Ancestor Stones Read online

  Hali, but I remember the day I saw one of the moon-shadow men with my own eyes.

  I was swift. My mother used me as her messenger. I would run the whole distance — sometimes to the fields, to the herbalist when one of us was ill, to the headman at the next village, it didn’t matter — and I would deliver the message, repeat the reply once, twice and run back. Look at you, so busy writing everything down on pieces of paper. Scraps of paper to lose or put away in a cupboard to grow mildew. Nobody ever bothered to teach me to write. They didn’t need to. Instead I taught myself never to forget. When I was a girl, I could run. And I can still remember. Those times when my mother required an answer urgently she spat on the warm earth by her feet. The saliva began to shrivel at once, like a slug thrown on a fire. I would set off knowing I had to be back before the dark patch was gone.

  This day, I remember, Alusani begged to come with me. I knew he would slow me down, but I agreed anyway. We walked in the shade of the coffee trees and entered the forest. Soon we passed the boulder marking the boundary to the village. We stayed away from the path. As we went we played a game we had played many times before. We made up riddles for the Trickster, in case he bounced down from one of the trees and refused to allow us on our way.

  ‘How do you carry water?’ I asked Alusani.

  ‘In a fishing net!’ He was quick as that. Then it was his turn to ask a question: ‘What do you pour on a fire to put it out?’

  I knew that one, I didn’t need to think. I replied straight away: ‘Oil!’ This was how we always began, posing the easy ones first. The next riddle was one I had been saving. I was certain Alusani would never guess the answer. ‘What do you give a thirsty stranger to drink?’

  I marched ahead, swinging my arms, certain of my victory. Behind me Alusani walked on. I knew he was puzzling over my riddle. One moment we were playing a game, the next I saw what I saw and I stopped breathing. I grasped Alusani’s arm. And I swear, if I hadn’t pulled my brother back he might have walked right into the man — right into the man whose skin was as white as day.

  The moon-shadow man didn’t see us. We slipped between the roots of a cotton tree and we hid ourselves there, as though we were hiding in our mother’s skirts. We waited and we watched. All I could hear was the singing of birds, sounds of the forest. The moon-shadow man moved about the clearing, in and out of the streams of light, appearing and disappearing before our eyes. I imagined that if I only dared to reach out I could put my hand right through him. People said the Trickster could make himself invisible. But even though I was just a child I did not believe the Trickster was more than a story.

  I wanted to whisper to Alusani, but my mouth was dry. I dared not close my eyes even to blink. I turned to Alusani. I felt my own eyes round with fear, but I saw Alusani’s eyes quick and bright as he watched that man.

  The man who was made of moon shadows was surrounded by boxes. Boxes made of sticks and bound with wire. They lay scattered on the forest floor. First I had eyes only for the strange man: the way his massive feet crushed the foliage beneath them; his hands the size of palm fronds. He was gathering up the boxes, stacking them one on top of the other. Sometimes he paused, wiped his face against his sleeve, another time he used a cloth. Once he stood and gazed up at the sky. While he worked, we watched him. The air was filled with birdsong, the sound of a thousand birds. And I saw that the boxes were not boxes, but cages. And birds were imprisoned inside those cages: sunbirds whose feathers shimmered like oil across the surface of water, bright blue flycatchers, dark-throated warblers, palm swifts as small as your thumb, doves vividly plumed as parrots, and in one cage an owl’s black-rimmed eyes watching us from inside a white face.

  I seized Alusani’s hand and we crept out from between the roots of the tree. We tried to be quiet, but the fear refused to be bound and scattered suddenly. And so we ran. I didn’t see him. I didn’t dare turn around. At first I didn’t even hear him, my heart thrummed in my ears. I felt him. I felt the moon-shadow man look up, begin to come after us. I scraped my shin on a fallen log; my footsteps crashed through the undergrowth; cobwebs snatched at my face as I dragged Alusani after me. But in the end we were helpless as beetles at the mercy of a cat.

  He didn’t touch us, Alusani and I.

  He stepped in front of us.

  We stopped. We did not move.

  We waited.

