by Marlon James
“There were voices, you heard them say that we were an obscene family,” the voice I knew said.
“They were my one. They were my one.”
“They were white science. Both of them. Grow another one. Or two. You might even get a pair who can talk next time. Like a grass parrot.”
“I call black heart men. I tell them hunt you and kill you!”
“Mun be kini wuyi a lo bwa, old man. I brought weeping to the house of death. Do you know what I wish for?”
I came nearer. The woman’s face was rougher up close, as was the boy’s. Not smooth, but run through with lines and ridges, like vines intertwined.
“Neither is of flesh,” I said.
“They were my only one.”
I pulled my ax.
“You sound as if you wish to be with them. Shall I make this happen? Right—”
“Stop,” he said.
He cried to his gods. He may have really loved this woman. This boy. But not enough to join them.
“Not every man is fine in face such as yourself. Not every man can find love and devotion. Not every man can say the gods have blessed them. Some men even the gods find ugly, even the gods have said there shall be no hope for your blood. She smiled at me! The boy smiled at me! How dare you judge a man for refusing to die of loneliness. Gods of sky, judge this man. Judge what he done.”
“There is no sky. Mayhaps call gods under the earth,” I said.
He took his son in his arms and held him, shushing him as if the boy was crying.
“Poor merchant, you have never had the kiss of a beautiful woman, you say.” He looked up at me, his eyes wet, his lips quivering, everything about him saying sorrow. “Is this because you keep killing them?” I said.
The sorrow left his face and he went back to his seat.
“And the men too. You hunt them down. No, there is no blood on your hands. You are too much a coward to fetch your own kill, so you send men out. They put people under spells with potions, for you wish them whole, with no poison in them, for that taints the heart. Then you kill some, and sell them for all sorts of secret magicks and white science. Some you keep alive because the foot of a living man, or the liver of a living woman is worth five times more on the market. Maybe even ten. And what of the baby that you just bartered with a young witch?”
“What you want?”
“I seek a man who comes to you for hearts. Hearts of women. You sometimes give him hearts of men, thinking he will never know. He knows.”
“What your business with him?”
“No business of yours.”
“I sell gold dust, crafts from the river lands, and fruits from the North. I do not sell such things.”
“I believe you. You live in the Malangika because the rent you find agreeable. Is it one heart every nine nights or two?”
“Go let ten demons fuck you.”
“Every soul in Malangika has a wish for my asshole.”
He sat back down at the head of the table. “Leave me to bury my wife and child.”
“In the dirt? Do you not mean sow them?”
I stood beside him.
“You know the man I speak of. You know he is not a man. Skin white like kaolin, just like his cape with black trim. You have seen him once; you thought, Hark, his cloak looks like feather. You thought he was beautiful. They are all beautiful. Tell me where he lives.”
“I say get out and go—”
I pressed his hand with mine and chopped his finger. He screamed. Tears ran rivers down his face. I grabbed his neck.
“Understand something, little man. Inside you there is fear, I know. And you should be scared of the lightning bird. He is a beast of great misery and will come for your heart, or turn you into a thing that will never know peace.”
I stood up and pulled him up until his eyes were almost level with mine.
“But know this. I will chop off your fingers, arms, legs, and feet, piece by piece, until you have no fingers, arms, legs, or feet. Then I will slice right around the top of your head and peel the scalp off. Then I will slice your cock into little strands so that it looks like a bush skirt. I will go over there, grab the torch, and seal each wound so you live. Then I will set fire to your tree-son and your vine-wife so that you can never grow them back. And that will be just the beginning. Do you understand, little man? Shall we play another game?”
“I . . . I never touch the living, never touch them, never, never, only the just dead,” he said.
I grabbed his hand, bleeding at the finger stumps.
“The road of blind jackals!” he shouted. “The road of blind jackals. Down where the tunnels all fall down and all sort of thing live in the rubble. West of here.”
“Any enchantments in the road, like the pit you wanted me to fall into?”
“No.”
“A witchman told me no man needs his right middle finger.”
“No!” he shouted, still bawling out his words. “There is no enchantment on that road, none from my craft. Why would it need it? No man go down that road unless he choosing to lose his life. Not even the witch, not even the ghost dog. Not even memory live there.”
“Then that is where I will find him and . . .”
Standing in this room and in the outer chamber as long as I did, the smells all became known to me. But I turned to leave and a new smell brushed my nose. As it always is, I did not know what it was other than it was not the others. An odor, a scent of the living. I dropped the merchant’s hand and walked over to a wall on the left, kicking away bottles with candles melting on top. The merchant said there was nothing there but the wall, and I turned to see him scoop his fingers into his hands. The smell was stronger at the wall. Piss, but fresh, the freshness of now. Things in it I knew from smell, wicked minerals, mild poisons. I whispered at the wall.
“Nothing there but the earth this hut cut out of. Nothing there, I say.”
