outside the entrance of the hut while Merabu cut his hair – shaved close, except for a few tufts in diamond patterns, as was the fashion in those seasons. Merabu was young and pleasing to look at, although not as full-bodied as their own mother. Their mother tolerated Merabu, despite their father spending more time with Merabu than with herself. Indeed Stanley thought that his mother frequently tired of his father, becoming sullen or argumentative in order to drive him away into the arms of Merabu. Merabu had two living children, one on the breast and the other an infant. The clan held its collective breath, waiting to see if they would survive better than Kaapa Katura’s other children.

  Stanley heard Zachye’s voice outside the hut. ‘May I speak with you, Father?’

  Zachye waited for permission, which his father, enjoying the attention of Merabu, appeared in no hurry to give.

  Eventually his father said, ‘Yes, Zachye?’

  ‘Sir, I wish to go to school.’

  Stanley looked up from the scattered seed to see his stepmother glance at Zachye in surprise at such a bold request. She stopped shaving her husband’s head.

  His father, frowning, said to Merabu, ‘Carry on,’ and then to Zachye, ‘I’m sending Stanley to school.’

  Zachye sounded peeved as he replied, ‘But why didn’t you choose your oldest son?’

  Stanley feared his father would strike Zachye for his impudence, but instead his father said, ‘You’re to look after the cattle,’ adding, as if not without sympathy for his oldest son’s feelings, ‘You’re wise in their ways and strong. Stanley is small and weak and won’t be able to look after the cattle on his own.’

  Zachye answered eagerly, ‘We’ll find someone else to look after our cattle. They could go out with Keesi’s herd.’

  His father took a long time to reply. ‘It’s true, alas, that our cattle are few enough in number to join another herd, but I don’t have the money to pay two school fees.’

  ‘I’ll bring the money, father.’

  Kaapa Katura shifted on his stool, waved Merabu’s hand off his head and turned towards Zachye. ‘Now you’re vexing me with your persistence. How will you do such a thing?’

  ‘Erinesti tells me that the Bazungu like to pay men to pull up plants in their kraals and make rain for their grass.’

  ‘Enough! Go, boy.’

  ‘Father?’

  Their father raised his hand threateningly. ‘Go! I have had to accept charity in order to send your brother to school. It’s easy for those who dig in the dirt making vegetables, or who trade goats, or who work for the gavumenti to find the fees, but for us who follow the ways of our ancestors, who have no need of shillings . . .’ He grunted, tiring of explanation.

  Merabu signalled Zachye to leave.

  ‘Thank you for your audience, sir,’ Zachye said, and left with what Stanley thought was a light step for such an unsatisfactory outcome to his request.

  Excusing himself, Stanley ran past his father and stepmother and caught up with Zachye. ‘What shall we do?’ he asked, breathless with anxiety.

  Zachye turned to Stanley with a satisfied smile. ‘My father has not vowed against me going to school. It’s just the fees. I’ll get what I want. I’m strong – like my ancestors. You’ll see.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just wait. Don’t ask me any more.’

  Stanley was relieved that Zachye seemed to have forgiven him; but his relief was overshadowed by the knowledge that Zachye was plotting something. As Zachye would not discuss it, he could not prevent Zachye hurting himself – or others.

  Stanley walked across a shallow valley to reach the diviner’s kraal. To avoid detection he took a track less frequented and set out during abantu baza omu birago, when the men and boys were resting from the heat of the day. Only those who had a petition came to the diviner’s dwelling, and like all other children Stanley had kept away. He did not know how he would be received or whether harm would come from his approach, for there were many restrictions, taboos and rituals that he had not yet learnt. As he drew close he felt an increasing pressure in his stomach. A tight copse of small, twisted trees and overgrown thicket, like the giant hairball of some monstrous hyena, marked the location of the diviner’s kraal. The copse emitted a carcass-like odour. Animal horns, and black and bronze feathers, hung from a branch as a warning to passers by that the air was viscid with ghosts and spirits. Beside the copse a tall conical hut made entirely of grass hissed in the sun. A fence of thorns surrounded the kraal, but this was only a rudimentary barrier as the diviner had charms that gave protection and warned away animals.

  Stanley stopped the length of a late aftern
oon shadow away. But the diviner had prescience, for he emerged from his dwelling and stood looking at Stanley. Today he wore a simple white robe and a single band of leather around his head.

  ‘I see you’re well, or do I look on the ghost?’ His voice was quiet and low but hinted at suppressed power, like the sound of distant thunder.

