‘What happens to Empires, to those centres of power that set out to dominate the world? Rome, Greece, Egypt? Rome is now a glorified theatre of ruins. Greece is a faded place, with no active memory of its astounding past. And Egypt is a necropolis. They conquer the world and are later overrun by the world. Because they set out to dominate the world they are condemned to live with the negative facts of their domination. They will be changed by the world that they set out to colonize. They shrink, and their former glory becomes an angry shadow. Is that the fate of imperialists – the inevitable dissolution of overreachers? Is it possible that those we colonize will later overrun us? Are we too to suffer the fate of all overreachers – the inevitable etiolation of the spirit? These people we call barbarians, will we not, like ancient Rome, find that they both devour and regenerate our powers?’
The Governor-General paused again. He was unaware that an angel, all celestial fire and gold, was poised just above him. It hovered in the window behind that opened out onto a sky of African blue and onto the charred lawn from which the African boy had arisen, transfigured. The Governor-General’s mood deepened. His thoughts had wandered into an unknown place. Novalis might have had this place in mind when he noted that ‘instinct is the genius in paradise’. And, touched by the enchantments of that unknown place, the Governor-General began writing again. He wrote that in moments when the wind changes, bringing beautiful night on its wings, he felt like an African himself and could understand the hidden stories in the fragrance of orange blossoms and agapanthus. Soaring and lost in himself, he wrote that in the beginning the creator spread the great jigsaw of humanity and human genius amongst all the peoples of the earth, and that no one people can have the complete picture alone. He wrote that:
‘It is only when the diverse peoples of the earth meet and learn from and love one another that we can begin to get an inkling of this awesome picture. Call it the picture of divinity, or humanity if you want, but like the magic powder that Africans sometimes allude to, this great jigsaw has been distributed amongst all of us; and one aspect of our destiny on this earth may be to discover something of that grand image or music of our collective souls, of our immense possibilities, our infinite riches. No one person or people has the final road or the great keyboard or exclusive possession of this jigsaw of humanity. Only together, as one people of this earth, facing our common predicament and redeeming love, can we make use of this universal gift, this map of our earthly journey and glory.’
Much later, in his native land, the Governor-General was to be quite frightened when he came upon that passage. He had no idea what had made him write it, no memory of when he had written it, or how. And when his memoirs came out to a modest critical reception, he would much regret the fact that he had allowed the editor of the small publishing house to cut out that passage which he felt constituted the most inspired fruit of his colonial service.
I watched him that day, and I saw him that night through the eyes of the yellow moth. I lay in the darkness of our small room in the ghetto, while he wrote feverishly about our lives in the white spaces of his colonial mansion. I saw him trying out ways of putting Byron’s lines about the second dance of freedom into his own words, without much success, as he sweated in his study. His inspired mood had deserted him and the singing had stopped. The moth had circled away from him towards the open window. It had flown out into a sky magnetized by an unusual saturation of the yellow dust of angels.
THREE
A beauty bordering on terror
THE MAGNETIC FIELD of the angel as it flew over our city enveloped the old woman in the forest with a humility deeper than wisdom. The suffocating animals had recovered in the wake of the heatwave; she felt their presence amidst the trees around her hut. She had seen the herbaceous plants recover their intensity of green; birds were piping among the dense branches.
The forest breathed a new fragrance. For the first time in many years she awoke into a day of tender sunlight without despair or bitterness in her heart. I could see her bafflement at the music which came from the settlements on the other side of the forest. The music and the singing roused in her memories of feast days in her village when elders spoke of the holy man who had seen an angel at night and who knew the precise date and hour he would die. She remembered them talking about how the holy man had called everyone together to make preparations for the special day. In the midst of her solitude the old woman found her hut now crowded with ancient presences; she saw holy men in shrouds bearing gifts for an invisible king. She went outside and looked up at the sky for signs of a visitation. A cat brushed past her foot. And then, in a startled moment, she saw a white and yellow form floating in the air above her hut. It was a form with mighty wings, dazzling like the brightness of pure moonlight. In a moment the form was gone.
Then she heard voices in the trees. Hobbling to the edge of the forest, she saw women with white dresses fleeing down the paths. For a moment, her eyes seemed to fail her. She watched as the intensity of the women created a marvellous turbulence in the wind. The leaves stirred. Then the women released a beautiful cry in unison and their bodies rose from the ground and they ran on the air of tender sunlight. Their transformation was accompanied by an explosion of yellow dust which struck the old woman blind. She hobbled back to her hut, her hands feeling the air. But her heart was serene. A beautiful terror glowed in her spirit.
When she got home she lay on her bed. Her mind was full of visions of angels whose wings had been a little stained by human blood, the blood of the innocent dying. Her mind was rich with the vision of angelic presences in human forms, of angels baffled by the intensity of human suffering.
