“What can I do for you, my friend?”
“I am concerned,” said the grand magician.
Chief Ngosi regarded him.
“Since the massacre at the Mount, your warriors powered with invisibility potion, an ability to appear and disappear with the wind at will, continue to plunder Whiteman’s farms and kill indiscriminately. They have forgotten anything about amnesty to women and children.”
Chief Ngosi nodded. “I will ask them to show restraint. Is that all?”
“At this point, yes.”
“Good. Perhaps you will join me for lunch. Fresh caterpillars from Yassa land.”
✦✦✦
A week later, Pickle pointed at the water gourd. “Look, Papa.”
Zhorr observed Ngoni warriors on rampage outside the tribal frontiers. “Kill! Kill! Kill! White is white!” they chanted. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
They marched past the Great Lakes to the coastline and left in their wake vultures looping the air in hordes.
✦✦✦
“Greetings, Chief Ngosi. I wonder—” Zhorr began in their next visit to the chief ’s palace.
Ngosi’s face tightened. “Emperor Ngosi,” he corrected.
“I’m a very busy man.”
“So I see.”
Emperor Ngosi would speak nothing of his warriors’ actions. In a stab of whatever modest hospitality he had left, he showed Zhorr his newfound treasures. Inside one hut, metal boxes, each carrying 500 rounds or more of ammunition, stacked high. Another shed was a museum of gadgets from an Arab Sheikh: pistols, shot guns, machine guns, live ammunition and rifle silencers.
The Emperor cradled a laser sight rifle in his hands. “A rarity even in the western worlds, I hear. Isn’t she a beauty?”
“Better than invisibility magic,” Zhorr said through tight lips.
“This,” the Emperor lifted another item, “is a bazooka.”
✦✦✦
In a third and desperate visit to the palace, Zhorr discovered that Emperor Ngosi was not so friendly anymore. He appeared out of mist and waved the magician silent. His court was now full of sorcerers whose powers he appeared to trust.
Emperor Ngosi locked his hands, his eyes dulled. “We are a master race,” he said. He thinned into black fog where no one could see him. Invisible Ngoni soldiers lifted and tossed the grand magician and his son out of the palace.
✦✦✦
Lust predated greed that predated power that predated altruism. The Emperor gathered a harem of one thousand wives whose shelter spread across three villages. Their feed took resources from twelve more villages now forced to pay ‘protection’ tax to the palace.
“You do understand the long-term outcome of this?” Pickle said to his father.
“Yes.” Zhorr’s smile was wistful. “What you witness is not genetic betrayal. It’s not a modern phenomenon. It is simple quintessential greed. Recognisable as it is age old. Emperor Ngosi knows he can climb higher up the money cum power tree—that itch is powerful. He’s obsessed in a rather clear way in a quest for continental supremacy that will only be a speck. In dramatic nuance, history will repeat itself, only with a new face.”
“Yes,” said Pickle. “A face called tragedy.”
They regarded each other.
“The Emperor has grown more powerful,” said Zhorr. “Guns are no longer to him magic sticks that spit fire. He understands the mechanics, complexities and gains of advanced weaponry. Soon, his troops will invade Europe, Asia, Australia and the rest of the world. He will destroy opponents with weapons of famine, disease and bombs. The release of weapons-grade material will change the Earth’s ozone layer. A tidal wave will unleash a tsunami that will kill millions. Changes to the earth’s epicenter will give rise to tectonic forces that will bend the earth’s crust. Earthquakes and lava bombs will kill millions more. Survivors and generations after them will become crippled with incurable illnesses far worse than mutable forms of bird flu, COVID-19, HIV or Ebola.”
“And my lesson?”
“Clearly it works,” Zhorr said in uncompromising attitude. “My method works very well. Too well, in fact, for the scoop of emotions it uncovers in you. Did you want me to teach you about galaxies and how a sprinkle of magic could keep them efficient? Did you want me to clap my hands and say: Look at this world. Isn’t it beautiful?” Zhorr pressed his hands together. “This, my son, concludes our history session.”
One clap and Zhorr regained his true form. Silver ringlets of hair fell to his waist. Jewelled apparel full of shadows, melancholy and river song wrapped around him. Onyx eyes glittered and lit the hut. The grand magician of Diaspora towered two heads above his apprentice son.
