Maurice Broaddus - [BCS300 S03] Read online

  Obalata went to the house of Orunmila, since he understood the secret ways of existence. Obalata laid out their dilemma, not knowing how to begin the work. So Orunmila brought out his divining tray. He cast sixteen palm nuts and, from the way they fell, read their meaning. He cast and re-cast until he was sure of what existence spoke to him. Orunmila told them to take sacred symbols: a snail shell full of sand, a white hen, a black cat, and a palm nut. But they were to descend to the watery wastes to conduct their ceremony.

  “‘But how will I get there?’ Obalata asked.

  “‘You are to descend the golden chord.’

  “When the preparations had been made, Obalata lowered the chain they had forged and began their descent. They passed from the realm of light through the region of greyness, with only the whooshing like waves to mark his passage. And after a time, they reached their destination. They poured out their sand and dropped the hen upon it. The hen scattered the sand in all directions, where it dried and became land that extended in all directions. The place where Obalata first set foot, they called Ife.”

  “That story means nothing to me. I feel... empty.” Dinga could not explain the strange gnawing in his soul, like a gaping hunger. As if even the space once occupied by Nyame now stood vacant.

  “Your heart knows.” She clicked her teeth with frustrated impatience. “Or it could, if it wasn’t so blocked.”

  “The physicians and phylacteries of my homeland are some of the finest in the lands.” Gerard shifted as if the comment had been aimed at him. “If Dinga had heeded my counsel, we’d each be in a maiden’s lap finding solace right now.”

  “That is what I meant. You rush to numb your pain. You embrace your capacity for distraction, as both amnesia and anesthetic, hoping to forget rather than plunge headlong into your pain in order to get through to the other side. We can be shaped by life.”

  “Can life shape us with the challenge of wealth?” Gerard protested. “The gods seem to overly delight in our trials of hardship.”

  “Orphan—” Luci’Kobi’s shoulders straightened in resolve as she turned to him—“you are a little snail seeking refuge behind the fronds of the banana tree.”

  “I get the feeling that I am not welcome.”

  “The sacred rituals of sorrow are not for you. Your kind plunder and keep for themselves.”

  “Rude.” Gerard hesitated, before taking a step backward. His hands withdrew into his chlamys. “Is this... where my story ends?”

  “That depends. All of your cunning plans seem to fall back to one base course of action.” Luci’Kobe lips curled upward. “Can you be trusted in the market to find yourself a meal?”

  First glancing at Dinga, Gerard shrugged. “I mean, I’m sad too, but I could eat.”

  While Gerard wandered toward the floating saucers marking the marketplace, Luci’Kobe and Dinga crossed the court. He had the distinct impression that ghosts danced with a delicate grace throughout the yard. He and Luci’Kobe climbed up the flight of steep steps until they stood before an ornate arch. A red shaft of light shot out. Dinga jumped back, but Luci’Kobe stood her ground. The beam ran down and then up her before turning to Dinga. It ran along his flesh without so much as the faintest tickle. An entrance appeared for them.

  “What if it had not found us worthy?” Dinga asked.

  “Then your quest would have ended.” Her voice turned dark and serious, her visage stoic. Unable to hold the sternness for long, her face collapsed into a smile. “And we’d have joined your friend for lunch.”

  Golden censers floated along the corridor, producing perfumed clouds. Mosaics of ruby, emerald, and onyx inlaid with gold leaf lined the many-hued walls. Dinga knew it was for the best that Gerard had not accompanied them. His avaricious instincts would not have resisted the casks of gems, golden coins, and silver ingots scattered in the rooms, and he’d have attempted to wander from them with pockets so full, his waddle alone would have given him away.

  A winding stairwell led to a long cold, narrow corridor, steeped in shadows like a tunnel to nowhere. The air, thick with the smell of bayberry and myrrh. Panels lit up alongside them as they passed, heatless torchlights illuminating their path. Neither said a word. The silence took on a meditative quality, holy, brooding, and deepening, alive with intelligence as if its spirit had just snapped awake. They traveled deep within the structure, further inward than the layout from the outside had suggested was possible. The city’s magic built structures that bent space to their will, Dinga surmised.

  Eventually the hallway opened up into a cavernous room; passed between two floating bowls at the entrance filled with water. Luci’Kobe dipped her fingers into the water and marked her forehead. Dinga mirrored her actions before he entered the room.