  ‘I’m well, sir,’ Stanley said, his voice thin and squeaky.

  ‘You may come near.’

  Stanley kept his head down and came closer. The diviner motioned him to sit on the earth while he took the stool by the entrance of his dwelling and sat down.

  ‘What is your request?’

  Stanley could not answer although he had rehearsed it. He sat silent.

  ‘If you have nothing to say then you must take your leave.’

  Stanley spoke, but not the words he had rehearsed. ‘Can a diviner teach a boy like me to read the auguries?’

  The charms hanging from the tree moved, although there was no breeze. The hem of the diviner’s robe rippled.

  ‘These secrets are taught by fathers to their sons.’

  ‘Oh! My father cannot teach me for he’s not a diviner.’

  ‘Then you cannot learn to read the auguries.’

  That seemed to be the end of the matter, but shortly the diviner spoke again. ‘There is another way. Some see visions to receive their secrets.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Stanley said, glancing up at the diviner, who held a thin grey bone in one hand while he ran the fingers of the other up and down its shaft.

  The diviner started tapping the bone and Stanley waited eagerly for him to speak again. ‘It’s not for me to give you visions. But maybe Ruhanga will grant these to you.’

  Stanley imagined himself sitting on his bed in the dead of night, with Zachye snoring unaware, as a man in a white kumzu came and whispered the secrets of the spirits to him. But there was another matter.

  ‘Unfortunately, sir, I’m going to school.’

  The diviner’s bone snapped in two, although it rested in the palm of his hand. Stanley exclaimed ‘Oh!’ but it seemed a small thing to the diviner, for he ignored the bone and said, ‘Some who go to school receive visions, but they are not for reading the auguries. These are visions of new ways, ways of the future: some see how to fly in the sky, or how to fight with guns, or how to send their voice to talk in a box many lands away. At school you’ll receive such dreams, but don’t forget the arts of your fathers. Do not despise them, or you’ll hate your very self.’ The diviner’s face darkened. ‘I have heard that some call the spirits of our ancestors “devils” and pray against them. Those men become cut off from our fathers. They have forgotten where they came from. They don’t know where they belong.’

  Stanley found the diviner difficult to understand, but he took some courage from the diviner’s willingness to speak as if one man to another man and said, ‘Do you think that Mugenyi is still angry with me?’

  ‘Your sickness has left you, so his anger is lifted,’ said the diviner, without hesitation.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, will our father have to pay you?’

  ‘He’ll have to pay. As agreed.’

  Stanley struggled to remember his rehearsed words. ‘Sir! I fear to tell you something.’

  ‘Tell it, or I’ll auger it,’ said the diviner. Stanley thought he heard him chuckle to himself.

  Stanley spoke so quietly that the diviner had to lean down to hear him. He told how he had deceived his parents because he did not want to go to school. How he had lain on his bed saying he had pain. And now he had come to the diviner because it was unfair that his father should have to pay for his son’s deception. His father was a poor man because the rinderpest had destroyed the herds of his father’s father. And so he had a request: that the diviner would accept payment from himself. He, Stanley, would pay in full himself when he had finished school and got a job with the gavumenti. The words came out quickly, and he did not look at the diviner as he spoke. It was as if he was making recitation in front of the men of his kraal – as he had seen Zachye do. When he had finished he took breath from such hurried words and waited to know the diviner’s answer, heart beating like a bird in a net: awaiting freedom, or death. Gruff noises came from the diviner’s chest as if the spirits were discussing within him the matter at hand.

  ‘You’re bold for one so young in years.’

  Stanley feared the diviner was about to refuse the request on account of his impudence. He said faintly, ‘I’m not strong. That’s why I’m being sent to school.’

  The diviner got up, towering above Stanley. Stanley closed his eyes tight.

  ‘I’m a poor man myself, but I’ll accept your promise.’

  Not many days later Stanley found Zachye absent from his bed when he woke early in the morning. The cockerel on the shelf under the thatch had not yet crowed, so Stanley did not wake his mother but got up quietly and went to Erinesti’s hut to see if Zachye was there. Looking in, he saw only the supine shapes of Erinesti and his sisters. He moved around the kraal, between the cattle, along the thick euphorbia fence, whispering ‘Zachye!’

  He jumped when he felt his shoulder gripped from behind.