He laid a gentle hand on Pickle’s shoulder, crisp with starched livery in lace, lavender and cream. “Tell me. What have you learnt then? What have you really learnt?”
Pickle’s face shone with clarity. “No matter how strong the urge or goodwill,” he said, “never use magic to flirt with history.”
“Unless—” said Zhorr with utmost professionalism, “you have a rule to cover it.” He ruffled Pickle’s copper head. “Well done, my boy. With that knowledge, you have earned a diploma. Now we must depart fast track and travel between worlds to where we belong.”
“Fast track?”
“Straight to the year 3059 and I will die in peace.”
“What about the no mess, no structural changes that favoured us flying as birds to the vortex? Atomic fusion, chemical transfiguration and what else, that’s what you said.”
“Pure gumbo.” Zhorr toyed with tresses falling down his shoulder. He combed off tangle with a finger. “I always wanted to fly.”
Pickle’s brow creased. “But Papa—”
“Mmhh?”
“I am desperate to leave this world. My faith in you is restored. Partially restored, at least.” He glared.
“Did you ‘But Papa’ me to fault my motive?”
“Can’t we, must we not…”
“Must we not what?”
“Undo it?”
“Undo the flying bit or my dying in peace?”
“The damage. The course of history that you have altered.”
“Ah, that. ‘Course we can undo it. It’s our obligation to do so. Yes, you must.” Zhorr’s strong fingers poked Pickle in the chest. “You,” almost absent-mindedly. “Yes, you. Put your wizard hat on. Quick! Time leaks perilously.”
Before Pickle could lift a finger, the door burst open.
Zhorr and Pickle barely transformed to prior form—just barely!—before Emperor Ngosi fell in.
“I don’t want it anymore,” he cried. “I don’t want it!”
Zhorr scratched his salt and pepper wise-man hair and regarded the Emperor with ancient eyes. He took a step forward, laid a hand on Ngosi’s shoulder, an action that appeared to carry calming effect.
“What is it you don’t want, Emperor Ngosi?”
“The power. Take it. Take it!” He tossed down his staff. “It has made a monster of me. Oh, what have I done? My own people! Zhorr, I am a sick man. My forefathers groan in their graves. I see reason now. I don’t want greater power.”
“Do you speak from your heart?”
“All men are equal. There’s no master race. Please remove your magic now.”
“I am delighted you have found sense. I couldn’t have enforced it without infringing your free will. Go home.” Zhorr gave Ngosi an indulgent pat on the back. “We shall work some arrangement.”
After Emperor Ngosi had left, shuffling his steps and carrying much weight, Zhorr and Pickle glanced at each other. Pickle spoke first.
“Your magic eyes didn’t see that coming.”
“N-no.” He was back in his jewelled robe.
“Time travel brings paradoxes and anomalies. That was an anomaly.”
“Knowledge for the future. What happens now?”
“Ngosi has no need of us, really. Having see
n light, his world will embrace him once more. The blood of a speckless rooster or three will appease the spirits of his forefathers. As for the powers of invisibility, he will no more use them for harm.”
“Yet you hesitate, Papa.”
“A small predicament really. Ngosi has no desire for greater power and he has already won the Maji Maji war. But, for the implications of changing history, although he is a reformed man, we must reverse the effects of my magic.”
“Heaven forbid. Reversal will—”
“Different historical outcomes are not necessarily better that the ones that eventuated them. We cannot tamper with this world. Take us back to exactly one minute before Ngosi and the elders first entered this hut and sat around the fire.” Fog touched his voice. It became hoarse, old as a museum. He glanced at his son with unwavering eyes. “You know what that means?”
Pickle nodded. “The calculation is simple.” He turned away from his father. “A simple calamity, really.” He stood still for a moment. “Ngoni warriors will use millet seeds and water to lose the war.”
“I cannot stop it.” Zhorr’s museum voice trembled. “And neither can you.”
“Yes.” Pickle answered. “No one can.”
In a flash, Pickle swished his gown. A glow of light on his forehead swelled in changing shape and size. It filled him with magical powers that lifted the grand magician’s philter of invisibility on the Ngoni.
