‘No one will take my children,’ Fat Rosa declared stoutly. She seldom went anywhere without her daughters at her side. In the village they joked that all three could fit inside her broad shadow. But there was nothing funny about what the egg-lady was telling her now.
‘That’s what you think. It’s what they all think,’ she said. ‘But you have no choice. One moment you are working out in the shamba, the next the child soldiers are in your compound. They are running like rats around the village . . . and they are just as ferocious. They will slaughter your laying hens and take all your seed grain, strip your crops of their harvest and steal your knives from the thatch. In a village called Jwato,’ the woman went on, ‘they rounded everyone up at the point of a gun. Even the chief’s youngest son, who had seen them and run to hide by the river, was found in the rushes and dragged back. Everyone was gathered into the central compound. They were weeping and begging; but the soldiers just laughed. Mothers had to stand and let their children be chosen. That’s what you must do if you value your life. And even if you don’t, it’s no good. They will shoot you . . . or worse . . .’ she added with a significant look. ‘And your children will still be abducted just the same.
‘In Jwato,’ she continued, ‘all the strong boys and girls were separated out. Those that clung to their parents were beaten with millet pestles. One had his arm broken. And then, laden with burdens of whatever food had been ransacked, they were marched off into the bush. None of them, as far as I know, has ever come back.’
Muka listened, appalled. She could feel the sweat creeping in runnels through her scalp; it ran down the sides of her face and the back of her neck but she kept her mouth firmly shut. If Bat’s grandmother had been there, she suspected, she wouldn’t even have been allowed to listen. The old lady would have dreamed up an errand for her to do. Better keep it a secret, the girl decided; better not to discuss what she had just heard. In the corner of the market place, a huge dark bird was wrestling with a creature that it had pinned under its claws. It was a rat: one of the impudent rodents that scuttled through the shanties, sitting up on their hind legs to examine those who passed. The bird tugged at the fur with its beak, exposing raw flesh beneath.
As they set off for home, Muka was unnaturally silent; but the worries were simmering away in her head and she hadn’t gone far before they finally boiled over.
‘What would happen if the child soldiers came our way?’ she asked Bat’s grandmother.
A dark frown flitted across the old woman’s face. She too had heard the rumours. ‘The rebels are a long way from here,’ she eventually said. ‘They live right up in the mountains. The government soldiers will stop them from coming as far as us. But if they should reach these parts . . .’ She paused. She did not know what to say.
‘If they do?’ prompted Muka.
‘If they do we will have to think . . .’ She let the sentence drop. ‘What does that say?’ she asked, changing the subject abruptly and pointing to a sign that had been painted on a tin sheet and propped up beside the road.
Muka squinted and began slowly to spell the letters out. ‘It says: Beware of invisible cows!’ she said.
Bat’s grandmother chuckled, but Muka, who would normally have broken into peals of laughter, could force only the faintest smile. Her mind was elsewhere. What if the child army did come as far as Jambula? What if, even now, they were creeping out from their hills? What would she do if, one day, she looked up and found one of them watching her? Should she run, or give up? And what if they found Bat? He wandered so far with his cattle. He might stray into their territories, and then he would be taken. Someone should warn him; he should be made aware.
‘Would you mind if I left you now . . . if I went on a bit quicker?’ she asked.
Bat’s grandmother smiled. ‘No, you run ahead and find him,’ she said, reading the girl’s thoughts. Bat had got into the habit of waiting to meet them on their way home and all three would walk back together, sharing whatever treats had been bought in the market if there had been enough milk to sell: chicken wings grilled over a charcoal brazier, perhaps; or a comb of dripping honey still stuck with black bees; a paper bag filled with plump, crisply fried caterpillars; or grasshoppers seasoned with pepper so spicy that water streamed out of your eyes as you ate. Bat loved the mixed sweet and tangy taste of the last.
