Blackheart Man, page 22
Pickens’ eyes in the dark, begging guidance… Veycosi’s sense of unease increased, an unnameable anxiety buzzing behind his eye sockets.
Thandy put her arms around her insensible picken. “Mama-ji,” she said, “look how the child mind you. She love you plenty bad, you know, Cricket?” Her eyes looked wet all on a sudden.
“Her?” Veycosi kissed his teeth, trying hard as he might to make a joke of it. “You mean she loved asking me unanswerable questions.”
Thandy’s face darkened. She clapped her hands together in his direction to silence him. “You must make fun of everything? This is my picken standing here, with not one thought in her head!”
Shame heated up Veycosi’s face. He was making a mess of this. “Beg pardon.” He stroked Kaïra’s head. The child’s hair was sopping wet with sweat. Veycosi longed for just one sensible word from her, one smile. Her energy was spent, but here they were, giving her commands. He pulled an unresisting Kaïra into his lap, cradled her there, else she’d have slid bonelessly off.
Her bones were twig-thin as a baby bird’s. Every breath shook her small body. The words were out before he knew it. “Thandy, foster her with me for a little while.”
Veycosi couldn’t believe what he self was saying. But he kept on: “It look like she will listen to me, so maybe she won’t hurt herself and you can get little bit of rest. Only until she starts to mend again.” If she ever did.
“Cosi, I can’t—”
“Gombey living in his ma’s compong, not far from me. Between us, we won’t let her come to harm. Let us do this for you, Thandy.”
She was already shaking her head no when Filiang called from outside, “Cricket, come quick! Your camel sick!”
“Mama’s tits!” Veycosi leapt up off the floor. “Kaïra, bring that bowl of groundnuts and come!”He stopped short. “No, I’m sorry—” He was so used to giving Kaïra little jobs to do to keep her from underfoot, he’d forgotten the state the picken was in.
Thandiwe burst into sobs. Veycosi turned. Kaïra had picked up the big calabash of groundnuts that was on the table and was coming towards him. She was hugging the bowl to her front with its wide mouth against her chest. Nuts spilling everywhere. She was doing what Veycosi’d asked. When she saw that Veycosi wasn’t moving, she stopped, too. There was no denying the power he had over the girl.
Thandy looked at Kaïra. Veycosi looked at Thandy. She took Kaïra by the hand. “Sweet goddesses,” said Thandy, “is what really happened to my child?”
“Cricket!” Filiang called.
Thandy shouted back, “We coming, Ma!” Veycosi told Kaïra to accompany them, and the three of them ran to find Goat.
The camel was over by the big outdoor ovens in Thandiwe’s compong. She was down, lying on her side, her bamboo-pole legs flung every which way. Crouching beside her was Cuffee, the neighbour who had helped in the search for Kaïra. Goat rarely let anyone near her head. But look like she didn’t have any fight in her this time. She was breathing hard, her eyes rolling. Little groans escaped from her with every breath. Near her mouth were several mounds of wet, white stuff. They reeked with the odour of vomitus. There was foam about Goat’s muzzle and she was kicking weakly at her own belly with her hind legs. Veycosi knelt beside Cuffee. “What happen to her?”
Cuffee spat to one side. “Gwine kill this so-and-so leggo beast, if raw dough don’t kill her first.”
“Dough?”
“She eat out the dough I had rising to bake tomorrow, the bread for everybody to break fast with.”
Veycosi said, “I see her eat dirt last night with no harm. How plain flour and water could make her take sick so bad?”
“It’s the yeast.”
Veycosi gasped. “The dough’s swelled in her belly!”
Cuffee nodded. Veycosi marked how Goat’s belly was enlarged, the stiff hairs that covered it standing out straight. Goat moaned again. Veycosi found a little sympathy moan escaping his lips as well.
Cuffee informed him, “She already spit out so much dough that I think it must be most of it, but her belly still swelling.”
“What we going to do?” Veycosi asked.
Cuffee shrugged. “Don’t know. I not no cameler.”
Jacob would know what to do, but suppose Goat died before he could find him?
A little voice piped up, “Tha mun give her saleratus.” It came from a dirty-faced youngboy lying along the top of the compong’s cement wall.
