by Marlon James
The Bad Ibeji’s one hand splayed itself on the one-eyed scientist’s neck and chest. He unhooked each claw and a little blood ran out of each hole. The second hand unwrapped itself from the scientist’s waist, leaving a welt. I shook and screamed into the gag and kicked against the shackles but the only thing free was my nose to huff. The Bad Ibeji pulled his head off the twin’s shoulder and one eye popped open. The head, a lump upon a lump, upon a lump, with warts, and veins, and huge swellings on the right cheek with a little thing flapping like a finger. His mouth, squeezed at the corners, flopped open, and his body jerked and sagged like kneaded flour being slapped. From the mouth came a gurgle like from a baby. The Bad Ibeji left the scientist’s shoulder and slithered on my belly and up to my chest, smelling of arm funk and shit of the sick. The other scientist grabbed my head with both sides and held it stiff. I struggled and struggled, shaking, trying to nod, trying to kick, trying to scream, but all I could do was blink and breathe. The Bad Ibeji crawled up my chest, his body swelling like a ball and squeezing out breath like a puffer fish. He extended two long, bony fingers that walked past my lips and stopped at my nostrils. The Bad Ibeji’s eye blinked sorrow, then he shoved two fingers up my nose and I screamed and screamed again, and tears sprung from my eyes. The fingers, the claws scraped the flesh, pushed up the hole, pushed through bone, cut through more flesh, moved past my nose, and between my eyes started to burn. His fingers passed my eyes, pushed through my forehead, my temples pumped and throbbed, and my mind went black, came back, and went black again. My forehead burned. I could hear his claws, cutting, scurrying in me like mice. The fire spread from my head down my back, along my legs to the tips of my feet, and I shook like a man whose head was taken over by devils. And dark came over my eyes and in my head and then a flicker.
And Sogolon came through the door and walked to the cell and the guards opened the gate and she walked in and bent to look and straightened herself and walked backward away from me, and nodded, and walked backward out the cell and backward on the steps, and the guard walked backward to the cell gate and locked it and Sogolon backed out the door that closed. And she stepped out and she stepped in again and Venin stood at the cell watching me and she stepped away backward and I yelled, and the bound boy jumped up from his fall and back to the balcony and sat in the chair and looked away from the balcony, and we retied him and pushed him back on the dried bush and the wall healed itself, sucking back up each broken chunk and Mossi and I unrolled on the floor, and I swung my one free arm and he caught it and he unlocked his legs from my legs and stopped choking me with one arm, then flipped me under him, choking me with one arm and locking down my legs with his legs and he yelled and pulled his punch from the wood as I dodged out of his arm and stood up, then I pulled back from punching him and fell back on the floor, and he withdrew his offering hand, but I pulled him down, punching him in the stomach, and in the house my grandfather is fucking my mother on the blue sheet that she bought to make mourning clothes and the climax goes back in his mouth and he is fucking up, not down, and he pulls out and slaps his hard penis until it gets soft and drops into the white bush of his hair, and my mother stops looking away and looks at him and spirits are in the tree that is not ours but the spirit is my father and he is mad at me, and my grandfather and every living thing sounds as if sucking the air back in, reverse breath, and the lighting jumps back from outside back inside and runs backways past me and the Leopard and that boy whose name I never remember and the Leopard is attacking a boy in the forest who wears white dust who I know but I can’t remember his name, and then the Leopard is attacking me and then we go through a fire door to Kongor and another to Dolingo and the old man gathers up his flesh and juice and jumps back from the ground but I don’t see where he goes and in Basu Fumanguru’s yard it is night and the bodies in urns and the wife is nothing but clothes and bone and she is cut in two and in another urn is a boy clutching a cloth from a doll and the doll comes up to my nose, and the boy bursts in my face, and his feet smell of swamp moss and shit and his smell walks away and it is gone and it appears east of the Hills of Enchantment and the smell goes over hills and down in valleys to the west hill and it is gone and it appears in the