Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [85]
Sometime in the night I woke abruptly. Somebody close by. I held my breath. A pangolin was watching us from a short distance away, weaving her head from side to side. Her den must have been close by. I sat up, the pangolin backed off. I could hear the caw of night birds. The air carried the smell of night blooms and rotting leaves. Somewhere close by a pod fell off a tree and split open, scattering seeds with giant-sized sounds, causing me to start. The fear settled in my bowels. I stood up, walked some small distance, propelled into the darkness by a sudden urgency.
How I wished to be at home! Safely asleep on my bed. How long we were supposed to stay out there in the forest, I had no idea.
Without realising it I was heading in the direction of the houses. Suddenly I heard voices, fleeing footfalls in the darkness. I pressed my back against a tree. The blood rushed around my head. I stood still, listening to the thud of my own heart, like the beating of a thousand bats’ wings. I pushed the heel of my hand against my chest to still the sound.
Shapes. Shadows. They passed me so close I could have reached out my hand and touched them. Bodies gleaming in the moonlight. I turned and pressed my face against the tree. I stayed that way for I don’t know how long, feeling the smooth bark against my cheek, wishing it was my mother’s skin. I whispered her name. The wish turned into a dream. For a moment I was in her arms. Then just as quickly the dream lost its colour, and turned back into a wish. Try as I might to hold on to the comforting feeling, it slipped away. I was alone and afraid again.
The moon shone like a blind man’s eye. In the dim light I saw the form of a man, coming towards me through the trees. He drew close, saw me and stopped. We stood still, gazing at each other through the grey. As I looked at him I had a strange feeling, like a scent that carries the memory of a touch, or a taste that brings a glimpse of something past. I had seen this man before. I felt sure of it. I did not move. I stood there as fleeting images formed behind my eyes. I saw the bolted gates of the miners’ compound. The men standing silently beyond. The police. Twists of smoke coming out of the barrels of the guns. Red and pink stains blossoming like flowers on the wet ground. And as the memories formed and dissolved I saw him staring at me, making up his mind what to do.
You see, I believed this man was dead. The same man who even before that was once mixed up in some trouble with one of the younger wives.
So now I made up my mind that this was no mortal man but a falang, come back to settle old scores against the people who had murdered him. I didn’t try to run away. For some reason I felt no fear. I was certain the time had come to die. In the pale light I could just make out the mark on his lip, the stain like a splash. He stepped towards me. My legs went weak. I closed my eyelids to shut out the darkness crowding in. When next I opened them I was alone again in the forest.
The rest of the night I spent with my body wrapped around the box of sacred objects entrusted to my father. I slept with my cheek resting on the lid. Inside the box was the skull of the obai who went before. We grow up and we are told a chief never dies. Instead his spirit flies out of the old body and into the new one. The elders keep the head of the last chief to bury with the body of the next. So the line goes on unbroken.
We slept and woke up damp with fright and dew. And when we woke up the rule of the new chief was already over.
And afterwards we heard how the rioters sang the same song all over the land. In town the pink and anxious Assistant to District Commissioner Silk gave the order to fire upon a crowd gathered around his office. Some fell. Those who didn’t took off through the chiefdoms, marching upon the compounds and houses of the chiefs, lighting bonfires of paper money, throwing radios and refrigerators