Song Beneath the Tides

by Beverley Birch

  Ally pictured the boat nosing past her, Joseph and Grace in the creek, the name on its bow. ‘Blue Marlin! That’s the one we saw.’

  A snip of conversation with Leli came to her. Visitors from the hotel will like this? he’d asked, steering the boat through the mangroves. It is interesting for them, Ally?

  Brilliant! she’d said.

  Magic! Ben had echoed.

  Standing here, it was a ludicrous idea. Once, she’d have been so excited to stay in a hotel like this. All the luxury! Now all she saw was that none of these people had come to look at anything. They were in a bubble. The bubble could be anywhere. Even another planet. No idea of the ripples spreading out from their beautiful bubble like the aftershock of an explosion. She thought of the purple-clawed receptionist. Probably really just like Eshe’s sister inside. But she’d found herself a job.

  Ally pictured Leli’s face, excited at new people coming. She wanted to fold him away, protect him from all this, appalled by an overwhelming, stark recognition of how huge was the juggernaut rolling inexorably towards his village, his life.

  ‘What is this business with Kisiri, Leli?’ his mother demanded. ‘Why do you go there today? You go twice! I see you!’

  ‘Mzee Shaibu said yes! Then we went again with him! It is not a problem, my mother! Huru was there. We are helping.’ He turned away quickly, not trusting himself to further talk.

  She caught his arm. ‘And with all this going over there to Kisiri and walking about, what do you find? Eh? Eh, Leli?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing!’ The Mzee had sworn them to say no word about the damage on the island until he had consulted the other Elders.

  But people had seen them going to Kisiri, and they wondered, and the talk went on and on, sometimes the stories wild and silly, sometimes angry that Mzee Shaibu did not explain. The air was becoming heavy with it, like a storm brewing. And it was in him too, something restless and unformed, made of frustration and uncertainty, and fury.

  Warnings, warnings, beat like a pulse in Leli’s head. The dreams of Fumo! The canoes. The strangeness of Kisiri! This damage that someone had done. The smell of death! Warnings!

  He felt in his shirt pocket, and took out the metal disc given to him by the storyteller. His fingertips traced the faint, worn shape of the flying eagle against the arc of the rising sun.

  Why does Mzee Kitwana give me this? Frustration welled up in him, and Shaaban jumped into his mind. Yesterday he finished the letter to Shaaban, and straight away gave it to Eshe to put in the post office at Lilongelewa. She was just leaving to visit her cousin there, and promised, on pain of banishment from further parties with Ally, Jack and Ben if she forgot.

  Shaaban, you should be here now! You will know what to do; how to speak to our mother and father so they do not worry. He missed his brother’s steady voice calming, helping them to think clearly.

  His mother had followed him into the yard.

  ‘You stop now, Leli! You listen to me! I do not like it, Leli! Listen! Why do you go with these English ones all the time? I do not like it, you hear?’

  He rounded on her, astounded. ‘These English ones!’ he mimicked her tone. ‘Why do you say it like this? They are our friends!’

  ‘It will come to bad things!’

  ‘What will come to bad things?’

  ‘Everything. This girl! This English girl!’

  Heat seared through him. Hot then cold. Cold. Angry cold.

  ‘What do you say?’ She looked hard into his face.

  ‘I say nothing. There is nothing to say. She is my friend!’

  ‘Do not spend your time like this.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She glared at him. Yesterday he would have dropped his eyes. Today, his blood was boiling.

  She sniffed with disapproval and turned her back.

  With the tumult in his brain, he could not trust himself: he left the yard quickly before she could enrage him more. He went down to the shore, taking refuge in the darkness. He looked towards Dr Carole’s house high on the distant headland.

  No lights shone. Everyone sleeps. Or perhaps they sit in darkness on the roof as Ally told me. And Ally looks towards me.

  A sense of her looking, knowing, hearing, filled him brimful.

  He stood, trying to calm himself so that his return into the house would not show anger. If his mother saw anger, it would provoke her more. Why was she – he searched for the word – frightened . . . yes, frightened – by Ally and the other English? They are not the problem! They are not doing secret, bad things on Kisiri!