“Akeem!” said Thandy. “How many times I have to tell you not to spy like that? Why you don’t bide with your own people’s camps out in the dry lands?”
“Yer camel going to dead in no time, an’ ye don’t pay me mind,” he said. “Belly go rupture, and she dead.”
“Saleratus could work, though,” mused Veycosi. “If gas is what making her belly swell, saleratus could relieve it. You have any, Cuffee?”
“Yes. I use it to rise certain breads. How much to give her, Akeem?”
“I could come inside?”
Cuffee glanced around at the compong people present. No objections. “Come then, nuh?”
Akeem grinned and jumped down. He came over and looked at Goat. He crouched beside the camel. He palped her flank, low on her body. Goat snapped at him and caught him on the side of his hand. “Shite!” Akeem cried out. He shook the bitten hand and sucked away the blood. “Ah, girl, I know,” he said. “Tha hurts something frightful, nah true? We’ll have thee better again soon.” To Cuffee, he said, “Gie her enough to overflow my hand,” he said. “In a full bucket of cool water. Then give her two more buckets of water, an’ she will take them.”
Cuffee nodded. “Soon come.” He ran off to get the saleratus.
Veycosi gave Goat’s flank a tentative pat. Her skin twitched, then rippled, belly-deep. She moaned. Veycosi pulled his hand away. He remembered Thandy and Kaïra, still standing there. “Kaïra, give me the bowl, please.” She’d spilled most of the groundnuts as she ran, and spilled even more in handing the bowl over.
Akeem watched her, his lips curled up in distaste. “Blackheart Man ate her soul,” he said.
“No such thing,” Veycosi told him, offering Akeem the bowl with what was left of the unshelled groundnuts. Akeem took a handful, slipped them into his sleeve.
Kaïra plopped herself down right at Goat’s head. Veycosi reached for the girl. “No, picken! She will snap!”
Goat did not. She put her head in Kaïra’s lap. Kaïra didn’t appear to notice.
Thandy said, “Don’t make her bite.”
“I will watch her.” He bade Kaïra shell and eat some of the nuts. As an afterthought, he specified exactly nine of them. The girl complied. Goat showed no interest in having any, even though they were close as her own muzzle. She must be very sick indeed.
Cuffee came back out with a tin bucket full of water. He told Akeem, “I dissolved the saleratus in here.”
By now, poor Goat was too ill to protest much as Akeem used the hem of his robe to wipe the slimy froth from her mouth, then poured the medicine and the two buckets of water down her throat while Cuffee and Veycosi held her muzzle. Once they’d done that, she groaned and laid her head back in Kaïra’s lap. The two of them remained quiet like that a good while, till Goat commenced to belching in long, redolent eruptions. Slowly, her flank began to subside. “Now,” said Akeem, “give her a small measure of castor oil or coconut oil.”
Cuffee fetched castor oil. Akeem helped him feed it to the animal. Little more time, they could hear a rumbling from Goat’s middle. “It’s working,” pronounced Akeem. “Good girl.”
Goat sighed, rocked to her knees, and stood. Akeem had to scramble out of the way as the camel let loose a stream of pale, foul-smelling shite, and a fart stink enough to singe nose hairs. But her belly was almost back to its usual size, and she seemed more comfortable.
Veycosi had Kaïra take Goat’s lead and walk her to the first fish pond and back. This she did, under Thandy’s and Veycosi’s watchful eyes. So it came about that Thandy agreed to let Veycosi and Gombey mind Kaïra for a while. She stuffed a pack full with Kaïra’s clothes, toys, and books, and they tied it to Goat. “Kaïra,” Veycosi said, “follow me, please.” They walked to his house, Goat ambling along beside them. Veycosi kept a guiding hand protectively on Kaïra’s shoulder, steering her around anything in her path. He paid no mind to the people tittering at him because he walked a camel rather than riding it. His thoughts were only for Kaïra.
* * *
Over the days, Veycosi’s Reverie phantasms became nightmares, and the nightmares worsened. In them, the piche-imbued man’s face loomed large and leering. He chased Veycosi through the halls of the Colloquium, cackling and brandishing a spear with which to jook out Veycosi’s heart. In some of the dreams, Kaïra and Tierce sat on the floor, playing a game of cat’s cradle, oblivious to Veycosi’s voiceless screams for pity.
