Behind the Eclipse

by Pramudith D. Rupasinghe

  ‘Let`s call Jusu,’ it was again my grandmother. Jusu was Oldman`s younger brother who was the chief of a small habitat just one screech away from our village. He left the village when he was young because he had a serious fight with his uncle who used to be the leader of our village. Since then, he did not come back to the village, and he erected his hut in the middle of the bush with his first wife. Later on, he managed to get a few other women from neighbouring villages, but none from our village till his uncle passed away. Then, he took the third sister of my grandmother as his ninth wife. With the expansion of his huts, people came from neighbouring villages including, one of the brothers of my mother who was suspected of killing one of his wives for taking organs for the rituals of secret societies and Oldman`s brother`s cluster of huts became a little village of which he became the chief.

  ‘He has royal blood that cannot remain hidden,’ Oldman was proud of his brother.

  Once or twice, I had seen him visiting Oldman. He used to bring a leg of a cow or a well- dried bush-meat whenever he visited our place.

  ‘I will take the message to him,’ one of the villagers told my grandmother.

  ‘Go with the boy,’ she grabbed my hand and put it on his hand as if to show that she had not forgotten her responsibility about the security and safety of each of the villagers even though Oldman had already died.

  ‘My boy, it is a long way,’ the man added with a bluffing expression on his face. During the time of Poro, I was taught the skills of survival in the bush how to take over the challenging missions in life and besides that, I had touched a woman, Kumba, which made me as manly as the one who was boasting.

  ‘I will come with you,’ I said hubristically.

  That afternoon, we left for the village of Jusu. I had a leather sack with snacks and water. The man had a long stick in his hand and a machete in the sack that was hanging on his shoulders. We broke the small pieces of branches and hung them along the way and started walking towards the descending sun.

  ‘Watch out!’ The man stopped me.

  ‘Let it move away,’ he showed me a snake creeping into a bush.

  ‘The rule in the bush is the stranger should respect the host.’ What I was taught during Poro crossed my mind.

  ‘We have to leave the place quietly.’ The man diverted the route a bit. I followed him silently.

  The darkness had already swallowing the visibility in the bush.

  ‘It looks like we are already late,’ the man said wrinkling his forehead. I feared the darkness and it was in the bush that my existing phobia reached its climax. The horror stories that Oldman had related me started populating my head as if they were an army of ants that were surrounding a snail.

  ‘Wait !’ The man raised his hand.

  ‘It seems that he has sensed a human presence,’ said the man in a very vigilant tone.

  I did not see anything. I was completely taken by the sensations of fear. I remained silent and followed him.

  ‘Stay in a tree till it goes away,’ he showed me a tree that was easy to climb. Both of us went up and waited a moment; A moment of fear that thickened with the gathering darkness in the bush which I had not expected to experience when I said ‘I do come with you’ to the man.

  ‘Look!’ He showed me a little round fleshy thing rolling inside the bush.

  ‘A wild-boar,’ he whispered.

  ‘It can peel your legs till the bones,’ he added.

  We chewed some dry meat and drank some water while on the tree because we might not have time to take a break.

  ‘Pee if you want, do not make noise. Do it along the branch,’ the man started peeing to a branch so very carefully as if he did not want a single drop to fall on the ground. After Poro, this was my first practical life event in the bush. I followed him.

  After a while of walking in the darkness, we managed to come to a plain where there were a few old huts which looked almost abundant, and some of them had been burnt down.

  ‘Oh the Creator!’ the man sounded astonished. It was visible that it was not what he wanted to see.

  ‘They all are gone,’

  ‘The Creator will transform their sick souls to ancestors,’ he said.

  I was completely clueless about what could have happened there. But there were no signs of life. It looked like a couple of weeks ago that everyone had either left or died. The gestures and words of the man who took me hinted that all of them had died or been killed. I found myself in a puzzle in which I was craving for an answer, but my mouth had already become dry and wordless to ask the man what might have happened to the people in the village. Nonetheless, there was every single sign of woe and death.

  ‘Looks like Bush-curse,’ the man said.

  ‘Bush-curse?’

  ‘Yeah, one dies after the other,’ he said releasing a heavy sigh, looking at the village that was burnt down to the ground.

  ‘It first kills bats, monkeys, and then the children in the community,’ he looked absolutely hopeless because we had been left with no choice other than to get back to our village and inform that there were no survivors in the village of Jusu. The Bush-curse had taken all.

  The man suggested that we should try to move a bit further as there used to be another village a few hours away. But, darkness had already covered the village. The bush could be completely captured by the thick web of darkness, and it was already a haunting ground of evil spirits and predators.

  ‘Looks like we are trapped.’ I heard him muttering as though he had lost his confidence.

  ‘Are we going to go back?’

  ‘No,’ he was not as firm as he was before.

  ‘We will try to locate the nearest village and stay there tonight. We cannot think of anything else other than to protect our lives,’ he said.

  It was the first time in my life that the fear factor dominated every single cell of my body. The more the tone of the man descended, the more my fears ascended. After a while, we found a foot lane which looked already abundant.

