by Lucie Wilk
But the sight of Dr. Bryce in that hut, ill as he was, and saying those things. Wanting to stay! Refusing treatment! It was unimaginable, irrational. It was the talk of a man possessed. And then, as simple as that, the idea of sorcery made a home in her mind. And it grew there, getting fatter and uglier—a greasy, gawky adolescent thought that kept maturing. It grew until it was an overbearing adult thought that wielded blame, flashed it like a sharp knife. Self-blame. She began to think about how mfiti and matsenga sometimes work this way, striking not the guilty person, but those in the vicinity. This is how her mother was attacked. And here Iris is, back in the village—why shouldn’t the attacks begin? Why shouldn’t Bryce be the first casualty? She has been around long enough to know that things can change, depending on what chair you sit in, what direction you face, which god receives your prayers. Or doesn’t.
She almost can’t go to the ceremony after the funeral; she has become this afraid of seeing Bryce there—the unfortunate possessed. The one to whom the dances, the jubilant, terrifying cries will be directed. By the time she is close enough to see the large crowd gathered in the centre of the village, she is shaking. Bryce isn’t there, but still she feels a threat.
The Gule Wamkulu is underway, and the drumbeats are frantic. The crowd sings, cheers, claps and yells, and the Nyau dancer in the centre clearing stomps, kicks dust, and gesticulates. He is telling a story, he is teaching a lesson. With his mask on, and the spiralling horn that jabs skyward from his mane, and the erratic swings of his costume, she can’t tell where his intentions are directed as he threatens, gyrates, teases, condemns. She circles wide around the crowd and searches each face for something: anger, or the guilt of revenge. And she almost finds it, over and over again in each face: something menacing as they watch the antics of the masked dancer. Ade watches her studying his people. He sees her fear. She walks around the circumference of the small fires over which the drummers are warming the skins of their instruments, feels the heat on her legs, the smoke in her eyes. Ade nods when she arrives in front of him. He waits for her question.
“Is it matsenga?” She asks. “Has he been taken by it?”
To these questions, and to her twisted, anguished face, Ade laughs—yellow teeth, black spaces. His laughter is deep-chested, honest. Mean. “He is his own witch. Our spirits, our ancestors had nothing to say to him. But perhaps his own did.” He gazes up to the sky, as if trying to determine the path of their flight, or perhaps to witness their escape. White or winged or shapeless on the black of the night, fleeing westward. Homeward bound, now that the job has been done.
Iris leaves the ceremony with the need to see Bryce. Her fear has not been abated by Ade’s mocking laughter. In the cool darkness outside the circle of firelight, she starts to feel more calm. With a cool, thinking head, she reasons that Ade’s explanation could be accurate. Why not his own demons? Why else would he wish to stay but to escape them, to avoid returning to where they rage unchecked in a low, grey building in Blantyre?
There is a lantern on in the hut; she can see the yellow-orange glow through the curtain in the doorway. She steps up to the door and moves the curtain aside. She goes no further. She sees Alile, moving over Bryce. Her hand cups his face. Her body covers his. He looks up at her with a gaze she has never felt cast on her own face. It is the gaze of love, or lust. Iris is unfamiliar with these looks; she is unable to distinguish between the two.
Iris steps back and drops the curtain. She moves away from the hut and then turns and runs out of the yard. Once on the path, she walks swiftly, fast enough that her breath comes more and more quickly, until she can’t catch it at all.
Of course, she thinks, as her face becomes wet and she swipes at it, smears the tears all over. She hiccups and tries for some deeper breaths. Of course it’s not matsenga, or vengeful spirits or ancestors of any sort and she feels so stupid, so stupid for ever thinking these things. It is nothing of spirit at all. It is simple, ubiquitous malaria that has made him ill. And it is even simpler, and even more ubiquitous otentha that is keeping him here. Heat. Lust. He is a man and she is a woman. Of course.
She stumbles onward, passes villagers who look at her strangely, give her a wide berth.
Dear Alile. Fallen under the influence of Bryce. Alile who has been given everything and now Bryce, as flawed as he is. As difficult and confused and flawed. Despite all this, and maybe because of it, he was beautiful to her. And she wanted to keep his damaged soul all to herself.
These thoughts that tumble through her make her dizzy. They sicken her with their green taint of envy—the trait of someone with a dark heart. Ku-dukidwa—jealousy—it brings her closer to becoming mtima woipa—not a real person, already on the muddy path to becoming mfiti. A witch. Is this what they think of her? She remembers her grandfather’s angry white eyes.
She walks toward her grandfather’s khumbi. But for the first time, he is not there waiting for her. The khumbi is empty and cold and dark. She leaves the khumbi and moves back into the crowd, allows herself to be carried by it to the ritual dance and then she moves past it, toward the wood.
She goes to the thicket because she needs a cooler space and so she steps through the gate and enters her grandmother’s kachisi. The offering pots are there and again she feels shame for entering this sacred grove empty-handed. Most of her memories of this place, Mapiri village, are of times spent with her grandmother. Until a girl is old enough to join her mother in household tasks like fetching water and sticks for the fire, or cooking, she remains almost solely in the guardianship of her grandmother and they were so similar, the two of them. In so many ways they were like sisters.
She wonders what her grandmother would think of her now, if she would be as disappointed in her as her grandfather, or if she would somehow understand that the life she leads—celibate, mostly alone—came about by happenstance, not by choice.
As she kneels down in front of the kachisi, she feels the heat again, now centred in the area of her genitals. The irony stings: that her mother’s promiscuity and infidelities are more natural here than her own chastity. Yet her mother worshipped a God that condemned her for it.
Alile was lying on Dr. Bryce and his hands were on her waist, drifting toward her buttocks. Iris presses her hands between her legs and feels the heat of her labia swollen against her palm. If she had been initiated, she would have labia stretched long for the act of sex. If she had been initiated, she would be a woman now. She lies down on the ground, smells the sour ku-konda mowa from the offering pots, listens for rustling in the leaves, waits for another visit from her grandmother, her mzimu. If she had followed the path her grandmother had chosen for her—to become a diviner, a spirit medium—she would never marry. But even then she would have nocturnal visits from a kamundi—a shrine official who represents the spirit. A spirit that would enter her in the form of a python. Even then she would not have to remain cold and lifeless. She closes her eyes to the darkness here and listens carefully for the arrival of the mzimu.
When she wakes it is still dark, and her shoulder and hip are cold from being pressed against the ground. She feels a wetness between her legs and reaches down there. When she pulls out her hand and holds it up to the moonlight she can see that it is dark, almost black. Menstrual blood. Proof that her earlier heat was not for lust and that her womb will not be carrying a child.
Scattering seeds. This is all any of them wish to do, is it not? Alile her garden. Men their women. She looks up through the web of branches and wonders how she will scatter her own. No one is meant to be barren forever. She wipes her hand on a leaf and then begins to make her way back to the village where she can hear the drumbeats. The funeral rite is still ongoing. She hasn’t missed anything and hasn’t been missed.
As she approaches the fire—now bigger and brighter—she feels the drumbeat enter her. The Nyau are gone, have passed through like a wind. The dead one has been escorted, is now safely establis
hed in his new domicile and precautions have been taken so that he cannot find his way back to this world. And the people of the village, left behind, mourn death and celebrate life.
Someone adds more wood to the fire and it sprays upward in a fountain of sparks, chased by tongues of flame. Bodies move and dance around her, frenetic claps urge them on. Iris stands still and watches the drummers for a long time, their arms moving so fast, so fast that they are gone and all that is left are two bright wings. The wings blur in front of them, the wings create the drumbeat, the wings pulse faster and faster. Everyone must keep moving and so Iris begins to move, first slowly and then faster and faster until she is moving as fast as the drummers’ wings. She spins and spins and spins until she is something spinning out of nothing. Stars fly from her fingertips, streak through the sky, scatter like dust across the womb of space.
There are hands on her. The hands direct her as she spins, move her away from the fire. She can’t stop, though. She keeps spinning around and around and then, as the hands hold her firmly over her hips, she stops long enough to feel the water. It runs over and down her and she stumbles and falls and then she is submerged, covered in water, takes water in through her nose and mouth. Then she is still for a long time. When she opens her eyes again, she is lying on her back and she sees a face above her. It hovers there and it is her father. Her father is looking tenderly down at her and she cries “Papa! Papa!” The face moves away and then all she can see is the night sky, bright with the seeds of her dance.
*
Henry could hear the ritual. He listened to the throb of the drums, long after Alile left him alone in the hut. He lay in the dark and felt the drumbeat come up from the ground, move through him, force the blood through his vessels. He felt his heart clench strangely, in time with the beat, not quite a regular rhythm. He heard cries. Terrible agonies or beautiful ecstasies out from the throat. Sounds he knew were his, and theirs. Sounds of the land itself, as though it were tearing open beneath the village and releasing things that lived there, things that could not be forgotten. Parts of himself. Parts he wished he could remember. Parts he would rather forget.
Lying there alone in the hut, his eyes stung from the heat and the smoke, he saw the animals, throats cut, bodies limp and still. He smelled their blood, watched it sink into the sand. He saw the dancers. Bodies that moved and writhed. People that sang and danced in an ancient way and as he watched them, he felt a terrible grief. He fell asleep with this grief gripping him tight.
*
When Alile enters the hut the next morning, Henry cannot look at her. Some time in the night, guilt overcame the grief. He declines the medicine she holds up to his lips, accepts the pain as a sort of penance. He holds her hands and cries, sees that her eyes are dry. But he released the worst of it the night before and so, apparently, had she. When Iris and Ellison step into the hut a short while later, he is ready. Alile is already gone, and he pushes himself up, reaches up for their hands, accepts their help.
The light outside the hut invades him; a searing pain. He can’t take another step; it is as though he is tied somehow to the interior of the hut, a premature infant leaving the womb too soon. He slumps against the hut and requests a few minutes alone. He needs time to just be there in that sun, under that sky that casts down on him a condemning heat. He can’t rush this. Iris and Ellison help him onto the step where he can lean against the hut and rest. As he sits there alone, contending with the sun and the sky and the yard that reflects it all back on him, a child appears.
It is Alile’s daughter, Mkele. She steps out from behind the garden and into the blinding light so he can see her, as though she is revealing the hiding place where she has been observing him all along.
Since he returned from the mountain, she flitted in and out of his sight, in and out of his dreams during that period when lucid moments were difficult to pry apart from the delirium. If she did enter the hut, she was always alone, silent and distant. She rarely approached him, staying close to the door for a quick escape if this became necessary.
She stays put near the garden but continues to watch him. Henry waves to her. She remains silent and still.
Henry reaches into his pocket and finds the shell there. It is warm and soft as Alile’s hand. He wraps his fingers around it and pulls it out into the sunlight. It is the same object, no different from when Iris’s grandfather placed it in his hands. But he knows this cannot be true. It, like him, is changed. He looks up and sees that Mkele is still standing there. Her interest seems to be piqued by the shell in his hand. He feels a rush of warmth for the girl. He reaches up with his hand and waves her over to him. This time, she comes. She pads across the dirt in her bare feet, clutching the skirt of her blue dress with both her hands. She stops a foot away and looks at the shell. Henry watches her study it. He sees the lines of her neck sloping into her shoulders. The straight nose. The small chin. The long limbs. She is mostly Alile, but Henry knows that someone else, another man, lurks within her, buried in her genes, peeking out in various ways, influencing the shape of her cheekbones, her posture, the way she thinks about the world. Henry wonders who he is, what man shared an intimacy with Alile to create this girl. He has no right to think about this man. He has no right to feel what he does right now: a swell of protectiveness for this girl.
She looks up at him, studies his face. Like a cat, her eyes hold no expression. She looks down at the shell that he still holds in his hand and she reaches for it. She picks it up out of his palm and cradles it with both hands. Henry wonders how it feels in her hands, whether it is warm or cold, hard or soft, heavy or light. She looks once more at Henry’s face and then turns on her heels and runs away from him. Quick and silent, she runs and is gone.
Part III
I’ll meet you there
Chapter 27
The man is thin. This is the first thing Jakob notices about the doctor. His beard is overgrown, like a wild-man’s. A bush man. As with many things in the hospital, the doctor’s absence had been noticed but not discussed. Jakob had assumed he had gone as they all do eventually.
He studies him lying there, sleeping on the bed. So where is his anger now? In his muscles strung tight like bowstrings? Without any fat under the doctor’s skin, Jakob can see where his muscles attach to his arm and leg bones. They are so taut they must still harbour a lot of anger. Even in sleep. He breathes deeply, like a man who is catching up on breaths he should have taken years ago.
He heard that he climbed Mulanje Mountain and its peak Sapitwa, all alone. Jakob imagines the doctor standing up there near the clouds and shaking his fist at Sapitwa. That is what he must have done for the mountain to pay him back with such a liberal dose of punishment.
Jakob steps a little closer and puts his hand on the doctor’s leg; there is a thin sheet between the warmth of his palm and the doctor’s skin. He still breathes the deep breath of sleep.
“What a fucking mess.”
Jakob says it loud enough for a few patients nearby to stir in their cots and watch him.
Dr. Bryce opens his eyes. The whites are yellow. But they are calm, placid even. No anger in them. And so Jakob doesn’t say what he had planned to say next. Instead, he blurts out:
“My mother is dying.”
Because now Dr. Bryce looks like a healer.
*
Maria giggles and Jakob shushes her. He puts his hand over her mouth, hovers it there not quite touching but feeling her breath warm his fingers. Her breath changes a little, it becomes shallower and quickens. Taking his hand away, he leans over and puts his mouth over her lips; they are soft and compliant and open a little so he licks them and thrusts his tongue between them. Then he moves away, looks at her big eyes in the thin light coming in under the door of the storage closet. She sighs. He moves in again, this time burying his face in her neck which he kisses and he breathes in her soapy scent. His heart hammering against his breastb
one, he places his hand over one of her large, soft breasts. Her nipple pushes out against the fabric and he brushes his thumb over it—just once. He moves away. He has learned that restraint reaps enormous rewards.
He holds her hands for a moment, then squeezes them once and stands up, pulls her up with him. They stand close; she is the same height as he is and when they hug it feels perfect to him. She is soft where he is all angled corners. She sighs again.
“We should get back to work.” She sounds reluctant. Jakob knows she will meet him here again later today.
“Yes.” He likes that they speak English to each other. He admires how well she pronounces her words.
It had come from a dare. Solomon, still poking fun at him for stealing biscuits to give to the nurses, had dared him to take it further. He had dared him to kiss one of the nurses. Jakob had chosen Maria because she was the one who helped him get his job. She was the youngest (he now knows she is just two years older than him) and the softest and the kindest. And now Jakob wishes this hadn’t come from a dare. He hopes that Maria never learns of his bet with Solomon, who had to pay him 2 kwacha for the kiss. They shared their first kiss behind the hospital where Jakob knew the men could spy on them and be sure it really happened. It was brief and dry and awkward and Maria had laughed in the middle. He felt her teeth against his lips when she laughed, and her lips had been soft and he was left wanting to taste her tongue. They had been leaning against the back wall of the hospital and he’d had to slide down to a squat to hide his excitement. She tucked down next to him and he held her hand for a few moments before she stood up, straightened her dress and slipped back inside the hospital and then Solomon and a few other orderlies came over and slapped his back and passed him a cigarette and he wished they would just leave in case Maria came back. She didn’t.