Flame sparked at the top of the wall and split to both edges, came down the sides, joining at the bottom and burning a rectangle that disappeared to reveal a room. A room as large the one we were in, with five lamps hanging on the walls. On the floor, four mats. On the mats four bodies, one with no arms or legs, one cut open from neck to penis, his ribs poking out, one full in body but not moving, and another, his eyes open, his hands and legs bound by rope, and a cross mark across his chest in kaolin clay. The boy had pissed on his belly and chest.
“Them sick. You try find a medicine woman in the Malangika, you try.”
“You are harvesting them.”
“Not true! I—”
“Merchant, you bawl to the gods, scream and wail like a priestess secretly fingering herself, and yet there is a broken Ifa bowl on your door. Not only are the gods gone, you wish they never come back.”
“That is madness! Ma—”
My ax chopped his neck, blood splashed the wall, and his head fell and swung from a strip of skin. He fell onto his back.
“You have killed children,” the voice that knew me said.
“Begging does not stop killing if one has decided to kill,” I said.
Nothing walked this road of blind jackals but the fear to walk it. Two spirits did come to me screaming, looking for their bodies, but nothing struck fear in me anymore. Nothing was struck in me, not even sadness. Not even indifference. The two spirits both ran through me and shivered. They looked at me, screamed, and vanished. They were right to scream. I would kill the dead.
The entrance was so small that I crawled inside until I was again in a wide space, as high as before, but all around was dust, and bricks, cracked walls, broken wood, rotting flesh, old blood, and dried shit. Carved out of this was a seat like a throne. And there he was, sprawled on it, looking at the two rays of light that hit his legs and his face. The white wings, black at the tips, spread out and hanging lazy, his
eyes barely open. A little bolt jumped off his chest and vanished. The Ipundulu, the lightning bird, looking as if he could not bother with this business of being Ipundulu. I stepped into something brittle that broke at my feet. Shed skin.
“Greetings, Nyka,” I said.
TWENTY-FOUR
You are the last of your kind, Nyka. One the Ipundulu chose to change rather than kill. Such honor he saves for those he enslaves and those he has fucked, so which are you?”
“Ipundulu can only be a man, no woman can be Ipundulu.”
“And only a body possessed by his lightning blood can be Ipundulu.”
“I told you. Ipundulu can only be a man. No woman can be Ipundulu.”
“That is not the part I asked you.”
“The last man he bit but did not kill, that man becomes the next Ipundulu, unless crossed by a mother witch, and he has no mother.”
“That part I know. Your dodge is neither skillful nor artful, Nyka.”
“He would rape and kill my woman. He had her by the neck, his claw already in her chest. I told him to take me instead. I told him to take me.”
He looked away.
“The Nyka I know would have fed him bits of his own woman himself,” I said.
“That Nyka you know. I don’t know this Nyka. And I do not know you.”
“I am—”
“Tracker. Yes, I know your name. Even witchmen and devils know it. They even whisper, Watch the Tracker. He has turned from red to black. Do you know what they mean? There is trouble all around you. I look at you and see a man darker than me.”
“All men are darker than you.”
“I see death as well.”
“What a deep thinker you have become, Nyka, now that you eat women’s hearts.”
He laughed, looking at me as if just seeing me. Then he laughed again, the cackle of the mad, or the cackle of one who had seen all the madness of the world.
“And yet I’m the one in this room with a heart,” he said.
His words did not upset me, but I thought right then of the me that it would have once struck. I asked him how he came to be this way, and this is what he told me.
That he and Nsaka Ne Vampi set off, not because of me, for he would have dealt with me, for such violent hate could exist only where there was still violent love beneath it. He and she set off, for he did not trust the fish woman and despised the Moon Witch, who was the one who made her sisters drive Nsaka Ne Vampi from the King sister guard.
“Have you ever seen a compass, Tracker?” Nyka asked. “Men from the eastern light carry them, some as large as a stool, some so small they disappear in the pocket. She would run, the lightning woman, run to the end of the rope and get pulled back so hard that her neck would soon break. So Nsaka shot her with a poison arrow, which did not kill her, only made her slow. These are the things that happened to us. The lightning woman kept running northwest, so we went northwest. We came upon a hut. Is this not how all stories of fright go, that we come upon a house where no one lives? Being who I am, I ran up and kicked down the door. First thing I saw, the child. Second thing I saw, a bolt of lightning ramming me in the chest and burning through every hole in my skin, and knocking me right out of the hut. Nsaka, she jumped over me and fired two arrows into the hut, one hitting a red one with grass for hair. Another came at her from the side and grabbed her bow, but she kicked him in the balls and he dropped to the ground and wailed. But the bug one, he is all flies, this bug one, he became a cloud of flies, and he surrounded her and stung all over her back through her tunic, and I could see it, the flies burrowing into her back as if they were coming home, and how my Nsaka did scream and fall to the ground on her back, to get them out for they bit and stung and sucked blood from her, and I rose and the Ipundulu struck lightning again but it hit her, not me, and the blast sent fire through her, but it also sent fire to the bug one, who shrieked and burned and drew all the flies back to his form. The bug one ran into the hut and went after the bird and they fought, knocking each other over, and the little boy watched. And the Ipundulu turned into a full bird. And he swatted the bug man away and threw lightning at him again, and the bug man flew away. I heard others coming and I ran in when the Ipundulu was looking at his bug man, and ran my sword through his back, and ducked when he swung his wing around. He laughed, would you believe this? He pulled out the sword and fought me with it. I pulled Nsaka’s sword quick, in time to block his blow, and swung it up to chop him but he blocked mine. I dropped to a squat and swung for his legs but he jumped and flapped his wings and his head burst through the hut roof. He jumped back down and threw mud chunks at my head and knocked me in the forehead, and I fell to one knee. And upon me, he was, but I grabbed a stool and blocked his blow and thrust from underneath and stabbed him in the side. That made him stagger. I pulled back and charged in straight for the heart but he blocked and kicked me in the chest, and I rolled and landed flat on my face and did not move and he said, You, I expected more game in you. He turned his back to me and I grabbed a knife—do you remember how good I was with knives, Tracker? Was it not I that taught you how to wield them? And the lightning woman, she ran to his side and he caressed her head and truly she purred and hunched herself under his touch like a cat, and then he took both his hands and broke her neck. I was on my knees, and I pulled two knives and this, this I will never forget, Tracker. The boy shouted at him. Not words, but he alerted him. Tell you truth, I remember nothing but lightning.
