“Leopard! But you thought he was dead.”
“So did he! The man was a blacksmith living on an island in the middle of a sea. I forget the name.”
“No you did not.”
“Fuck the gods, maybe I don’t want to remember. He was no longer a blacksmith, just an old man waiting to die. I stayed there with him. Saw him forget to remember, then saw him forget that he forgets. Listen, there was no Leopard in him—he had forgotten it all living with his young wife and family under one roof, which is no Leopard’s nature. Curse you and your whiskers, he said to me many times. But some days he would look at me and growl and you should see how startled he was, wondering where the growl came from. I changed in front of him once and he screamed as an old man screams, making no sound. Nobody believed him when he shouted, Look a wildcat, he will eat me!”
“This is a very sad story.”
“It gets sadder yet. His children in that house, my brothers and sisters, all had some trace of the cat in them. The youngest had spots all over his back. And none of them liked to wear clothes, even though on this island in the river, men and women covered everything but eyes. When he was dying he kept shifting from man to Leopard to man on his death mat. It scared the children and grieved the mother. In the end it was only me, my youngest brother, and him in the room, since everybody else but the youngest thought it was witchcraft. The youngest looked at his father and finally saw himself. We both became Leopards and I licked my father’s face to calm him. In endless sleep, I left him.”
“That is a sad story. Yet there is beauty in it.”
“You a lover of beauty now?”
“If you saw who left my bed just this morning, you would not ask that question.”
I missed his laugh. The entire inn heard when the Leopard laughed.
“A wanderer I became, Tracker. How I moved from land to land, kingdom to kingdom. Kingdoms where people’s skin was paler than sand, and every seven days they ate their own god. I have been a farmer, an assassin, I even took a name, Kwesi.”
“What does it mean?”
“Fuck the gods if I know. I even became an entertainer of the bawdy arts.”
“What?”
“Enough, man. The reason I sought you out—”
“Fuck the gods with your reason, I will hear more of these bawdy arts.”
“We don’t have much time, Tracker.”
“Then be quick about it. But spare no detail.”
“Tracker.”
“Or I shall rise and leave you with the bill, Kwesi.”
He almost winced when I said that.
“Fine. Enough. So I was a soldier.”
“This doesn’t begin like a bawdy story.”
“Fuck the gods, Tracker. Maybe the story begins when a man found an army—”
“North or South?”
“Fucks for both. I say, this man found an army with need for a man with superior archery skills. This man found himself in lands with no food, and no amusement. This man might have been great with killing the enemy, but was not great keeping peace between his fellow soldiers. Though one or two comely ones served their use.”
“Ever the Leopard.”
“This is how it came to pass. We attacked a village that had no weapons besides stones to cut meat, and burned down their huts with women and children still in them. It happened this way. I said, I do not kill women and children, not even when hungry. The commander’s little bitch says, Then kill them with your bow. I say these are not fighters in war and he says you have an order. I walk away because I’m no soldier and this was not a fight worth coin.
“Say this also happened. The little bitch screamed traitor and in the quick his men were upon me; meanwhile soldiers were still setting fire to children trapped in huts. Four soldiers came at me, and I fired four arrows between four sets of eyes. The little bitch tried to scream again but my fifth arrow went right through his throat. So it goes without telling you, Tracker, that I had to leave, under the cover of fire smoke. But then I wandered for days and days before I found that I was in the sand sea where nothing lives. Four days without water or food, I started to see a fat woman walking on clouds and lions walking on two legs, and a caravan that never touched the sand. Men from the caravan picked me up and threw me in the back.
“I woke up when a boy’s mother had him throw water in my face. The caravan dumped me at some doorstep in Wakadishu.”
“From the sand sea to Wakadishu takes moons, Leopard.”
“’Twas a fast caravan.”
“So now you’re a mercenary,” I said.
“Look at this leper accusing another leper of leprosy.”
“But I find men, not kill them.”
