by Marlon James
A smaller book, bound in alligator skin, opens with this:
Day of Basa Dura
Oh I should know the will of Kwash Dara? Is that what he thinks? Did he not know that even when we were boys I was my own man?
Five pages more:
Bufa Moon
And nothing until so far down the edge of the page the words nearly fell off:
Tax the elders? A grain tax? Something as essential as air?
Obora Gudda Moon
Day of Maganatti Jarra to Maganatti Britti
He set us free today. The rains would not stop. Work of the gods.
I threw down that book and picked up another, this one in hairy black-and-white cowskin, not shiny leather. The pages were bound in brilliant red thread, which meant this was the most new, even though it was in the middle of the stack. He put it in the middle, surely. He scrambled the order so that no one could build the story of his life too easy, of this I was certain. A cat dashed past me. A flutter over my head and I looked up. Two pigeons flew out a window high up over me.
What are we in, but a year of mad lords?
Sadassaa Moon
Day of Bita Kara
There are men that I have lost all love for, and there are the words I will write in a message I will never send, or in a tongue that they will never read.
Day of Lumasa
What is love for child, if not mania? I look at the magic of my smallest boy and cry, and I look at the muscle and might of the oldest, and grin with a pride that we are warned should be only of the gods. And for them and the four in between, I have a love that scares me. I look at them and I know it, I know it, I know it. I would kill the one who comes to harm my sons. I would kill that one with no mercy and no thought. I would search for that one’s heart and rip the thing out and shove it in their mouth, even if that one is their own mother.
Six sons.
Six sons.
Guraandhala Moon
Day of Garda Duma
The same night Belekun left me alone. All night I wrote. Then these I heard, a whimper, a gruff reply, a scream slapped short, and another gruff reply. Outside my door, four doors down. I pushed it open and there was Amaki the Slippery. His back wet with sweat. I would say too it was the god of iron but it was my own rage that went up in my own head. His Ifa bowl was right there on the floor at his feet. I brought it down on his head. Again and again. He fell on top of the girl, covering her totally.
They will come for me soon. Afuom and Duku said to me, do not worry young brother, we have made arrangements. We shall come for your wife and boys and people will think they vanished like a loose memory.
He was hiding in Kongor.
Six sons.
Between this book and the one below lay a piece of papyrus. I could tell it once had a strong fragrance, like a note sent to a mistress. His own handwriting, but not as rough and rushed as his journal. It said:
A man will suffer misery to get to the bottom of truth, but he will not suffer boredom.
Basu Fumanguru is a man who had been north of the sand sea. I am guessing because of their love for riddles, games, and double-talk, sometimes at the border of a wicked city, where if you guessed wrong they would kill you on sight. Who was this for? Himself or whoever read it? But Fumanguru knew someone would one day. He knew forces were coming for him and had all this moved from before. Nobody took anything from the hall of records, not even the King. Somebody would come looking, maybe for the writs, which nobody could find and that might not even exist. All this talk about writs against the King, as if nobody has ever written in protest of the King. And yet below these journals were no writs, just pages and pages of tallies for tax, how many more cows he’d gained over the year before. Tallies of crop yield in Malakal. And his father’s lands, and a dowry he helped pay for his cousin’s daughter.
Until I came up upon a page, in old papyrus, with lines and boxes and names. The candlelight glowed brighter, which meant outside was darker. No sound came from the keeper, which made me wonder if he had left.
The candle burned slow. At the top of the paper and written very large was Kwash Moki. The King’s great-grandfather’s father. Moki had four sons and two daughters. The oldest son was Kwash Liongo the celebrated King, and under his name, four sons and five daughters. Under Liongo’s name, his third son, Kwash Aduware, who became king, and under him, Kwash Netu. Under Netu are two sons and one daughter. The oldest son is Kwash Dara, our King now. I don’t think I ever knew the King’s sister’s name, before seeing it written there. Lissisolo. She gave her life to serving a goddess, which one I do not know, but a server of the goddess loses her old name for a new one. My landlady said once that the gossip was that she was not a nun but a madwoman. Because her little head could not handle doing a big terrible thing. What this terrible thing was, she did not know. But it was terrible. They sent her to live in a fortress in the mountains with no way in or out so the women who serve her would be also locked away forever. I put the family map aside, still bothered by Fumanguru’s riddle.
Below his map of kings was his handwriting. More tallies, and logs, and other people’s tallies, and other people’s logs, and inventory of the food supplies of all elders, and a list of visits, and more of his journals, some dating years before the ones that were on top. And even two small books on his advice on love, which looks like he wrote it back when he and the King were looking for anything but such. And books empty of words, and pages carrying smells, and drawings of ships, and buildings, and towers taller than Malakal, and a book marking a tale of the forbidden trip to the Mweru, which I opened, only to see glyphs, but not like what I had seen before.
