Читать книгу Blessing - Florence Ndiyah - Страница 10

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Nchumuluh was a small village. Mumba was an even smaller quarter in the village, a quiet place where people worried mostly about the welfare of their families and community. It was a place where the people all spoke one language and with one voice. However, the arrival of the Church had changed all that. The people no longer walked as one but went about in factions. While one group worshipped at the Catholic Church, others carried out their religious activities in Tchafo’s shrine. Temkeu was among the latter. He often visited the shrine either to consult the gods or to offer sacrifices in supplication or thanksgiving. It was a Tuesday morning. He was off to the shrine to seek the wisdom of the gods. His step was heavy step, as though the burden on his mind had transferred its weight to his feet. To arrive and handover his burden – that was what gave him the strength to keep moving.

He had been walking for sometime. Tchafo’s shrine was only a few meters away. He could make out the outline through the branches of the trees that flanked the footpath. However, just before he came within full sight of the shrine, Tchafo called out from inside, ‘Temkeu, go back to your compound.’

Temkeu suspended his step in midair. He credited the diviner to have foreknowledge of his arrival but as to asking him to return, he was not prepared to give in without a fight. Lips curved in a fury, he dared, ‘What do you mean, Tchafo?’

‘I mean that you should go back to your compound!’

Temkeu took several steps forward. ‘How can you ask me to go back when you have not even heard what I came to tell you?’ he asked boldly. ‘How can you ask me to carry my problem back to my compound?’ At the mouth of the shrine, he took off his ntamp cap, folded it under his armpit, took a deep breath and stepped inside.

‘Temkeu,’ Tchafo said without lifting his head from the bowls into which he was extracting juice from crushed leaves, ‘I have told you to go back.’

‘Go back to where?’ Temkeu asked defiantly. ‘If I cannot get comfort and answers here, where am I going to get them? This is the place where the wisdom of the gods dwell. How can you send me away from the shrine? This shrine is big enough to carry all our problems.’

The shrine! The walls of palm fronds woven between bamboo pillars, the feathers of rainbow colours planted into the fronds, the animal skins sprawled across the earth floor, the raffia bag from which dangled dry snake skins and monkey tails, the gourds and clay pots of various sizes filled with concoctions of leaves, barks and roots of almost every plant species around, the skulls displayed at the four angles of the rectangular structure – such was Tchafo’s shrine. Such was the place where he performed the divine duties of invocation, purification, protection, solicitation, libation and every act related to the gods that had ‘tion’ as suffix.

‘Temkeu,’ Tchafo repeated, ‘The gods have nothing to tell you today except that you should go back to your compound. Your compound is shaking with trouble.’

‘But I am just coming from my compound’ Temkeu barged in. ‘It was very well when I left. There was no trouble around it.’

‘I tell you now that trouble has visited it. Go, Temkeu. You know that the rain has no pity for the man who decides not to cut a leaf to protect himself. I tell you that you should leave my shrine and go back to your compound.’

Temkeu looked over his shoulders at the door. That was as far as his effort went.

‘If you really take me for the eye of the gods, then go back to your compound now.’

Temkeu made as if to keep arguing but then marched out of the shrine. He was used to dishing out orders, not receiving them. He was accustomed to talking down to women. He usually had the last word, even with Mefo. What was Tchafo trying to prove? He swung around and started walking right back. At the entrance he removed his cap, stomped inside, folded his hands over his chest and waited.

Tchafo did not lift an eye in his direction. He went about his business as though in the company of one of his spirit visitors.

‘Why did the ancestors send Fatti back with a message for a dead man?’ Temkeu finally spat out. ‘Why did the ancestors send my child to a dead man? And what is the message which she carries for Saha Tpune?’

‘If you believe in the gods’ Tchafo said, ‘then do what they tell you. The answers you seek will come to you when the time is right. Go, Temkeu. Thunder is striking in your compound.’

This time Temkeu walked out and did not return. The seriousness of Tchafo’s tone had finally sent home the message that something was amiss in his compound. He had strolled to the shrine; he was almost running back to his compound. His body was dripping, beads of sweat trapped in the hairs that had invaded his chest. Despite the searing sun, he marched on, his soles beating the earth.