ports of Lish and the smell of the boy crossed the sea and I try to stop the trail in my head for I know this Bad Ibeji is searching it and I bring up my mother and I bring up river goddesses who kill with disease, and two nomads who dared me to take them both at once in their tent and one sat on me and the other spread himself on the floor and I fucked him with my big toe but the Bad Ibeji burns it out and my forehead is afire and I scream into the gag and blink and my nose is on the boy and the boy crosses the bay from Lish to Omororo and they walk days and quartermoons and moons past lands I did not know and over the Hills of Enchantment to Luala Luala and his smell vanishes and appears south beyond the map and the smell of the boy walks or rides I do not know and the smell vanishes and appears in Nigiki walking running or riding and it stops in the city I can smell him go straight, then bend, then go around then in one corner and stay for long, maybe till nightfall and in the morning his smell leaves and goes down south to caves or somewhere and then it’s night and his smell goes deep in the city and stops in the West, and stays there till night and then leaves again in morning, and several days have passed, and then the smell of the boy sets out far west, and keeps going west, he is leaving for Wakadishu he is leaving Wakadishu for Dolingo and I will think of Father, no, Grandfather, and the Leopard, and the colours gold and black, and rivers and seas and lakes and more rivers and the blue girl, and Giraffe Boy stay with me stay in my head grow now you must be growing you must have grown is that you running down the river say something, say that you hate how I never came but you can’t remember me so you hate nothing you hate air you hate memory that you can’t place like a smell you can’t place but you know it because it takes you to a place where you were someone else don’t leave children but the Bad Ibeji burns it out of my head my head boils and the memory is gone for good I can feel it I know it he wants to follow the boy but I will not follow the boy but his claws go up farther and I can’t feel the cut but I hear it and my toes burn, they rot, they will fall off, he wants to find the boy, he is on the road with me I can only smell but he can see and now I can see, a road with people in robes and they are talking all men in Dolingo do is talk and we go over a bridge because his smell is getting stronger and stronger and the smell turns right and now Bad Ibeji is seeing it and I am seeing it and it is a small alley like the alley with the bazaar and the alley with the bar but it is an alley that is just the back of a house and the smell goes to the caravan and I am in the caravan and it takes me over to the seventh tree, which they call Melelek, and down five levels almost to the trunk but not the trunk and everything is alley and tunnel and nobody sees the sun very much and the smell of the boy walks this wide road and he turns and he turns and he goes over a bridge and turns right and then right and then left and straight and then down, and he stays somewhere and the Bad Ibeji brings sight and I can see the boy and my head is burning and a white hand touches the boy’s shoulder and points a long-nailed finger and the boy goes to the door of that house and he knocks hard and he’s crying and he is saying something that I can’t hear and I smell him like he is right here he is yelling he is afraid and an old woman opens the door and he does not run in, he steps back like he is afraid of her too and she tries to stoop but he touches her, and he looks behind suddenly, like somebody follows, and runs past her, and she wraps her pagne tighter over her shoulder, looks around then closes the door and my mind is gone. And when I open my eyes they still feel shut. They close and open again without my will. The Bad Ibeji scampers off me like a crab and climbs up to the one-eyed one’s shoulder. The two white scientists are both over me looking on, the one-eyed one furrowing his brow, the other one raising his. Then they are by the cell bars. Then they are over my head again. Then they are going out the door. They will tell Sogolon. She will search and find the boy. I can
still see him and the house he ran into, the Bad Ibeji’s infection still in me. My lips went wet from blood dripping down my nose. This Queen will betray her. My head was too heavy to take that thought any further and inside my head still burned, and I thought it wasn’t blood pouring from my nose but the inside of my head, melted to juice. My elbows gave out and I fell back, but when my head hit the floor it felt like I landed in water and I sunk.
