Ancestor Stones

by Aminatta Forna

  I had left the back door to my house open. This was how I could see what was going on. I expected my neighbours had bolted theirs before they fled, and sure enough a moment later I heard the sound of wood splintering, of a door being broken from its hinges.

  Beneath the cooking pot in the yard the embers of the fire throbbed faintly. One of the intruders raised the lid of the cooking pot. Good, I had wanted them to find the food. I saw him dip his fingers into the sauce, he made a joke to the others.

  I pulled my eye back from the spy hole. The other man was wandering dangerously close to the house. I listened to his steps as he approached the door, heard him carefully cross the threshold, the click of his weapon. My heart thudded, my breaths came short and fast. Surely he could hear me, I thought. I cowered inside the box, waiting for the lid to open. They would kill me straight away, of that I was certain. An old, crippled woman, there was not much sport to be had with me. Softly, the footsteps came closer, inches now from my head. I held my breath.

  He stopped, swivelled, turned. He had spotted the jewellery on the table. The chink of metal as he turned over the pieces and began pocketing them. The sounds must have alerted the others, I heard them coming to see what he was doing. I listened in the dark as they began to squabble over my possessions.

  Somewhere in the distance a voice shouted orders. The three looters snatched up the remainder of the jewellery and began to move off. I put my eye to the spyhole, watched their backs as they disappeared. I lay back and breathed out.

  I slept. I woke. I slept again. A serpentine dream wove its way through my mind. Dreams of discovery. Dreams of death. I slipped in and out of consciousness and woke struggling for air. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. For a moment I had forgotten where I was. My body was damp, pools of sweat had gathered on the floor of the box. Something had woken me. I could hear scattered gunfire. From outside came the smell of burning straw. I peeped out of my spyhole. Against the darkness, a halo of flickering light: fire from flaming houses

  In the yard a stone ricocheted. A figure appeared carrying a burning brand. It lit up his features, turning his nostrils into black holes, his eyes into dark hollows. With silent steps he crossed the yard, making for my neighbour’s house.

  The hours passed. I must have lost track of time. The next I knew the three from before were back. I listened as they slit the throats of my chickens and roasted them over the fire. The contents of my cooking pots were passed around. More people came, bringing loot from the surrounding houses. Evidently they had broken into the bottle store. There was music and much rough laughter. Different smells drifted into the box: the sour smell of unwashed bodies, rum fumes and the scented smoke of marijuana.

  Hamdillah, how I prayed. I don’t deny it. Not at all. To the gods of Islam and Christianity, to every god in the skies plus any others I might not have thought of. Would they set fire to my house when they had taken what they wanted? Would I die of thirst trapped in my hiding place? Somewhere my fate was already cast in stones.

  Have you ever wondered what it is that makes people do terrible things? I have. Since that day, I have set my mind to it many times. All the stories of supernatural beings and yet those men and women out there were not so different from me, only that something inside them had been unleashed. So, where does it come from, the fury? A thousand indignities, a thousand wrongs, like tiny knife wounds, shredding a person’s humanity. In time only the tattered remnants are left. And in the end they ask themselves — what good is this to me? And they throw the last of it away.

  At dawn, finally, they slept. I listened to the sound of their snoring. I didn’t dare let myself fall asleep again in case I snored too, or cried out in my dreams. The sun was halfway up the sky and the temperature inside the box was rising rapidly by the time they had woken up. Through my circular window I watched them rouse themselves, collect up their weapons and as much of their stolen booty as they could carry, and stumble away like sleepwalkers.

  I waited two hours more, then I opened the lid of the box and climbed out. I plunged my arm into the water jar and retrieved the bundle. I allowed myself a few sips of water before I picked my way across the yard, through the banana grove and into the trees. I kept on walking. I left the path. I crossed the boundary into the sacred forest. It was a forbidden place, but what did that matter now? Things had changed, perhaps for ever. The old order had gone, those rules no longer applied. I had to find Adama, to help bring her baby into this world.