  I looked at him and beyond him, for a way past. He crouched down; he put his hand into the folds of his trousers. From his outstretched hand he offered us a gift. At first I was transfixed by those luminous eyes, such a colour: the colour of water. When I did look down I saw in his hand a peeled egg. The man reached into his pocket and brought out a packet, of paper instead of leaf. He opened it and sprinkled a little of what was inside on to the top of the egg. Salt. Just salt. The man held it out in front of him and uttered a sound like the noise a donkey makes — though not so loud as that. Still, it caused me to jump backwards. He pulled his lips back and showed us his huge teeth: ‘Hee-ah,’ he said, ‘hee-ah!’

  I tried to warn Alusani. But he was less fearful than I, although I had never once thought so before. He reached out his fingers and he took the egg from the moon-shadow man.

  It has been such a long time. In all that time I never spoke to anybody about what happened that day. Except now. Except to you.

  Sometimes, when I used to remember, when I thought back to the beginning of what happened next, there was only one thing of which I was sure. That everything started with the man whose skin was like the shadows of the moon. The man who was busy filling cages with the souls of children.

  My mother beat me for failing to deliver her message. I returned to her empty-handed long after the spit had dried on the ground. Worst of all I had taken Alusani with me into the bush. My brother tried to beg for me, but my mother was deaf, her anger like a whirlwind inside her skull, going round and round, her mouth pursed and tight as though someone had sewn it shut and pulled the thread.

  Maybe in time, when I had acquired some wisdom, I would have come to laugh at my childish fantasies. Perhaps I would have thrown away the memory of the moon-shadow man along with all the other unimportant thoughts I never bothered to cherish. Maybe. Who is there that knows the answer? As it was I came to hold myself responsible, to believe what happened next came as a punishment. I took Alusani there. Alusani took the egg and I could not stop him. The memory stayed with me for ever.

  Alusani began to visit the place of the spirits.

  It was dawn. I ran to fetch my grandmother. I did not bow my head or greet her respectfully first. There was no time for it, no time for her to be angry either. She followed me to where Alusani lay on the cot we shared. His eyes rolled backwards into his skull. His back was arched, his body vibrated like a plucked string. Karabom heated water to prepare a poultice. My mother held Alusani on her lap and massaged his limbs until his joints unlocked and the light came back into his eyes. In time he drifted into a deep sleep.

  In those days there were those people who had ‘four eyes’ — two to see the human world and two eyes on the backs of their faces, eyes that can see beyond what is here. People said twins had four eyes. Ours was a spirit so powerful it required two bodies. Sent by the ancestors, they said. Only, I didn’t have four eyes. I never saw a devil or a spirit or a ghost, though there were times I was afraid I might.

  At night I pressed my ear against the inside wall of the house, imagining I could hear the spirits of the dead trapped in the space between the inside and the outside wall. That’s how we built our houses in those days: with two walls and two doors. The doorways were offset — to confuse spirits who wanted to come back inside into the warm. The blacksmith’s uncle died: a dried-out old man with a wheezing cough and a voice like a cracked flute. My mother and grandmother went to cry at his funeral. Late that night I listened for him, for the sound of his woman’s voice calling from the other side. And I pictured his sightless ghost wandering from house to house, trying its luc
k, banging into the walls and groping for the door.

  Maybe Alusani really did have the gift. To this day I can’t tell you. I only know that once he started to visit the underworld he kept going back. Pa Yamba, the diviner, went into a trance and followed him as far as he could into the land of dreams. But Alusani was going further, he was crossing to the land of spirits, where he had been befriended by a man and a woman — a husband and a wife. The woman, especially, liked Alusani. Trapped in the land of dreams, Pa Yamba couldn’t get close enough to see who she might be.

  The whispers rustled through the houses, like wind through the tops of the trees. People came to wait outside our compound bringing gifts: bowls of white kola nuts, embroidered cloths, leather pouches of precious salt. Maybe Alusani’s spirit woman had something to tell. Or maybe she planned to give him special powers. That happened a lot. People befriended by spirits used their knowledge to amass great wealth. Others could see into the future or hold conversations with the dead. At mealtimes my mother fed Alusani from her own plate and she passed his chores to me.

