Africa Risen, page 43
“Get out,” his uncle ordered, and heaved himself out of the car. Edim fumbled with the handle before he was able to open the door and hurried to his uncle’s side. A row of steps led up to a narrow veranda where a white man in a suit was waiting for them. Like Naomi, his skin was pale as a fish’s belly except at the tip of his long nose where it flushed red. His bald head and lustrous brown moustache gleamed in the sunlight.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Uncle said. When he talked to the white man his voice pitched two octaves higher and took on an odd nasal quality. Edim fought the urge to turn and check if the man speaking was the same one he had met the night before.
“You’re late. I’ve been waiting for you.” The white man glared and Uncle shrank under his gaze.
“Sorry, sir,” Uncle said meekly.
“I say, this is terrible form,” the man snapped. “If you’re going to continue Dr. Borchgrave’s practice, you’re going to have to leave off these native habits.”
“So sorry, sir. It was my new boy, sir.” Uncle reached out and grabbed the cap off Edim’s head, shoving it into his hands. “He was the one who delayed me.”
The white man arched an eyebrow at Edim’s hair which spilled over his shoulders in a cascade. He sniffed but seemed mollified by the explanation.
“Very well, let’s get this over with. They tell me you’re the best at these sorts of things. I hope you’re worth the money—and the trouble.” He spared Edim another glance, then turned and went inside.
“Wait for me here,” his uncle growled under his breath as he followed the white man inside. He pointed to a bench on the veranda under the windows.
Edim sat down to wait and watched the compound. Across the street, there were smaller houses that reminded him of home: long mud-brick huts with thatched roofs and wooden doors. He could smell wood smoke from a kitchen somewhere—it reminded him of his mama.
Before she fell sick she had loved to cook. She always had something for Edim’s friends whenever they came to the house to play. William used to joke that they should have been born brothers so that he could enjoy Mama’s cooking also. Perhaps if she hadn’t died last year, perhaps if William hadn’t been the son of white missionaries, things might have been different.
Thinking of William made Edim’s heart lurch painfully, as though a hand were squeezing his chest. He longed for the Voices that would have helped him call up the sound of William’s thoughts—wherever he was across the sea—but they were gone. Edim shook his head to clear his thoughts and resolved not to think about it again.
“… And you’re sure that’s all she needs?” came the white man’s voice from the bungalow’s doorway.
“Of course, sir,” his uncle said, emerging from the house. “I will mix the treatment for her tomorrow and deliver it in two days’ time.”
“So quickly? Perhaps you really are a doctor,” the white man said, chuckling. “And given the looks of your boy here, I’d even believe you have magical powers.”
A look of horror flitted across Uncle’s face for a moment. Then he burst into loud laughter, clutching his stomach and slapping his thigh as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
“Oh, sir, such a joke,” Uncle finally managed. “You will kill me with laughter.”
The white man put his hands in his pockets and leaned back, pleased at the reaction.
“I shall see you in two days, then,” he said, dismissing them. “Don’t be late.”
“Of course, sir. No problem, sir.” Uncle almost bowed as he turned to go.
As soon as they crossed the hedge wall, Edim felt two knuckles grinding painfully down on the crown of his head. The smile on Uncle’s face had vanished.
“Useless boy,” Uncle hissed. “Look at how you just disgraced me. How can you come to somebody’s house looking like a madman; what is wrong with you?” He grabbed a handful of Edim’s hair and pulled viciously, yanking his head back. Edim cried out, feeling some of his locks tear from his head. “We are going to cut this nonsense, today. Do you hear me?”
Later that day, when Edim was sitting on the high stool in the barber’s shop watching his locks fall from his head one by one, he tried to tell himself that this was what he deserved. That this was part of his punishment for what he had done with William. He tried to stay strong, as Papa had always wanted. But Edim couldn’t help it. He started to cry.
* * *
That night, he had the dream again.