“Of course. It’s cow’s blood you’re always wiping from your helmet. Why do we war over words? Are you happy, Tracker?”
“I am content with much. This world never gives me anything, and yet I have everything I want.”
“Fool, not what I asked you.”
“Beasts look for happiness now? Be less the man and more the Leopard, if this is the man you are going to be.”
“Fuck the gods, Tracker, ’tis a simple question. The longest answer is but one word.”
“This affects your offer?”
“No.”
“Then there’s your answer. I am busy and better busy than bored, is that not so?”
“I’m waiting—”
“For what?”
“For you to say that sadness is not the absence of happiness, but the opposite of it.”
“Have I ever said that?”
“You say something close. And who does your heart belong to?”
“You told me once nobody loves no one.”
“I may have been young, and in love with my own cock.”
“Jakrari mada kairiwoni yoloba mada.”
“What use is that tongue to a cat?”
“Your cock is like a camel to you.”
I was starting to tell him things just to hear that cat laugh.
“I don’t trust people who take voyages without return; it gives them no stakes. I’ve been, let’s say, disappointed by men with nothing to lose,” he said.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“You answer a question with a question?”
“Because here we are, whining like first wives of husbands who no longer want us. But then I’m a boy raised by no one and you pretend to be a man when it suits you, but there are many enchanted beasts that can talk. Whatever this offer is of yours, I’m liking it less and less.”
“My offer hasn’t left my lips, Tracker.”
“No, but you are doing some kind of test.”
“Forgive me, Tracker, but I have not seen you in moons upon moons.”
“And you are the one who sought me out, cat. And now you waste my time. Here’s coin for the raw boar. And extra for all the blood they left in for you.”
“It does me good to see you.”
“I was about to say the same, then you started wondering about my heart.”
“Oh brother, your heart I wonder about all the time. Worry too.”
“This too is part of it.”
“What?”
“Your fucking test.”
“Tracker, we are freeborn. I am drinking and eating with another. At least sit if you’re never going to eat.”
I got up to leave. I was a good few paces away from him when I said, “Send word for me when I have passed whatever test it was you were trying to give me.”
“You think you passed?”
“I passed when I came through the door. Or you wouldn’t have waited four days to call on me. You ever see a man who doesn’t know he’s unhappy, Leopard? Look for it in the scars on his woman’s face. Or in the excellence of his woodcraft and iron making, or in the masks he makes to wear himself because he forbids the world to see his own face. I am not happy, Leopard. But I am not unhappy that I know.”
“I have word of the children.”
He knew that would stop me.
“What? How?”
“I still trade with the Gangatom, Tracker.”
“Give me this word. Now.”
“Not yet. Trust me, your girl is fine, even if she still huffs and puffs and turns to blue smoke when she loses her temper, which is often. Have you seen them?”
“No, not ever.”
“Oh.”
“What is this oh?”
“A strange look on your face.”
“I have no strange look.”
“Tracker, you are nothing but strange looks. Nothing is ever hidden from your face, no matter how much you try to mask it. It’s how I can judge where your heart is with people. You are the world’s worst liar and the only face I trust.”
“I will hear of the children.”
“Of course. They—”
“Did none say I came to see them? Not one?”
“You just said you have not seen them. Not ever, this is what you said.”
“Not ever it might as well be, if they say they have not seen my face.”
“More strangeness, Tracker. The children are fat and smiling. The albino will soon be their best warrior.”
“And the girl?”
“I just told you about the girl.”
“Eat.”
“We have other matters to discuss, Tracker. Enough with nostalgia for now.”
He took the last chunk of flesh in his mouth and chewed. There was blood on the dish. He looked at it, I looked at it, then he looked at me.
“Oh be a fucking beast, Leopard. Your wanting man’s approval troubles me.”
He smiled his huge grin, put the plate to his face, and licked it clean.
“Not fresh kill,” I said.
“But it will do. Now finally. Why I came to see you.”