  When he saw the attention he received, Alusani began to repeat demands from the spirits: rice bread, sugar cane, sweet potato cakes, steamed coco yams and eggs. Everyone knows you shouldn’t give eggs to a child, it spoils them. But my mother and grandmother were very afraid. They preferred to go without themselves than to upset the ancestors who might send a cloud of locusts or a bush fire. After three rainy seasons our coffee trees had reached twice the height of a man. In two more seasons the beans would be ready to pick.

  Slowly Alusani became the opposite of himself. Where once he had been fine to look at and sweet-natured, now he was bloated and angry. The expression on his face was as bitter as the coffee grounds themselves and when he spoke his voice was sour with sarcasm. As often as I could I stayed away from him. Down among the groves I wandered between the rows of coffee trees growing side by side with the banana trees. I imagined my brother and I were like these trees, growing together but not the same at all.

  My brother acted like a warlord. At supper he complained the soup was too peppery, so I left my place to fetch fresh lime for him. The sack in the storeroom was empty; I ran to the lime tree in the garden at the back of the house but by the time I returned he complained the soup had cooled. My brother looked at me with scorn. As though I was his servant. Day after day my dislike for him grew. I hated my mother, who had given away my birthright. And I was angry with my grandmother who ordered the cooks to prepare sweetmeats for my brother, and no longer let me sit with her when I brought her coffee in the morning.

  Maybe today we would guess Alusani had a tumour growing inside his head like a kola nut, and take him to the Chinese doctors at the hospital. But people didn’t know these things then. People believed there was a reason for everything. Nothing happens for nothing, that’s what they said then, and still do say.

  Alusani complained of a headache. I didn’t care. He said he wanted to lie down. As he turned away I saw his face had a look that was sly, one eyelid drooped. My mother told me to run and fetch the herbalist, have her bring her pan of herbs. Afterwards I sat on the step outside while the woman did her work. I watched the people arriving for prayers and leaving. Twice. Maybe three times, even. I waited there a long time, in case I was needed to run another errand. When I heard my mother call my name I jumped up and went inside, swaying in the sudden darkness. My mother sat on the side of the cot, stroking her son’s face. I had never seen her cry, but now I did. Karabom sat at the other end of the bed, holding my brother’s feet in her hands. My mother beckoned me to sit down and I did so. I bent my head down, and felt Alusani’s breath against my cheek, and waited. He spoke. I could barely hear him.

  ‘Brine’, he said.

  And, though it took me time, I understood. The answer to the last riddle. What do you give a thirsty stranger to drink? Brine. Then Alusani closed his eyes.

  My brother was dead. What else do you want to know? That’s how it happened.

  How you look at me so?

  You’ve guessed, guessed it didn’t happen that way at all. Well then, you are right. You’re cleverer than I thought. Yes, it is just wishful thinking. I wish there had been no fire between us the day Alusani died. Alusani complained of a headache, that much is true. And his eye, the sly look — that is true, too. But he died alone in the afternoon while I went about my errands and my mother counted stones in my father’s parlour. He went to sleep and never got up again.

  We buried Alusani in a treeless plot on the outskirts of the graveyard. That same day I won my mother back. Every season, when she cooked the first pot of new rice, my mother had taken a knife and scored a line inside the lid of the wooden chest where she kept her most precious belongings. As we grew up she stopped bothering to count our anniversaries. Now the fear began to spread like a shadow at dusk. Alusani would return for me — because our spirit was cleaved in two.

  What can I tell you? That she fed me treats, the way she had with Alusani? Or that she let me sleep in her bed on those nights when my father went to visit her co-wives? Maybe she allowed me to abandon my chores while she kept me by her side and let me pass the days playing childish games. I wish it had been that way. But the fear tainted her like dye dropped into water. Alusani, who had been her beloved, now became the very being she most dreaded. Determined not to let him have his way, she fought him for possession of me.