She lay on her bed till her sight returned. I watched her through the eyes of the cat as she hobbled out and began her most extraordinary weaving. She wove scenes of frightening beauty, beauty bordering on terror. Painstakingly, and with a dexterity unusual for her age, she wove her most lovely section about the good people who survive terrible times through innocence and patience and through transformations. She wove idyllic landscapes and hillsides with yellow and blue flowers. Beautiful men and women were lying on the grass with a golden glow around them. Above them was a shimmering sky. She wove charming designs for future African cities. She wove the rich dream of a city, with magic water spouting from fountains. The inhabitants were radiant in the higher realization of all their sleeping possibilities. She wove villages with houses made of blue mirrors. Trees with palatial interiors. Serene rivers running alongside well-made roads. Trees in bloom along the streets. Flowers in the middle of lanes. She wove another city with seven sacred hills as its centre of pilgrimage. She worked all through that splendid day.
In the afternoon, as we were listening to the blind old man’s music, and as the Governor-General spied on his servants, the old woman wove herself into a tranquil hallucination. In this hallucination she created the forms of angels flying over a future city, taking into their beings some of the dust and atomic radiation of our human history, taking in the flurry and chaos of our restless spirit. She wove scenes in which angels entered human beings or passed through them and emerged a little confused about their momentary humanity, while the human beings were terrified at their own sudden angelic qualities, their moods of a golden eternity. The old woman created a mesmerising section in which goats were turning into men, in which men were half-transformed into angels, their black wings bristling with a deep yellow glow. It dazzled with the confusion of angels. Angels who had the feet of women; one wing eagle, the other angel. Their faces were puzzled and enchanted. Their eyes were horrified and full of wonder. Around these scenes of redemption by beauty, this terror of angelic presences, were scenes of carnage, poverty, war, corruption. And containing it all were golden weaves, a mellow frame like an eternal summery dawn.
The old woman worked all through that day. Her sight failed her and recovered. Turned moon-white and then green. Lost in her visionary mood, she created the intermingling of humans and angels. The
angels were weighed down with the debris and the failures of the human spirit. And the humans were raised up by angels who breathed alternative dreams of a beautiful future into the disturbed air.
And it was only when she was exhausted, with tears pouring down her face, clearing her vision, that she saw something which astonished her. She saw that in her inspired mood she had woven angels of many colours. There were blue angels. Flaming red angels. Black angels. Yellow angels. All her colours were mixed up as if her dyes had been poisoned by the air. She saw all this and got up, screaming. The girl with the wooden leg hurried over and led her into the hut and prepared for her a strong draught of herbs which put her into a profound sleep. In the depths of her sleep she was encompassed by the many-coloured angels she had woven.
That evening I saw an angel of a colour human eyes have never seen as I got drunk on the blind old man’s wine. Everywhere along our street people were drunk on the mood of angels.
FOUR
End of an enchantment
THE SPIRITS OF the land were peaceful in their spheres. The air was fresh. And there was a yellow cloud in a far corner of the sky. The mood of angels lasted several days in our lives. We seemed to have discovered a paradise lurking in the heart of our wretchedness. The people who write history always concentrate on great events and neglect the days when unsuspected bliss, like an enchanted dream, shines out from the lives of human beings.
There was much music in those days. Strangers increased amongst us. And everyone looked beautiful. But no one looked more beautiful than Madame Koto when she appeared in public on those days of forgiveness. Who can forget the splendour of her gold-bordered wrapper. Her silk blouses. And her astounding hairstyle which had been specially plaited into a pyramidal glory.
She reappeared amongst us like an underciphered sign in the middle of our good days. A fanfare of talking drums announced her fresh ascendancy. Her praise-singers rendered all manner of epics about her legendary power and generosity. But then the music from her bar grew louder. It spread a coarse revelry up and down our area. And then our drunkenness, which had been full of light, gradually turned overbearing. The louder her music sounded, the more the serenity of the lights retreated. And the days that were joyful dreams changed imperceptibly and turned unpleasant when the first blood of fighting was spilled. Because two strangers argued about politics.
People sometimes say that happiness is the holiday of the spirit, the lovely dreaming of the nerves. But after the mood of angels there came a yellow karmic dust which settled everywhere over the continent, creating unpredictable effects which the historians took to be spontaneous events. We lingered too long in the holiday of our spirit and in the lovely music of our days. And we didn’t notice when it all changed. We didn’t notice when the dance became a stampede, when the peaceful songs turned rousing, when the musical instruments spoke a different language, issuing crude commandments to the brain and hands. We didn’t notice when the mood darkened, obscuring the profound joys that were intended to outlast all the suffering that was to come.
II
BOOK FIVE
ONE
The story of the Rain Queen
MADAME KOTO APPEARED to us again on the third day of the angel and her moonstones shone brightly round her neck as if they were on fire. Her eyes also shone and her skin was oily and smooth. She was massive. Her plaster cast had been removed and her bad foot was still swollen, but her face showed no pain. Her pregnancy was entering its final stages of ripeness and she floated around with the dignity of a great ship loaded with exotic gifts. She walked with the aid of a crocodile-headed walking stick, she had gold bangles round her arms, and all about her lights glittered as if she were wearing mirrors.