And I sunk, and I sunk, and the fire was cooling in my head, and people kept coming in and out, and whispering to me and shouting at me, like they were all ancestors come to gather on the branches of the great tree in the front yard. But my head wouldn’t settle. Something boomed, boomed again and then a memory or a daydream screamed, and then shouted, and slammed against my skull. The slam woke me up to see that I was not asleep. Something slammed against the door and fell to the ground. And then the boom hit like a bam and pushed a knuckle mark in the door as if somebody had punched dough. Another punch and the door flew off and hit the cell bars. I jumped up and fell down. Sadogo stomped in, wearing his gloves and holding up one of the guards by the neck. He threw him out of the way. Behind him came Venin, and Mossi with shiny things that hurt my head. Everything they said bounced around my head and left before I understood. The Ogo grabbed my cell lock and ripped it off. Venin walked with a club almost half her height and in my madness she picked it up as if it were a twig and swung it at the cell beside mine, whacking off the lock. The cell was so dark that I didn’t know they kept other prisoners here, but why wouldn’t they? Thinking on top of thinking made my head throb and I lowered it back down into hands cradling me. Mossi. I think he said, Can you walk? I shook my head no and could not stop shaking until he held my forehead and stilled it.
“The slaves are rebelling,” he said. “MLuma, where we were, Mupongoro and others.”
“How long was I here? I can’t—”
“Three nights,” he said.
Two guards rushed in with swords. One swung wide at Venin, who ducked and then swung around with her club and took his face off. My shock got lost in the sweep of Sadogo picking me up and throwing me over his left shoulder. Everything moved so slow. Three more guards ran in, maybe four or five, but this time they ran into the prisoners, men and women not from Dolingo, skin not blue, bodies not slim and withered. They picked up weapons, pieces of weapons, and bars that Sadogo pulled out, all scattered on the floor. My head bounced off Sadogo’s back, making it swirl worse. Then he swung around and I saw the prisoners run over the guards like a wave over sand. They shouted, and rallied, and ran past us in the cell, all of them squeezing through the small door, sand through the time glass.
“The boy, I know where he is. I know where …” I said.
I couldn’t tell where we were going until we passed through it. Then the sun touched my back and we stopped. I was flying through the air, I was on grass and the buffalo’s snout was on my forehead. Mossi crouched beside me.
“The boy, I know where he is.”
“We must forget the boy, Tracker. Dolingo is bleeding. Slaves have cut their ropes and attacked guards in the third and fourth trees. It will only spread.”
“The boy is in the fifth tree,” I said.
“Mwaliganza,” Sadogo said.
“The boy is nothing to us,” Mossi said.
“The boy is everything.”
Noise ran in and out of me. Booms and bams and crackles and shouts and screams.
“You say that after what Sogolon did to you. To us.”
“Is the boy blameless or not, Mossi?”
He looked away.
“Mossi, I would kill her for what she did, but this, this takes nothing from why she did it.”
“Fucking nonsense about divine children. Who shall rise, who shall rule. I come from lands reeking with prophecies of child saviors, and nothing ever came out of them but war. We are not knights. We are not dukes. We are hunters, killers, and mercenaries. Why should we care about the fate of kings? Let them take care of their own.”
“When kings fall they fall on top of us.”
Mossi grabbed my chin. I knocked his hand away.
“Who is this that now lives in your head? Are you like her?” he said, pointing to Venin.
“Him.”
“As you like. The Tracker helping the witch—”
“We are not helping her. I tell you true, if I see one of them taking her for the kill, I will watch it. Then I will kill him. And I … I … and even if I didn’t care about rightful kings and queens, or what is wicked in the North, and what is just, I will take a son back to his mother,” I said.
The sun mocked me. Smoke rose from a tower in the second tree and drums sounded as a warning. None of the caravans moved, for the slaves stopped moving them. Some swung midway with people inside them shouting and screaming. Every sound startled Sadogo; he darted left, right, and left again, squeezing his knuckles so hard the joints popped. A crash roused the buffalo, who snorted, telling us we had to leave. As I sat up, pushing away Mossi’s help, Venin approached me, still gripping the club like a toy.