What good did it do to run ahead of the future? If Tchafo had not told him that trouble was wrecking havoc in his compound, he would have lived the present according to plans of the past. He would have enjoyed the present while poising to tackle whatever lay ahead, but only when it became the present. Here he was breathing like a horse as he rushed to address trouble. What kind of trouble could it be even?

He accidentally hit his left foot against a rock and squealed, ‘I kicked my bad foot? Trouble is really following me. But what kind of trouble?’ Could it be Fatti’s health, or the boys or one of the women? Or maybe it could be Mefo. ‘Disaster strong enough to remove Mefo from my life!’ he muttered. ‘Do I really want to intervene? Do I want to arrive early enough to prevent it from doing its job?’ The stride slowly became a lumber and then nothing. After a few moments, he sighed in resignation. ‘When a man bites his tongue, he cannot spit out all the blood. He must swallow some.’

Mefo remained in his thoughts as he continued the journey home. If only she would acknowledge that the gods are always men, never women! If only she would accept that the eyes of the gods are always men, that Fons are always men, that elders are always men, that nchindas are always men. ‘She may be older,’ Temkeu blurted out, ‘but I am the man. She may be a Mefo, but I am the head of a compound. People will talk of Mefo’s hut but never Mefo’s compound!’

As if in defiance of his words on the subordinate role of women, a woman’s squeal greeted him as he came in view of his compound. Temkeu dashed forward, following the sound until he stood face to face with the source. Nkem. She was clinging to the mango tree in the middle of the compound as though eager to be one with it. Temkeu just stood and watched as she released the mango tree and transferred her aggression to the earth, tormenting it with her buttock’s back and forth movements. Asking her to keep her hands still would have been tantamount to preventing her from discharging her pain, for the more she wailed, the more active her hands became – carrying her jaws, holding her waist, tapping her laps – they just seemed unable to remain still. Her headscarf which had been attacked by her roving hands lay under the tree not far from where she sat. Such a display could have been the climax of a traditional dance but it was the expression of a woman’s distress. ‘Come and help me! Oh, people of Mumba, come!’

And they had come – the nearest neighbours, family, friends, onlookers. Inhabitants of Mumba quarter had taken their usual place around Temkeu’s stage of a compound – the cry of a woman in distress was as good as the village crier’s gong. The villagers had still not gotten over Fatti’s unprecedented return from the land of the ancestor. They talked about it on the farm, the market, the stream, the road, at funerals and death celebrations and in their huts at night. They had again converged in the Fopou compound, and they did not just talk about Fatti, but also about Nkem, the white man’s faithful disciple. Was her agony linked to the white man who had brought his God to compete with theirs?

‘People of Mumba come and help me!’ Nkem again cried out from the ground.

Temkeu did not step forward to help his wife. He took one last glance at her and asked, ‘Where is Fatti?’ He rushed from one hut to the other, starting with Achile’s and ending in Nkem’s from where he pulled out his daughter. ‘Are you okay?’ He stooped to her height and began a rapid physical examination of her body, stretching bones here and flexing joints there. Satisfied, he stretched out and looked about. Nkem was still rocking on the ground. She seemed even more disconsolate.

Mefo was conspicuously absent. Temkeu started hurrying towards her hut but then changed direction and moved towards the five women trying to console Nkem. ‘Come good, my mother-in-law. What trouble is worrying your child? Why is she crying like a child?’

Tangue Pualine gave a thunderous clap, folded her arms above her breasts and clumped her lips. ‘hm!’

‘Hm, what?’ Temkeu barked. ‘Speak woman.’

‘Trouble oh! The gods have spoken.’

‘The gods?’ Temkeu shuddered.

‘Yes, the gods have spoken, and they have not spoken for us.’

‘Tell me, what did they say? When?’

‘You know Samboa, our diviner far away in Nchusa village, the— ’

‘Yes, yes, I know him. What?’

‘I went to see him to ask him to look into the future and tell me if my harvest would be good. You know that problems have been following me these past years –’ At the intense look in Temkeu’s face, she returned to the story. ‘Yes, I went to see him to ask if my harvest would be good. Hm! The kind of thing that he told me made me to start running from Nchusa right to Mumba. Hm!’