In those days he spent much of his time keeping Kaïra fed and making sure she bathed herself and used the latrine. Gombey came by frequently, but mostly the tasks fell to Veycosi, who would pass the long hours by chanting to the picken the tenor parts of songs of lost books found. Kaïra seemed less restive when she heard the melodies. Oddly, Goat seemed to like them, too. She had taken to following Kaïra as close as she could. Wherever Kaïra bided, there Goat would rest also, crouching down in the position Jacob called “kush.” Sith she couldn’t come into the apartment, when Kaïra was inside, Goat would lower herself by her front legs and make shift to crawl onto the porch. She looked so imperiously forlorn there, making mawing sounds at the window, that Veycosi took to leaving it open and flinging the jalousies wide. Goat would thrust her head on her long neck in through the window and regard Kaïra watchfully. And when Veycosi sang, she would rest her head on the window ledge and moan softly, apparently with contentment. Occasionally someone came by with a tale of Chynchin to recite to Veycosi. Word had gotten around that he was looking for such. His stack of table-books was growing. He had thought to spend his time preserving the books of others, not making one himself.
Thandiwe visited them most evenings. Veycosi craved her company, eager to tell her any slight news of Kaïra’s behaviour that might at a squint be construed as progress. Thandy remarked on how sweet and gentle Veycosi was with her daughter. There was no more talk of unbinding their engagement.
Were he being honest, Veycosi would have to admit to himself that Kaïra was showing no change at all. The same slack jaw, the same blank gaze. Once, Veycosi bade her smile, but the rictus Kaïra contrived at that command was a terrible thing to see. Minutes later, when her expression hadn’t changed and spittle was dribbling from her mouth corners, Veycosi had told her to relax her face again.
All told, Veycosi was satisfied to be in Thandiwe’s good graces once more, and to be doing his best by Kaïra. But he was daily consumed by an unfathomable guilt, and when he tried to sleep come nighttime, he would spend his nights once more fleeing the Blackheart Man in his dreams, and would wake sweating and breathless, wound about in his hamaca, half-strangled in his own sheets. And always, his nightmare pursuer had the face of the broken-legged man the piche workers had dug up, with its sour, furious expression.
And it was nonsense. Veycosi was exasperated at himself for letting a fanciful childhood notion rule him thus. He determined to visit the piche soldiers where the guards had placed them, lining the plaza of Carenage Town’s seat of government. He would look well and good upon the face of that particular man, and thus satisfy himself that the poor, hapless soul was only a human being like himself who had made the wrong choice and thereby met a horrible death a couple of centaines before.
* * *
He went early in the morning, when the sun wouldn’t be too hot on Kaïra, and there would be fewer people out and about to gawk at the younggirl.
When they arrived to the plaza, Veycosi checked for the umpteenth time that Kaïra was seated solidly up high on Goat’s back, and holding on well to the rein. For himself, he walked at Goat’s head, holding her lead. He reached up and patted Goat’s flank. “Good girl,” he said. Then he turned his attention to the reason he had come here.
Such grim figures they cut. No wonder there were stories in the news now about people spying a tar-covered figure creeping around the town. The very thought made Veycosi’s heart stutter, and he usually such a sensible soul. Poor sleep and fretting over Kaïra were keeping his mind uneasy.
He remarked upon one of the piche statues as he passed it; a soldier woman, half-fallen off her camel, which had apparently stumbled down onto its front knees. Were it an actual statue, it would have been comical. But these were two beings, petrified at the moment of their ignominious death.
A thump from the shadows over yonder; Veycosi started. A wooden bucket rolled out from beneath the legs of a statue. Then came giggles, and the sound of feet pattering away. Veycosi caught sight of the bottoms of muddy little feet in flight. “Ey!” he yelled. “Mash, allyou! Get along now!”
A mirth-filled face peeked from behind a wall; another from atop it. Veycosi shook a finger at them. They fled, laughing.
