by Judy Croome
…I recognise him. He whispers false promises in my dreams every night, since first I came to the court and met him as he slouched in a pitha in front of the altar at St Jerome’s.
‘Trust me,’ Enoch says again.
I blink slowly, once, twice. I see him, not the shadows dancing, and squint around me, surprised there’s no change in our small private world. We still stand on a deserted beach, him and me, me and him.
I succumb to the temptation and rest my head on his shoulder. The tears come. Indulgent, selfish, I cry for all that I have lost: my Dalia, my innocence, for the me I could have been had I some colour to my skin. All hope abandoned, years ago, somewhere along the dreariness that is my life.
He caresses my face into his chest, enfolding me in his embrace, and my world changes. I learn the sweet cedar smell of his shirt and the soft silent comfort of an ancient promise that I am loved.
I am beloved.
Dalia told me that lie too often and I no longer believe in it. I wrench myself away and run as fast as I can to reach the court office. And Jamila. Jamila, my friend, a normal, uncomplicated woman, whose kindness has rekindled the hope I’d thought lost forever.
This time I run alone. Enoch stays where he is. As I begin to climb the steps that will take me off the beach and into the road where the court grounds nestle, I turn back. He stands there and watches me, his long hair lifted by the sea breeze that has sprung up, and the sun glinting silver off what might be tears.
I wipe my own face and take a few deep breaths. I am as ugly when I weep as when I am angry. Uglier, for tears make me weak and defenceless.
‘Where is the young Master?’ the old woman asks from deep within the collection of flowers she has for sale.
Jerked back from my self-pity, I reply, ‘I left him on the beach.’
She struggles to stand using, as her support, the trunk of the twisted old bladdernut tree under which, Jamila tells me, she has sold her flowers for years. The frailty of her age, visible in the trembling of her limbs and the white curls, reminds me of the crone I imagined hiding in an ancient kraal. And, in her face and in the way she moves, there’s a peculiar affinity between us. One forged in more than the few times I’ve bought flowers from her, before I visited the garden of remembrance, where Grace’s spirit rests.
‘You will not elude him,’ she says.
I glare, shaken by my tears, because, of course, I ran from Enoch. I do not allow others to see my weakness. No one’s kicked me, or betrayed me, since I hid my tears behind my rage. I won’t let that change, because a stranger saved a piece of abandoned seaweed and I cried into the smell of cedar-wood as he stroked away my pain.
‘I don’t want to,’ I say. Do I lie? I don’t know, but I think she does.
‘Good,’ she smiles. ‘Good!’ She rustles among her buckets, full of flowers. Her clothes, ragged and dirty with age and poverty, brush the blooms and knock a few petals off the older flowers. ‘Ah-hah!’ she says, as she finds, hidden beneath the aspidistra and daisies, a small bunch of white roses. She holds them aloft, like a laurel wreath after a great conquest. ‘For you,’ she says, and holds them out.
My walk with Enoch has made me forget I’d planned to visit Grace. I wanted to tell her of the joy of this day: that Jamila has invited me to dance. But the prickle of the thorns against my heart, and the dampness of the long green stems, reminds me.
I clutch the roses and dig in my jeans’ pocket for some small coins I always carry. The old flower seller refuses to take them.
‘It is your gift,’ she insists.
‘For what?’ I ask, embarrassed.
A finger, arthritic with neglect, touches a bloom, then touches my chest where the ache from Enoch’s nearness, the impossibility of his nearness, ticks dully.
‘You hope,’ she says, ‘when you could hate.’
I want to howl out a denial. For I, I who can see into my heart, I am so full of anger that hope is barely a seed watered by Jamila’s friendship. In silence, I bury my nose in the fragrant blossoms and think of Dalia. Where is my Dalia now? Does she ever remember me as I remember her?
‘Go,’ the old crone says. ‘Go visit the angel of Grace.’
I refuse to cry again. Instead, ‘I’ll buy double tomorrow,’ I promise.
‘I go home today,’ she says. She begins to empty water from the pails and places her leftover blossoms in a large wicker basket. ‘I’ve paid the last of my debts, the young Master says.’ She stops stacking the rusty tin buckets, one into the other, and sighs into the future she alone can see. ‘Today I go home.’