‘Hm what? Talk! What did he tell you?’

‘He told me about my grandchild whom the gods sent back to life. He said that death might again steal her soon. He said that …’

Temkeu turned around, fished Fatti out, grasped her wrist and pulled her all the way back to Tchafo’s shrine. Thrusting her forward and watching as she rubbed her sore wrist, he voiced his desire: ‘I do not know what the gods want from this child, but all I ask is that you protect her. Keep her in this world.’

‘A one-year-old spotless white duck,’ Tchafo, who was sitting with his legs folded in, said without looking up. It seemed he had not moved from where Temkeu had last seen him. ‘What I need to appease the gods and call on their protection is a one-year-old spotless white duck.’

When Temkeu returned an hour later with the token, Tchafo pulled Fatti forward and asked her to revert to her birth attire. One clothing-piece over her head and nudity appeared. Tchafo took his place in front of her. Using a blade dug out from one of his many clay pots, he branded her chaste skin with three small lacerations on the outer parts of her wrists, her elbows, the sides of her ribs, the back of her neck, the split of her buttocks, the outer sides of her knees and her ankles. Then, while chanting an incantation, he massaged some black herbal mélange into the cuts. Fatti’s flinching and slight groans went unnoticed as he continued to send the mélange home with all his force. As if to justify the application of pressure, he explained that the medicine had to merge with her blood in order to form the scars which were to protect her from any evil spirits on her trail.

‘You shall not bathe for three days.’ That was the only effort Fatti had to contribute towards the success of the operation. ‘Take this and swallow.’ Tchafo handed her a bowl of gloop. ‘It tastes like Aloe Vera and earwax combined, but it is accurate like the predictions of the gods and efficient like Tchafo.’

‘Since you are not to bathe for three days –’ Temkeu said to Fatti on their way home ‘– you can stay away from the farm for three days.’

‘Thank you, Papa.’

As soon as he walked into his hut, Temkeu approached his skulls, words of supplication tumbling from his mouth: ‘This matter now lies in your hands. I have done what is in my power to appease the gods to act in my favour. I count on you to do the rest. You know that I need this child here with me in the land of the living – that is why you sent her back to me. Please do not take her again before … before … Please just give me more time with her.’

That night Temkeu retired over a jug of palm wine and later on Achile’s body. The night was not so good for Nkem who got out of bed with the puffy eyes of one who had not seen sleep at all. It had taken a brawl for Mefo to allow Fatti to spend the night with her. Standing by the bed, she looked down at Fatti lying on the hay mattress. The cuts on Fatti’s bare torso looked up at her. She sighed and walked outside.

Just as the bells alerting Christians that they had thirty more minutes before the start of 6 00 a.m Mass rang, Nkem rushed back into her hut and to the bed. ‘Fatti, wake up. Fatti.’ She shook the child out of slumber. ‘Wake up, Fatti.’

‘Mama?’

‘Yes, wake up and let us go for Mass.’

Rubbing her eyes and scratching her stomach, Fatti got up and aimed for the door, but before she had taken two steps, she tripped over a gourd and kicked the mortar.

‘Come, I will help you. Where is your chewing stick?’

Five minutes later, as they wiped off the dew from the grass with their bare feet, Fatti asked, ‘Is something happening in church, Mama?’

‘I just want Father to pray for you.’

‘Okay, Mama.’

The fierce cold made them billow steam with each word. It turned their skins to a bed of taut goose pimples and increased the hardness of the calluses on their soles and palms. Nevertheless, they hurried on, letting nothing prevent them from catching up with the appointment with God. They left behind women with cainjas strapped on their backs and young men strolling lazily, chewing sticks sticking out of their mouth. Aside from the whistling of the cold wind, the air also bore the sound of dry corn grains bouncing against the iron walls of a corn mill and that of exploding gunpowder. When the distinct cry of the juju gong commanding all women to opt for blindness met up with them, they immediately halted, turned their heads to the bush and waited until the sound of the juju, which was returning from or heading to a burial or death celebration, faded in the distance.