  But today was not the beginning. These days his mother provoked him too easily. Frustration turned to coldness again. Like fear, like fear. If my mother forbids . . .

  It churned in him: Shanza, Kisiri, Fumo and Zawati, himself between everything. And Ally. Ally. Already in the weave of his life, torn if she left it.

  The wind had dropped. He absorbed the strange, rare silence of the forest. The tide was low, the lip of the sands dark with the shadows of uncovered reef. Kisiri was cut in silver by the touch of the moon, hard and high behind it.

  And for the first time, the shape of his fears surfaced through the seething disquiet. It went through him as a series of thoughts. That something big was breaking apart. That Kisiri would be taken from them. That this was not just the loss of the island, of the place, but the extinction of something. The thoughts came together: if Kisiri is taken from us, does Shanza cease? Everything is changing. The young men angry at Mzee Shaibu; everyone argues about the hotel, my mother looks for quarrels. She scorns Ally and the others.

  If it falls apart, can it be put together again?

  He heard the thrum of an engine on the water. But when he strained his ears, there was nothing. It was only his fears that thrummed, like the persistent beat of a warning drum in his head.

  *

  I dreamed again of walking shores I have never walked, to walls of a broken town. No fires smoke the sands, no person, goat or chicken inhabits the streets. The day is filled with such silence.

  This death is our work, and the work of our enemies, come as saviours to the town, smuggling betrayal.

  I woke, and in sudden terror fell to my knees and prayed to God, to Her: give us deliverance from this death, this fort, this death in life! I cannot shed the dreadful silence of the broken town. Is this the world we will leave when we are done?

  I thought long of my conversation with Jabari, and took out my father’s journal and papers again. Also Dom Alvaro’s, which my father kept when Alvaro died.

  I gave them to Jabari. He read in silence, and after said, ‘Your father’s anger truly fires every page, brother. He rages at your Captain Alvaro’s pride at theft and murder and assassination of kings, his lists of every coin stolen from the townspeople, every tax, ransom, punishment, killing, every other town bombarded with ships’ cannon because it is a place of Muslims, his pleasure at news of a ship’s captain beheading a king and killing thousands of his subjects for “rebellion”.

  ‘I see why our fathers became dear friends. Muslim and Christian, joined. But what troubles my father too, is this. Now people welcome these men who besiege you, these Omani Arabs who sweep across the ocean with soldiers and weapons to rid the coasts and seas of you. Kings and people embrace them as saviours.

  ‘But, my father says in truth it is merely one vulture competing with another for its prey. There is peril for any people caught between. It is true, they do not press the Christian way upon us, as your people do. They do not burst into our world with such contempt for our beliefs. They hail us as brothers in Islam. Their bonds with us are centuries old, tied by our ships trading across the oceans.

  ‘But it is certain – my father says – we will come to feel their violence. First these Omanis will put to the sword all of you that have not already died. They will tear down your flag and pla
nt their own. Then will this town, and others – even my own dear city of Mwitu – begin to know their true purpose. The day will come when they will seek to enslave us. My father is growing old; many dismiss his fears for our world, for the ever-circling violence of it. But he sees far.

  ‘But we will escape this hell, my brother. We will see Mwitu and my father’s house again, every one of us.’ He put his arm about my shoulder. ‘The power of the warriors and your Spirit of Hope will give this gift to us, I think!’

  seventh day

  attack

  Eighteen

  The hammering at the door came at five in the morning by Ally’s watch. She’d been jolted awake by something minutes before. She lay in the dark, listening.

  Thump of feet running on the veranda. She jolted upright.

  The pounding shot her out of bed. Barefoot on the cold stone floor, she heard the urgent call of her aunt’s name. She heaved open her bedroom shutters, and recognized Huru’s cousin Saka.

  ‘Hurry, hurry!’ he urged. ‘Small ones are hurt! Terrible! Terrible! Mzee Shaibu says come! I have the ngalawa for Dr Carole—’

  ‘Who?’ Carole burst out of the veranda doors looking as if she’d dressed in her sleep. ‘How? The car’s quicker, Saka. I’ll bring you back to your boat after. Ally, where the hell did I put the car keys?’

