not to speak English. No understand . Sure.
Isaiah paces. The ghastly creature cackles again. Echoes. A skin-chilling aaaaado!
He stops. He needed a break from his obsession with frontlines and transition zones of terrible absences. Outside, a clattering of doum palm leaves. Isaiah glares. When do the bloody winds end their garbled groaning? Too much life; everything breathes here, even the damn stones. Too much space. But being in the house is like being crammed into a too-slow metal lift with no light. He hates the startling creaks of many unseen things here.
A hyena’s guffaw; he shivers. This land, its awful age—here time hums an ancient, eerie tune. The hyena cackles, and all of a sudden Isaiah is deluged by a need to see the wide sky. He leans out of the window.
… aaado!
He sprints out of the room.
In Wuoth Ogik’s courtyard, a pang as if he, the outsider, walking toward this outside , will never find his way back to normal . But he is hungry to experience his lost father. This was Hugh’s house—a certainty. Isaiah wonders about his five pages of questions: Who to ask when nothing answers back? A groan.
Up.
So many wild stars in the night.
Whirling backward in time, becoming Arabel again, finding that blood still congealed on a Christmas Eve white silk robe. It left the imprint of an oryx’s face mask. Whirling, and all life whirled. She was just Arabel, the way Bernardo sang her. Arabel Ajany writhing around a steel pole, accompanying Bernardo’s seven-minute story, which he sang in a throbbing bass. Her life in stark light twice a week, working so hard to show Bernardo how necessary she was to him.
Except that she was replaced on Christmas Eve.
Before the blood, she had dialed Odidi’s number. He would know what to do. But she had switched off the phone after the fourth ring.
After.
From under her bed, she had dialed Odidi’s number again. She would tell him what she had done. She would beg him to come and get her. She heard Odidi’s phone ringing. It rang until it returned with a message in two languages: Mteja hapatikani kwa sasa; the mobile subscriber cannot be reached .
And then, a day later, after midnight, Nyipir Oganda had phoned her and said, “Odidi is gone.”
A strange idea: Gone. Where?
Ajany laughed out loud then.
Ajany laughs now.
Isaiah watches the fire that burns close to a woman who barely breathes on her tattered mat.
“May I help?” he had asked Nyipir a day and a half ago.
“No.”
Isaiah said, “She’s unconscious.”
“Really?” Nyipir’s brow had gone up.
Isaiah was convinced that, given the smallest chance, the silly bugger would have clouted him on the skull to make him disappear. A grim grin—he would leave only when he was ready.
Isaiah had persisted, “She needs help?”
Nyipir’s terse “Someone’s coming.”
Three days later, nobody had shown up yet.
Not his problem.
Doum palms rattle; he hears the woman laugh, so he moves closer to see if she is conscious. He finds stillness, a reclining caryatid. Isaiah stares. Stirring of recognition besieged by flickering images, song portions, and old words, almost knowing … what? The night fire sputters. When Isaiah turns, he sees through its embers a mirror of the scorching hole in his heart. A muted groan: What in hell am I doing here? What has my mother to do with this forsaken realm?
8
THE TRADER, WUOTH OGIK ’ S NEWEST VISITOR, HICCUPS “ THEE-THEE-THEE-THEE ” over a joke he alone grasps. He had returned with Galgalu, who had shambled over to his corner of the land and told him the current season’s story in six lines:
Police in down-country Kenya had murdered Moses Odidi Oganda.
Akai Lokorijom had fled Wuoth Ogik with the old car.
A rabid d’abeela had implanted a death wound into Galgalu’s soul, which needed to be exorcised.
Nyipir was breaking rocks to build a cairn for Odidi, who could not be buried until Akai-ma had returned.
Sorrow had swallowed Arabel Ajany,
Isaiah paces. The ghastly creature cackles again. Echoes. A skin-chilling aaaaado!
He stops. He needed a break from his obsession with frontlines and transition zones of terrible absences. Outside, a clattering of doum palm leaves. Isaiah glares. When do the bloody winds end their garbled groaning? Too much life; everything breathes here, even the damn stones. Too much space. But being in the house is like being crammed into a too-slow metal lift with no light. He hates the startling creaks of many unseen things here.
A hyena’s guffaw; he shivers. This land, its awful age—here time hums an ancient, eerie tune. The hyena cackles, and all of a sudden Isaiah is deluged by a need to see the wide sky. He leans out of the window.
… aaado!
He sprints out of the room.
In Wuoth Ogik’s courtyard, a pang as if he, the outsider, walking toward this outside , will never find his way back to normal . But he is hungry to experience his lost father. This was Hugh’s house—a certainty. Isaiah wonders about his five pages of questions: Who to ask when nothing answers back? A groan.
Up.
So many wild stars in the night.
Whirling backward in time, becoming Arabel again, finding that blood still congealed on a Christmas Eve white silk robe. It left the imprint of an oryx’s face mask. Whirling, and all life whirled. She was just Arabel, the way Bernardo sang her. Arabel Ajany writhing around a steel pole, accompanying Bernardo’s seven-minute story, which he sang in a throbbing bass. Her life in stark light twice a week, working so hard to show Bernardo how necessary she was to him.
Except that she was replaced on Christmas Eve.
Before the blood, she had dialed Odidi’s number. He would know what to do. But she had switched off the phone after the fourth ring.
After.
From under her bed, she had dialed Odidi’s number again. She would tell him what she had done. She would beg him to come and get her. She heard Odidi’s phone ringing. It rang until it returned with a message in two languages: Mteja hapatikani kwa sasa; the mobile subscriber cannot be reached .
And then, a day later, after midnight, Nyipir Oganda had phoned her and said, “Odidi is gone.”
A strange idea: Gone. Where?
Ajany laughed out loud then.
Ajany laughs now.
Isaiah watches the fire that burns close to a woman who barely breathes on her tattered mat.
“May I help?” he had asked Nyipir a day and a half ago.
“No.”
Isaiah said, “She’s unconscious.”
“Really?” Nyipir’s brow had gone up.
Isaiah was convinced that, given the smallest chance, the silly bugger would have clouted him on the skull to make him disappear. A grim grin—he would leave only when he was ready.
Isaiah had persisted, “She needs help?”
Nyipir’s terse “Someone’s coming.”
Three days later, nobody had shown up yet.
Not his problem.
Doum palms rattle; he hears the woman laugh, so he moves closer to see if she is conscious. He finds stillness, a reclining caryatid. Isaiah stares. Stirring of recognition besieged by flickering images, song portions, and old words, almost knowing … what? The night fire sputters. When Isaiah turns, he sees through its embers a mirror of the scorching hole in his heart. A muted groan: What in hell am I doing here? What has my mother to do with this forsaken realm?
8
THE TRADER, WUOTH OGIK ’ S NEWEST VISITOR, HICCUPS “ THEE-THEE-THEE-THEE ” over a joke he alone grasps. He had returned with Galgalu, who had shambled over to his corner of the land and told him the current season’s story in six lines:
Police in down-country Kenya had murdered Moses Odidi Oganda.
Akai Lokorijom had fled Wuoth Ogik with the old car.
A rabid d’abeela had implanted a death wound into Galgalu’s soul, which needed to be exorcised.
Nyipir was breaking rocks to build a cairn for Odidi, who could not be buried until Akai-ma had returned.
Sorrow had swallowed Arabel Ajany,
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