Almost thirty minutes after they set out, Nkem and Fatti finally arrived at the church door and crossed the boundary into serenity. Though the church had existed only for about a year, Nkem and a handful of other women, like Suum’s mother, had made it the most regular place they visited, second only to their farms – and it was only after daily morning Mass that many of these new converts set out with hoes and cainjas. Such swift attachment to so alien a culture had not gone unnoticed by other villagers. Of the many rumours circulating on their account, the most prominent was that the white man had charmed them. But how? Some villagers had taken it upon themselves to dig out the truth. They had returned from spy missions to the white man’s haven with the theory that the charm was put in the wafer: ‘The white man eats a large piece, prepared differently, but gives our people very small slices.’

Even before the village had time to digest the charm theory, others had moved on to analyse the wafer-size evidence: ‘Our people, in other parts of the country, labour hard in the fields to grow the wheat and produce the flour. Our women, in the convents, prepare the bread. The white man comes and all he does is say a few words over it; yet he eats the greater share!’

The more they speculated, the more theories they devised. At the end of the day, the white man was not only considered as a lazy glutton but also an egoist who drank alone while the natives ate and swallowed saliva.

As time passed, the villagers’ concerns had moved from the rapid adhesion of the women to the priest’s lifestyle: ‘We need at least three women before we feel there is a piece of manhood in us. But look at this man who survives without even a quarter of a woman? He is not normal!’ A few words but repeated over and over by many mouths.

The Christians did not give in without a fight, ‘Our priest, our man of God, is a special man. God did not use a woman’s rib to make him. God used his own rib. So a woman kills our priest like salt kills an earthworm.’ Even these many words from Fr. Maxworth Cain’s few supporters did not prevent the sceptics from growing in number and propagating their theory further. Everyone in the quarter knew the songs that had been composed to describe him.

What inspired Nkem and the other adherents to follow the new faith? Was it some deficiencies of their own traditional religion or simply adventure? Was it curiosity over the white man and all he represented or surrender to a force too powerful to be ignored? Though Nkem and the other Christians so far had been unable to give satisfactory answers to these questions posed by their contemporaries, the doubts remained in their compounds and in the quarters. In church the priest had no equal.

After Mass, Nkem took Fatti to Fr. Max. ‘Pray that God should protect her, Father.’

While chanting an incantation, Fr. Max sprinkled holy water on Fatti and used his chrism-greased thumb to cross her forehead. ‘Pray the rosary with her everyday and bring her to Mass as often as you can,’ he said to Nkem, ‘and get her baptised.’

‘Her father is the problem,’ Nkem retorted.

‘Fatti, do you have a rosary?

‘No, Father.’

They collected the rosary from the presbytery and got to the compound in time to catch Temkeu’s last words to his skulls: ‘… protect Fatti so that she stays here on earth. There is still much she has to achieve. Let her not come and go without a history big enough to be passed down.’

Temkeu got out of bed with a word to his skulls and went to bed with a word to his skulls. The last visit he made each night was to Mefo’s hut and the first in the morning was still to Mefo’s hut. He did not want to hear from another that Fatti had woken in the same state in which she had gone to bed. He had to verify for himself that her breath had not been snatched away during the night. Like everyone in the compound, Temkeu agreed that one good had at least been born from the crisis: For the first time in a very long time, Mefo’s and his thoughts had moved in the same direction. They had unanimously agreed that Mefo was in a better position to do the right thing should the ancestors try to take Fatti during the night. That was how Fatti, for the second time, had left her mother’s hut for Mefo’s.

Soon the three days of rest were over. Fatti returned to accompanying her mother to the farm. When she got back home in the evening, she made for Mefo’s hut where she spent the night. As she continued to live with the days and weeks, Temkeu’s attention gradually shifted to another aspect of her life. Each morning, as she walked past his hut on her way to the farm, his eyes did a tour of her anatomy.

‘Why is her chest is still flat? Where are the signs of womanhood?’ In need of answers to the questions he asked himself, he called her to his hut one evening. ‘How many branches have you cut from your age tree?’

‘Nine, Papa.’

In the continuous absence of the sight his eyes were on the lookout for, the news that she had added one year from the time he last inquired was good enough to merit celebration over palm wine and corn beer with his friends. Fatti was getting riper and the time was drawing nearer.