Faced with her satisfaction, I can say nothing.
When I arrive for work every day, it’ll be strange not seeing her here under the old bladdernut tree, the guardian of the gate into the court grounds. ‘Hamba kahle.’ I give the farewell blessing, for I wonder how she will eat, and where she’ll sleep on her journey. She’s so poor I can’t imagine she’ll be able to buy much in the rural areas. ‘Do you have enough money for food? For a taxi?’ I begin to dig in my pocket, about to insist she takes what I will not miss.
‘Sweet child,’ she sighs, and lays her healing touch on me once more. ‘Sweet, sweet child.’ She nods towards the beach, where a distant Enoch stands. ‘The young Master will take me home. You worry about yourself. Go,’ she says and pushes me towards the court gates. ‘Go!’ She shoos me away.
I leave and take her gift with me into the sacred garden where we remember the loved ones. I lay the white roses at the foot of the angel that protects Grace’s ashes. Driven by impulse, I kneel before its celestial face. Unbidden, the nearly forgotten words begin to tumble out, O Great Spirit King, I begin, warrior wild, look upon a little child…
• • •
When I return to the office, Jamila is radiant with excitement, and full of wedding talk.
‘Sorry I was so long,’ I say. Do I want her to notice the tear stains on my cheeks and the grass stains on my jeans? Perhaps, if she asks about them, I will talk to her about my walk on a beach.
‘Not a problem,’ she says. ‘You’ll never guess who ‘phoned!’
I do guess, of course, for there’s only one person these days who puts that specific smile on Jamila’s face. Chuki Samanya.
The woman has been relentless in her pursuit of a friendship with Jamila. In a relationship, can one avoid corruption by the flaws of the other? I must trust Jamila’s judgement. I look at her, all brittle animation and restless fingers tapping, as she waits to tell me her news. After her bitter experience with Daren Samanya, I don’t understand her preoccupation with the woman who is his wife.
To make her happy, I say, ‘I can’t guess.’ Then I ask what she wants me to. ‘Tell me who called.’
‘Chuki Samanya,’ she announces. ‘Chuki called. Oh, Lulu, that’s every day she’s phoned this week!’
‘That’s great,’ I say, and try to mean it. ‘What did she want?’
‘Oh, this and that. She asked how the plans are coming along.’ A slight frown mars the smooth skin of her forehead. ‘When I see her I’ll ask her what’s best for the table settings.’
Perhaps Sub-Prioress Kapera and her lover, the charity Prior, were correct, all those years ago. Perhaps I am the Levid’s Child, for a wave of envy swallows me up. Wouldn’t a woman such as Chuki Samanya have many friends? Does she have to usurp mine? Jamila is the only friend I have; the only one I want. And when she talks of this socialite, this Chuki Samanya, I hear what she does not say, this exquisite who is my friend Jamila.
There’s hurt, concealed in that simple statement, and anxiety. But most of all there’s a deep fear of rejection. As if I’m in her skin, I break out in a sweat, the hair on my arms rises as a breath of darkness, dangerous and enticing, sweeps past me to wrap around Jamila.
‘Don’t see her,’ I blurt out.
She’s startled out of her distraction. ‘Why ever not?’ she asks.
My fear is so great I kneel before her and clutch her hands in mine. I t
ry to chafe them, or is it my own I try to warm? For this close Jamila’s face is calm and implacable.
‘Her husband. Daren.’ Even though Jamila has never told me exactly what happened, the memory of it tore at her essence. I clutch her hands tighter and say, ‘Think of what he did to you.’
She drags herself free, and gives me a reproachful look. ‘How can you judge Chuki by her husband? As a servant of the Spirit King, I hope I’m not so judgemental! Chuki isn’t responsible for her husband’s Errors.’
Oh, Jamila, I want to cry. Dear, sweet Jamila who sees no iniquity in the world. What I can tell you about life! Don’t you know, I want to say to her, don’t you know that friends can betray you too?
She is hurt and disappointed. All I can do is rise, dust my knees off and walk back to my desk, all the earlier joy of this day a faded memory.
How can I tell her what waits for her? She’ll be hurt. She’ll be lost. A blight has evaded all of us who love her and seeps steadily into her light.