  Pa Yamba fashioned talismans, coated them with saliva and betel nut juice, and dangled them from my neck and around my waist. I stood in his hut. It was dark and feverishly hot. Vapours from the fire filled the air, burning my lungs. At our house I saw my mother on her knees scratching a hole in the floor with her bare hands and she placed the amulet Pa Yamba had given her in the dark space. But in the morning the fear was back, more monstrous than before. I can’t tell you the times we waded across the stream to the opposite bank where the diviner lived. My mother begged him to conjure ever more powerful charms. But it was never enough. She had become the man who has convinced himself that his neighbour is out to steal his goat and builds a thousand fences around it.

  We were standing in the market when my mother overheard a conversation between two women. One, a tray of smoked fish balanced on her head, claimed a moriman had rid her of a troublesome rival who would have put her out of business. My mother did not care what these women thought of her, the wife of a big man, and interrupted their talk. But the fish seller was flattered and answered my mother’s questions. The moriman had instructed her to sweep up her rival’s footsteps and to bring the dust. This was what she told us. And so in the amber light of evening we searched the corners of the house until we found one of Alusani’s footprints. I cried easily to see the shape of his foot in the earth. I wanted my mother to comfort me, but her face was flat and she went about the business briskly. The next morning she woke me early to walk to the town where the moriman lived. And there I knelt and watched all that remained of Alusani go up in flames.

  And so it went for months. How many magic men I could not count. One splashed a liquid in my eyes that stung for a long time — to stop me from seeing Alusani and wanting to go to him. There were times I had a powerful medicine made from boiled roots rubbed all over my limbs. The moriman said it would deter wicked spirits. People believed these things then. My mother believed them, too. I did not. I was miserable. I smelled like rice left in the pot for days, slimy and sour. I was ashamed.

  My mother was the senior wife. There was a time when I was so pleased with myself that I was the daughter of the most important of the wives. She paid the workers their wages and held the keys to the store; she ordered the provisions and hired the servants; it was she who had the authority to decide which of the women should cook for my father, or travel with him when he went away on business. I found there was nobody to help me. My grandmother shared her daughter’s fears. Even my father would not confront my mother, for she was older than him in years.

  * * *

  I
was sitting outside our house on a stool with my tray on the ground before me, preparing ogere to sell in the market, wrapping the balls of fermented sesame seeds in leaves and tying the packages with raffia. I used to make the ogere myself, standing over the pot, stirring the seeds which boiled for the whole day. Then I would spread them out on rice bags and lay heavy rocks on top of them. After three days, I pounded the fermenting seeds into a paste with my pestle and mortar.

  Ogere tastes good, but you know how bad it smells. That’s why we never cook it inside the house. Always on the three-stone fire in the yard. At that time it seemed a good job for me. I smelled so bad anyway.

  Those days my chest felt bruised. I was growing breasts, though I didn’t know it. Your uncle saw me. And he knew what he saw. And he stopped and talked to me nicely for a while. I watched him walk away, swinging his prayer beads in his hand, his body outlined by the wind beneath his white gown, and I let my imagination follow him down the street. I saw the power of his shoulders, the strength of his arms and the narrowness of his waist. I did not notice the weakness in the line of his jaw. The next day he came back with a gift: a bowl of scented roseapples. He ate one, and afterwards he handed me an apple and had me eat it. But with every bite I took all I tasted was the raw ogere, it overpowered the sweet fruit and made me nauseous. Your uncle appeared not to notice. I saw a man who was kind to me, and I saw the way to free myself from my mother. I ran from the smoke straight into the fire.

  There’s not much more to tell. It’s a true story. You never knew my name was Yankay, the firstborn. That I was once a twin. That I had a brother Alusani, the other half of my soul. Or that I grew jealous of him and longed for my mother to look at me, without knowing what it was I wished for. And how I watched a man with skin like the shadows of the moon collecting the souls of lost children in the forest.

  One day you married one of these men and brought him home. As soon as I saw him so close I could not help myself. I reached out my hand and I touched his skin. And it was warm, so warm — not cold like sea water. But I made you ashamed and afterwards I heard you whispering, making apologies for me you thought I was too deaf to hear.