There was nothing to do but wait on the Leopard. Down the stairs, night crept up without me even seeing it. Kongor plays as a righteous city under sunlight, but turns into what all righteous cities turn into under the dark. Fires lit up patches of the sky, from the Bingingun far off. Drums at times jumped over roofs, and above the road, and shook our windows, while lutes, flute, and horns sneaked in under. I did not see a single man in Bingingun all day. I went out the window and sat in the sill, looking across to rooms with flickering lights, few, and rooms already dark, many. Fumeli, wearing a rug, walked past me carrying a lamp. He returned shortly after, passing me again carrying a wineskin. I followed him, ten and two or so paces behind. He left the door open.
“Grab your bow, or at least a good sword. No, make it daggers, we go with daggers,” I said.
The Leopard rolled around in the bed. On his back he snatched the wineskin from Fumeli, who did not look at me.
“You drink palm wine now?”
“I’ll drink blood if I wish,” he said.
“Leopard, time is not something we have to lose. Kwesi.”
“Fumeli, tell me this. Is it ill wind blowing under that window, or is it you speaking in a tone that sours me?”
Fumeli laughed quiet.
“Leopard, what is this?”
“What is this indeed? What is this? What is this, Tracker? What. Is. This?”
“This is about the house of the boy. The house that we are going to visit. The house that might tell us where he went.”
“We know where he’s gone. Nyka and that bitch of his already found him.”
“How do you know? Some drums told you? Or a little whore whispered something before sunset?”
A growl, but from Fumeli, not him.
“I go to only one place, Tracker. I go to sleep.”
“You plan to find him in dreams? Or maybe you plan to send your little maiden here.”
“Get out,” Fumeli said.
“No no no. You do not speak to me. And I only speak to him.”
“And if the him is me, then I say, you don’t speak to him or me,” the Leopard said.
“Leopard, are you mad or is this some game to you? Are there two children in this room?”
“I’m not a chil—”
“Shut up, boy, by all the gods I’ll—”
The Leopard jumped up. “By all the gods you will … what?”
“What is this relapse? First you are hot then you are cold, you are one thing, and then you are another. Is this little bitch bewitching you? I don’t care. We go now and argue later.”
“We leave tomorrow.”
The Leopard walked over to the window. Fumeli sat up in the bed, stealing looks at me.
“Oh. So we are in these waters again,” I said.
“How funny you talk,” Fumeli said. In my mind my hands were at his throat.
“Yes. In those waters, as you’ve said. We go our own way to find the boy tomorrow. Or we don’t. Either way we leave here,” the Leopard said.
“I told you about the boy. Why we need to find—”
“You tell me many things, Tracker. Not much of it any use. Now please go where you came from.”
“No. I will find what is this madness.”
“Madness, Tracker, is you thinking I would ever work with you. I can’t even stand drinking with you. Your envy stinks, did you know it stinks? It stinks as much as your hate.”
“Hate?”
“It confused me once.”
“You’re confused.”
“But then I realized that you are full from head to toe with nothing but malcontent. You cannot help yourself. You even fight it, sometimes well. Enough for me to let you lead me astray.”
“Fuck the gods, cat, we are working together.”
“You work with no one. You had plans—”
“To what, take the money?”
“You said it, not I. Did you hear him say it, Fumeli?”
“Yes.”
“Shut that fucking ass mouth, boy.”
“Leave us,” said the Leopard.
“What did you do to him?” I said to Fumeli. “What did you do?”
“Other than open my eyes? I don’t think Fumeli seeks credit. He’s not you, Tracker.”
“You don’t even sound—”
“Like myself?”
“No. You don’t even sound like a man. You’re a boy whose toys Father took away.”
“There’s no mirror in this room.”
“What?”
“Leave, Tracker.”
“Fuck the gods and fuck this little shit.”
I jumped at Fumeli. Leapt onto the bed and grabbed his neck. He slapped at me, the little bitch in him too weak to do anything else, and I squeezed. “I knew you consulted with witches,” I said. A big, black hairy mess knocked me down and I hit my head hard. The Leopard, full black and one with the dark, scratched my face with his paw. I grabbed at his neck skin, and we rolled over and over on the floor. I punched at him and missed. He ducked right down to my head and clamped his jaws on my neck. I couldn’t breathe. He clamped and swung his head, to break my neck.