  ‘They must have died a few weeks ago,’ the man said while he was walking along the path. I followed him with my mouth fully shut, but I could not shut down my mind, and I was wondering how the man was able to guess the time by looking at the path. During the Poro, an old man taught us that the bushes covered the human traces fast once they stopped frequenting. The little grass bushes that had abruptly popped up along the lane and the thrones of Dormilone plants that could hurt the feet said a lot about the time when the path was last used by humans.

  After a long walk, noticing a light of fire through the bushes that were hidden in thick darkness was like a drop of water after a long drought.

  ‘Yes,’ he turned towards me.

  ‘The Creator saved our lives,’he was happy.

  ‘I knew there was a way out,’ his voice started ascending again. I felt that it was just the chance and nothing else. But, we followed a lost path, already abandoned which did not have a sign of guarantee of a human habitat nearby. However, the beauty of human nature could be its dynamics. I followed him without making any comment.

  The closer the lights appeared, the more hopeful we became though there was a strange feeling that was not explainable. I was anticipating something that I could not explain; something which was pretty similar to what I used to feel when Oldman disappeared in the bush.

  ‘Wait!’ The man stopped me again and started listening to a roar like noise coming from the side of the village.

  ‘Broh is there,’ he said with surprise.

  ‘Then my father also should be there,’ I said.

  We moved towards the village with the anticipation of meeting Broh and my father. A while ago, we were walking towards a village to find shelter to safeguard our lives.

  ‘I’ m dead sure that they are there,’ his confidence seemed to have risen unto the skies just like the fir
st time he talked to me when I told him I wanted to go with him. However, his words drove my mind to anticipate unconsciously, the presence of my father and Broh. It was rather a feeling of being secured than anything else. Seeing Broh and father in the village would definitely solve all our problems, and we would go back safely. We reached an open plane where we could see the village in such proximity that we could see the movements of the villagers in the pale light of firebrands.

  ‘They are there for sure,’ he said again while we were walking across the plain towards the huts.

  06

  In the fading light of firebrands that was in a constant battle between life and death in the wind which was blowing across the plain from the bush covered by the thick darkness, the villagers were pleading the Creator and the ancestors to save the last bit of life left in the plain of death. I had to believe what the man said when I noticed the familiar face among the men who were carrying a sick man out of the hut. It was my father. I could not but believe that the man had some instincts which were true.

  ‘Yes, it is my father,’ I said.

  ‘I hear Broh doing rituals for the ancestors. That`s why I told you that they should have been there,’ he added.

  When we entered the compound of the chief of the village, my father noticed us. He looked shocked having seen us coming in. He did not tell anyone he was going to the village near the village of Jusu but to Guinea. Simultaneously, he must have felt that we had come to see him on an urgent issue, and only urgency he could anticipate was the death of Oldman.

  ‘Oldman?’ It was one of the rarest moments I knew in my father`s life that the words came out faster than the thoughts. Probably, he knew that there could be no other reason for us to come to see him.

  ‘Yes, waiting to join the ancestors,’ the man who came with me said as if he came in search of my father.

  ‘We came to see Jusu, but the village was burnt down,’ my words stabbed the man like a dagger even though it was not a deliberate action to let him down.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he corrected him spontaneously and added.

  ‘Bush-curse looks like spreading like a fire,’

  ‘Broh and I went to Guinea where two villages were completely taken by the curse.’ My father said while he was rushing towards Broh who was preparing for another session of rituals for the ancestors. My father`s presence at the very moment when Broh was trying to connect with the invisible super powers of passed souls was vital for Broh, but on the other hand, the Oldman`s transition into an ancestor was important for my father.

  My father approached him with slightly bent back as a gesture of respect and whispered into his ears. Nodding of Broh was clearly visible in the shadow fallen on the clay wall, but I could not read whether it was in approval or refusal of what my father had requested. The following moment, my father stepped slowly towards us through the human shield that had gathered around the ritual ground.

  ‘We go now,’ he said.

  ‘I heard the first bird,’ the man who came with me said.

  ‘It will soon be light,’ said my father.

  ‘What happened to Oldman?’ My father asked with indifference.

  I could not remember a time when he showed his emotions to anyone except my grandmother. Not even Kumba was able to take his emotions out in public. The fact that she was unable to talk with the family members did not allow anyone to discover his role of a man in love, but whenever my mother used to talk about his cold nature, Kumba used to nod her little head with bushy hair in approval which said many things. However, to me, he was a very practical person who did not allow his emotions to dictate his cognition. He always tried to stand for the right side even when his loved ones did not agree. Whenever my mother commented about father`s cold nature, Oldman used to say ‘he is an African man.’

  ‘Suddenly his heart stopped.’

  ‘No one was around?’ My father`s voice rose a bit.

  ‘Kumba was seriously sick, witchcraft.’

  ‘What?’ He startled.

  ‘What happened to her?’ He looked at me. His eyes were shining like diamonds which reminded me of a pair of eyes of a hawk.

  ‘She is good now,’ a current of an unconscious anger conquered myself when I replied.