The cloak whirred again.
Zhorr and Pickle soared with outstretched hands into naked space.
Soft tips of Diaspora mist lifted and touched a cobalt line of hillocks. Crystal water gushed between pieces of boulder and cascaded downwards in a waterfall. A snow- crested mountain ridge climbed towards a floating fortress with an iron gateway. An array of white lights in every arched window blinked. The flying castle sighed in welcome exactly three nanoseconds before a timid rap on the wooden door of a mud hut somewhere in Ngoni country.
THE UNCLEAN
NUZO ONOH
“There is nothing the eyes will see that will cause them to shed blood-tears.” – Igbo Proverb
Ω
UKARI FOREST – 9 PM
My husband’s corpse lies on the raffia mat, spread underneath the giant Iroko tree that towers over the thick vegetation of Ukari Forest. The Iroko tree is legendary in the ten clans of Ukari and even beyond. Its broad branches reach up to the skies, fighting for airspace with the eagles and the kites. Its circumference covers at least eight arms-length of marriage-age men. The other trees in the forest bow their leafy obeisance to the Iroko tree, paying homage to their great lord, just as the humans of Ukari village kneel to it.
All is still. Nothing breaks the grave-like silence of the vast forest. Apart from the occasional snake or lizard, no other creature stirs in the perennial gloom of this accursed forest. From my kneeling position by my late husband’s body, I force my bloodied eyes to look upon his reviled face, coal-dusted by death and decay. His features, swarthy and harsh, have not yielded their cruelty to death. The white cloth shrouding his bloated body is stained with the death fluids seeping from his fast decomposing body.
In the two nights I’ve spent in the forest with my husband’s corpse, I have been unable to keep my eyes from his face….and IT. I feel its malignancy, the threat in its
unnatural turgidity. I live in terror of what IT would do to me should I take my gaze away from its terrible erectness.
I look away, return my gaze to his face. My body shudders yet again, expecting those swollen lids to lift, his cold eyes promising harsh retribution for sins I can never recollect. Yet, I cannot escape. I am rooted to my husband’s side by limb-freezing terror. My heart leaps into my mouth, filling it with bile and panic each time the trees stir, the dry leaves rustle or an owl hoots his midnight vigil from a distant tree. Had I slept, my dreams would have been dreams of escape, freedom, and peace. But I am forbidden that relief, chained as I am to my husband’s corpse by the witch-doctors’ powerful incantations and the customs of our land.
I am a prisoner in a jail without bars. I am the condemned, convicted before her trial. I am the accused, facing her judgement at the one-man jury in the court of the great Iroko tree, known to the villagers as The Tree of Truth. The Tree of Truth is the final arbiter in every dispute in the village, the righteous judge and jury that condemns and sentences with ruthless efficiency. It is said that none who is guilty ever escapes its merciless justice. Its roots are swollen with the blood and cries of its victims, men, women and even children, accused of crimes ranging from witchcraft to night-flying. And I, Desdemona, first daughter of Ukah, wife of Agu of Onori Clan, have joined that wretched fraternity of The Tree. I am a condemned criminal awaiting my fate beneath the unforgiving leaves of The Tree of Truth.
As I prepare to endure my third and final night by the side of the putrid body of my late husband, I know with a feeling of total despair that my ordeal is far from over. Even if by some unbelievable stroke of fortune The Tree of Truth rejects my blood; if by some divine intervention my husband’s vengeful spirit fails to strike me dead by dawn as is widely expected in our village, I could yet be dispatched to my own ancestors’ hell by a myriad of foes, too strong, too powerful, for a mere widow to resist.
For, I am the most accursed of widows. I am a widow without offspring, cursed with the womb of a man, my belly filled with soured eggs that will never again yield the precious fruit of a child. Even worse, I am a widow without a son, left without protection like a day-old baby abandoned in the middle of an African thunderstorm, exposed to the flings and thumps of the merciless force of nature.
For my failure to provide my husband with an heir and name-protector; for my desperate and foolish attempts to produce that precious gift; for my own mad folly and ignorance, I will pay with my life when the cock crows in the dawn and his relatives come to extract the life from beneath my chest— my coward’s heart, my foolish heart.
