Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [90]
Mapenga looked after him. “That man needs my pills too, I promise you. Then he’ll be square. You too. You should take them too, then we’ll all be square.” Then he seized my hand and pulled me in the opposite direction, to the front of the queue, until I was standing below the man with the sjambok. Mapenga spoke to the man in Shona and the man, not taking his eyes off the throng in front of him, nodded his head and replied, “Yes, Mapenga. You may go to see.” His whip sailed down and then abruptly cracked back, barely glancing the hide of an ox that was about to step into the well. “But not to taste,” the man warned.
“Come.” Mapenga pressed me ahead of him, around the edge of the well and through a tiny slot in the chapel wall. I crouched on hands and knees to get through the cool, dark passage of stone, which was about six feet long and so narrow that I had to turn sideways in places to force my shoulders through. I landed on a carpet of moss and looked up at pieces of torn sky breaking through a dense roof of foliage. It was like being born into a place beyond the world. Suddenly the noise and dust and heat of the last few days were forgotten. All here was fragrant and soft and whispering. Mapenga helped me to my feet. And there we stood, hand in hand, in the garden of Eden.
We were surrounded by three stone walls, as high as a castle, that reached back to the hill. Inside the belly of the walls, where we stood, was a cultivated garden that had gone beautifully wild. Mint bushes as big as small trees pressed against hedges of rosemary and thyme. A frenzy of tiny white flowers bordered an ancient tangle of passion-fruit creepers. Bright birds swooped and dived from the canopy of heavy-limbed trees that groaned and sawed against their own weight in the mild breeze. Through all this, from a dark hole in the mouth of the hill, a jumping stream bubbled over its rocky banks and set up silver droplets of water.
“There, lovely creature,” said Mapenga, kissing my hand. “I’ve shown you heaven on earth.”
I knelt down and pressed my hands into the moss.
“Anyone caught in here gets thrown out of the village,” said Mapenga. “And anyone found drinking from here . . .” Mapenga knelt next to me and put his lips close to the stream without drinking. “They’re for the chop.”
BY THE TIME we arrived back at the cage, the sun had begun its decline into the lake, dragging with it all the day’s colors. K went out into the garden to pray. Mapenga and I lay on opposites ends of the sofa and drank a cold beer. Neither of us spoke. When darkness fell, K came in from the garden and sat opposite us. The generator came on and the fan started to whirl the warm air around and around. We didn’t bother to switch on the lights, but instead stayed in the darkness until we couldn’t see one another at all. Then Mapenga got up and opened a bottle of wine and poured out two glasses.
“Here’s to no more spooks,” I said.
Mapenga raised his glass.
“I’ll have some,” said K.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Just a small one.”
“Okay.” I got up and fetched a little glass from the kitchen and poured out a sip for K.
The three of us knocked glasses together.
The lion came to the edge of the cage and flung himself against the wire.
“Look,” said Mapenga. “My lion’s lonely. He’s feeling left out.” Then he said, “Let’s throw a fish on the fire. We can sit outside with Mambo.”
So we took the wine and a tiger fish outside and built a fire and cooked our meal under the stars while the fire spat mopane smoke at us. The lion lay next to Mapenga, contentedly licking fish flesh off the edge of Mapenga’s plate, and we talked softly about other nights when we had sat around fires in Africa—with different people—listening to wild lions, or hyenas, or to the deep, singing, anonymous night. Above us the sky tore back in violent, endless beauty, mysterious and unattainable. There is no lid to this earth and there is nothing much fettering us to the ground. Eventually we will die and be wafted back into