Ras coughed and then said, "Look!" and pulled the letter from the antelope-hide bag. Mariyam and Yusufu grayed under their dark skins, but their faces expressed only puzzlement. Mariyam said that she could not read the writing. Yusufu took a long time going over the letter and then said that most of the words were unknown to him.
Ras felt that Yusufu was acting. His comments and his facial expressions had something controlled about them. And Mariyam's reactions had also been more restrained than they should have been. Both were too silent.
Ras became angry and said that they knew much more than they were telling him. They became indignant and began to shout abuse. They were overacting. But nothing he could say could get them to admit anything. Mariyam said that she was of the opinion that the paper was a letter from Igziyabher, that is, a message, to the Virgin of the Moon, or perhaps Igziyabher was writing the story of the history of the world from creation to the present.
"Why don't you ask me where I got the letter?" Ras shouted. "Isn't it strange that that was not the first thing you asked me about it?"
Neither of the two would admit that this was strange. Nor did they then ask him where it came from. Nevertheless, Ras told them about the stiff-winged bird, its fiery encounter with the Bird of God, the yellow-haired creature, and the dead brown man.
Mariyam cried, "Of course, the yellow-haired thing was a demon! She was flying in a demonic bird, one of Satan's, and so attacked the Bird of God! The dead man must be one of her fellow demons, struck down by Igziyabher!"
"You have said many times that Igziyabher is all-powerful," Ras said. "How, then, could the bird of Satan take the Bird of God along with it in its fall? And why did not Igziyabher kill the yellow-haired demon, too, if He killed the brown one?"
"Who knows why Igziyabher does this or does that?" Mariyam said. "His ways are many and devious and ones that we, his creatures, cannot understand. But truly I am happy that you did not come across the yellow-haired demon, because she would have destroyed you or, worse, taken you back to hell with her!"
"How do you know that the demon is a she?" Ras said.
Mariyam stuttered for a minute and then said, "Because it is likely that Satan would have sent a female demon to entice you the more easily to hell."
Ras had always been more curious than frightened by her stories of devils and Satan and hell in the cave at the river's end. Besides, he now had heard the stories of the evil spirits of the Wantso and of the Sharrikt, and no one of the three versions agreed with any other, yet the Wantso and Gilluk, the Sharrikt king, had been as convinced as Mariyam that their stories were the truth.
That Yusufu and Mariyam did not press him for details was proof that they were concealing knowledge from him. Raging, repressing the desire to shake the truth out of them, he left the house with a mighty slam of the door behind him. He strode through the forest and then along the lake shore for hours. Finally, he realized that he had wasted his time by coming home. He would have to return to the area into which the yellow-haired being had fallen and search for her.
That, however, would be done later. In three days, Wilida would be let out of her cage by Bigagi, who would conduct her over the bridge to the village, where the all-day wedding ceremony would start. Ras would sneak onto the islet late tomorrow night and take Wilida away. When he had her safely hidden away, he would take up the search for the angel or demon or whatever she was.
It was an hour before dark when he came back to the house. Mariyam was baking bread in the brick oven on the veranda. Yusufu walked in a few minutes later with a hare he had killed with an arrow. Both his parents greeted him, but they were unusually quiet. Ras wanted to talk, but forced himself to be silent. After a while, Mariyam and Yusufu became nervous and started talking about this and that, quarreling over trifles but saying nothing about the letter or the two birds or the yellow-haired creature.
6
LIGHTNING TURNS TO STONE--AND A KNIFE
He watched Mariyam bring a few glowing coals of wood from the hut. She started a fire in the brazier on the veranda and stuck the hare on a rod of iron and set it over the fire.
Iron, Ras thought. Where had she gotten iron? As far back as he could remember, the brazier and other articles of iron had been here. But not until recently had he questioned their origin.
"What did you eat?" Mariyam said.
"Some pig that I killed several days ago. And a tree rat I caught yesterday."