“I will go. I have unfinished business with Sogolon.”
“Venin?” Mossi said.
“Who is that?” Venin said.
“What? You are who. Venin is what you go by since I met you. Who else would you be if not her?”
“It is not her,” I said.
The him in her looked at me.
“You been thinking so a long time,” they said.
“Yes but I could not be sure. You are one of the spirits Sogolon write runes to bind, but you broke from her.”
“My name is Jakwu, white guard for the King Batuta who sits in Omororo.”
“Batuta? He died over a hundred years ago. You are … no matter. Leave the old woman to the bloodsuckers. She is like them in company,” Mossi said.
“Do all the spirits want what you want?” I asked.
“Revenge against the Moon Witch? Yes. Some want more. Not all of us died by her hand, but in all our deaths she is responsible. She drove me out of my body to appease an angry spirit, and now she thinks she has appeased me.”
His voice was still Venin’s but I have seen this in possession. The voice remains, but the tone, the pitch, the words he chooses are all so different that it sounds like another voice. Venin’s voice went hoarse. It came out like a rumble, like the voice of a man long gone in years.
“Where is Venin?”
“Venin. She the girl. She gone. She will never be back in this body. Call her dead. It is not what she is, but it will do. Now she is doing what I did, roam the underworld until she remembers how she came by that place. And then she will seek out Sogolon, like all of us.”
“She could barely ride a horse and now he wields a club. And you? You can barely stand,” Mossi said.
At the end of the road, round the bend came yells. Noblemen and noblewomen of Dolingo walking swift, thinking that was enough. Looking back, walking faster, the men and women at the front not yet seeing the people behind them, then running, and the running crowd, maybe twenty, maybe more, pushing some out of the way, knocking down some, trampling some, as they ran this way. Behind them came the rumble. Mossi and Sadogo and Venin took places all around me and we readied our weapons. The screaming nobles ran around us like two rivers. Behind them, with bats, sticks, and clubs, and swords and spears, slaves, who ran and staggered like the zombi but were gaining. Eighty or more, chasing the nobles. A spearhead went through a noblewoman’s back and out her belly, and she fell to the ground. The rebels stayed clear of us as they ran around us, save for one who ran too close and was kicked in two by Sadogo’s boot, and one that ran into Mossi’s sword, and two whose heads met Venin’s swinging club. The rest ran past us, and soon swarmed the nobles. Flesh flew. Sadogo in front, we ran back the way they had all come, and one battle cry from Sadogo kept trailing rebels out of our way.
The caravans had all been stopped, many with people trapped inside, but the platforms took us down, th
ose slaves not infected with freedom yet. On the ground, as we scrambled off the platform with me still swaying and tripping and Mossi still holding me up with his hand, Mungunga broke out in explosion and fire. Fire bit into some of the ropes and ran across to one of the caravans and coated it in flame. The people inside, some already on fire, jumped. At the foot of Mungunga a door the height of three men and ten strides wide broke at the hinges and fell down, shooting up dust. Naked slaves running out slowed to a stagger, some with sticks and rods and metals, all hobbling at first, blinking and holding up their arms to block the light. Cut ropes around necks and limbs, and carrying whatever they could hold. I could not tell men from women. The guards and the masters, so used to no resistance, forgot how to fight. They ran through us and past us, so many of them, some dragging whole bodies of masters, others carrying hands, feet, and heads.
Slaves still ran when from above fell elegant bodies. From terraces above ropes fell, and slaves pushed masters off. Noble bodies fell on slave bodies. Both killed. And more fell on top of them.
At Mwaliganza, the platform took us to the eighth floor. Quiet all around, it seemed, as if nothing had spread this far. I rode the buffalo, though I was lying on him, holding on to his horns so I did not fall off.
“This is the floor,” I said.
“How are you sure?” Mossi asked.