Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [52]
“The ex was such a . . . She’s tiny,” he said, “but very strong. She works out in the garden all day, like she’s . . . trying to run from something. Well, she is. She is trying to run from something.” He paused and said, matter-of-factly, “She’s possessed.”
I realized then that we had slipped—as periodically happened—off the edge of normal conversation into K’s mind, where he was at his most paranoid and angry.
“Possessed?”
“Ja. By demons. Ja.” His lips slapped shut with finality. It was a long time before he said, “You know, she never got over Luke. She can’t leave that poor boy to rest in peace. Luke’s room, all his clothes, everything, even his ashes. They’re all in his cupboard. Everything washed and folded and in his cupboard like he’s going to come home after lunch for his afternoon rest. She’s even left his toys where they were when he died. All his stuffed animals are on his bed. . . . It’s all there. And she spends hours sitting on his bed, like she is waiting for him. To this day, she’s there. Every day. She’ll never leave Zimbabwe. She’ll never leave that boy alone. If those ‘landless peasants’ come for the house, they’ll have to kill her or let her live there with them because they won’t get rid of her.”
I said, “I don’t think that’s being possessed. That’s grief.”
K shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. I actually saw the demons entering her. I woke up one night and I watched the demons fighting for her soul. If I hadn’t woken up . . . I pulled the sheets up around her and I told them to fuck off and they went back out the window. The demons—well, there was one in particular, like a cat’s head floating there, black and with bright green eyes, that was trying to get into her. But I chased it out. I used the power of the Almighty to chase it out. But the ex has never believed, really. She used to say that she did, but she doesn’t. And since then, oh ja . . . she’s evil. She opened herself up as a house of Evil and they came. She’s possessed.”
I don’t underestimate the power of ghosts and spirits and, at that moment, I could feel K’s own demons. They were burning and noisy and hard-edged and they were churning about in the front of the car. The windows were open and the air was rushing around us, hot and black from the tarmac, but it couldn’t sweep the demons out of the car.
“When we were going through all our shit”—by which I assumed K meant the affair that he said his ex-wife had had—“I knew she was possessed. What else would make a woman do what she did?”
I puffed hard on my cigarette and said nothing.
“About ten years ago, when we were still trying to work out our marriage, I prayed to the Almighty, what should I do? I read that the answer to my problem could only be resolved by prayer and fasting. For twenty-five days I prayed and fasted and then I waited for God to tell me what to do next. Nothing. I waited three days. On the third day, He told me to visit the ex. I was with Dingus at the time.
“I told him, ‘Dingus, the Almighty has sent me to her.’
“I was—I was so sure that God was going to send the demons out of her. I could feel His power all around me. Dingus dipped his finger in cooking oil and he drew a cross on the windscreen, right there”—K pressed his finger against the windshield and drew a cross on the glass—“right there.” K glanced over at me to make sure he had my attention, which he did. Every nerve was prickled. I felt as if I was sitting in a small chamber of ever advancing needles. “Dingus came with me. We drove to the ex’s house and I got out of the pickup. The gate was locked. I called for her, I hooted. I shouted some more. I knew she was in there. I could just feel she was in the house. When she came out, she had a gun with her.
“I asked her, ‘What’s the gun for?’
“She said, ‘Leave me alone.’
“I said, ‘I need to talk to you.’
“We went back and forth for quite a while like this, hey. Eventually, she let me in. We went into the house. I told her to put the gun down. I mean, I am the one that taught her how to shoot the blerry thing and she can shoot straight, that woman.