  About the room were ten statues, three of which were off to themselves, not quite set apart but closer together. Before them was a dais. One of the three statues shimmered, as if blinking in and out of existence, and then a young man stood in place of that statues. About him a gold light shimmered. He walked toward the center dais, stopping short of it. Swathes of cloth, the green silk interwoven with the strips of yellow cotton, wrapped about him. An elekes of alternating green and yellow beads, around his neck. His gold bracelet matched the headdress suspended above him. The crowning mask had ornate images of animals, crescent moons, and a sun carved into it. His eyes brimmed with wildness. Dinga had seen those eyes many times. The distant stare of someone lost in the throes of bloodlust.

  Moving to an unseen drummer, the young man danced. A gentle chant, somehow harmonizing with himself. He stared off with a sway to the rhythms, like a reed caught in a breeze. Finding his freedom, he began to step, a half-march, his stomps coinciding with heavy palms banging against canvas. He bowed and straightened, bowed and straightened to the music until his feet found themselves. Twirling, he spun, circling the dais until suddenly the music stopped. He stretched out his arms, his fingers grasping at the sky. As if his entire body attempted to open itself up.

  “Through this, the deep magic of myal, he can speak to Orunmila face-to-face and through him, Orunmila may speak,” Luci’Kobe answered Dinga’s unasked question.

  “Possession?” He had heard of the gods and some spirits taking over a person’s body.

  “Nothing so crude. Orunmila does not come down, so we have to go up. It’s about being in relationship. To connect with him on another plane of existence. We pray for him to reveal himself to us. That the encounter changes us and orients us to who he is.”

  “I don’t understand. Are they you?” Dinga asked. “Are they with you?”

  “They are with me. I have to let them in. An aspect of them, because how could a mortal hope to contain the immortal. That is where I end, and we begin. All are we. As our consciousness expands, so will our understanding of them.”

  “The gods have a strange way of talking.” Dinga kept his eyes on the still-swaying young man.

  The mask lowered into place, covering the young man’s features from his forehead to his nose. “Orunmila” withdrew a carved horn. Carrying the horn to the dais, he set it down between two halves of guiro. His heavy lips parted. The words uttered did not match their movement though Dinga understood them all the same.

  “Step forward. We know who you are, Dinga of the clan Cisse,” Orunmila said.

  “Then you know why I’m here.”

  “We do, but do you?”

  Dinga paused, sensing a trap in the words. “I only come to fulfill a promise.”

  “You travel all this way, risking life and limb, not to mention the fate of your friend simply to... run an errand?” Orunmila strode across the elevated stage the dais sat upon. With a grand flaunt, his cloth wraps draping behind him, he descended down the steps.

  Dinga flushed hot, like a child caught in a lie. “I... am on a journey.”

  “Good. An admission, that’s a start. What do you hope to find on your journey?”

  “Answers.”

  “Answers wo
n’t bring you what you want,” Orunmila said.

  “I should be the judge of that.”

  Another statue flickered in the dim light of its recess. In its place, Eshu stepped forward. Orunmila glanced at Eshu. The pair conversed without words, the way only siblings could. Eshu nodded. With that he withdrew into the shadow of his alcove until the statue reappeared.

  “You have reached a crossroads in your journey,” Orunmila continued. “We share a similar pain, you and I. My brother informs me that you have come here because of a story. Thus, I am moved to speak with you.”

  With a gesture, a sphere, like a ball of water, formed above the dais.

  “Look where your sorrow has taken you. Your grief moves you through the underworld. It is your duty to mourn, to live in the ashes of their loss. The soul fragments, its bits stolen, broken, or fled from.”

  His eyes filled with an emotion Dinga couldn’t quite read. A dulled pain, perhaps. Orunmila’s face tightened, a hint of anger rose in his voice. The sphere rose and split, becoming four smaller balls.

  “Our rituals create a vessel for our grief, join the hearts of the suffering, for suffering is what unites us in life. Here, we belong. Here we find wholeness.” Orunmila clasped his hands together and the globes melded back into one complete sphere. “We have much to teach here, but few have the ears to learn.”

  “I can learn. I can understand.” Dinga hated the odd note of desperation in his tone.

  “Indeed? Let us see what you have learned.”

  Orunmila outstretched his arms. The room darkened. Light leapt from the dais, forming images flaring to life all around him. Most of the scenes were memories, though some of the depicted quests were unfamiliar to him. So much violence in his stories. The jeweled-city of Jenne-Jeno. The evil wizard Naiteru-kop. The black-hooded raiders of Sjilmasa. The otherworldly bats with star-shaped heads. So much betrayal. Ifriquia. His father. Anasa the Wise One. So much shame. The last image lingered—him in his childhood alcove. With Lalyani.