‘Run along then,’ encouraged Bat’s grandmother. ‘I’ll follow slowly. I’m feeling a bit weary. So off you go.’ She watched the soles of the girl’s feet flashing away through the dust. Then, frowning, she paused to readjust the wrap around her waist. She was growing slower. She had started to notice it. Her bones often ached . . . far more than they used to. She would have liked to have bought a bit of camphor oil in the market. It helped when she rubbed it onto her hip. Or perhaps she might have got a poultice from the lady who traded with the pygmies in the jungle. They had compresses made from the bark of rare trees. But, nowadays, she thought with a slow inward sigh, by the time she had paid for kerosene, tea and salt, there wasn’t much left to spare. The elephant was still not yet weaned. She was still drinking too much of their precious cows’ milk.
Bat’s grandmother shifted the weight of her bundle to try to ease the pain. She had found herself doing that a lot of late. But she was still limping pronouncedly when Fat Rosa caught up with her, a cage of pigeons balanced precariously on top of her head. Everybody enjoyed the company of this jolly woman. Her big half-moon smile split her face when she laughed. ‘I hope these birds didn’t come from that rogue Lacan Jonathan,’ she giggled as she fell into step with the old woman. ‘Remember how he would sell and re-sell the same pigeons again and again. Each time someone bought them, they would come flying back home to him as soon as the unwary buyer let them loose; then the next week he would take them to market and sell them all over again.’ The two friends laughed. ‘Until that lady from the shanties took them,’ remembered Bat’s grandmother, ‘and finally wrung their necks.’
Muka, meanwhile, her worries whirling faster and faster around her head, barely broke from her run until, coming around a corner, she spotted Bat – and there, just beyond him, the familiar bulk of Meya. They were hanging about expectantly just where they always did. She smiled as she at last slowed. It was the running that had done it. It whipped up your thoughts. She lifted her arm and gave a light-hearted wave.
Usually, in the lazy heat of the late afternoon, while the drowsy cows were chewing the cud, Meya would be taking a dust bath, blowing great sighing clouds over her belly and back. It kept the biting insects away. Then she too would doze. But she would always be the first to know that Muka was coming. Her rumbles of greeting would roll through the air.
But today she was silent. A faint lick of worry flickered up in Muka’s stomach again. Then she saw another figure hunkered down beside them. There was someone else there. That would explain it. But who? Muka wondered. She strained to see. With a jolt she realized that this stranger was Lobo. What was he doing there? It had been quite a while ago that she had left him drinking. She had assumed that he would stay in town. But now here he was. He had returned home ahead of her. And how had he got there so fast anyway? A bulky black bicycle thrown down under the tree soon explained it.
‘I’m going to be the first person ever to ride an African elephant,’ Lobo cried eagerly as he saw her approaching and, jumping up from the root on which he had been squatting, he swaggered towards her. Muka just scowled.
Lobo returned to his perch and examined his foot. A jigger had lodged itself in the tip of his toe. With a frown of concentration, he set about extracting it, piercing the blister with the point of a thorn. He impaled the curled parasite and then, carefully removing it, flicked it playfully at Bat. The boy brushed it away. He looked sullen and miserable, Muka thought.
An amulet hung round Lobo’s neck, she noticed. She hadn’t remembered him wearing it in the bar. It looked like the skull of a rodent and it was all knotted up with some long wiry hairs. He must have bo
ught it from the witch doctor, she thought, remembering how only that morning he had tried to sell her just such an amulet. Lobo, brought up by the medicine woman, probably believed in the magic of spells. She wondered if he had bought it in the hope that he could make people like him. Perhaps he had heard what the villagers muttered behind his back.
Lobo interrupted her reverie. ‘Why pedal an old bicycle when you could ride an elephant?’ he cried, aiming a kick at the black machine he had brought.
He was drunk, Muka realized. She could smell the sourness on his breath. The acrid smoke of the bar still clung to his skin.
‘Imagine if that animal could be turned into something useful . . .’ Lobo mused, casting a look of derision at Meya, ‘if it didn’t just hang around idly like some pointless pet.’
Meya slapped her ears indolently against her neck. Clouds of flies danced in the currents of stirred air.