And also these, book after book and page after page on the wisdom and instruction of the elders. Proverbs he heard or created himself, I did not know. And logs of the meeting of the elders, some not even written by him. I cursed him outright and long until wisdom fell on me.
I was suffering through boredom.
Just as he wrote I would, so I did. Then the whole brilliance of his ways hit me like sudden wind blowing a flower in my face. Suffer through boredom to get to truth. No, suffer through boredom to get to the bottom of truth. To get to truth at the bottom.
I grabbed two stacks of books and papers, both as high as my chin, and put them aside, leaving one on the floor. Red leather binding and tied with a knot, which set fire to my curiosity. The pages were empty. I cursed again and almost flung it across the room, until the last page flew up. Where birds come in, it read. I looked up, at the window. Of course. There, in the windowsill, two planks of wood that came loose. I climbed up and moved them aside. Under the wood, a satchel in red leather, all the pages inside, large and loose. I blew the dust off the first page, which read:
Being a writ in the presence of the King
By his most humble servant, Basu Fumanguru.
I looked at this thing that some people have already been killed over. This thing that caused men to scheme and plot; these loose, dirty, and smelly pages that have so far changed the course of many a man’s life. Some demanded punishment in fines and the end to torture for minor offenses. One asked for the property of a dead man to go to his first wife. But one declared this:
That all free men of the lands, those born so, and those who have been given freedom be never enslaved, or enslaved again, nor are their lives commandeered for war without payment to the scale of what they are worth. And this freedom shall also be for their children and their children’s children.
I didn’t know if the king would have killed him over this, but I know many who would. And still there was this:
Every just man who feels he has a case against the king shall be protected by law and no harm should come to him or his kin. And should the case against the king be dismissed, no harm should come to him. And should the case go in the man’s favor, no harm should come to him or his kin.
Tru
ly Fumanguru was either most wise or most foolish of dreamers. Or he was counting on the king’s better nature. Some writs were just a breath away from treason. The one most bold and most foolish came at the end:
That the house of kings return to the ways that had been decreed by the gods, and not this course which has corrupted the ways of kings for six generations. This is what we demand: that the king follow the natural order set by gods of sky and gods below the earth. Return to the purity of the line as set in the words of long-dead griots and forgotten tongues. That until the kings of the North return to the clean path, they go against the will of all that is right and good, and nothing shall stop this house from falling or be conquered by another.
He called the royal house corrupted. And for a return to the real line of kings, wrong for six generations, or the gods would make sure the house of Akum fell. Fumanguru had written his own death note, words that guaranteed execution before it even reached the king, but had hidden it in secret. For who to find it?
So I read most of his journals and looked through all, including that one he was writing very close to his death. This I know: The last entry was the day before he was murdered, and yet here was the book in this hall of books. But only he could have added to his own stack; no one else would have been allowed. Who am I to put reasoning into unreasonable? There is no farewell here, no final instruction, not even any of that sauce of bitterness when one knows death is coming but does not like his fate.
But something here did not go right. He made no mention of the boy. Nothing at all. Something must have come from this boy—a fragrance of something bigger, deeper, more important, as sure as what I smelled on the doll, but bigger so—if this boy was the reason he and his family were hunted and killed by Omoluzu. But there was nothing here of the boy’s worth, nothing here of the boy’s kin, nothing here even of the boy’s use. Fumanguru was keeping him a secret even from his own records. In his way, keeping him secret even from himself. And among smells was something sour coming from the pages. Something spilled and dried, but from an animal, not from the ground or of the palm or the vine. Milk. Vanished from sight now, but still there. I remembered a woman suckling a baby who sent me in a most curious way a message to save her from her husband and captor. I reached for the candle.
“Bigger fires have started from smaller flames,” he said.
I jumped and reached for my axes, but his sword was already at my neck. I had smelled myrrh but thought it was an old bottle the library master had behind him.
The prefect.
“Did you follow me or have me followed?” I asked.
“Do you mean will you need to kill one man or two?”
“I never—”
“You still wear that curtain? Even after two days?”
“By the gods, if one more man says I wear a curtain . . .”
“That is a pattern on the drapes of rich men. Are you not river folk? Why not just wear ochre and butter?”
“Because you Kongori think strange about dress and undress.”
“I am not Kongori.”
“Your sword is at my neck. Answer my question.”
“I followed you myself. But grew tired when I saw the giant would cry to you the entire night. His stories were amusing, but his crying was insufferable. That is not how we mourn in the East.”
“You’re not in the East.”
“And you are not among the Ku. Now why were you about to burn that note?”
“Take your blade away from my neck.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because there is a blade between my big toes. Kill me and I might just fall and die before you. Or I could kick and you become a eunuch.”
“Put that down.”
“You think I have come all this way to burn this?” I said.
“I don’t think anything.”
“Not a new thing for a prefect.”
He pushed the blade harder against my neck.