✦✦✦
I married Agu a few months after I turned seventeen, just one year past the age of female wisdom. It was a time of great changes in our country, a time when people said the white men would give us back our land and return to their own. The calendar in our parlour had the year, 1953, stamped on it. It also had pictures of our new ruler, Queen Elizabeth II, on all its twelve pages. There used to be pictures of the king. But the king was dead, and the queen now owned our lands and calendars.
Agu arrived at our house one rainy day as we made to prepare Papa’s lunch of yam fufu and bush-meat soup. I was in the smoke-clouded kitchen, attempting to keep the kerosene stove going, when the kitchen door flew open and my little brother, Ibe, rushed in, all excitement and glee, knocking over Mama’s wooden stool in his haste.
“Desee, Papa wants you now,” his eyes were wide with what seemed like awe, his voice pitched like a girl’s. I wondered what had given the sudden animation to his customary indolent disposition. Ibe took his role as the only son very seriously. And both Papa and Mama made sure we, the daughters, recognised and respected his privileged status as “heir,” regardless of our superiority in both age and intellect. I had already passed out of senior school with grades that were good enough to secure me a teaching apprenticeship at the village primary school. My sister, Gono, also seemed certain to follow in my footsteps.
But Ibe, despite the attention and praise lavished on him by our parents and family at large, never succeeded in producing a report card that could make any teacher or parent proud. Yet, Papa would insist on giving him the chair of honour in the family living room, right next to grandfather’s stone grave, while Mama would chant her “hero song” whenever he sneezed, coughed or even farted, her face glowing with a mixture of pride, determination and a sad kind of martyrdom that left one won-dering why she’d even bothered giving birth to her precious son in the first place.
“Jealous people, leave my tiger alone, Envious people, look at my prize, Evil people, turn your eyes from my son, My hero,
my solace, my king.”
And well might she praise the little sod, since without his timely appearance, Papa would have replaced her with a second wife to produce the much-wanted heir and “name-protector.” As Papa was fond of telling my sister and me, a woman has no name, no religion, no country, no custom and no honour except that given her by a man, a husband. Ibe’s name said it all—clansmen, brothers! Ibe was the only one amongst us given an Igbo name, showing how valued he was. We, the girls, had been left to the mercy of poor Mama when it came time for name selection.
She in turn had turned to her “learned” brother, uncle Silas, who had promptly lumbered us with the most high-faluting names imaginable, courtesy of one Mr. Shakespeare of England. Everyone knew me as Day-see-mona (Desee, for short), except my schoolteachers, who had struggled in my student years to read out Desdemona in the class register every morning. My younger sister was known as Gono to everyone, but diligently wrote her full name in her textbooks—Goneril.
“Desee, hurry up or Papa will get angry with you,” Ibe was almost hopping by the open kitchen door. I heard a grunt and turned to look at Gono, who had stopped pounding the yam fufu in the wooden mortar as soon as Ibe made his announcement. Her brows dipped in a frown of displeasure. I was unsure who her anger was directed against—Ibe or Papa, both of whom she loathed with equal intensity.
“What does he want with Desee?” Gono barked at Ibe. “Can’t he see we’re busy preparing lunch for you two bigheads?” She shot Ibe a look that dripped with contempt, her body, wiry and small, as tense as a featherweight boxer’s in a boxing ring.
Aggression emitted from every pore in her body as she stood clutching the long wooden pestle. She looked as if she intended to bash in someone’s head with it.
Ibe looked at her and quickly averted his eyes. “I don’t know,” he mumbled, slinking out of the kitchen, but not before I caught a shifty look in his eyes that convinced me he was lying—as usual. That boy would lie to God Himself if he ever made it to St Peter’s gates. Gono was the only one amongst us—Papa included—who inspired some form of fear in the lout. Gono’s temper was notorious in the five clans and many had already predicted she would remain a spinster with her harridan’s temperament—a fact that pleased rather than dismayed her. Even Papa avoided sending her on errands, at least, as much as he could without appearing weak. Gono was the only one of his children that never cried when he took the birch to her.
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