He was in the cold, damp maze, the rhythmic thumping sending painful vibrations up his legs. Then the voice began its wail. Edim knew that it was searching for him. A cold wind picked up and Edim realised he was naked. He began to run, but once again everywhere he turned there was only cold, cold stone. The wailing grew louder—became a scream of desperate pain.
Edim woke tired, his head strangely light. He touched a hand to his skull and felt the raw, bruised flesh. He drew a shaky breath and rose to face the day.
If Naomi noticed the change in his appearance, she did not comment. He did notice that his slice of fried bread was larger than the day before, and that she had added a hunk of meat scooped out of yesterday’s soup, still dripping with stewed vegetables. As he ate he could still hear the echo of the screaming from his dream.
“Edim!” Naomi’s voice snapped him from his stupor. “Did you hear what I said? You have to go to the market today. Your uncle has an … engagement this afternoon.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I did not sleep well; I had a bad dream.”
She cocked her head in her curious lizard-like fashion.
“What did you dream about?”
He hesitated, wondering how much to tell her. For as long as he could remember, Edim had always been able to hear the Voices of the Earth; it was his gift from the Goddess. They guided him home whenever he was lost. They steadied his arm when he aimed his slingshot, so he never missed his mark. They warned him of danger before it could find him, and helped him to see the truth of things—even dreams. But ever since that terrible day in the forest, the Voices had been silent. It felt as if he’d gone deaf; their absence was an emptiness he could not fill.
“What does it mean if someone is calling to you in your dream?” he asked instead.
She looked at him sharply. “Calling you to do what?”
“I wish I knew.”
Her look was sceptical. “Edim, if someone is calling to you in your dream, answer them. Now, it’s time to get to work.”
He spent the rest of the morning sweeping, scrubbing, polishing, and dusting according to Naomi’s instructions. Around noon, Naomi sent him off to the market with careful instructions for what he needed to get. Edim struggled to remember everything she told him about Uncle’s habits. He did not want to risk Uncle’s anger, not after yesterday.
* * *
Later that afternoon, he was in the kitchen emptying the jute bags that had held his purchases when he heard a sharp crash from the ceiling above him. He paused and the noise came again—something hitting the floor of the room upstairs—but it was the screaming that made him run.
He took the stairs two at a time, tore down the long hallway with its many doors, and burst into the room at the end of the hall.
It was the room where Uncle prepared his medicines. Dominated by a long worktable with a stone mortar and pestle, a coal brazier and other delicate instruments, its walls were lined with bookshelves groaning under the weight of more books, jars, vials, pots, and bowls than he could count.
In the centre of the room was a narrow bed. The room’s large bay windows had been boarded up, but even in the gloom Edim could see Uncle standing over Naomi, who lay prone on the bed. Uncle’s trousers were bunched around his ankles; Naomi’s dress was hitched up around her waist. A broken bottle lay on the floor next to them, dark liquid pooled beneath it.
Edim wanted to go to her—to pull Uncle off and stop him from hurting her more—but, as if he was in a dream, he could not make his legs move.
Uncle turned at the interruption, the look on his face murderous. As he gathered up his trousers, Edim saw him slip his belt free. In a few steps Uncle had him by the collar. He lifted him off the ground with ease and dragged him downstairs.
* * *
The beating lasted for hours.
* * *
Much later, Edim lay in the semi-darkness of his room with nothing but his breathing and his pain for company. He had long since stopped crying. For that much at least, he was grateful. His tears had always disturbed Papa, but they seemed to enrage Uncle. He had beaten him until he tired then locked him in his room. He had no idea how long it had been since he had heard Uncle’s car drive off, but he knew it was evening by the golden quality of the light that streamed in under the door.
The soft knock brought him back to himself.
“Are you all right?” Naomi asked softly from the other side of the door.
He tried to move, but his body was a mass of welts and cuts. The pain radiated from everywhere at once.
“Yes.” His voice was a hoarse croak. Something scratched against the wood as Naomi slipped a long, thin pipe under the door.
