FLESH AND THE DEVIL by Kola Boof

by Kola Boof

  Shango found that all he could do was sigh. Staring into her soul, he felt captured and wanted nothing more to do with freedom. Their mutual desire coming over them like music, a parchment in the throat as neither knew exactly what to say, the nearness of one another’s strangeness vibrating the earth and air like a ghost scream.

  Shango chopped down the first tree by saying, “I am Prince Shango Ogun of Ajowa. ..and I’ve come a very long way.”

  “I am Ife Ife...the third daughter of King Katanga and Queen Ambi. I am born under the star of Roshumba--the goddess of beauty.”

  “A princess”, said Shango with a gentlemanly grin as he knelt down and gently placed a kiss upon both her feet. “tumba princess.”

  “What brings you to our nation?”, asked Ife Ife, stiffly, her body clutching inwardly as if to bestill any heartbeat.

  Shango laughed out loud (very loud), because he didn’t know where to begin or how to explain it, and as he laughed, Ife Ife quickly put a single finger over his mouth and motioned him to quiet down at once! She cautioned with an impassioned whisper, “You must speak very gently ...or my Aunt Thiaroye will awaken to spy on us and summon the guards.”

  “Yes”, he said and began to speak again, but then Ife Ife realized that there was a much better place for them to talk at the bottom of the lake! She took his hand, saying, “I have a secret place...come, we can talk there.”

  She removed the heavy brocaded cowrie shell and banana leaf skirt she wore, revealing a perfect pair of charcoal stick legs and a mass of white pearls covering her crotch. She then pulled him towards the steamy black lake, the lazy crocodiles barely moving as they stepped over them. Ife Ife giggled, and Shango was fascinated to know that there was someone somewhere who shared his longing for friendship and immediacy--for she didn’t even know him and yet there they were entering a lake together, her bony hand pulling him into the very warm, steamy water, her excited girl’s face instructing, “You must swim and follow me.”

  “I don’t like this lake. Why is there no sand on the bottom? This feels like jagged rock. The water’s black--how are we going to see down there?”

  “Just follow me and swim straight down--there’s a moon at the bottom of the lake.”

  “A moon?” He looked up at the one in the sky. He got a lump in his throat, thinking this whole thing might be an elaborate trap, but something about Ife Ife made him want to be wherever she was.

  “Come Shango. Don’t be afraid.”

  Ife Ife dove underneath the water and Shango followed her.

  As he swam behind Ife Ife, he suddenly realized that his body hadn’t ached or felt tired since he’d laid eyes on her. In fact, it seemed as though he’d forgotten all his troubles. The horror of being capsized in a black river by hippopotamus’s had happened not more than thirty minutes ago, and yet that adventure seemed old. Even the memory of the throat eaters roasting and eating other men’s penis’s had faded and retired like an untrue nightmare to the back of his mind. And his new bride, Princess Namibia, meekly confused as she held a white, blue eyed, bone-chomping Moon baby--never crossed Shango’s mind once. Only Ife Ife did.

  His eyes bewitched and bewildered by the sleek fluid movement of Ife Ife, her body moving as gracefully as the S-dancing torso of a blue, blue sea horse--and the water--it was salty like the ocean! Shango had never seen anything like it. His gaze frightened and fascinated at once by the glowing bottom of the lake, its sublime ivory white dome surrounded by underwater hot springs and black coal-like granite rock. Was it really a moon, he wondered? For certainly, it looked as though it were but a small piece of one buried beneath the earth.

  And as Ife Ife’s long, charcoal body swam above its glowing luminescence, a peacock-pretty music began to float in his mind. She was so beautiful and so seemingly unaware of it.

  Suddenly, she made a sharp turn and swam towards an underwater ledge surrounded by prickly thorn bushes. She disappeared inside a black hole.

  Shango jetted forward and followed her...the inside of the tunnel being black at first but then penetrated by an orange glow. Within moments they came through the other side of the tunnel and were inside what seemed a giant drop of orangey, flame-lit, clear clear water. And it wasn’t salty! It was somehow fresh.

  Ife Ife swung upwards to break the surface and Shango came up right after her, the both of them gasping for air and Ife Ife laughing with that musical voice of hers.

  “You did it!” she giggled in delight.

  “Yeah”, nodded Shango with hard breathing. “I’m a man of adventure. Not that I planned it that way.”

  “Come”, said the princess, proudly, as she took his hand to guide him. “Come into my palace.”

  And it was breathtaking! A majestic volcanic sea-earth cavern the likes of which Shango had never dreamed existed. The ceiling of it consisting of a million sharp, dagger-like blue and pink diamond spears that hung about like glistening, sparkling ice.

  Ife Ife led him to a shallow sandy bank where they came out of the water and walked upon the smoothest marble-like flooring, the walls adorned with brightly burning torches and whole bouquets of the wildest, most fragrant, most beautiful flowers that Shango had ever seen. They seemed to be growing out of the walls.

  Ife Ife explained to him, “This is the chamber of the virgin queen’s womb. This is where my my father, Katanga, brought my mother, Queen Ambi, each time they ever made love. This is the place where all of my brothers and sisters and I...were conceived.”

  Shango looked in the corner and noticed an immaculate royal bed carved from pure ebony and gilded by full grown tusks of ivory, the bodice draped in honeybee lace and adorned with plaques of turquoise and mother of pearl. The pillows looking like clouds of fluffy Arabian loofahs and embossed with the black charcoal images of the God man and the God woman--their pod-shaped heads burned into the walls like shadows of long ago dreams.

  “Come”, said Ife Ife, pulling him by the hand through the tunnel that led to another chamber. In this one there was a bubbling green pond and huge chunks of red rubies and white crystals embedding the walls. “All of this used to be a volcano under the ocean. That’s what father told me.”

  “It’s amazing. I smell the sea salt.”

  “I bring all my friends here”, said Ife Ife, but Shango could tell by the sound of her voice that she didn’t really have any friends. There was a definite loneliness. She said, “Make yourself comfortable. Sit on the rugs while I fix some food.”

  “Food? Oh great!” said Shango.

  He sat on some big furry creature’s hide as Ife Ife dragged a very large stone tablet away from a hole in the ground next to the steam pond. Using a clutch she pulled the roasted boar and chicken parts from the hole and set them down on a slab of rock salt. Then she took out yams and ground nut paste. From the shrubbery around the walls she plucked juicy red tomatoes and sea squash.

  “Here...this is good”, she said, excitedly, setting a tablet of salt in front of him. She gave him a clutch and a bell stone to eat with.

  “I love boar!” he said as he began stuffing down the delicious food. His cheeks full and his mouth greasy, he said, “This is delicious. You are a very good cook.”

  Ife Ife’s whole face lit up, and there in the fully lit chamber, Shango could really, really see her. She looked like a child and had the most sparkling molasses-brown eyes, the biggest dimples and the prettiest, smoothest velvety black skin he had ever seen. Her small breasts, which the God women wore bare, usually with cowrie shell necklaces, were high, firm and had a modest jiggle. And her shoulders were so thin he almost wanted to laugh, because he knew that in his land, the women would be making outrageous jokes about how skinny Ife Ife was. She had a well shaped ass, but it was tiny and nondescript, and that was a let-down for Shango, but...you can’t have everything, he thought to himself.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Fourteen...and the Prince?”

  “Sixteen”, he grinned.

  “Well”,
she said, pouring palm wine that she had fetched from a brass urn. “That makes you an adult...and me just one year shy of adulthood.”

  “I thought God women were grown by fourteen.”

  “Fifteen”, she assured him in an elegantly flippant way. “And my father’s already taking court with different warriors and griots who wish to take marriage--the arc and bed of my totem and womb and be the master of my life--til death do us part. There’s one of them that I like, but he’s a poor man from a poor family and I fear that father won’t choose him. Are you married?”

  Shango stared at her, because he didn’t know what to say. Should he lie? He said, “Uh...no, I’m not. I’m too lonely to be married.”

  “Too lonely?”, she giggled. “What a funny thing to say. Do you have any brothers?”

  “Only by my father’s concubines. None by my mother.”

  “Then that makes you the future King!”, she proclaimed, joyfully. “This is exciting! They will pick a beautiful Ajowan bride for you very soon. Oh, it’s so romantic! You will have many sons...just as tall and handsome as you are! Will you invite me to the wedding?”

  Her good cheer annoyed and soured Shango, his mind suddenly restless as his stare penetrated her face and eyes very deeply...his ashen face burning with its own question as he ignored hers.

  Ife Ife’s smile faded, because it dawned on her that he was a man in the sense that her father and her guards were men, fully developed and sexualized,

  not a boyish cousin come to visit, and with that, the part of her that was naive quickly melted into fear, her face warmed by the heat of his eyes.

  She said, “I think we should go back to the garden now.”

  “Why? Did I do something wrong? You said that we can’t talk in the garden.”

  She was too embarrassed to look at him, because all of a sudden--she knew--that they liked each other. “I just think that my Aunt Thiaroye will be worried...”

  “No, Ife Ife, that’s not it.” He took hold of her wrists to stop her from putting away the food. Their eyes met and he said, “It’s because you can tell that I am enchanted by you. You feel it all of a sudden--like a chill. Our souls dancing as though one--as though we were sky and sea awaiting some hard summer rain. Now deny it, Ife Ife.”

  “Let me go!”, she hissed and jerked her wrists free. “I’m barely a fawn, I don’t even know what you mean to say.”

  “Then why”, laughed Shango, “are your nipples so hard right now?”

  She looked down and saw that they were pointing directly at him like swollen shiny purple titsii hornets. She was very confused, because she didn’t know what that meant.

  “Swollen nipples mean that you like a guy and that you want him to kiss you”, Shango informed her.

  “I am a God!” retorted Ife Ife, quickly covering her nipples in shame. “We do not kiss. Only wild animals lick and kiss and put their mouths on one another. Our tribe does not defile itself with such filth and leftover cannibalism as kissing.”

  “Well, we Ajowans...we kiss”, laughed Shango, and then he grabbed her and pulled her close to him!

  He tried to plant a passionate one on her mouth, but she jumped up, shrieked as though she’d seen a flying bug and bolted out of the chamber.

  “Ife Ife!” he called running after her. “I just wanted to tease you!”

  “Don’t kiss me, don’t kiss me!” she cried, horrifically.

  She ran back to the chamber of their entrance and leaped diving into the lagoon. He followed her into the water and in no time they were jetting like blasts of steam and anxiety, their arms and legs lacking grace as they swam back to the shore of the garden.

  And when they came up out of the water--the romantic spell was over.

  “Kill him!” screamed a shrill older woman’s voice.

  Ife Ife screamed out, “....nooooo!”, but it was too late. A half dozen arrows shot into the lake, two of them piercing Prince Shango’s body--one through the shoulder and another in the chest!

  “He’s my friend!” Princess Ife Ife protested as tears beaded up like drops of rainbows falling from her eyes. “He’s my friend!”

  3

  •

  The whole head of confusion, thick and bull-shaped, rose up out of the universe and took Ife Ife’s life by the tail.

  “When will he awaken?”

  “The soldier’s arrows were dipped in the pancreatic juices of a white dove”, said Pikine, the royal medicine woman and midwife. “He could sleep for months, but the good thing is--he’s only sleeping.”

  “I think we should send messengers to his parents in Ajowa-land. He’s been here for three weeks now. They’ve got to be worried sick not knowing where he is.”

  “Your father forbids it”, replied Pikine with a serious graveness. “It could start a war between the tribes. What if their Prince died after they came all this way to see him and found out that that he’d been shot by God arrows? Who would they blame? The King is right when he says that Shango should return to his father only if he’s walking and talking, otherwise, we Gods don’t know a thing about where he is is. You just keep feeding him this rich saba oil and moving his muscles, Princess--one day he’ll awaken.”

  Ife Ife looked down at his sleeping face, a frail arc of moonlight highlighting its handsome youth, her own bright eyes spellbound by the intensity of what she had begun to feel for him with each passing day of the last three weeks. For it was she alone that took care of him and wouldn’t let any of her servants come anywhere near him. Guilt, fear and suspense torturing her with a constant connectedness.

  The old woman took Ife Ife’s hand suddenly. She looked into the girl’s dreaming eyes and shattered their spell by saying, “Tonight is upon you now.

  The most special night of your life...as our great and wise King shall finally reveal which man it is that is to be your husband.”

  Ife Ife looked away from Pikine. She set her glance on Shango and said, as a child would, “This is the man...this one lying here as though he’s dead to this world and running like a mighty lion in the next. This is my heart.” Clutching Shango’s arm, she began to weep. “I feel it...the insanity that Aunt Thiaroye always told me true love would feel like.”

  “It’s out of the question”, said Pikine. “You are a God and he is an Ajowan. Your father has big plans for your womb, Ife Ife. A princess’s life is not her own, you belong to the people. If you were a boy, it would be different, but a girl of the Gods is not allowed out. For only a God male can touch your royal flesh.”

  Boof! came the drums.

  The distant drum of the cathedral was suddenly empowered by a crash. The drum roll of the King beginning to swoon above the towering walls of the great palace.

  Ife Ife lifted her head with a tragic silence. Tears pouring down her black face. Her eyes went dead and the butterflies in her stomach dissolved into spoiled milk.

  “Come my child...it is time to engage your husband. The Gods await you.”

  ••

  Hembadoon

  Capital city of the Gods.

  •

  King Katanga, son of Babukar the Slayer and graduate and scholar of the university in Timbuktu, looked first to this royal wife, Ghana’s legendary almond-eyed beauty, the “African violet” and keeper of the bees...Queen Ambi of Oshiwambo.

  Leisurely, the queen, flanked on either side by her solid gold collared pet leopards, nodded her famous cheekbones in consent.

  King Katanga declaring--”let the God man be born.”

  The mantra of all of men tumbled freely from his lips:

  tooszwu...tomihiee (glorious is her womb...)

  odoogo nu Biha (...Africa...mother of God, mother of man)

  Afa badulango mono (...ancient and tomorrows, glory to)

  Ziti unoosu (our queen, her black perfect poetry)

  Odoogo nu kebutii nuwu (that we should draw breath eternally)

  jda gono, jda bono, jda tooszwu odoogo Ulo (all praises to the goddess flower...mother of A
frica, river of God, mother of man).

  Queen Ambi, handing the leashes of the leopards to a servant, stood to receive the bowed heads of the men. The pod-shaped heads of the tall, thin charcoal God people filling the palace court, their ivory white eyes searching about anxiously because most of them had placed bets on which of the two finalists would be chosen to serve as Ife Ife’s husband. They would have to wait for that announcement but didn’t mind the suspense so long as the pomp and circumstance centered around West Africa’s most enigmatic woman, the glamorous leopard queen, Goddess Ambi.

  They watched as she presented with a seashell full of honey--her earth brown fingers smearing the honey upon the nipples of her milk mighty breasts. Her bodacious mud brown body captivating the skinny God people as Queen Ambi was not thin but regal, ripe and luscious as a hive of juicy black grapes, her bee-stung lips voluptuous as an open flower and her dark, brilliant eyes flashing before fate as though they ruled both earth and its after world. And once her bare black nipples were covered with honey, she rose her right hand and declared, as was the queen’s responsibility to initiate the call and response identifying as natural law--the value of woman as humanity’s womb--”Long live the queen!”

  “Let the God’s be born!” the masses responded as always.

  King Katanga then shook his fist in the air in affirmation, “Long live the live the queen!”

  “Let the God’s be born!” cheered the masses even more passionately than before.

  Boof! came the drums...praiseful voices rising into song as muscular burning bodies, male and female, spilled onto the center court like some bird of paradise harmony...the white bottoms of black feet dancing the spirit world into being, the fatness of booties lifting rhythm up to God--towering feathers, straw masks, peacock plumes...Oimja...the dance symbolizing the King and Queen’s pride at giving away a royal daughter in marriage...the same exact dance...that was performed on the night that Pikine had been called to the palace to cut, mutilate and sew shut Ife Ife’s three year old vagina. The same beautiful horror.