Even I, who of all of them have tasted betrayal, will be unable to save my friend from the sunless spirit that waits to rape her kind and loving essence. I’m familiar with the scent of betrayal. Dalia made me breathe it and live it for ten long years. I smell it again, heavy around Jamila.
What can I say to make her believe me? People who cannot be trusted also wear the faces of angels: unrepentant, they do not care whom they devour along the path to their perdition. I can’t save her from this nameless dread and I’m afraid, so afraid, the next sacrifice demanded by this malicious world we live in will be Jamila.
Pure and innocent Jamila.
Chapter 20
Jamila
“Sometimes we are devils to ourselves
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers.”
‘Will you be alright without me?’ Dawud asks for the tenth—no, the hundredth time—as they call his flight. Granny Zahra does not yield as she watches the hordes of young men and women, some dressed in army green; others, like them, in civilian clothes. All of them are there to say goodbye; a few weep and hold onto their loved ones, pressing branches of buffalo-thorn into their uniform pocket as if some premonition tells them the only way they’ll come home is when the ancestors gather their spirits.
A fleeting premonition of danger threatens Jamila and she wants to put her arms around Dawud and beg him to stay but, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Granny Zahra. The old woman stands rigid, with dry eyes and a cotton handkerchief twisted into tight little knots in her fist. Her lack of emotion gives Jamila the determination to contain her fears.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she says.
In that moment, she means it. Although, over the past fortnight, there have been times when the panic almost consumes her. She blames the Pale One.
‘Go with Dawud,’ Lulu urges. ‘I can manage the office.’
There’s a compulsion to Lulu’s advice; a leitmotif of murky emotion that hooks into the recesses of Jamila’s equanimity. It almost turns her into the same unhappy woman she’d been after The Battle of the Balcony. That’s how she remembers it now. The Battle of the Balcony. But she’s finished with unhappiness. The young Jamila has returned, inspired and strengthened by the vision of a dew-dropped Spirit King-mask welded to an old school gate. Chuki Samanya has shown her how she triumphed over the ezomo within, and won her personal war, as the Spirit King will help Dawud win The War he goes to fight.
But when Lulu speaks in that compelling way, her eyes burning with an intensity that reminds Jamila of the strange glitter in the court gardener’s eyes, she wavers. She steadies herself with the image of Chuki Samanya’s admiration as she spoke of how even Daren Samanya—once, Jamila had thought, the Levid himself—respects her. She is Jamila Johnson to Chuki: Jamjar no longer.
‘I’ll stay,’ she says to Lulu. ‘Someone must care for Granny Zahra.’
‘I’ll visit her every day,’ Lulu offers. ‘So will Prior Ajani, and Enoch.’
Jamila wants to laugh. The Pale One and the Outlander to visit Granny Zahra? She doesn’t want to be churlish, so she merely smiles her thanks, and says, ‘I’ll do more good here, where I can make a daily petition to the Spirit King for Dawud’s safety.’
When Chuki Samanya promises they’ll tend to her while Dawud is away, she’s content with her choice.
• • •
Once Dawud has left to do his duty in The War, Jamila is no longer afraid as she drives Granny Zahra back from the airport.
Careful to turn the flicker on, Jamila changes lanes and glances at Granny Zahra. The old woman hasn’t moved. She hasn’t spoken a word since she reached up and placed her lips to Dawud’s cheek, one hand knotted in her hankie, the other glued to Dawud’s arm as if she wanted to hold him forever.
‘May the Spirit King keep you safe,’ she’d said. A chill had seeped into Jamila’s bones, for despair underpinned the words and Granny Zahra sounded like an old woman who had spent a lifetime petitioning a Spirit King who never answered her pleas.
Granny Zahra has never set foot in the court of St Jerome’s in all the years Jamila has been in the city. Has the bitter old woman forgotten how to be a supplicant? She must have committed a terrible error to have so little allegiance to the Spirit King. Perhaps that’s why Prior Ajani visits her so often: to save her essence and return her allegiance to the Spirit King.