The whites of Madame Koto’s eyes were so white they seemed like moonstones cleaned for the advent of a new vision. And when we stared into her eyes we were transfixed by their milky death-white beauty. She seemed to have changed profoundly since recovering from her madness. She stared at the world with a gaze at once serene and deathlike, as if she had swum in the nightmare milk of the abyss and had seen visions that reside only within the beings of inscrutable gods.
Madame Koto burned and was silent in her maternal beauty. She burned fiercely and the intensity of her presence, blinding us with its ice and fire, seemed like a great farewell.
All around her was the sweet staccato music of her praise-singers, a music so piercing that it seemed to speak of an imminent death or an abnormal birth. Just as the rainbows in the sky during the music of gentle rains speak of mighty elephants giving birth deep in the forest.
Madame Koto was silent as she went amongst us, drawing crowds of children and curious adults. But all through that day we heard rumours, fuelled by the arcane syncopations of the talking drum, that she was planning the most fabulous of wedding feasts. We didn’t know who she was getting married to. But we heard that the great event would take place after the elections, whose results had already been decided in advance in all the realms of manipulated reality.
She was silent in the midst of her flaming beauty. But she distributed bags of sweets to the children as the air turned sour. The dark clouds returned, sailing across our skies like the fleet of an invading navy. The music from her bar had poisoned the sweet music of the days.
I am not sure at what point it all changed but one morning instead of music we heard the crackling of loud hailers. The politicians had returned and they blared out their contradictory promises over our air – while malnutrition devoured the children, while poverty crushed the hopes of the inhabitants, while the women grew haggard from the sunstroke, the crippling domestic duties and no freedom.
It was Dad who put the last idea in my head. He came back from carrying loads one evening and sat down on his fabled chair. Mum was sweeping the room. Dad stared at her grim implacable face. Then he broke another of his long silences, and said:
‘We are destroying our women.’
Mum stopped sweeping, and sat on the bed. Dad sighed.
‘Why did you say that?’ Mum asked.
Dad was silent. His eyes were dim in the candlelit room. After a while Mum got up and said:
‘Men are nothing but talk.’
She resumed sweeping. When she had finished she gathered the pots of soup from the cupboard. Just as she was about to leave for the kitchen, Dad spoke again.
‘Have you ever wanted a wife?’ he asked her.
Mum came back into the room, dropped the pots, stood over Dad, and said:
‘Why do you ask these questions, eh?’
Dad was silent for some time before he said:
‘Someone told me a story today. It made me think about all sorts of things. There is a powerful Rain Queen in the southern part of our continent who has sixteen wives.’
Mum didn’t say anything. Dad didn’t continue the story. The silence made me restless.
‘Is Madame Koto a Rain Queen?’ I asked.
Mum and Dad stared at me contemplatively for a long while. The fireflies sizzled in the room, circling Dad’s head. Outside we heard the loud hailers again, blaring their promises into our nightspace. Mum sighed. Dad sucked his teeth in contempt. I got up and went to the door.
‘Come back!’ Mum said.
I stopped.
‘Let him go,’ Dad said. ‘The road is calling him.’
‘Let the road call someone else’s child,’ Mum replied.
I stayed at the door, my nose suffused with the bad air that the politicians had brought to our compound. It stank so much that Dad ordered all the windows be opened.
‘We will die of mosquitoes,’ Mum said.
‘Better than to die of the bad smell of those politicians,’ Dad countered.
‘I’m hungry,’ I said.
‘Azaro, if you keep quiet and sit still,’ Dad promised, ‘I will tell you the story of the Rain Queen.’
Mum went out with the pots, and Dad went to help her cook. I sat in the room, oppressed by the midges, the mosquitoes
and the political bad smell. My stomach rumbled. I caught a fleeting glance of the old woman. She seemed to be at the window, staring at me. I went to the window, looked out, and saw nothing. A large frog croaked from the rubbish heap outside. A lizard scuttled up the wall and it stayed in a far corner, watching me. I had the dim suspicion that someone, somewhere, was watching me from the lizard’s eyes. The lizard was very still. Its stillness made me notice a spider in another corner of the room. Midges circled my head, a constellation of fireflies flitted everywhere, and for a brief moment I saw the Governor-General standing at the bay window of his huge white house, a black pipe in his mouth, contemplating the nation whose sleep was about to be altered.
Mum and Dad came back with the food. I ate hurriedly, washed the plates and sat down. My back was against the bed. I stared at Dad, and after a while became aware that I wasn’t the only one staring. Mum stared too. And behind us, up on the wall, so did the lizard. Dad cleared his throat, his expression remaining the same, except that his eyes took on a faraway gaze, as if he too could see people with whom he had a mysterious affinity, people living their lives somewhere else, unaware that they were being watched by distant eyes. And when Dad’s gaze had reached its best point of focuslessness, as if he had suddenly flown in spirit to the southern part of the continent, he said: