A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel

by Sofia Samatar

  The soup was ready. They put the pot on the sand, and the older sailor unwrapped a packet of banana leaves in which there was thin maize bread. We took the bread in pieces in our fingers and dipped it into the soup. Fire on the tongue. On the sea, light flashed like a warning.

  We were wonderful children, strange, vivacious, we amused them. They could not know the source of our dazzling energy, that we were intoxicated with secrets, shame, and buried unhappiness, the unspoken knowledge that we were hotun people. The attention, the approval of our elders made us delirious: we sang, we were bright-eyed, witty, impulsive, daring, we gave them everything, showed them our own beach dances, giggled and even spoke impertinently because we knew it would please them. Especially me. It was so easy to be with the sailors from Prav. I felt that I could discern every one of their wishes, and when they laughed and glanced at one another I saw that I had been right, and the thought, the power, filled me with exultation. Ainut followed me; the food and acceptance made her glow. Never could they have encountered such magical children. And wrapped in our brilliant vitality, charging it with a heady essence, was our cry: Don’t go, don’t leave us, take us with you.

  Take us with you. Take us to see the bazaars of Akaneck. Take us to Prav, to the city of Vad-Von-Poi. Take us to live in that city of towers, pulley, wells, and fountains, to be sailors, to wear trousers and blue tunics. Take us to where the women have windblown hair and tapering eyes and smoke cigars, to where they grow hibiscus flowers, the flowers that make the wine you carry in an ancient glass bottle, tied at your waist, underneath your clothes.

  They drank. They sang. We tasted the wine in fearful, hesitant sips. The talkative sailor told us not to be shy. The embers of the fire grew redder as the air turned blue, still, silent, leaning toward a motionless dusk. At last they stood, kicked sand over the embers, said they were going back to Pian. I wanted to plead with them, to cry. . . . And the woman shouldered her knapsack with the clay pot bulging in it, and she looked at us sadly and told us what she knew about men and seasons.

  Then they were turning toward the sea, toward the red of the sunset, and Ainut, afraid to be out after dark, was clambering up the rocks. The sailor with the spices turned toward me and caught my arm, smiling in the twilight air that was filling with shadows.

  The lonely beach. The others turned away. The dark rocks. Salt, the smoke of cigars, ginger, sweat. He leaned down and kissed me with a kiss that arrested time, and then he smiled again.

  Good-bye, chakhet, he said.

  I don’t remember his face. It’s the only one I don’t have anymore, the only face that was lost to me in an instant. The rest, I remember them, Dab-Nin, Ajo Kyet, Ainut and the other children, the kyitna man of the caves. I remember them all, I sort through them as if they were shells or beads, lying in the heat in the open doorway, or later, lying inside against the wall, under the worn thatch with its faint and mournful odor of rotting grain. I dwell on them, brood over the details, the hard-faced sailor with his arrogant nose jutting toward his lips, the long eyes of the woman and her polished cheeks and the way her mouth lifted in a smirk, and her sad look. But him, no, I can’t remember him, he obliterated his face, the touch of his lips and tongue usurped the place of all other memories. There remains only a trace of smoke, the awareness of blue shadows, a sense of alarm, and the sound of the waves on the shore.

  After the crowds cleared away, after the boat of Ajo Kyet went slowly, mournfully, trailing its clouds of incense, and a space was opened around our house, tingling, unapproachable: then, for an afternoon, we were filled with happiness. Perhaps it was not happiness, but for us the emotion of those hours was indistinguishable from true joy. My father climbed up into the house, his eyes wild and his face darkened with triumph, making his hair seem brighter, fiery. We laughed, embraced, the three of us. They had not chased us away. They had not succeeded in ruining us. And I was not feeling very sick, I sat up and ate the meal my mother prepared on the brazier, spinach and fried bananas. We all ate quickly, hungrily, keeping the door flap raised so that the daylight could illuminate the room, and we could see the boats going by, far off on the shining water, the life of the village going on despite everything. My father was full of schemes. First, he said, we’ll treat you with hawet-blossom, and then with pumpkin flowers when they’re in season. Rice-wine too, every day. And meat, if I can shoot something in the forest, or buy from Pato—to thicken your blood. Then we should go out to sea whenever we can, where the air is pure, and you should bathe.—He nodded, chewing; he was glowing with satisfaction.

  And all those charms, my mother said. Will they be good forever?

  I’ll get more, my father said, scoffing from his confidence. I’ll replace them. Eat, he said to me, eat all you can.—Then suddenly he was shaking with helpless laughter. That fat sow, he choked. His face when I gave him the blessing of jut.

  Silence: a subtle darkening in the room.

  And Ainut: I never spoke to her again. The last words I said to her: You’re so stupid. The basket’s full of ants. Perhaps last words are always like that, vapid, inadequate. The last words I said in life were: Hold the light.

  What would I have said to her, had I been given the chance? Perhaps I would have told her of her grace, her wonderful steadiness, her beauty unpolluted by vanity, her expression, slightly solemn, yet seeking laughter. But no, I was only fifteen, fresh from adventures in my boat. Perhaps I would have said simply: Remember. Ainut, remember the time we saw the sailors, the indigo sellers, remember when we found the spoor of the leopard. . . .

  I would have only those memories. But she would have many others. Now, working in her rice paddy in Kiem, she has her choice of memories, she can remember her wedding night, the birth of her son, the expansion of her small farm. She can remember the first time the man she was to marry smiled at her. Why would she waste her thoughts on me, waste her time in going over a few disjointed memories of a girl she used to play with, who died of kyitna?

  And yet, I believe that Ainut thinks of me from time to time, perhaps when it rains, or at night when she is afraid. I don’t think she flatters me in her thoughts. She must remember the way I bullied her, my restlessness, my impatience. She must remember how I could never admit to any weakness, my imperious manner of a daughter of chiefs, and the way that, if she questioned me or offered a contradiction, I would punish her for days with a cold silence. Finally she would have to coax me back, sometimes with presents, tyepo, bananas. I don’t think she’s forgotten that. And I don’t think she’s forgotten the three years I lay in the doorway, visible in the light of the setting sun.

  (5)

  I always thought we would go to the hill. First I thought we would walk there, climbing the ridges, sleeping outside on the way. Then I thought we would go by mule, and later still I thought they would carry me there, Tipyav and my father, in the hammock. No matter how we went, I used to dwell on our adventures. The starlit nights, the camping fires, the dew. And then the first sight of the house, always lit by the glory of the sun, its winged roof sparkling in the pristine air.

  One day, after everyone’s stopped speaking to us, he appears. He is already old. He taps at the pole of our house. We can’t believe it, we look at one another. A dog, my father says, and we go on eating, or they go on, and I watch them. Then the tapping again, discreet but insistent. It’s someone, my mother says. Her eyes are full of fear. My father swears. He swears more often now, now that he has had to give up his withdrawn existence and become heroic. I’m trying to draw the curtain aside. My father comes over and yanks it up. Outside, a dark blue evening, blue river light. And standing in the evening, this old man, tall and lean with a tuft of whiskers, chewing his lip, looking up at us.

  No, my father says. What are you doing here?

  The old man shifts his feet. It’s been raining; he’s in the mud. He chews his lip. I see that his vest and trousers, though clean, are ragged, and that he’s carrying a pair of clean sandals. He looks unhappy and burdened
with the hopelessness of Kiem, perhaps senile, at any rate very old. Two stout sacks are lying on a reed mat at his feet. Stealthy faces peer from the neighboring houses.

  Holding his sandals, looking up at the sky, the old man speaks. He says that he has come down to find the Ekawi. He says that he has no message, that he has come of his own will. He says that carefully: Of my own will. He says that he’s always wanted to come, but he has found it impossible until now, and that he has lived with the shame for years, and that he has no desire but to live and keep on serving his master if his master will forgive him for the betrayal. He speaks in an unbroken stream; he’s clearly practiced the words. All the time he keeps looking up at the sky, holding his sandals against his heart. When he’s finished, my father swears again, looking down on him from the doorway.

  I don’t keep servants, my father says. He’s furious, trembling with rage. The old man looks at the dark blue sky and blinks. I’m finished with all that, my father says. The word ekawi has been banished from my life. I don’t want to hear it.

  My mother comes to the door. Let him come in for water, she murmurs. My father flings the ladder down, wordless. The old man clambers up, carrying one heavy bag at a time. My mother tries to take one of them and staggers.

  He is Tipyav. He will stay with us and help my mother and sleep in a hammock underneath the house. He will never leave us. I don’t know how he developed such loyalty, perhaps only in response to desperation. He will be our friend, our doddering uncle, our confidant, the means by which we get news from the village, our messenger, our forager, a back for me to ride on, a backbone for us all, long-suffering, patient. And he will be my mother’s servant. That much is decided, that first night. Then you take him, my father shouts. Take him, if you want him. But I will be no one’s ekawi.

  And he swings down the rope ladder into the dark.

  He took his boat out that night, and so he wasn’t there when we opened the heavy sacks. The old man opened the first one for us, his big, black-nailed hands fumbling with the strings in the rushlight, the contents of the sack shifting and clinking. The mouth of the sack opened all at once, we saw his hand jerk to stop something from falling, but he was too late, it clanked on the floor. We watched it roll, mesmerized. My mother gave a cry. It was a cup, somber and weighty, made of gold.

  Let me hold it, I cried. Give it to me.—She was so slow, she picked it up and stared at it with her mouth open. I couldn’t bear the sight of that lovely thing in her squat, misshapen hand. I smacked my palm on the floor. Give it to me!

  Humbly, she put it into my hands. Oh, it was beautiful, burnished, heavy. I pressed it to my cheek: it was cold, like water. My breath made cloudy patterns over its etched design of triangles and stars, and I wiped it carefully on my shirt. My mother had brought out the razor and was cutting the strings of the other sack, and always, I’ve always found that moment so strange, for despite our different spirits we were both blinking unusually fast, both of us struggling with our tears of joy. Why, of course you can ask me why, you’ve never seen our tiny house with the mud walls and thatched roof, the poor skin maps, the water pots repaired with gum, the narrow pallets and murky light, and you’ve never seen that light when it falls on gold. It wasn’t only the golden cups and bowls, the amber necklaces, the beads of jade and coral, the ivory flutes. It was the way the room was changed by the luster of those objects, and the light became like the glow of a thousand fireflies. . . . Suddenly this room, our room, so stifling, so eternally sad, became like a place where things were always happening, a place of enchantments, reversals, lovers’ quarrels, impromptu poetry, where the air had the soulful, exciting odor of incense. Oh, look, oh, look, we whispered, laughing and crying. And Tipyav wore such a mournful and awkward smile, as he told us in his shy and halting way of my father’s sister, his younger sister who was called Jetnapet. Jetnapet, a beautiful name, it makes you think of the first rains, the smell after all the dust has been washed away. I’d never heard of her. I held her jade bracelet and kissed it, saying, Jetnapet, oh Jetnapet, my aunt! I loved her, I knew all about her, her beauty, her slender wrists like mine, which were so unlike the thick wrists of my mother. I knew how sad she was when she thought of my father, for what she had sent him was as valuable as an entire inheritance.

  It’s mine, it’s my inheritance, I whispered. Then: Give me that, I told my mother sharply, snapping my fingers. I held out my hand, my arm deliciously heavy with rich jewelry, for the bowl she had held up admiringly to the light. What’s that? What are you wearing?

  She looked startled, confused, ashamed, her hand wandering to the amber at her throat.

  Take it off, Tati. . . . Gods, on you . . .

  We had not heard my father come in: he looked at me aghast, as if I had struck him.

  How it was on the hill.

  The beautiful lacquered tableware, the jade cups, the decorum, the immobility. My father tells me more about it now that I’m very weak, now that I’m dying, although we don’t call it that. During our last months in the village the stories well out of him along with his tears, he unburdens himself to me. He doesn’t play the flute anymore, he drinks millet beer, he smells of beer as he unplaits and combs my hair.

  It was agony, he tells me thickly, his voice growing older, taking on the uneven texture of the rushlight. My mother, I’ve never told you about her. God of my father, Jissi, a woman to make you kill yourself, or her, or both. All right, I’ve told you some. I know I’ve told you how she never shouted or showed anger, only simpered and smiled. She had been well brought up, what they used to call “hill quality,” a child-bride from the mountains up the coast. But listen, how can I tell you. She had a series of servants, always young girls, terrified as rabbits. As soon as one got used to her, showed signs of resignation, my mother would replace her with another. She needed them to be frightened, you see, needed that entertainment in her life of seclusion, someone to terrify. She needed the sound of weeping in the house, from behind the screen where the maid slept. . . . It soothed her, helped her to sleep herself. . . . They were always inseparable, my mother and her trembling maid. Other women, our clanswomen, would visit. My mother had a note at which she pitched her voice to speak to the maid—chilling, penetrating, and yet so soft. . . . The girls lived in terror, it was unspeakable. One of them ran away. The laborers tracked her. Yes, they would have killed her. But she escaped, she must have gone aboard a Pravish ship. I hope she settled somewhere, I hope she found love.

  Love, Jissavet. In our house it did not exist. It was the same with everyone on the hill. Love, for our people, was synonymous with dishonor. It was something to be avoided, hidden, crushed. . . . They spoke of it in hushed tones, telling about my cousin who loved a man forbidden to her and drowned herself, or disapproving of a father who doted on his young son, saying the child would be spoiled, would become a weakling. Then I don’t want to be strong, I told my mother before I left. That was her complaint, that I was weak. I don’t want your kind of strength, I said. Do you know what she said to me? I wish I’d aborted you with tama-root.

  He strokes my hair softly, my disease, my sun-red hair. It’s better here, he whispers, despite everything. I know he means, Despite the fact that you are dying young. On my cheek, a tear. It is not my own.

  But she loves you, I said. Your sister.

  I think it was true, despite what he said, his hatred of her gifts, his conviction that she was trying to poison his home. She was young when he ran away, a girl of sixteen. He must have been a god to her: this kind, sad-eyed elder brother. She must have wept when she saw that his jut had disappeared from the altar, that he was gone. And she had preserved her memory of him for years, hoarded her wedding gold, made cups and bangles disappear, perhaps blamed a maid. Her treasure growing slowly in a cupboard. And then, one day, she thought it was enough, and she found the servant who had most loved him, an old man now, and she said to him: Find my brother. And old Tipyav shouldered the sacks, and she stood at the door in the twi
light and watched him, her heart full of pride and love, never knowing how her gift would be received.

  Jetnapet, my aunt. I kept hundreds of dreams of her; I thought of her as I lay in the open doorway. I rested my eyes on the cool, marvelous structure of the hill, and I thought: Now, my aunt, you are combing your long hair. You comb it out into sections, each one fixed with a clasp of gold. And now you are trailing your pet dragonfly on a string. Your smooth face, your deep, compassionate eyes. Perhaps you’ve heard of me, perhaps you even know I’m wearing your bracelet.

  My father’s mouth cracked. He laughed loudly; the sound frightened me. He drank from his brown gourd of millet beer, and his voice broke when he said: Jissavet, don’t do this to me. You have no right.

  He closed his eyes: You have no right.

  And later, it was during my mother’s excitement, her calculations, what we would have to sell to get us to Olondria: my father laughed harshly, sitting propped against the wall with the beer gourd between his knees in the hot night. His laugh woke me. I saw his hair straggling down the sides of his face, his wild eyes, the sweat dripping on his neck. Well, she’s proved herself, he said. His voice was far too loud, and my mother looked up guiltily from the corner.