“I have water here. Take the straw and drink. I put something in it for the pain.” Ignoring the searing agony that was his back and legs, Edim crawled to the door, and took the straw in his lips. He sipped deeply, coughing. The water tasted faintly bitter. Within minutes, Edim could feel the pain recede to a dull ache, though he still felt drained.
“Thank you.” There was only silence on the other side of the door. It lasted so long that Edim thought she had left. Then she spoke again:
“Why did you enter the apothecary?”
“I heard you screaming.”
“I never scream.”
Yet Edim was sure he had heard something. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe the Voices had returned for a moment or maybe he was just abnormal—as he had felt since the day Papa caught him in the field with William.
“That room, is that where you go when you finish work in the evenings?”
Though Edim never saw her leave, she was always gone just as the last rays of the sun set—sometimes leaving whatever chore she was doing half-finished.
“That’s where I go when your uncle needs me to make his medicines for him.” There was a bitter note in her voice. “He knows nothing of the art of healing, but he possesses a low cunning.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No, but we have a very good library. He describes the symptoms; I research to diagnose the illness, and then prepare the medicine.” She paused for a long moment. “You know, Edim, no one is holding you here. You can leave anytime you want.”
Edim wished that were true, but he couldn’t go back and face Papa. For good or ill, this was his new home.
He didn’t hear her leave, but by the time the last light had filtered out of his world, Edim knew she was gone.
* * *
A breeze tickled his face and Edim sat up. The door to his room was ajar. Perhaps Naomi had unlocked it? Creeping out, he saw that it was full dark and one of the double doors which led to the back veranda was also open. A cool smell, like parched earth before the rain, wafted through it. He went to it and stepped out. The screen door had been left open and was creaking softly in the breeze.
A cold moon shone high in the cloudless sky, bathing the crumbled archway to the neglected garden in silver. An overgrown path of white stone led deeper into the garden. Edim followed it through a vast, tangled mass of trees, shrubs and vines.
As the vegetation thickened, the path faded. The garden was now dotted with weather-worn sculptures: a hunter with a giant bow, a mermaid with a snake coiled around her shoulders, two men in loincloths locked in a wrestling match, a monster with twelve heads pointing straight ahead, a giant tortoise with a city on its back. In the pale moonlight, they seemed almost alive.
He turned to make his way back and realised he was lost. Cold panic gripped him: he had to get back before Uncle woke. Tears welled up in his eyes as he blundered through the garden, hoping to find the path again. Instead, he burst into a clearing. At its centre was a statue of a girl wearing an old-fashioned dress. She had her hands shackled in front of her and was looking up to the sky, as if expecting something to fall. There was something familiar about her, though Edim couldn’t say what. The wind picked up, rustling the trees, and the statue’s dress seemed to flutter in the breeze. He blinked; the moonlight was playing tricks on him. He approached the sculpture cautiously and examined the black stone of the base. When he looked up the statue was staring straight at him, its face locked in a silent scream.
Edim turned and ran.
Somehow, he found his way back to the house and dove into his room. He clutched his knees, trembling, until the grey light of dawn broke under the gap beneath the door, and he finally fell asleep.
* * *
Edim wandered through the maze until the wild, wordless wailing began. He turned to run, but the ground began to quake. The earth roiled like waves and from the darkness a great beast with four taloned limbs emerged. Its teeth were like scimitars and a pair of leathery wings folded tight against its sides. A bony ridge ran the length of its long, sinuous body from crown to tail, and its ash-grey scales glinted in the uncertain light like diamonds. It cut short its wailing when it saw Edim.
“Free me,” it demanded.
Edim wanted to run, but his legs were locked in place. The beast leaned in close, and Edim could feel its fiery breath searing his skin like the lash of a leather belt. Its eyes were full of rage.
“Free me!”