I woke again to see two of the grass-haired devils. They ripped off Nsaka’s robes and spread her legs, and the Ipundulu was hard. I don’t know why he listened to me when I begged him to ravage me instead. Maybe he saw me as more beautiful. I was too weak and they were upon me. How he mounted me, Tracker—no wet, no spit, he rammed into me until I cut and bled and hark, he used my own blood to ease his fuck into me. Then he bit me until he supped blood, and he drank and he drank and the others drank too, and then he kissed the cut right in my neck and lightning left him and went right into my blood rivers. All this made her watch. They didn’t have to make the boy.
“You ever feel fire burn you from the inside out? And then everything was white and blank like highest noon. Tell you truth, I had no memory from then until I woke up as the Ipundulu in Kongor. Some things come, like the eating of rats, and the sound of loose chains. I looked at my hands and saw white, and at my feet I saw a bird and my back itched and itched until I saw I sat on wings. And my Nsaka. Dear gods, my Nsaka. She was in the room with me, maybe she saw me when I was changing. Such is the wicked way of the gods. And how she must have loved me to just . . . to just . . . without fight. . . . Dear wicked gods. When I remembered I was me, I saw her on the floor, her neck broken, and a big bloody hole where used to be her heart. Dear wicked, wicked, gods. I think of her every day, Tracker. I have caused the death of many souls. Many souls. But how deep my heart troubles over this one.”
“Indeed.”
“I have killed my—”
“Only one.”
“How did you—”
“Those words are popular this night.”
“I have no heart for killing,” he said.
He brought his feet up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. I clapped. I had sat down on the floor while he spoke, but rose and clapped.
“Instead you have others do the killing for you. You forget what led me to you. Save the heart pull for the next sad girl whose own heart you rip out, Ipundulu. You are still a murderer and a coward. And a liar.”
The sour look came back to his handsome face.
“Hmm. Had you come to kill me, that torch you would have thrown already. What is your desire?”
“Was there one with him, with bat wings?”
“Bat wings?”
“Like a bat. His feet the same as his hands, with iron claws. Huge.”
“No, there was no one such. I am telling the
truth.”
“I know. If he was among them he would never have let you live.”
“What do you want, old friend? We are old friends, no?”
“The creature with bat wings, people call him Sasabonsam. That boy you speak of, we reunited him with his mother five years ago. Sasabonsam and the child are together again.”
“He stole the boy.”
“That is what his mother says.”
“You do not.”
“No, and you just said why.”
“Indeed. The boy was strange. I thought he would have even tried to run to those who came to save him.”
“Instead he warned those who took him. He is like no boy of this age.”
“That was pompous, Tracker. Not like you.”
“How would you know what I am like if you have forgotten, as you say?”
I went up to his shamble throne and sat down close, facing him.
“Where you could not save him, we did. And even with all of us, we could only hurt Sasabonsam, not stop him. There was something wrong with that boy. His smell would be strong, and then it would fade as if he was running hundreds of days away, and then he would be right in front of me.
“Here is a story. We tracked them to Dolingo. When I found them, I caught the Ipundulu pushing the boy from his chest. The little boy, he was sucking his nipple. Would you believe what I thought? I thought of a boy child and his mother, some boy child who never stopped longing for the mother’s milk. Except this mother had no koo. And then I thought, what kind of wickedness was this, how foul was this that he had been raping the boy so long that he thought this was the natural way of things. And then I saw it for what it was. No rape. Vampire blood. His opium.”
“There are women and boys who come to me as if I am their opium. Some have run from so far, for so long, they have no feet. But none has found me in the Malangika. He will want it more than the embrace of his own mother.”
“Sasabonsam went for him in the Mweru.”
“No man leaves the Mweru. Why would anyone even enter?”