Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [143]
I looked and looked again. Something strange. I could see straight through the flimsy wood of the coffins. There were no bodies inside, only piles of sticks. The mourners were talking to each other, I could see their mouths opening and closing. I was too far off to hear what they were saying, though the calls of the market traders reached me. It was as though they were communicating soundlessly, like animals. And I alone seemed to see them. The people in the market went about their business, bargaining and bantering with one another. Other strangers walked between the stalls. A young woman buying sweet potatoes stood right next to one of them, who stared lasciviously at her breasts. When she turned around she brushed past him, but never so much as glanced his way.
A fist of fear squeezed my belly. Trailed its fingertips slowly across my scalp. Sapped the strength from my muscles. I gasped, choking on my own breath. Drops of moisture rose on my forehead. I let go of my load. The plastic bags tumbled down the hill, tearing open, all of my oranges bouncing away. A dread filled me, a dread unlike any I had ever felt. Not the terror of God, or his angels, but the sickly fear of man.
I saw them returning at night, moving between the headstones and the mausoleums, indistinguishable from the shadows, from the dark shapes of the statues. Great slabs of stone and marble were heaved aside, coffin lids swung open. I saw the graves open up, the spirits of the dead walk away from their resting place.
Then just as suddenly the vision disappeared. It was market day again. A little boy, naked but for a pair of shorts, was standing next to me holding my shopping bags. Another boy had climbed up the hill and was holding out the last of the runaway oranges. They were both smiling up at me, thinking of the coin I would give them, ignorant of everything I had just witnessed.
When I had finished speaking Adrian waited, as though I would go on. As though there was more. There was, but for the time being I was finished. I folded my hands in my lap. He was staring out of the window, flexing his long fingers. He didn’t turn to me when he spoke, and when he did his words came quiet and slow:
‘That was how they got into the city, wasn’t it? The rebel army. They hid their weapons and their men in the graveyards. Collected them at night.’
Yes, I told him. That was how it happened. Nobody realised it until later. We awoke the next day to find them in our midst.
We were silent together for a while. Then he pushed back his chair and left the room. When he returned he was carrying a tray, upon which some tea things slid dangerously about. He set them down, stirred the tea to hasten the brew, poured two cups. Halfway to the top, the way Europeans do. He added milk to both cups, and pushed the sugar bowl towards me; the loose grains stuck to the underside of the bowl scratched the surface of the table.
‘The starlight was blue. There was a patch of the night sky where the stars crowded together — astronomers call it a “butterfly cluster” — and in the middle a single pale, yellow star brighter than all the rest. I used to like to tell my class about the stars. For some reason they can imagine it, the night sky. Even the ones who were born blind. We would go outside and they would turn their faces upwards, like flowers to the sun. Somehow they could sense the vastness above.’ I stopped. The sky had never looked so beautiful as it did that night.
‘The next day was Twelfth Night. Did you know that? They came on the feast of the Epiphany.’
A fly had become trapped behind the window. The angry buzzing invaded the room, and an insistent tapping. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. As the fly hit the windowpane. The tapping punctuated our conversation.
‘Do you still believe in God, Mariama?’
‘I believe he exists.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Just that. I believe he exists. I don’t believe in him.’
Adrian folded his hands in front of him.
‘Like you here,’ I said. ‘I believe you are sitting