FIFTEEN
A ghost knows who to scare. As the sun glides to noon, men and women grab their children and run home, close windows, and draw curtains, for in Kongor it is noon that is the witching hour, the hour of the beast, when heat cracks the earth open to release seven thousand devils. I have no fear of devils. I went south, then turned west along the border road to the Nimbe quarter. Then I turned south down a crooked street, west down an alley, then south again until I came upon the Great Hall of Records.
Kongor was the record keeper for all the North Kingdom and most of the free states, and the Hall of Records was open to anyone who stated his purpose. But nobody came to these large rooms, five tall floors of scrolls stacked on shelves, stacked on top of each other, as tall as any palace in Kongor. The hall of records was like the palace of clouds in the sky—people were satisfied that it existed without ever entering, ever reading book or paper, or even coming close. On the way there I was hoping to meet a demon, or a spirit of someone who would feed the hunger of my two new axes. I truly wanted a fight.
Nobody was here but an old man with a hunch in his back.
“I seek the records of the great elders. Tax records as well,” I said to the old man. He did not look up from the large maps he stood over.
“Them young people, too hot in the neck, too full in the balls. So this great King who is only great in the echo of his voice, which is to say not great at all, conquers a land and says this land is now mine, redraw the maps, and you young men with papyrus and ink redraw the old map for the new and forget entire lands as if the gods of the underworld tore open a hole in the earth and sucked in the entire territory. Fool, look. Look!”
The library master blew map dust in my face.
“Truth, I know not what I look at.”
He frowned. I could not tell if his hair was white from age or from dust.
“Look in the center. Do you not see it? Are you blind?”
“Not if I see you.”
“Be not rude in this great hall and shame whoever you came out of.”
I tried not to smile. On the table stood five thick candles, one tall and past his head, another so down to the stub that it would set things afire if left alone. Behind him towers and towers of papers, of papyrus, of scrolls and books bound in leather and piled one on top of the other, reaching the ceiling. I was tempted to ask what if he desired a book in the middle. Between the towers were bundles of scrolls and loose papers that fell flat. Dust settled like a cloud right above his head and cats fat on rats scrambled.
“Alert the gods, he is now deaf as well as blind,” the library master said. “Mitu! This master of map arts, which I am sure he calls himself, has forgotten Mitu, the city at the center of the world.”
I looked at the map again. “This map is in a tongue I cannot read.”
“Some of these parchments are older than the children of the gods. Word is divine wish, they say. Word is invisible to all but the gods. So when woman or man write words, they dare to look at the divine. Oh, what power.”
“The tax and household records of the great elders, I seek. Where are—”
He looked at me like a father accepting the disappointment of his son.
“Which great elder do you seek?”
“Fumanguru.”
“Oh? Great is what they call him now?”
“Who says he is not, old man?”
“Not I. I am indifferent to all elders and their supposed wisdom. Wisdom is here.” The library master pointed behind himself without looking.
“That sounds like heresy.”
“It is heresy, young fool. But who will hear it? You are my first visitor in seven moons.”
This old bastard was becoming my favorite person in Kongor who was not a buffalo. Maybe because he was one of the few who did not point to my eye and say, How that? A leather-bound book, on its own pedestal and large as half a man, opened up and from it burst lights and drums. Not now, he shouted, and the book slapped itself back shut.
“The records of the elders are back there. Walk left, go south past the drum of scrolls to the end. Fumanguru will bear the white bird of the elders and the green mark of his name.”
The corridor smelled of dust, paper rot, and cat. I found Fumanguru’s tax records. In the hall, I sat on a stack of books and placed the candle on the floor.
He paid much in tax, and after checking the records of others, including Belekun the Big, I saw he paid more than he needed to. His death wish that his lands be given to his children was written on loose papyrus. And there were many little books bound in smooth leather and hairy cowskin. His journals, his records, or his logs, or perhaps all three. A line here that said keeping cows made no sense in tsetse fly country. Another saying what should we do with our glorious King? And this:
I fear I shall not be here for my children and I shall not be here soon. My head resides in the house of Olambula the goddess who protects all men of noble character. But am I noble?
Here I was wishing I could slap a dead man. The old man had gone silent. But Fumanguru:
Day of Abdula Dura
So Ebekua the elder took me aside and said Fumanguru, I have news from the lands of sky and the chambers of the underworld that made me shiver. The gods have made peace, and so have spirits of nurture and plenty with devils and there is unity in all heavens. I said I do not believe this for it demands of the gods what they are not capable of. Look, the gods cannot end themselves, even the mighty Sagon, when he tried to take his own life only transformed it. For the gods there is nothing to discover, nothing new. Gods are without the gift of surprising themselves, which even we who crawl in the dirt have in abundance. What are our children but people who continue to surprise and disappoint us? Ebekua said to me, Basu I do not know by how this entered your head, but bid it farewell and let us never speak on such things again.
A smaller book, bound in alligator skin, opens with this:
Day of Basa Dura
Oh I should know the will of Kwash Dara? Is that what he thinks? Did he not know that even when we were boys I was my own man?
Five pages more:
Bufa Moon
And nothing until so far down the edge of the page the words nearly fell off:
Tax the elders? A grain tax? Something as essential as air?
Obora Gudda Moon
Day of Maganatti Jarra to Maganatti Britti
He set us free today. The rains would not stop. Work of the gods.
I threw down that book and picked up another, this one in hairy black-and-white cowskin, not shiny leather. The pages were bound in brilliant red thread, which meant this was the most new, even though it was in the middle of the stack. He put it in the middle, surely. He scrambled the order so that no one could build the story of his life too easy, of this I was certain. A cat dashed past me. A flutter over my head and I looked up. Two pigeons flew out a window high up over me.
What are we in, but a year of mad lords?
Sadassaa Moon
Day of Bita Kara
There are men that I have lost all love for, and there are the words I will write in a message I will never send, or in a tongue that they will never read.
Day of Lumasa
What is love for child, if not mania? I look at the magic of my smallest boy and cry, and I look at the muscle and might of the oldest, and grin with a pride that we are warned should be only of the gods. And for them and the four in between, I have a love that scares me. I look at them and I know it, I know it, I know it. I would kill the one who comes to harm my sons. I would kill that one with no mercy and no thought. I would search for that one’s heart and rip the thing out and shove it in their mouth, even if that one is their own mother.