  With me I carried my gifts for the baby. But what would I say to her? How would I explain that her great-grandmother, who had lived for longer than eighty years, had learned nothing at all, had no knowledge to give? That she had arrived in a world where suddenly we were all lost, as helpless as newborns.

  17

  Mariama, 1999

  Twelfth Night

  Kuru Massaba made the world and placed it upon the head of a great giant. This is what Pa Yamba told me once. Every day the giant turned himself slowly from east to west and then slowly turned himself back again. People lived on the earth and should have been happy, for everything they needed was there. But they fought among themselves and their anger caused pain to the giant in the form of terrible headaches. He shook his head to free himself of the torment and brought down great storms that only tormented him more. In time the pain became unbearable. The giant lay down, grew sick and died, the world became dark.

  This is what we know happened to the world. I told Mr Lockheart this story. And this is the story I will tell you, the last one.

  ‘Go on, Mary,’ he said.

  Kuru was angry. So angry he turned his face away. But when he heard the distress of the dying people on the darkened earth, his heart softened. He forgave them, he placed the world upon the head of another giant who turned from east to west every day. He pushed all the bad spirits into the underworld, and gave the rest of the world to human beings, because he loved them. But Kuru is disappointed again, because we will not love him the way he wishes to be loved.

  Sometimes the giant stumbles. You can feel it. He is weakening. Every time he stumbles the earth is shaken, it crumbles and cracks. The spirits in the darkness down below are woken.

  ‘What will happen then, Mary?’ Mr Lockheart liked to use my name a great deal, and to look me in the eye as he did so. I had expected this, I wasn’t offended by it. I quite liked him.

  I replied: ‘If you would like to call me by my name, it is Mariama.’

  ‘I will, if that’s what you would like. I thought Mary was your Christian name. Why do you call yourself Mariama?’

  Yes, Mary is my Christian name. That’s exactly what it is. That’s all it is.

  Mariama was the name given to me. The nuns took it away and replaced it with something that sounded like my name, that I learned to answer to. It was easier to remember, they said. For whom? I might have asked. And why did I need a name that was easy to remember? Perhaps they thought we weren’t worth the effort. Or that it was presumptuous of a little pagan baby to walk through life trailing a name of four syllables, flagrantly, like an ermine cloak or a silk scarf, something that should only be worn by the most important people. But Mary wasn’t mine. It never had been. Mariama was the name my mother had chosen for me.

  Some of this I said out loud. Some I kept to myself.

  Mr Lockheart nodded: ‘I see. Mariama it is. And you must call me Adrian.’

  He glanced down at the desk, I could see he wanted to pick up his pen and make some notes about me. He wasn’t sure. Now he was masking his hesitation by pretending to look like he was thinking about something. He was new, had only been here a few months. But he thought that if he was calling me by my first name, I should call him by his. They all did that, so they could feel they were treating us like equals.

  As a matter of fact, if it were up to me I would tell him to call me Aunty Mariama. Because at his age he ought to show a little respect. That’s if it were up to me. But it isn’t.

  I
think of that giant turning slowly round. From east to west, from west to east. Endlessly revolving. I wonder if that is why our lives so often end up in the same place they began? Because life is not a straight line, just as the earth isn’t flat. You don’t walk and walk until you reach a place you know is the end. Like the Europeans once believed. They thought if they sailed their ships towards the horizon they would plummet off the end in a cascade of water. Then came Galileo. And after that they found us here, clinging on to the curve of the earth. What took them so long? I sometimes wonder. We knew the earth was round long before that.

  No, life isn’t a straight line. It is a circle, whose slow and gentle bend we fail to spot, until we realise we are back where we started. I don’t know when I realised I knew this, but it was some time before I met Adrian Lockheart.

  The next time, Adrian Lockheart asked: ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  ‘You mean like the Holy Ghost.’