‘It would be great, wouldn’t it?’ the boy persisted, determined to provoke some sort of response. ‘Then your grandmother wouldn’t have to slip-stump along all higgledy-piggledly,’ he cried. ‘Like this!’ and, jumping up, he began imitating the old woman’s limp. He laughed. Bat clenched his fists but still he said nothing. Muka looked stubbornly down. She was willing the bully just to go away.
‘Hey, you! What’s your point?’ The frustrated Lobo now turned his attention to the elephant. Meya watched him warily through the fringe of her lashes. Reaching down for a bit of dirt, she slung it over her back. It was a threat, the children knew. The elephant was uncertain. She didn’t understand what this boy wanted either.
‘She makes us happy,’ Bat ventured. ‘That’s point enough.’
‘You’re just a coward! You’re too frightened to ride her.’ Lobo’s voice had turned nasty now. His eyes glittered with malice. ‘Well, I’m going to prove that your great elephant is just a tame farm animal.’
‘Don’t,’ warned Bat. ‘She won’t let you.’
‘You mean you’ve never dared try!’
‘She won’t like it,’ Bat said.
But Lobo stood up and, swaying slightly, took a step towards Meya. Her trunk twitched. He was testing her patience. Her forefoot swung to and fro as she tossed her head.
‘Come on, you puny she-elephant,’ mocked Lobo. ‘You’re not a wild beast any more. You’re just a little kid’s pet.’ And suddenly, with a leap, he was on the animal’s back.
Meya whirled round with a squeal and dashed straight for the trunk of an acacia, and before any of them could even tell what was happening, the startled Lobo was lying spread-eagled on his back, his shirt ripped, his elbow bleeding, his cheek badly scratched. It had all happened in the blink of an eye. For a few moments he just lay there with a look of dazed confusion, rubbing at the shoulder that had taken the brunt of his fall. Then, swearing, he started to struggle back to his feet. Meya turned, her eyes gleaming, and picking up a bolus from a pile of fresh dung, she hurled it as hard as she could straight at her tormentor. It hit him squarely in the middle of his chest.
Just at that moment, Fat Rosa and Bat’s grandmother came into view. From afar, they had seen the whole thing and now they were both doubled over with laughter, chuckling and wheezing and wiping helplessly at their streaming tears. ‘The white ant does not eat beyond the river,’ Bat’s grandmother cackled. Even this famously daring little creature, she meant, did not venture into territories that it did not know.
Lobo’s face was twisted as a puff adder’s as it prepares to strike. His eyes almost vanished into the thick furrows of his frown. Rising to his feet, he stalked unsteadily off and picked up his bicycle. He was weaving from side to side as he pedalled away down the track.
‘He’s so mean. He deserved it!’ Bat shouted. His face glittered with anger as he tried to soothe the startled elephant.
‘He deserved it!’ echoed Muka. ‘I wish Meya had hurt him; I wish she’d hurt him much more.’
But Bat’s grandmother, after listening to the enraged children as they blurted out the whole story, only shook her old head. ‘Lobo can’t help it. Just remember that. He has no one to guide him. You are both embedded in the village like a tooth in a jaw. But he has been pulled out. That has hurt him and made him angry. He doesn’t know to whom he belongs. When he grows older he will finally discover, and then I expect you will begin to see a change.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lobo left the village whenever he wished, stayed away as long as he liked and returned when it pleased him. ‘I am my own man,’ he would say. But whenever he did choose to come back to Jambula, Bat from now on did his best to avoid him. He was pretty sure that the older boy would be contemplating revenge. Lobo had been made to look ridiculous in public. Even now he would be planning a way to get his own back. And what would Bat be able to do about it? The question kept troubling him.