“The paper. Down.”
I put the paper down and looked up at him. “Look at me,” I said. “I shall hold this paper over this flame, for I feel it will reveal something to me. I do not know you, nor do I know how stupid you are, but I cannot make what I say any simpler.”
He withdrew the sword.
“How do I know this?” he said.
“You will have to trust me.”
“Trust you? I don’t even like you.”
We stared at each other for a long time. I grabbed a sheet, the one most sour.
“You and your curtain for a dress,” he said.
“Will you not stop until I am off with my clothes?”
I waited for a sharp reply, but it never came. I would have gone there, trying to figure out why the sharp reply never came, or try to catch him before he hid it from his face, but I did not.
“What are you—”
“Please, be quiet. Or at least watch for the keeper.”
He stopped talking and shook his head. Fumanguru had written these writs in red ink, bright in colour but light in tone. I pulled the candle closer to me, then held the sheet right over the flame.
“’Tis Mossi.”
“What?”
“My name. The name you have forgotten. It is Mossi.”
I lowered the flame so that I could see the flicker through the paper and feel the warmth on my finger. Figures took shape. Glyphs, letters moving left to right or right to left, I did not know. Glyphs written in milk so they would be hidden until now. My nose led me to four more pages smelling of milk. I ran them over the fire until glyphs appeared, line after line, row after row. I smiled and looked up at the prefect.
“What are those?” he asked.
“You said you are from the East?”
“No, my skin went pale when all the colour washed off.”
I stared at him blankly until he said something else.
“North, then east,” he said.
I handed the first paper to him.
“These are coastal glyphs. Cruel letters, the people call them. Can you read them?”
“No,” I said.
“I can read some of it.”
“What . . . do . . . they . . .”
“I’m no master of ancient marks. You think Fumanguru made these?”
“Yes, and—”
“For what purpose?” he asked.
“So that even if the wrong man came this close to the water, he would never be able to drink.”
“That I understood you makes me very sad.”
“Glyphs are supposed to be the language of the gods.”
“If the gods are too old and stupid to know the words and numbers of modern men.”
“You sound like you stopped believing in the gods.”
“I am just amused by all of yours.”
It bothered me to look at him and see him looking at me.
“My belief is nothing. He believed that the gods were speaking to him. What draws you to Fumanguru?” Mossi said.
And I thought, for a blink, What should I construct now, and how much will I have to build on it? The thought alone made me tired. I told myself that I was just tired of believing there was a secret to protect from some unknown enemy, when the truth was I was tired of not having someone to tell it to. Here is truth: At this point I would have told anyone. Truth is truth, and I do not own it. It should make no difference to me who hears it, since him hearing the truth does not change it. I wished the Leopard was here.
“I could ask you the same thing. His family died from sickness,” I said.
“No sickness cuts a woman in two. The prefect of prefects declared this matter closed, and recommended that to the chiefs, who recommended that to the King.”
“Yet here you are, in front of me, because you didn’t swallow that story.”
He
leaned his sword against a stack of books and sat on the floor. His tunic slipped off his knees and he wore no underclothes. I am Ku and it is nothing new to see the man in men, I said to myself three times. Without looking at me, he pulled the tail of his garment up between his legs. He hunched over the papers and read.
“Look,” he said, and I leaned over.
“Either his mind went slightly mad, or it is his intent to confuse you. Look at this, the vulture, the chick, and the foot all pointed west. This is northern writing. Some make one sound, like the vulture’s sound, which is mmmm. Some make a whole word or carry an idea. But look at this down here, the fourth line. Do you see how it differs? This is the coast. Go to the coast of the South Kingdom, or even that place, I forget its name. That island to the east, what is the name . . . ?”
“Lish.”
“You can still find this writing in Lish. Each one is a sound, all sounds make—”
“I know what a word is, prefect. What is he saying?”
“Patience, Tracker. ‘God . . . gods of sky. They no longer speak to spirits of the ground. The voice of kings is becoming the new voice of the gods. Break the silence of the gods. Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings.’ Is this sounding wise to you? For it is foolishness to me. ‘The god butcher in black wings.’”
“Black wings?”
“This is what he says. None of this moves like a wave. I think he meant it so. A king is king by a queen, not a king. But the boy—”
“Wait. Stay, do not move,” I said.
He looked up and nodded. His thighs, lighter in skin than the rest of him, sprouted hairs too straight. I went right to the library master’s table, but he was still gone. I guessed he kept behind him the logbooks and records of kings and royal subjects. I climbed two steps up a ladder and looked around until I saw the mark of the rhinoceros head in gold. I flipped from the back page and dust rushed into my nose, making me cough. A few pages in was the house of Kwash Liongo, almost the same as what Fumanguru had scratched out on paper. On the page before was a Liongo, his brothers and sisters, and the King before him, Kwash Moki, who became King at twenty and ruled until he was forty and five.