Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [141]
Chapter Sixty-three
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Voices in My Ear
Okolun Returns to His Home
Yes, she had gone before him, but he was not one to give up until the very last, yet the thread that tied him to these old country people was spinning out and spinning out ever thinner and thinner. Leaving the girl behind was one thing, after all, she was like anyone else, holding her fate in her own brown fist and thinking that someone else, a god like me, held her the same way. Oh, that has been going on so long, even a long time for a god to contemplate, I must say, going on ever since we first made these creatures and watched them go their own way so afraid of every which way and turn that they had to believe that we were guiding them. Give it up, I say, take your fist and seize what you need, do not, I say do not, and these may be my last words to you, because just as some billion years ago, or whatever time is to you and earth, these continents Africa and the New World were still joined together, just as they were one, not even twins but two heads and hearts in the same body, the plates beneath—I can’t imagine what you believe as I tell you this, but we always knew about the shift and jolts and creakings and tearings of these massive shelves beneath the upper world—these plates shifted, and the continents ripped away from each other—imagine the earthly pain! The noise! The winds! The storms! The eruptions! The slides of fiery ash and mud!—and the New World went its own way, leaving Africa behind. Don’t these people see they have the same chance now, the chance to turn their servitude into freedom? This, my farewell message to all of you, beastly owner and worried vassal, as I put the New World behind me and return to a home that loves to receive me in proper fashion. Carolina, farewell, oh, my Africa, beaches and deserts and forests and rivers and trees and mountains and skies skies skies—
In less than the time it took me to say this, I have returned, kneeling beneath the ocean just off the African shore, planting my undersea garden, ready to emerge and play with anyone who worships me, to give guidance, but never, never, never to chain anyone to a single truth! Hello, Africa, I am home!
Chapter Sixty-four
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Isaac
Have we forgotten about Isaac? We must not let him drop from our thoughts. He came close, very close, and not just once, alas, to murder and to discovering his true self.
The first time occurred just after the first time Liza found herself with child, and there was no doubt as to whose child it was. Early one evening Isaac accompanied her into one of the farthest distant cabins, a shambling old ramshackle place among places already quite old, where an ash-gray witch woman lived, an ancient creature who could have been the older sister of the late Old Dou, with a beautiful thin-jawed face that might have been carved out of wood from a distant thick forest. She had the reputation in the cabins of dealing in herbs both white and black that she had learned to administer when she was a young girl in the old country.
Either because she had mystical foreknowledge or because she was a wise student, even in her oldest age, or perhaps because of it, of human behavior, she greeted them both as if she had been expecting them.
“It is not too late,” she said.
Liza, just inside the door, tried to back away, but Isaac held her arm.
“You know?” he said to the witch woman.
“Look at her,” the witch woman said. “Young, as beautiful as the rice kernel in its almost to full blooming condition, who can not see?”
Now Liza became interested, and stepped right up to the woman, so close that she could smell the rank weed odor of her intimate parts, mouth and other places.
“But not too late for me?” Liza said.
“No, no,” the witch woman said. “You have long travels to make before you