  ‘Looking for someone?’ It was Bejuura. The men took watches through the night – more for protection of the young calves from leopards than from raiding parties, in these new days.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  Bejuura held him there, his grip causing pain. ‘Don’t crawl around the kraal before the men are up. Next time I may mistake you for a beast and kill you.’ Stanley tried to turn around but Bejuura held him. ‘Go straight to your bed and wait for the men to rise.’ As Stanley tried to look over his shoulder, Bejuura slapped him hard on the ear and hissed, ‘Do not turn! Are you deaf? Go back to your hut.’ He pushed him away and Stanley fled to his bed.

  When the adults found that Zachye was missing, and after his mother and the other women had ceased wailing that this augured calamity, his father called the men together to look for him. Stanley was questioned. Yes, Zachye had gone to bed with him. No, he did not smell of beer. No, he had heard nothing in the night.

  The boys were left to milk the cattle but were not to go out for grazing until the men had found Zachye. The men moved in groups of three, in an easy, loping stride to cover distance as efficiently as possible. They returned tired at abasetuzi bagaruka, unsuccessful. Stanley’s mother asked his father whether he had paid the diviner. When his father was noncommittal, she went again to make offerings in the ghost huts. His father told the men that he was going to walk to the police station. When Stanley asked to walk with him he refused, saying it was too far and that he needed to make haste. It would be nightfall before he got there.

  For two days Stanley pastured the cattle with Erinesti. The cattle seemed to miss Zachye; they lowed continuously and wandered restlessly, so that he and Erinesti could not rest at abantu baza omu birago, but had to call the cattle’s names often to persuade them to stay together. The cattle refused to listen to Erinesti, as they did not know him. Erinesti became irritated when the cattle were better persuaded by Stanley – although Stanley thought that even with him they obeyed with poor grace.

  Stanley tried to make friends with Erinesti saying, ‘Zachye must have gone a long way away.’

  ‘Not that far,’ Erinesti said. He started throwing stones at crows.

  ‘So you know where he is,’ Stanley said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Please tell me.’

  ‘If I knew I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘I’ll not speak to anyone. I’ll just go to him and tell him to come back before the gyoogi come.’

  ‘He may be dead by now,’ Erinesti said, casually, as if it was a small thing.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘He went with two spears. He’ll use them.’

  Stanley remembered the boy who had attacked him. Surely Zachye had not continued to bear a grudge.

  Erinesti started laughing. ‘Bejuura is missin
g his spear. He accused me of stealing it, but he missed it on the night Zachye went out and he knows Zachye took it. If he’s exposed he’ll be disgraced. He must have slept on his watch.’

  Stanley thought back to the night when he had got up to look for Zachye and remembered how Bejuura had been so reluctant to let him turn around to look at him. What good was a man on watch without his spear?

  ‘I beg you tell me where Zachye’s gone,’ Stanley pleaded.

  ‘I’ve already said more than I wanted. Don’t speak of this at the kraal.’

  Erinesti returned to throwing stones. Stanley wandered among the cattle unable to play, or even chat to the calves. He kept looking out, as if Zachye might appear on the horizon – tall, with two spears. Then he abruptly stopped walking. He was trying to remember what Zachye’s face looked like. He could recall Zachye’s tall form and the way he carried his spear, but he could not see his face. He became fearful at the meaning of this sudden incapacity. Perhaps it told that Zachye was already a ghost. He turned to press Erinesti again but, as he did so, he saw a flash of light on the road far away – the sun catching the bright metal on a vehicle. The car stopped, and two men got out and started walking along the track towards the kraal. As they got closer Stanley could see that they were gyoogi, in their black jerseys. Zachye had told Stanley that gyoogi – the word for the dark blue flies that frequented dead animals – sounded like the English word jersey. That was why the police were called gyoogi.

  ‘Look, Erinesti!’

  Erinesti had already started rounding up the cattle.

  The gyoogi walked slowly, leaning back a little to balance themselves against their bellies. One of them held a stick, or spear; Stanley could not tell which because it was wrapped in a dark cloth. When the boys arrived back at the kraal, hurrying the cattle, they found the gyoogi had entered Merabu’s hut with some of the men, while the rest of the clan crowded around the entrance. Stanley went around the back where he could listen more easily. He heard Merabu offering the gyoogi milk. They preferred tea, but accepted beer when they learnt that there was no tea. The gyoogi said they wished to interview the men of the kraal. Stanley heard the men say that this should be done in the centre of the kraal where the clan members normally gathered, so that everyone could hear what was happening, but the gyoogi refused, saying that they must conduct their business in something that could be equated to an office – not outdoors, like primitive people.