“Kwesi!”
The Leopard dropped me. I wheezed air and coughed up spit.
The Leopard growled at me, then roared, almost as loud as a lion. It was a “get out” kind of roar. Get out and don’t come back.
I headed for the door, wiping my wet neck. Spit and a little blood.
“Don’t be here tomorrow,” I said. “Neither of you.”
“We don’t take orders from you,” Fumeli said. The Leopard paced by the window, still a Leopard.
“Don’t be here tomorrow,” I said again.
I went to the Ogo’s room.
Bingingun. This is what I learned from the Kongori and why they hate nakedness. To wear only skin is to wear the mind of a child, the mind of the mad, or even the mind of the man with no role in society, even lower than usurers and trinket sellers, for even such as they have their use. Bingingun is how people of the North set a place for the dead among the living. Bingingun is the masquerade, drummers and dancers and singers of great oriki. They wear the aso oke cloth underneath, and this cloth is white with indigo stripes, and looks like that with which we clothe the dead. They wear net on the face and hands, for now they will be masquerade, not men with names. When the Bingingun spins and makes a whirlwind the ancestors possess them. They jump high as roofs.
He who makes the costume is an amewa, a knower of beauty, for if you know the Kongori they view everything through the eye of what is beautiful. Not ugly, for that has no value, especially ugliness of character. And not too beautiful, for that is a skeleton in disguise. Bingingun is made from the best of fabrics, red, and pink, and gold, and blue, and silver, all trimmed in cowries and coins, for there is power in the beauty. In patterns, braids, sequins, tassels, and amulets with medicine. Bingingun in dance, Bingingun in march, make for transformation into the ancestors. All this I learned on my travels, for Juba has masquerade, but they are not Bingingun.
I said all this to the Ogo because we followed a procession on the way to the house so that a man as tall as he would not look strange in the torchlight. He still looked strange. Five drummers in front setting the dance—three beating barrel drums, a fourth beating a double-skin bata, and the fifth beating four small bata tied together to make a sound pitched high like a crow call. Following the drummers came the Bingingun, among them the Ancestor King in royal robes and a cowrie veil, and the Trickster, whose robes turned inside out to another robe, and yet another robe, as the Bingingun all swirled and stomped to the drum, boom-boom-bakalak-bakalaka, bakalakalakalaka-boom-boom-boom. Ten and five of this clan shuffled to the left then stomped, then shuffled to the right and hopped. I said all this to the Ogo so that he would not start talking again of whom he had killed with his hands and how there is nothing in this world or the next like the sound of the crushing of skull. Sadogo’s face was lost to me in the dark, and as he stood taller than the torches, he waved his hands in the air with the Bingingun, marched when they marched, and stopped when they stopped.
Here is truth. I did not know which house was Fumanguru’s, other than that it was in the Tarobe quarter, north of the Nimbe boundary, and that it would be almost hidden by massive growths of thornbush. I said, “Good Ogo, let us look. Let us walk street to street, and stop by which house burns no light and hides in branches that will prick and cut us.”
Outside the fourth house Sadogo grabbed a torch from the wall. At the ninth house I smelled it, the fire stink of sulfur, still fresh in its scent after so many years. Most of the houses on this street stacked themselves tight beside each other, but this stood apart, now an island of thornbush. Larger than the other houses, from how it looked in the dark, the bush had grown wide and tall, reaching all the way up the front door.
We went around the back. The Ogo was still quiet. He wore his gloves, not listening when I said they were no use against the dead. Look at how they failed to save you from Ogudu, I thought, but did not say. He tore away the branches until it was safe to climb. We jumped the back wall and landed in a thick blanket of grass. Wild grass left to grow tall, some of it to my waist. Omoluzu had without a doubt been here. Only plants that grew off the dead grew here.
We stood in the courtyard, right beside the grain keep, with millet and sorghum gone sour from getting wet from many rains, caked with rat shit and fresh with rat pups. The house, a cluster of dwellings, five points like a star, was not what I expected in Kongor. Fumanguru was no Kongori. Sadogo placed the torch in the dirt and lit up the whole courtyard.
“Spoiled meat, fresh shit, dead dog? I can’t tell,” the Ogo said.