He retrieved the wooden bucket they’d dropped. Whiting had spilled out of it, at the foot of the statue the little devils had been sporting with. They had already painted Mamapiche Grindle Crewe Before All on the side of the hapless pitch camel, and had whitened the nose of its rider. Pickens throughout town were cresting a wave of excitement as their crewes prepared to compete for best float come Mamapiche Day. “Beg pardon, sirrah,” Veycosi whispered to the rider. “You know how youth stay.” The man on the camel had one arm flung out, the other grasping at his collar, his face straining as it had been when he’d died, as his nose and lungs clogged with piche. Nearby was a piche-mired donkey, its legs thrown every which way as it had done in its efforts to struggle free of the piche. Someone had propped it against a rockstone so that it would stay upright. Who the rass had had the bright idea of lining the Palavera avenue with such as these? Samra was right. Chynchin had triumphed two centaines ago; need they make sport of the Ymisen dead, too?
Veycosi spied the one he had come to see. He gasped. His heart commenced to stuttering in his chest. His hands trembled. But he would see this through. He clicked at Goat to recommence walking, and he led her and her indifferent passenger to the man’s side. Standing in front of the unfortunate soul, Veycosi made himself as calm as he could. The man was in a crawl, reaching forwards. Veycosi crouched to examine him further. Perhaps the man had been vertical, trying to climb out of the sucking piche. He examined the man’s face. Surely the nose of his nightmare apparition had been more peaked, the lips less full. This was just a man. A real one, not the product of Veycosi’s imagination. His features marked him as Garfun blood. And now Veycosi noticed that the man’s clothing was ancient Garfun, not ancient Mirmeki. What was a Chynchin man doing amidst this group of soldiers? Had he been their prisoner, then?
Someone up to Mamapiche japes had found a tattered jacket in the Ymisen style, turned it inside out, and sat it on the statue’s shoulders. That was another possibility; that the man had been a turned coat, for true. Hadn’t Yaaya mentioned someone such in her version of the tale?
The face wore an aspect of terror. In a moment of sympathy, Veycosi reached out and touched the man’s cheek. The black gum shifted a little under his fingers. Under the warmth of the sun, the piche of him had softened till it felt like flesh against Veycosi’s palm. It would harden again in the cool of night. Disturbed, Veycosi snatched his hand away. A small blob of piche from the figure had stuck to his palm. Not thinking, Veycosi wiped the hand on the chest of his robe, on the left side. Then recollected himself. Too late. The piche had already stuck to the fabric. “Damnation!” He tried to pull it off, but it wouldn’t come.
“Pursuing a new area of study, I see.” Veycosi jumped to his feet.
It was Steli. He nodded to Kaïra. “Good morning to you, Kaïra.” Steli didn’t seem to expect a response, but the thing was well done; few nowadays treated Kaïra as though she were actually present. Veycosi had a surge of missing his stern but principled teacher.
Veycosi informed him, “Ymisen has banned me from her ship while so many aboard it are sick. I’m looking after my intended stepdaughter instead.”
“So I see. That is good of you.” For all he was giving Veycosi a compliment, his lips were pursed like he was sucking limes. Fair he was, but slow to forgive.
The sun was full hot now. “Kaïra,” said Veycosi, “pull your hood on to protect your head.”
Steli’s eyes went round as Kaïra obeyed. “Your charge getting better, Veycosi?”
“Sadly no, mestre, much as I wish it. Is just that she will obey simple commands if I give them. Only me, though. She don’t hearken to no one else.”
Steli just gaped, lacking for words. Veycosi said, “I sorry to hear about your Yddyta.”
Grief replaced the amazement on Steli’s face. He indicated some healing scratches on his face. “She gave me these. I rather see she and Kaïra plotting their usual tricks together. Not the way they are now.”
Veycosi nodded sympathetically. “Thandiwe told me they were bannas.”
“And that is the first you knew of it?” Steli replied, sneering. “So little you know about your woman’s child. You only paying her mind now that the Blackheart Man take her?”
Veycosi didn’t respond to Steli’s jibe because, to his shame, it was true.
“Yddyta had piche on her hands when she arrived back to our compong,” Steli said. “And reeds.”
Gombey’s old alpagats had been piche-fouled along the bottoms when Kaïra came back wearing them. Filiang had told him she’d found reeds between Kaïra’s toes when she was bathing her.
Veycosi said, “You don’t believe that codswallop that is the Deser—the Mirmeki who did this?”
Steli shook his head slowly. “For a rarity, I agree with you on something. The Deserters don’t have no reason to have done such a heinous thing. After all, it happened to their pickens, too.”
