Ajany’s teeth chatter, but she is not cold. Pinpricks of darkness. She senses that even Odidi is listening.
Revulsion. Fear. Terror.
Sight.
Night insects creak.
The house is still falling down.
Akai says, “Nyipir and me, we went back to the house and waited to be found. No one came.”
“But then so many seasons after, when memory is dust, Ali came. But he could see nothing.”
Akai then closes her eyes.
Inside Ajany, resonance from a song that was being sung as she first crossed the threshold into Saudade: “Clube Dorival.” “A morte é uma canção velha, profunda” (Death is a deep, old song), “braços eternos, curvados sobre as penas” (eternal hands cupping sorrows).
And inherited guilt.
Nyipir and Akai had planted new myths about Wuoth Ogik. It was an aborted mission base. Its disappointed priest had gone back to Europe, after giving over its stewardship to his assistant and friend, Nyipir. In Kenya’s pre- and early post-independence days, anything was believable. And a story repeated often enough became fact.
Ali Dida Hada paces the peripheries. Isaiah and Galgalu stand a little farther away, Galgalu translating and embellishing what he thinks Isaiah should know. Which is not much. “Mister Bolton he hears his two children with Akai-ma is died, much sorrow. So he falls on his gun and it misfires. Oh no! Much blood. Much sorrow. Mzee and Mama, they are afraid because he is died and this is a mzungu and his gun has died him. What people will say? Much sorrow. What to do? So they take his body inside a cave, far from eating animals and … and pray so he is never be forgotten, truly much sorrow.”
Stillness.
Akai then crawls, aiming for Odidi’s cairn. She rests her head on one of the stones. God will see that you reach your place, sleep in this cool place. Giver of peace, give me peace. Her voice is soft. Give my children peace.
44
SOMEWHERE NEAR THE COURTYARD, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE evening, Petrus accosts Ali Dida Hada. “I appreciate your love.”
Ali Dida Hada chokes.
Petrus asks, “All your money?”
“You wanted it.”
“Not everything.”
“Take it.”
“And you?”
Ali Dida Hada sneers, “Concerned?”
Ali Dida Hada turns away toward the boma.
Petrus, in an awkward gesture, tries to give Ali Dida Hada the sign-over papers. Rethinks, and rips them apart instead.
“A joint account?” Ali Dida Hada wonders.
“Better: I’ll be your relative. I’ll show up in every inconvenient season with a long story, one thin dead chicken — stolen — and hands outstretched to receive alms from you.” A sudden grin transfigures Ali Dida Hada’s face. Petrus asks, “Is that reasonable?”
When he can stop laughing, Ali Dida Hada says, “You’ll have to find me first.”
“Relatives like me have a natural radar for our targets.” Petrus puts out his hand for Ali Dida Hada to shake.
Ali Dida Hada grasps it hard.
He hesitates, then asks, “There was a fire at the mission?”
“Yes,” replies Petrus.
“Casualties?”
“A few.”
Ali Dida Hada looks away. “Anyone we know?”
“Yes.”
“Survivors?”
Petrus blinks.
“Yes?”
“A bambaloona”—Petrus pauses—“might have managed to fly away.”
“I see.” A smile.
Later.
Around a now-roaring fire that had sustained a very long wake, four men — Nyipir, Ali Dida Hada, Petrus, Galgalu — and a woman, Akai Lokorijom, murmur in soft, soft tones. At moments what is being said has the cadence of incantations, at times sharp sounds erupt.
Slap! Akai’s hand, Petrus’s face — she now understands who he is.
Then silence.
Murmurs.
A high groan breaks into that night.
Nyipir.
Letting go.
Then stillness.
The intermittent chirping of crickets, muted monotones, like the dirge of sad heralds. An undercurrent of haunted silences, but now also relief.
Ajany, lying on her back, listens to the whisperings. She turns to stare at the black spaces between stars that become Kormamaddo. His nose points south, in the vicinity of her heart. She tastes the tear-flavored names of just-found siblings: Ewoi. Etir. Quieter tears for Odidi, fragile parents, and even Hugh Bolton. This is also the night when she has lost her home. It will return to its true heir. Throbbing in Ajany’s head.
Homelessness is where Far Away is.
Small rocks hard against her back, the earth holding her weight. She turns, presses into the dust as if to dissolve into landscape.
I swear, she remembers.
Soil, fear, threat — what children they had been.
Ajany rubs her face in the soil, kneads it in desire, its aches and promises. What endures? Spaces in the heart that accommodate the absent. She turns over, crosses her hands across her chest, feels the stir of arcane currents of ceaseless, restless love. Kormamaddo twinkling down at illusions. What endures? The hard earth: her limits.
In a corner of the ranch, a changing man gathers words from around a fire. He will try to make sense of these and fill his memories with what he learns. He finds himself wandering off to the boundaries of Wuoth Ogik, looking out, looking in, trying to decide where he ought to go next, how and why. He knows it won’t be England. Not yet.
Later.
From other spaces, a clear voice rings out: “Arabel Ajany!”
Ajany hugs the feeling of her name inside her mother’s voice.
“Arabel Ajany!”
She lingers so she can memorize the shape her name takes in Akai-ma’s mouth.
Soon.
Unsweetened porridge in a calabash. Akai-ma pours a portion out to her daughter and says, “Words are so small. They cannot show the womb of my heart.” She says, “It’s where I hold you.” She says, “My child.”
Ajany’s head goes up.
Gaze-touch.
Akai-ma strokes Ajany’s head, her face. “I leave now, Arabel, I must leave Wuoth Ogik.”
Ajany lowers her bowl, fingers twitching. “Why?”
“Weariness has gobbled up even the words that should bridge.”
Silence. A pause. Ajany is learning to look unflinching into the abyss. This is also being.
“We reached the end of our strength.” Akai’s hand supports her head. “So we turned into mutes.”
Another beginning.
Night hues, ardent cravings, stomach rumble. Ajany wanting to tumble into her mother’s arms and give herself the respite of temporary childlike hopes, of simple homecoming.
Ebbing of life, as normal as the tides.
“What remains?”
“Stories? When we meet again.”
Quiet.
Ajany murmurs, “How will I find you now?”
Silence.
They sip porridge.