  ‘I’ll find them, I’ll come too.’

  ‘These little children, Collins, Dedan,’ panted Saka. ‘They try to come to Shanza but they are hurt very bad! Jela and Thimba see them when they are fishing for the lobster. They bring the children to Mzee Shaibu. They are in my house now! Hasina is with them. Her sister Aishia is helping.’

  ‘Jack, find a torch?’ Carole said as he appeared, struggling into a T-shirt. She threw things into a large bag. ‘You’ll be all right here?’

  ‘Coming with you – Benjy, get a move on!’ Jack yelled.

  Minutes later they were bumping away from the house, slithering and jerking as Carole drove too fast over the alternating ruts and sand of the track. Ally had a vision of two small boys mown down in a car driving like this.

  ‘Are they hurt really bad?’ she whispered.

  Saka sucked breath between his teeth. ‘They are beaten. Very beaten. And thrown away in the mangroves.’

  She felt the blood drain from her face. It’s our fault! We went on about snooping round the boats!

  She looked at Jack, sitting forward, gripping the back of Carole’s seat; feeling his sister’s gaze, he flicked her a glance and away again, staring blindly into the bouncing tunnel of headlights.

  Grimly Carole said, ‘We’ll stop at Kitokwe and get Salim to ring Inspector Rutere.’

  Dedan was cradling his arm, yelping when Carole fingered it, whimpering as she felt delicately around his chest, screaming at the slightest touch of his ankle, which lay at an odd, twisted angle.

  Ally knelt beside her. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Broken ribs, arm, ankle, dislocations . . . Here, shhhh, Dedan, I know it hurts, but try to be still so I can look . . . Ally, calm him?’

  Ally held his good hand and stroked it and murmured; he stared at her in terror and heard nothing. His shirt hung off, ripped from collar to hem. His jaw was swollen; dried blood matted mouth and chin, forehead grazed raw. A long, deep gash on his leg had bled freely and was crusted with mud.

  If anything, Collins’ face looked worse. His right eye had vanished inside a purple jelly of bruises and cuts; blood stained his face from brow to jaw; he was jittering with rage, muttering incoherently, Hasina said, though her sister insisted they were dark threats of revenge.

  And there was a stench around them both. Carole sniffed, exchanged a look with Hasina, who nodded. To Ally it reeked of dung, though more overpowering than anything she’d ever smelled before.

  ‘Right,’ said her aunt, ‘Jack, cut their clothes off, then help Hasina and Aishia wash every bit of sound skin – gently, mind – and keep changing the water. I’ll deal with the open wounds. Then wrap them in something clean. Bibi Hasina, can you lend something? I’ll replace—’

  ‘I have, I have.’ Hasina went quickly to a wooden box in the corner and sorted two kangas from it, shaking the lengths of bright cloth out and putting them ready.

  ‘OK, Ally, once most of the mud’s washed off, you give me a hand cleaning the wounds. I’ll do the deep ones, you keep to the grazes and surface cuts? Only boiled water – one dab with the cotton wool and chuck it, see? Ben, pack up their clothes carefully – we’ll give them to Rutere to figure out what’s on them that stinks so awful.’

  She pushed herself off her knees and stood, thinking aloud. ‘Tetanus shots, painkillers. Dedan – arm broken, ankle fractured, twisted; Collins – breaks, maybe. So, splints for Dedan. Then both into the car, hospital, x-ray.’

  She turned and regarded Collins with a long, searching look. ‘So, Mr Collins Karanga, time to tell us what’s happened.’

  He stared at her balefully.

  Carole pressed her lips together, gave Ally a look that was unmistakably find out. ‘I’ll get bandages and stuff from the car,’ she said pointedly.

  For some minutes there was no sound except the crump crump of the scissors and the trickle of water. Ben busied himself collecting the debris and hauled buckets of water from the village tap for boiling. Hasina lit a second charcoal brazier outside, discussing something in emphatic tones with Saka. He went off and returned, ushering in Grace and Joseph. They stood, tiny, and wide-eyed at the tending of Collins and Dedan. And very close together, Ally saw, until Aishia persuaded them to help fetch food from her own home several houses away.