Edim woke with a start. For a moment he could not remember where he was. The rattle of a key in the door’s lock brought him to full alertness. Hadn’t it been open last night? Fear clutched at his belly as the door swung open to reveal Uncle’s silhouette.
“Get up,” Uncle ordered. Edim scrambled to his feet as Uncle reached in and hauled him out into the hall. He had time to note that the door to the veranda was also firmly shut. “So you think you can just enter any room you like anytime you want?”
Edim kept his eyes fixed on Uncle’s belt buckle and did not answer. He felt as if the air had gone out of the world.
“From today, I will show you who really owns this house.”
It started with food. No breakfast because the windows weren’t properly polished, no lunch because the front yard wasn’t properly swept. Then, slaps across the face if he asked a question; kicks to the buttocks if he wasn’t moving fast enough; sharp knocks to the head if he forgot something.
And if he didn’t follow some instruction in exactly the right way, Uncle would grab him by the shirt collar and whip at his legs and thighs with the nearest item at hand—a belt, a walking stick, a wooden spoon.
Over the next few weeks, Edim learned to stay as close to Naomi as he could—Uncle never beat him in her presence. In that time the outside world dwindled away until it seemed that he had always been in this dark place stalked by fear, afraid to look up or talk too much or step too heavily. Edim grew thin; his golden-brown skin faded to a jaundiced yellow and stretched over his bones like paper. He was tired all the time, yet at night he did not dare sleep, for he was terrified of the dreams.
They had grown more vivid. Now, instead of the stone forest, the trees were alive. He could smell the rich, red earth, could feel tree branches snap at his clothes and catch in the short cap of what was left of his hair as he tried to escape the wailing. The vibrations thrummed through his whole body. Then the taloned beast would be there, asking him questions he could not answer and demanding its freedom.
Edim would wake shivering and in tears because he knew that no matter what he did, he would fail.
* * *
One night he was sitting in his room fighting to stay awake—pinching himself whenever his eyelids began to droop—when the sound of a car driving up to the house startled him. The slam of a car door, followed by a heavy pounding on the front door, cut through the night. Edim leaped to his feet and rushed to answer.
Standing on the veranda, looking ghost-pale in the starlight, was the white man Uncle had called on.
“Fetch your master, boy,” said the white man. “Bring him down immediately.”
Before Edim could reply, he heard Uncle’s heavy footsteps clump down the stairs behind him.
“What kind of nonsense is this? Who is banging on my door anyhow?” Uncle bellowed before catching sight of the man in the doorway. Uncle’s bearing transformed immediately: his shoulders rounding, his hands clutching together at his chest. “Sir, what brings you here in this midnight? I hope no problem?”
“I need more of that treatment. Now. She’s taken a turn for the worse.”
“But sir, it is very late. Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! I saw the way she looked at me. She’s starting to remember!”
“Sir, did you allow her to go outside?” Uncle asked cautiously.
“Of course not!” The white man paused then sagged. “She wanted to see the garden … She said she was feeling better…”
Uncle sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes in frustration.
“Sir, I told you—”
“Listen here, you charlatan, I want no more of your bloody instructions!” The white man straightened. “Get me that treatment, do you hear? Or you’ll spend the rest of your miserable life in a colonial prison.” The man stepped close to Uncle, towered over him, and whispered: “We all know that what happened to Dr. Borchgrave was no accident, don’t we?”
Uncle shrunk into himself even further and Edim saw his face crumple in fear.
“Sir, I will need some time.” His voice was low and tremulous. “By tomorrow. You will have it by tomorrow.”
“I should hope so. For your sake.”
The white man turned on his heel and stalked away. As he started his car and drove off, Edim scuttled back into the house before Uncle could find him. He sat in the shadows of his room, peering through a crack of the slightly open door as Uncle shuffled past to the parlour, shoulders still slumped. A cold knot of dread settled at the bottom of Edim’s stomach. He knew he should not have witnessed that—and he knew that somehow Uncle would make him pay.