Mariyam and Yusufu looked disgusted. Mariyam, he knew, did not care about the pig, but she was upset about the rat. Yusufu was sickened by the thought of eating either animal.
And that was strange, strange. When he was a child, he had been encouraged to eat anything that could be eaten: worms, spiders, bamboo shoots, mice, everything except carrion. Yet his parents had refused to eat much of what he ate. They had managed to conceal their disgust then, or else he had not noticed it. But he was seeing much now that he had taken for granted then.
"I am going swimming," he said suddenly. "Maybe I'll go fishing. I'll be back in time to eat."
They did not object. He walked away but turned once to look back. They were squatting on the veranda, face to face, their noses almost touching, their mouths working, their hands flying. So, they were even more upset than he; yet, for some reason, they had not wanted him to know. His story and the letter had disturbed them.
Ras shrugged and walked on through the gloom of the great trees and the shriek of monkeys and birds. At the lake, he swam for a few minutes. When he came out of the water, he saw Kebbede, a chimpanzee, running off with his leopardskin belt with the sheathed knife. He gave chase, but the chimpanzee, hooting madly, scampered up a tree and became lost in the higher levels of the forest. All Ras could do was to howl curses and promise vengeance in many languages but mostly in Arabic. This had a vast and beautiful range of oaths, obscenities, exquisitely described tortures, and insults.
When he returned to the house, he told his parents what had happened. Mariyam said that, doubtless, Igziyabher would furnish His son with another just like the one stolen. Perhaps very soon, since clouds were forming. Igziyabher was wrathful about something, and when He became angry, He sweated clouds and, after a while, cursed thunder and then threw down His knives, which looked like lightning while descending.
Before sundown, the clouds, big-browed, black, and swirling, sped over the western edge of the mountains, bringing with them the chill of the cold stone sky. Ras, his parents, and the animals huddled around the central brick fireplace. They coughed when the wind blew down the chimney and spread the smoke through the hut. Yusufu hacked and swore; he spat in the fire, and the odor of burning saliva mingled with that of the smoke.
Ras was not as cold as the two old ones, since he had been used to sleeping outdoors even in winter with little covering. But he was shaking inwardly; the ice of the unknown and the threatening future was a lump in his belly.
"Where do the knives come from?" he said suddenly.
Yusufu growled and said, "We have told that tale a thousand of a thousand times, O witless."
"A thousand of a thousand lies," Ras said. He looked through the smoke at the old man's reddened and weeping eyes. "If the Devil is the Father of Lies, you are the Devil."
"And you are an impertinent, ungrateful, son. If you were not such an elephant, and I so enfeebled by my years and by the sickness brought about by worrying over you, I would thrash you until you howled louder than the storm."
The wind increased until it was a shrilling. Thunder boomed as if great pieces of the cliffs were falling off. Lightning smashed deafeningly nearby, and the smoky air was whitened. All three jumped.
Ras said with unconcealed sarcasm, "O mother, tell me again the story of how Igziyabher hurls knives to the earth, and every knife is a lightning stroke."
Mariyam looked up at him through the smoke with misery on her face. "O son, it is true. Would I, your mother, lie to you? When it storms, it is because Igziyabher is wrathful. He rages b
ecause His creations have been sinful, and He wishes to frighten them back into a state of grace. And sometimes He kills the especially sinful as an example to the others.
"You, my son, and it grieves me to say it, have been lying with the black women of the Wantso. Igziyabher does not like this."
Ras, panting with repressed rage, stood up, looked around, and then kicked the door with the flat of his foot so hard that the bamboo bar securing it broke. The door banged open outward. The wind and rain rushed in. Lightning exploded and whitened the air. Yusufu and Mariyam yelled in terror.
"I haven't been evil!" Ras shouted. "What have I done that nobody else does? Why should I suffer when Yusufu and the Wantso men and every male beast in the world have a female? Why?"