  ‘They could not look after her when I was not at home.’ My father`s fury was partially on me which I knew very well. He knew that I was eating the fruits of the poison tree, but he could not ask me because he was also doing the same to his own father−Oldman who was now waiting to step into the world of ancestors from the hands of the son who cheated on him. But unlike my father, Oldman was not aware of this.

  ‘My woman, she is cruel.’ He knew that the friendship between my mother and Kumba had turned into a hatred because of him. I could recollect the time when Oldman was telling that my father did not want any other wife. My mother, unlike my grandmother or aunts, was quite a possessive woman who did not want her husband to be shared by another woman which was not normal in my society at that time. One day, my grandmother came to our hut with a girl who looked slightly older than Kumba.

  ‘She can help you with the household work, and you will not be lonely when my son is away,’ my grandmother told hopefully as she thought her son was not normal as per the social aspects prevailing at the time.

  ‘I am happy alone,’ my mother denied in one single word even without looking at the girl.

  ‘Women have bad days whereas men do not.’ She hurried out of the hut and never talked about it again. If she knew about my father`s relationship with Kumba, she would rather be happy than getting shocked after knowing that her son was sleeping with the last wife of her dead husband.

  ‘She had a belly,’ I told my father.

  ‘Belly, for whom?’ He looked shaken.

  ‘Yes,’ I hesitated.

  ‘And the baby is gone.’ I completed my reply without looking at him.

  The maiden sunlight started clearing the darkness in the bush, and the symphonies of the birds harmonised us for a moment.

  ‘Everyone except one family died in this place,’ said my father showing us the village of Jusu.

  ‘Jusu a few days ago,’ he added.

  ‘Bush-curse, no one except the witch healers from Maryland can heal this,’ the man uttered.

  ‘There was one from Togo in Guinea; he healed a lot of people, but finally he became weak and died.’

  ‘Bush-curse may retain a couple of months till half of the villages becomes empty,’

  ‘Yes, like the time of Oldman`s grandfather who died of Bush-curse,’ my father added.

  ‘He died of Bush-curse?’ I could not wait.

  ‘He loved the gorilla and the monkey,’

  ‘I heard about it,’ I said

  Oldman used to tell various stories about his grandparents. He always talked about his grandfather who was a good hunter as well as a farmer. He used to say that his grandfather used to kill monkeys and gorillas often and he never ran out of bush meat at home.

  ‘He bled to death,’ my father said.

  ‘Same Bush-curse,’ the man said in agreement.

  ‘Yes,’ my father nodded.

  After a couple of hours of walk, we reached an open area from where we could see a cluster of huts at the horizon. It did not take much time for me to realise that we had already reached the village. As we reached the village, there was no sign of Oldman which looked like he had already been buried. Instead of welcoming us, or at least being happy about having been able to return alive to the village, everyone looked shocked and perplexed as if they were bound by a spell.

  ‘He left us, he left us, left us, left us.’ Having noticed my father, grandmother rushed wobbling towards us and fell right at the feet of my father. My father being the elder son to her, who was supposed to execute the final rituals for Oldman, grandmother had a lot to vent when he showed up. She cried lik
e a child, wailed like an eagle-owl, rolling on the ground as if she were possessed by a raged evil spirit.

  ‘We could not send him where he deserves,’

  ‘We could not send him where he belongs,’ she kept on saying. It indicated that, in the absence of the brother of Oldman or my father, the funeral had taken place and Oldman lost his only chance to be an ancestor which was considered not only as a disgrace to the family, but also an act of irresponsibility and disrespect to the deceased.

  My father was not given a single second to explain what had happened. Grandmother kept on crying beating the ground.

  ‘Let the woman cry,’ the man who came with us whispered into the ear of my father.

  ‘She has got a lot to let go,’ he added.

  ‘How did you find him?’ It was about my father; it was not difficult for me to guess about whom my mother was asking. Her tone was more about getting to know what he had been doing in the village than to know what had made him go over there. The seeds of suspicion had already grown into huge trees and completely blocked the visibility and audibility of my mother. She was always an extremely judgemental woman who plunged into what she believed and never wanted to hear anything other than what she heard inside of herself.

  ‘Now, he likes women too much,’ she did not want to hear what I was about to say. She turned back as if she had just wanted to let me know that she knew what my father had been doing. Her gestures were unwelcoming and full of anger. Her reactive nature had transformed her into a more different person than who she used to be before Kumba crept into our lives.

  My grandmother was always like a bottle of Coca-cola. She either cried or shouted at first and then she used to cool down very fast as if nothing happened before. She looked at my father from bottom to top from where she was lying.

  ‘Tell me what made you go to the village of Jusu? Where is he?’

  Everyone knew her to be hot blooded, and my father`s iron heart melted like a piece of butter under the hot sun.

  ‘We went to Guinea. Almost everyone died of the Bush-curse. Then Broh and I were on our way avoiding villages affected by the epidemic and entered the village of Jusu. On getting there, we learnt that the people of that village had been under the shadow of death. Jusu died a few days ago. Only a few survived. They were the luckiest to be able to escape from the grip of death but the most unfortunate to live on this earth without their loved ones,’ said my father