“What else?”
“A great slumber. Traveling but not moving. A long scream. What does the Ogo remember?”
“Everything, it seems. His whole life came back to him. Do you remember when we set out? You had a problem with me.”
“We must have solved it, for I do not remember it.”
“If you heard yourself, you would not have thought so.”
“You are confusing, Tracker. I sit and eat with you, and there is love between us that until now was the kind we never had to declare. So stop living in a squabble so little that I cannot remember it, even with you prompting me. When do we go to the boy’s house? Shall we go now?”
“Yesterday you wer—”
“Kwesi!” his arrow boy shouted, and dropped the basket he was carrying. Maybe I did forget his name out of spite. He came over to the table, not looking or even nodding at me.
“You are not well enough to be eating strange things,” he said to the Leopard.
“Here is meat and here is bone. Nothing is strange.”
“Go back to the room.”
“I am well.”
“You are not.”
“Are you deaf?” I said. “He said he is well.”
Fumeli tried to glare at me and fuss over the Leopard with the same face, but it came out as him fussing a little over me and glaring a little at the Leopard. Even when it was not funny, this boy provoked me to laugh. He stomped off, grabbing his basket on the way out. One of his little parcels fell out. Cured pig, I could smell it. Supplies. The Leopard sat down on the table and crossed his legs.
“I should lose him soon.”
“You should have lost him moons ago,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing, Leopard. There are things I must tell you. Not here. I do not trust these walls. Truly there are some strange things here.”
“You’ve said this four times now. Why is everything strange, friend?”
“The black puddle woman.”
“It’s these statues that bother me. I feel like an army is going to watch me fuck at night.”
He grabbed one of the statues by the neck, and grinned that wide smile I couldn’t remember when last I saw.
“This one the most,” he said.
“Grab your bird,” I said.
We wrapped our waists in cloths and walked south to Gallunkobe/Matyube. The freemen and slave quarter, also the poorest, except for vulgar houses that spread wide instead of tall for freemen with much coin, but no noble air. Most of the houses were one room or hall, and packed so tight that they shared the same roof. Not even a rat could squeeze between each wall. The towers and roofs of the Nyembe quarter made it look like a huge fort or a castle, but no towers rose in this quarter. Freemen and slaves had no need to watch anyone, but everyone needed to watch them. And despite having the most men and women sleeping there at night, by day it was the emptiest quarter, freemen and slaves at work in the other three.
“When did Bunshi tell you such a story?”
“When? Good cat, you were there.”
“I was? I don’t … yes I do remember … memory comes forth, then slips away.”
“Memory must be one of them who heard what you do in bed.”
He chuckled.
“But, Tracker, I remember it as if somebody told me, not as if I was there. I have no smell of it. So strange.”
“Yes, strange. Whatever that Fumeli makes you smoke, stop smoking such.”
I was happy to talk to the Leopard, as I always am, and I did not want to bring up the sourness of the days past—one moon past, a fact that staggered him every time I said it. I think I know why. Time is flat to all animals; they measure it in when to eat, when to sleep, when to breed, so missed time to him feels a board with a huge hole punched out.
“The slaver said the boy was his partner’s son, now an orphan. Men kidnapped the boy from his housekeeper and murdered all others in that house. Then he said the house belonged to his aunt, not his housekeeper. Then we saw him and Nsaka Ne Vampi try to pry information out of the lightning girl, who we set free but then she jumped off a cliff and landed in Nyka’s cage.”
“You tell me things I know. Everything but this lightning woman in the cage. And I remember thinking for sure this slaver lies, but not about what.”
“Leopard, that was when Bunshi poured herself down the wall and said the boy was not that boy, but another who was the son of Basu Fumanguru, who was an elder, and on the Night of the Skulls the Omoluzu attacked the house and killed everyone but the boy who was then a baby and who Bunshi hid in her womb to save him, but then she took him to a blind woman in Mitu who she thought she could trust, but the blind woman sold him to a slave market where a merchant bought him, perhaps for his barren wife, but then they were attacked by men of malicious means. A hunter took the boy and now none can find him.”
“Slow, good friend. None of this I remember.”
“And that is not all, Leopard, for I found another elder, who called himself Belekun the Big, who said the family died of river sickness, which was false, but the family was eight, which was true, and of it six were sons and none were just born.”
“What are you saying, Tracker?”
“Do you not remember when I told you this on the lake?”
The Leopard shook his head.
“Belekun was always liar and I had to kill him, especially when he tried to kill me. But he had no reason to lie about this, so Bunshi must have. Yes, Omoluzu killed Basu Fumanguru’s family, and yes, many know this including her, but that the boy we seek was not his son as he had no young sons.”
The Leopard still looked confused. But he raised his brow as if a truth suddenly struck him.
“But, Leopard,” I continued, “I have done some looking and some digging and somebody here in this city also asks of Fumanguru, meaning they asked to be told if somebody asks, which means the closed matter of the dead elder is not so closed, because one thing remains open, this missing boy who is not his son, and though he may not be his son, he is the reason why others search for him and why we search for him and given that Fumanguru was an annoyance but not a real enemy of the King, whoever sent roof walkers to his house was not there to kill the family but was there for the boy, who Fumanguru must have been protecting. They too know he is alive.”
I told the Leopard all this and this is truth, I was more confused by the telling than he was by listening. Only when he repeated all that I said did I understand it. We were still ankle deep in the water when he said, “You know this buffalo stands behind us as we speak.”
“I know.”
“Can we trust him?”
“He looks like a trustworthy beast.”
“If he lies, I will bring him down with my jaws and make supper out of him.”
The buffalo snorted and started kicking up his right front leg in the water.
“He jests,” I said to the buffalo.
“A little,” the Leopard said. “To this man’s house with us. These robes make my balls itch.”
Sadogo sat on the floor in his room, punching his left palm with his right hand and setting off sparks. I stepped into the doorway and stayed there. He saw me.
“There he was. I grabbed his neck and squeezed until his head popped off. And her, her too, I swung this hand, this I hold up right here and slapped her so hard that I broke her neck. Soon the masters would gather seats and men and women who paid cowrie, and corn, and cows to watch me execute women, and children, and men with my hands. Soon they built seats in a circle and charged money and cast bets. Not for who would best me, for no man can ever best an Ogo. But for who would last longest. The children their necks I breaked quick so they would not suffer. This made them mad—who would watch, for they must have it, don’t you see? Don’t you see, they must have show. Curse the gods and fuck them all in the ears and ass, they will have a show, that is what I tell you.”
I knew what would happen. I left the Ogo. He would be talking all night, no matter the misery such talk caused him. Part of me wanted to give him ears, for there was depth there, things he had done that he buried wherever Ogos bury their dead. The Leopard was already grabbing his crotch when he went in the room with Fumeli. Sogolon was gone, and so was the girl and the lord of the house. I wanted to go to Fumanguru’s home, but did not want to go alone.