He shook his fist at the howling blackness outside. Mariyam screamed and ran to him and wrapped her tiny arms around his thigh.
"Igziyabher is saving a white woman for you! He wants you to take to wife a woman of your own kind. That is why He forbids you to whore around with those blacks!"
"And how do you know that Igziyabher has a white woman for me?" he bellowed. "Does He whisper His secrets to you?"
Mariyam, her brown, eaglish face upturned, clung fiercely to his leg.
"Trust me, my son! I know!"
"How do you know? When have you talked to Him?"
Tears ran down her cheeks, and she said, "Believe me, my son, I know!"
"Let loose of me, mother! I am going out there where He can see me, and I will dare Him to strike me! I haven't been evil! He is evil, because He wants to kill me for doing what He made me do."
Mariyam shrieked, released her hold, stepped back, and held her ears.
"I won't listen to such talk! He will kill you!"
Yusufu took a long drink from a goatskin bag. He wiped his lips and growled, "Let the simpleton go out and get struck down, Mariyam. It won't be your fault."
He took another drink of the wine, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, belched, and said, "It won't be Igziyabher's doing, either, if Ras gets killed. It'll be nothing but an accident caused by his foolishness."
"Shut your mouth, you...!" Mariyam yelled, but Ras did not hear the rest. He ran out into the rain and wind. He ran and ran toward the hills, slipping many times on the wet grass or mud and almost falling. By the frequent flashes of lightning, he could see where he was going and so avoid most of the obstacles, the bushes, fallen trees, and the creek. Up the hill he charged, up the slope into the jungle, where the gorillas lived.
"Strike me; you big hyena up there!" he screamed as he shook his fist. "Hurl your knives of fire; see if you can stab me with hot white death!"
On and up he ran, slowed down now by the steepness and the slipperiness of the hill. Several times he went down to his knees or fell on his chest, but, each time, he leaped up and charged on.
"I'm not afraid of you! Mariyam, my mother, has tried to make me scared of you! But I don't scare! Mother, did I say? That brown, misshapen, little thing is not my mother! She lied when she told me she was an ape, and she lied when she told me she was my mother!
"How could I, I, come out of a thing like her! I am not her son!"
He stopped to raise both hands, more in question than in defiance.
"Whose son, then, am I?"
It was a strange thing that followed. He should have been knocked unconscious instantly. He should have had no idea of what struck him.
But, afterward, he swore that all did not become black and empty. Not for a part of a second, anyway.
The world became luminous. He was in the heart of fire. Moreover, the arms held upward became full of light. He could see through their skin and to the bones. He was a skeleton fleshed in flame.
Lightning enveloped him, danced down the tree trunk on his right, undulated along the ground, slithered down a hole in the ground as if it were a snake.
A small globe of fire--ember of the lightning--was somewhere inside him. The globe expanded, and he could see that part of the world he remembered best inside its glow. But it was very tiny. As if the world had been recreated inside his head. There, three threads: the cataracts. A blue smudge: the lake. Rearing out of the lake, like the outstretched arm of a black giant going down for the last time; the pillar. By the lake shore, the old cabin. Dancing around it, seven minute and naked black figures.
These would be Mariyam, Yusufu, Abdul, Ibrahimu, Sara, Yohannis, and Kokeb. He remembered Kokeb well, but the others, except for his parents, of course, he remembered dimly. Now many things about them came back.
Abdul had died of pneumonia. Sara had been murdered by Ibrahimu, who had cut his own throat afterward. Yohannis had drowned in the lake. Kokeb had disappeared when Ras was nine. Supposedly, a leopard had carried him off.
Now they danced around the glare inside Ras, leaped, cavorted, ran on all fours sometimes like the apes they had said they were. Dance, little black apes, dance!