  Jack watched them go. He had a look on his face that Ally couldn’t read. ‘They must have followed someone from the hotel! I got them into this,’ he said.

  ‘We did, Jack – not just you! I got worried – I should’ve said something! In Tundani we could’ve stopped—’

  He shook his head wordlessly, abruptly stood up and went outside.

  Ally knelt by Collins and began cleaning the grazes on his legs. Dedan drifted into fitful sleep. Collins, on the other hand, was restless, eyes roaming the room as if something might leap at him.

  Then he stiffened, gaze fixed on the door behind her. Assuming it was Jack, Ally turned.

  Leli’s mother halted on the threshold: she held two large bowls. She eyed Ally. Then she came in and lowered the bowls.

  ‘New hot water,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ally.

  Silence, that stretched.

  ‘Is Leli here?’ Ally ventured. A pause. Then his mother jerked her head at the doorway. She retrieved the bowls Ally had been using.

  Ally smiled at her. No answering smile, just another nod, a gesture towards Collins’ battered leg.

  Ally took a clean piece of cotton wool, dipped it in the water, dabbed gently at grazes on the boy’s ankle.

  I’ll finish this, wash Dedan, then find Leli, ran through her head.

  From the long shadow across the floor, she could see his mother had crossed to the doorway again, but not left. Ally continued, working methodically: clean cotton wool, dip, dab, chuck, new cotton wool . . . A minute more, and the shadow moved and faded.

  ‘My mother says you are here.’ Leli’s voice, sudden, beside her. ‘I—’ He caught sight of Dedan’s swollen face, then Collins. His mouth fixed in a grim, angry line.

  ‘We have to clean the grazes,’ Ally said, and held out the cotton wool. He took it from her and knelt down, beginning work on the mosaic of scratches on Collins’ arms.

  The room was quiet. Collins seemed to doze off. They worked steadily – legs, arms, rolled him gently to start work on his back.

  At the sight of the mess of black bruises and red welts, Leli pushed back onto his heels and stood up. ‘I talk to Mzee Shaibu!’ he said brusquely. ‘I come back after, Ally
.’

  In the silence that followed, Collins stirred. His eyes fluttered open and fixed on Ally. He hissed – something unintelligible through swollen lips. Except the last word sounded like ‘box’.

  ‘Box?’ Ally looked at Hasina’s box for clothes.

  Vehemently Collins shook his head. ‘Box, box!’ shaping with his hands something square that came to the top of his head. ‘Wire, wire!’

  Light dawned. Cage. ‘You were in a cage?’ The stench of dung made sudden sense. ‘An animal cage? There was an animal with you?’

  ‘No! We would be died with this animal!’ He winced as she dabbed his chin, jerking his head away.

  ‘Keep still, Collins, it’s got to be cleaned. I’ll be really careful.’

  He looked at her, his one good eye full of fury. But he obeyed.

  After a minute, she ventured, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Cage, cage!’ he said, as if repeating the word would force it through. ‘They sleep inside, sick! Simba—’

  Frustratingly, he stalled: Carole had come into the room.

  ‘Simba?’ Carole echoed in a tone of disbelief.

  ‘Simba,’ he spat. ‘Chui.’

  His anger, Ally saw, was a way of holding back the tears. He glared at them both with one reddened eye. The other had closed completely with the swelling.

  She looked questioningly at her aunt.

  ‘Lion,’ Carole responded grimly. ‘Leopard. I hope this is a little flight of exotic fancy. OK, look, Collins, Inspector Rutere is coming, you tell him about this.’

  Collins went rigid as if stung, springing to his feet. ‘Askari? We go!’

  ‘Stay right there, Collins! Have you done anything wrong? No. Planning anything wrong? No. So you’re not in trouble with the askari. No need to be frightened. Speak to Inspector Rutere. He will listen. Then you’ll come to the hospital with me.’