  ‘Are you teasing? It’s OK if you are. I don’t mind. And I take your point, Mary.’

  ‘Mariama.’

  ‘Mariama.’ A pause. ‘I mean ghosts, spirits, devils.’

  He is trying to understand, and despite myself I would like to help him. He has read newspapers and scholarly reports about us. And he has been talking to the others who come here. He will have been out drinking with them, which I know is where he was last night. I saw him: leaning across the table, hovering above the pools of beer stretched out on the plastic. He is the new boy. The others enjoy the fact, they can pretend to be old Africa hands. Tales of cannibals and juju. If ever they see a shadow of scepticism on his face they shake their heads knowingly. ‘I’m telling you. Just like that. Dead. Convinced someone had placed a curse on him, doesn’t matter how educated. I’ve seen it before. Rwanda. The Congo.’

  He thought he would be working with child soldiers. Or at the very least the limbless, the lipless, the eyeless, the tongueless. Instead he got me. But he was a good man, and determined to make the best of it.

  I asked what his own opinion was, since he was the Spiritual Advisor.

  ‘I’m really a counsellor, that’s just a fancy title.’ He smiled when he said that.

  So I told him, no, I wasn’t teasing.

  March is the warmest month of the year, and this was the warmest March for many years to come.

  We used to meet on Friday mornings, eleven o’clock. His office had bare walls and a concrete floor, a bare light bulb descended from the ceiling on a three-foot, brittle cord. Too low, so each time he passed it he was forced to duck slightly. A small pink burn showed on his forehead. A desk, five chairs, one of which was broken and pushed against the wall. One he sat on. The other three, of variable height, were placed in a row in front of his desk. The middle one was directly opposite him, soft but too low slung, it left you peering across the surface of the desk at him. Choosing either of the others meant you would be at eye level, but off-centre. I chose the one that was closest and sat down, looking at him sideways on.

  He turned his chair to face me. My skin prickled under his gaze, so I stared straight ahead of me at the wall, or else out of the window. Sometimes he turned to see what I was looking at. But there was nothing to see. Just a badly built wall with dried concrete oozing out between the breeze blocks and a trail of withered bougainvillea.

  He suffered in the heat, clawing at his collar; the back of his shirt was soaked with sweat and stuck to the plastic chair. Still, he refused to give in to it. Every day a tie, a long-sleeved shirt, and a jacket that hung uselessly over the back of his chair.

  Our sessions ended when the day was at its hottest.

  ‘Quick! What’s the first thing that comes into your mind.’ As if we were playing a game. So I told him about my niece, whose child had died. He asked me how I felt about that. I told him I was sorry for my sister’s daughter, she had wanted this child very much.

  ‘Some people believe these things are just God’s will, Mariama.’ Adrian said in his hushed voice.

  I told him it was probably no such thing. It was the child’s will. She had changed her mind. For her one world was as good as the other. It is we who are so much attached to this one.

  One morning, the sixth or seventh time we met, Mr Lockheart had another idea. He asked if he might visit my room, he had heard so much about it. I didn’t like to let anybody inside, not even the houseboy who cleaned the bedrooms of the other staff. On Mondays I left my waste paper basket out for him. On Tuesdays he left a dustpan and brush leaning against my door. But he, Mr Lockheart, Adrian, was quite insistent. He said it would help him to understand me.

  I pushed open the door of my room. I crossed in front of him towards the window, unhinged the shutters. A ray of sunlight lit up the opposite wall, bouncing off the shiny surface of the magazine pictures. I opened the window and pushed the shutters all the way back, until they hit the outside wall with a bang. The room glowed with light. I had never seen it like this, it pleased me. Sounds from outside entered the room, mingling with the dust that played in the air, and set the colours of the pictures shimmering. The images sparkled and came alive. A shark swam towards me with red, gaping jaws. A shoal of silver fish swam by. A red starfish flashed, on and off. A blue sea horse reared. A conger eel hid in the darkness of his cave. A sleepy eyed turtle with wrinkled features glided past. A setting sun glittered upon the waves. All around me the sound of water, crashing and foaming on to the shore, trickling back down the sand to the ocean. The sounds filled my ears, I shook my head.

  Adrian stepped across the threshold, and stood with his back against the wall, slowly crossing his arms in front of him. He tilted his head upwards towards the painting on the ceiling. Kassila! Nacre teeth, glinting coral eyes, ears of fragile oyster shells, his great scaly tail coiled and flexed. He reached down to us with spiny fingers. Adrian swallowed. I saw his Adam’s apple, hard and fragile, move up and down behind the translucent skin of his throat. The fingers of his right hand fluttered briefly against his arm.

  I looked at Adrian and I looked around me. Before we came here I thought I was going to feel ashamed, but I didn’t. Instead I felt proud. This was the first time anybody had seen my room, with my permission. A month before, the urgent matter of a bats’ nest in the roof of the room next door had brought the caretaker over, he in turn called the matron, and she the principal. That’s where this whole thing with Adrian Lockheart started, when the sessions began. They had not known quite what to do. It did not seem to occur to them just to leave me as I was.

  He didn’t speak for quite a long time, eventually he said: ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s my work,’ I replied.

  The pen Adrian Lockheart used to record our conversations was an old-fashioned fountain pen. A fine example, with a gold nib that made scratching sounds like the birds on the roof. One day, when he was called out of the room briefly, I picked it up and examined it. The shaft was made of marbled enamel, the nib engraved with the manufacturer’s name. When he came back in he told me it had belonged to his grandfather, who had lived and worked in this country once. His grandfather’s fondness for our country made Adrian want to see it for himself.

  ‘Lockheart?’ I asked.

  ‘Silk. On my mother’s side.’

  The same name as the old District Commissioner. I replaced the pen on the table. I pretended the name meant nothing to me.

  Adrian had something he wanted to talk about. He said we started but never did finish the discussion.

  ‘The giant shakes his head and frees the spirits from underneath the earth, isn’t that what you told me?’

  I nodded. That’s what Pa Yamba Mela had told me. When I was a child, growing up. A lot of people thought Pa Yamba was a fool. That his magic was nothing but trickery, that his prophecies were cleverly worded so as to mean anything. He couldn’t pull thunder out of the sky any more than you or I. He claimed to have magic powers just to make people afraid of him. And many were. In that way he became powerful. You could say th
at was a kind of magic.

  ‘The underworld will rise,’ I replied.

  ‘And when will that happen?’ Adrian shifted in his seat.

  ‘It already has.’

  Once I lived among nuns. They told me stories of the lives of the saints, men and women who had visions, sometimes of God, Jesus or Mary. Other times these visions were premonitions.

  Well, I had a vision of something that came to pass.

  It was in the middle of the day, a market day. The sun was hot, bearing down on the top of my head. So bright it made me squint. The shadows were short and black, black, black. The air was heavy like glue, impossible to breathe, it wrapped itself around me. I made my way uphill, pushing against it all the time, my head bowed, my legs straining. Where the road was steep I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. I remember I looked up at the sky. Above me the sun and moon hovered on opposite sides of the blue, one indistinguishable from the other.

  Suddenly I heard a great rush of wind, as though a whirlwind was racing towards me. I braced myself and waited. Nothing. The grass and trees stood straight. And yet the sound went on, becoming louder, filling my ears, rushing around my head. I felt myself becoming unsteady. I looked down at the ground and at my feet. I reached out for something to support myself, found a bollard and leaned against it.

  There was a Creole graveyard below me, very old, at least one hundred years. I saw a crowd of mourners walking between the graves. They were carrying several coffins. It looked as though a whole family had died. But even though they were dressed as bereaved people, instead of weeping, the relatives appeared almost unconcerned. One or two were even laughing openly as they hoisted the boxes towards the waiting graves.