He saw himself, a tiny boy, the sun flashing whitely off him. He was throwing knives, hour after hour. He was shooting arrows; he was flipping into the air backward, walking on a tightrope, swallowing fire, doing all the tricks the little men and women knew so well and insisted that he know also. The globe of fire grew even more swiftly. Now he saw the band of gorillas with whom he and his parents and Kokeb had sometimes lived. Now he was climbing the trees, speeding along branches, leaping like a young gorilla, he was better at this than the hairy, long-armed teachers, agile, sure, unafraid. And he was happy because of his superiority at this.
For a long time, he had been convinced that he was a gorilla freak, hairless and funny-faced and weak and inferior except in racing through the trees. And, of course, so much more intelligent!
The fiery ball rushed up from him at him. It was a big heart of white pushing through flesh of black. It drove back the shadows within him and outside him.
From the top of the pillar rose the big Bird, screaming and squawking. God, Igziyabher, sat on its back. God was a white man. Hence, he looked much like Ras himself. But his face, when it got closer, was vague and kept changing shape.
Then two faces floated by Igziyabher's. One was a young white man who had Ras's face. The other was a young white woman who had Ras's face.
Seeing them, he remembered that he had dreamed of these faces when he had been much younger.
When he awoke, he could move only his eyelids. It was dawn; the sky was blue above and yellow-red on the lower sides. He was lying on his back on the hillside and must have spun around before falling, because he was now looking down the hill. Water dripped from the branch above and fell a few inches from his head. A small, yellow bird with scarlet tail feathers passed overhead. Something grunted nearby.
He was cold, yet he could feel nothing outside his skin. The cold moved from within. The ball of fire had become cold, heavy stone and was rolling through the rut of his body.
He tried to struggle, to break loose from the chains of himself, but he could not move. He grew afraid, but after a while he became angry. The cold within became heat. Who had done this to him? Igziyabher?
"You have no right to do this to me!" he shouted silently. "What have I done to you? Nothing! Oh, if only I could get my hands on you! I'd kill you!"
The fury closed to a small, hot fist for a while. Feeding on its warmth, he studied his situation as best he could. By moving his eyes he could see the top of the pillar above the trees. Also, he could see part of the hillside and the country beyond that was not hidden by the trees and the bamboo.
Nothing moved except the leaves. He hoped he would see nothing else move. Unless it would be his parents looking for him. But why should they? He went away whenever he felt like it and returned when he felt like it. They would think that he was off on an adventure or perhaps punishing them by staying away.
However, they could be worried because of the lightning and might come looking for him.
Something grunted near him, and he was startled inwardly, but outwardly was as calm as a rock.
Had he heard a pig? He hoped not, although it would not make much difference if he stayed out here long. Soon enough a jackal, a leopard, or ants would come along.
A shadow fell on him. It was followed immediately by a long-legged bird, five feet high at the shoulder, with blackish wings and a white lower tail. The neck was long; the head, naked; the bill, long and sharp. It stank of excrement and long-dead flesh; it strutted as if it were all-important.
Its bearing was not incongruous. Eaters of carrion were important.
"Oh, marabou," Ras said soundlessly. "I am not yet carrion! But if someone who loves me does not come soon, I will be carrion."
Oh, God! he thought. I am buried in my own flesh!
He wanted to scream. If only he could, he might frighten it off for a while. Only a little while. Then it would come back. Those dead eyes, dead from having seen so much death, would soon be looking down that long, sharp beak at his own eyes. The beak would stab down, and one of his eyes would be plucked out.
With the other eye, he would be able to see the big head on the long neck rise, the bill tip upward so that the marabou could swallow. Then the dead eyes looking at him, then looking around quickly, because the marabou had enemies, too. Then, a flashing stab, and the knifelike beak would be the last thing he would see in this world. But it would not be the last thing he would feel.
The marabou gave a harsh sound and lurched away, its wings half spread. Another shadow fell on his face. The caster of blackness had a black face. Its nose was two enormous nostrils, like two blind eyes. The jaws thrust out, and the open lips revealed large, yellow canines. Below the bulge of bone covered by coarse hair were two large, russet eyes.
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