Bat was not one of that little gang which liked to trip along at Lobo’s heels. The smaller boys were impressed by him. He was the best wrestler; he had new clothes and a bicycle; no one bothered to scold him or order him about. They had bare dusty feet and a list of daily duties, and wherever they went in the village there was always an adult to tell them what to do. They would glance up enviously from their chores when they saw Lobo swaggering by, lounging about indolently with his hands in his pockets or trundling down the pathways on his new black bike. When Lobo requested something, they would run immediately to fetch it, shinning up trees to pick the ripest mango or running down to the shambas to get a maize cob. Then Lobo rewarded them for their obedience. He would mete out the sweets that he brought back from town and let them take sips from his bottles of beer or palm wine. Once little Gwok had returned home, his head reeling, and everyone had known it was Lobo who must have given him too much to drink, although even the next morning when the boy was sick as a dog, his brain throbbing so hard that it felt as if his skull would crack, he had refused to tell anyone where he had got the alcohol.
‘Those little boys don’t really like him. They’re just frightened; he’s a bully,’ said Muka, and Bat had agreed, but still, when he thought about the child who had cheered for the elephant in the wrestling match, he would feel a nervous fluttering deep in his gut. Lobo had ambushed that boy on his way back from the shambas and given him a beating that had sent him howling for his hut. ‘That’ll teach you that I always win in the end,’ he had said, and now, whenever the child came anywhere near him, hovering timidly at the edges of his circle, hoping to be allowed back to play with the gang, Lobo would reach down and pick up an imaginary stone, the way people do when they want to frighten a dog. He would pretend to fling it and then jeer when he saw how he flinched; but on the day the boy hadn’t ducked and just stood there and faced him, he had flung a real stone and then laughed when the blood ran down his head. ‘Go home and whine to your mother,’ he had mocked.
The boy hadn’t dared. What good would it have done? Lobo wasn’t scared of the elders or their scolding. The medicine woman had long ago lost all control. ‘I would beat her back if she lifted a hand to me, and she knows it,’ he told listeners whose own mothers thought nothing of cuffing them and sending them squealing about their chores.
After Lobo’s fall from Meya, Bat took to leaving with her and the cows as early in the morning as possible and only coming back again as late as was still safe. But when almost a moon had passed, he began to think that perhaps the older boy had forgotten. He had been drunk after all. And anyway he had asked for it.
‘He probably knows it was his fault,’ Muka suggested. ‘If he hadn’t climbed on her back, Meya would never have hurt him, and if he hadn’t fallen, Fat Rosa would not have laughed.’
‘It was only a tumble, after all,’ Bat agreed. ‘And he’s used to a few bruises. When he was a child, the medicine woman made sure of that.’
And so the days passed and eventually Bat forgot until, one evening, just as he was locking up the cattle, separating the bleating calves from their mothers for the night, one of Marula’s sons came dashin
g to find him. ‘Lobo says that he rode the elephant!’ he panted excitedly. ‘He says that he climbed on her back . . . that she squealed like a pig . . . but that he rode her and she couldn’t stop him . . . he says that he’s the only man in Africa ever to have ridden an elephant.’ The breathless outburst ran suddenly to a halt and the boy looked up at Bat questioningly, as if his opinion now hung in the balance, as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted the boast to be true or not.
Bat’s fingers were trembling as he fastened the gates. For a few long moments he tried to hold his feelings back, and then, like a pot of milk left too long on the fire, they all boiled over, spitting and steaming and bubbling up froth. ‘He’s a liar!’ he flared. ‘He’s a stinking bully and a liar and he knows it. He never rode Meya! No one can ride her! Meya is wild. She can’t be ridden like a pet. Go and ask my grandmother or Fat Rosa . . . they’ll tell you. They saw what happened – they saw Lobo sprawled on his backside like a flipped-over toad.’ Flinging a look of black-eyed fury at the youngster, he ran off.
‘Have you heard what Lobo’s been saying?’ he demanded as, dashing into the cook-hut, he confronted his grandmother. ‘He’s saying that he rode Meya. He’s claiming that he rode her like some tired old mule. How can you feel sorry for him? Just because his mother left him . . . she probably dumped him because he was so horrible . . . she probably knew what a lying bully he was.’ Bat paced around the hut, fists curled and eyes flashing, frustrated as a genet cat trapped in the cage of an overturned basket. ‘Next time I’m really going to get him,’ he fumed. ‘I don’t care if he’s bigger than me. I’m more furious than him.’
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