But she’s an old woman and must be afraid of the Spirit King’s judgement that death heralds. Jamila’s disguised fear of the old woman changes into pity. She will, she decides, use the time Dawud is away to help guide Granny Zahra back to the Spirit King who has so blessed her own life.
How pleased Prior Ajani will be, when she saves a faded spirit where he has failed! Jamila takes a hand off the wheel, leans over and places it on the old woman’s arm, the wrinkled skin dry with age and waning life. ‘Our Dawud will be fine, Granny Zahra,’ she says. ‘We’ll light candles every day. The Spirit King will keep him safe. Trust me. He’ll be safe.’
For a long while, long enough for Jamila to turn off the highway and enter the curving driveway of the Templeton mansion—Granny Zahra is to move back in while Dawud is away—the old woman doesn’t answer. She shifts in her seat, her hands twisting the handles of her purse, and says, ‘You think the Spirit King listens to the entreaties of ordinary people who err?’
Jamila has an epiphany. ‘Yes,’ she says from the midst of a soaring joy. ‘Yes!’
This is why the Spirit King has tested her all these years. Not for her new life, the one Dawud is risking in a distant foreign war that’s of no concern to either of them. Not to suffer the deep unhappiness that sucked all the meaning from her life for so many years, and not for the kindness she shows the Pale One.
No, her belief in the Spirit King’s guiding light endured for one reason only: to save Granny Zahra from her errors. Granny Zahra, a daughter of privilege, is an unbeliever, while she—the daughter of a beggar—is an honest soldier of the Spirit King.
For too long, guilt ate at her certainty. The memory of mingled flesh under a moonlit night drowned out the brighter image of a young girl and a nova, silvered with dew and full of the promise of a better life. But the part of her that has endured her trials is the gift of true reverence. So much a forgotten part, she lost the certainty she’d found as a young girl, one early dawn long ago. She has found her lost devotion, her sense of what is right and true.
Deep peace flows into her as she pulls the car into the driveway and hurries round the bonnet to open the door for Granny Zahra. She has the strength to help the old woman out and, for the first time, Jamila puts her arms around her in a brief hug of comfort.
It makes Jamila feel good, so good. The Spirit King’s approval is in the air, and in the wind that brushes their faces as, bubbling with determination, she locks the car and says, ‘The Spirit King does answer our supplications, Granny Zahra. He does!’
A low, sour laugh escapes the old woman and Jamila wonders what errors this stern upright w
oman committed. Her mouth pinches small with resolution. All she needs to do is save her as she saved herself. The power of her belief trembles through her and she shuffles Granny Zahra inside as fast as she can. She tells her to wait as she runs to fetch the old family Eden Book Dawud keeps in his study. She will read the holy words to Granny Zahra, tonight and every night until she has saved her and the old woman returns to worship the Spirit King at the Court of St Jerome.
• • •
Jamila is unable to tell Chuki Samanya of her crusade; of the exhilaration driving her new life, and her renewed faith, through to her very core. Instead, she tells Lulu. Somehow it doesn’t embarrass her when she shares her progress with the Pale One, for she has come to realise—it makes her blush even to think of it!—that Lulu worships her.
She’s become aware of Lulu’s covert glances of admiration since Chuki Samanya showed her that she’s worthy of so much more than she’s settled for, these past years she lived so laden with errors. She rewards Lulu by delegating small tasks to her. Prior Ajani’s coffee. Delivering the approved proofs of the wedding invitations to the printers or typing out the provisional guest list. Jamila needs it typed to show Chuki Samanya when she goes to dinner. ‘It’ll be the two of us,’ Chuki promised. ‘Daren will be away on business.’
The offer thrills Jamila. Lulu, in her gruff way, is pleased too. For Jamila, in a rush of happiness shows her where her name is, right next to Prior Ajani’s on the guest list.
‘What can I do to help?’ Lulu asks her, after she saw the list.
‘There’s a book in the court library,’ Jamila says, ‘called “The Spirit King Forgives My Error.” Fetch that.’ She’d read it herself, a few years after The Battle of the Balcony. It hadn’t made much sense to her. Today, understanding that the years she’d run from Samanya in fear of her ezomo’s power, were years in which she’d used her allegiance as a shield, the book is a revelation to Jamila. One she determines to share with Granny Zahra.