  “Indeed, you have learned,” Orunmila kept his voice low, tinged with compassion. “How to fight. How to kill. How to temper a blade.”

  “It is easy for you to judge from your heavenly realm, from this Dreaming City. What do you know of the hardships of life? Of death? You are so far removed from your people, I am surprised you can even hear their pleas.”

  Luci’Kobe gasped. Lowering her head, she retreated to the nearby shadows as if unable, or unwilling, to witness any more.

  “Who are you to question the orisha or our ways?” Orunmila rose, his feet no longer touching the ground. He floated toward Dinga with unwavering intent. “You have no knowledge of who we are. Or what we experience.”

  “You tell me then.” Dinga refused to back down. “I wish to know you.”

  Orunmila hovered before him, eyes narrowed to grim slits.

  The silence burgeoned between them, a gulf neither knew how to navigate.

  “You asked me what I have learned,” Dinga began. “I have learned that sometimes it is easier to tell a story about ourselves in order to voice our pain into the world. You talk to me of your precious ways and rituals. That we have a story in common. Tell me a story of your city.”

  The orisha cocked his head in consideration. Several long heartbeats passed in silence. With the boom of a distant thunderstorm, Orunmila’s voice emanated from all around the room at once.

  There once was a boy who only sought to please his father. His father was an important man. He was a Creator, a builder of dreams and ideas and people. So numerous and fabulous were his creations that his name passed the lips of all the people in the world as the Father of All.

  But to the boy, he was simply his father.

  One day the boy crafted a bowl. The boy labored hard, fashioning it with his bare hands. He thought about the ornate designs he would etch into it. All of the things which pleased his father. A single bracelet. A horsetail switch. A cane. A bell. He labored for many days until the bowl was exactly as he imagined. For the truest mark of an artist was to bring into being what they had imagined.

  That evening the boy knelt at his father’s feet and presented him with the bowl. “Father, I follow in your footsteps, born with your spirit to create.”

  His father inspected the boy’s handiwork. “Its color does not please me.”

  With that, he set the bowl aside.

  Ashamed, the boy fled his father’s presence. A rift occurred between them, like a piece of fabric worn bare. The boy wandered about the land studying his father’s handiwork. An hour passed. A day. A week. Yet no one came looking for him. He made his way throughout all which had been created, learning all of its secrets. Still, no one came for him. With each month, each year, that passed, the rift only grew larger, a seam splitting at its threads. Consumed by the memory of presenting his father the bowl, playing the moment over and over in his mind, he finally realized that it was not his shame to bear but his father’s, alone.

  So, the son returned. When the father spied him, he nodded as if only a moment had elapsed. His father never realized a gulf now separated them, much less how to breach it. And the son never mentioned his absence, his travels, or the lessons he learned. All the secrets and mysteries of existence would be his to keep.

  Orunmila opened his eyes. The room brightened. “You came here to receive answers? Come, follow me and see if you are ready for them.”

  V.

  There is grief we carry from the sorrow experienced by our ancestors.

  The décor of the pavilion was a lush mixture of color and textures. Divans scattered throughout the chamber, jumped upon by children in gilt-braided skirts. Other children poured libations into chalices carved from a single emerald. A golden-silled window opened onto a balcony overlooking the Dreaming City. Orunmila led them to the rear of a second pavilion. He paused, steeling himself with a breath before the wall dissolved before them.

  A bed chamber, white walls surrounded a bed covered in white linens. They framed a figure near-buried within them, his dark skin ashy with a terrible pallor. Their slender frame sat up as best they could, drawing tight their silken jupons.

  Obatala, the Sky Father. Father of all the orisha.

  Dinga blinked hard. Obatala looked exactly like his father from his youth, with echoes of his grandfather. The room filled with the smell of Obatala’s thick musk. Their large, expressionless countenance still had an aristocratic air about it. His Father’s face.

  No one resented the arrogance that swaddled Obatala. That was the expected manner and bearing of the orisha. Every calculated posture, even a casual finger waggle, had the deliberate of a dramatic embellishment.

  “Do not be disconcerted,” Luci’Kobe said. “Each person sees them different.”

  Their hands, oddly small, reached for the chalice beside them.

  Orunmila walked towards them.

  Obatala’s attendants, a pair of children who fanned them, challenged him as if he had demonstrated some violation of protocol. The tone of Orunmila’s voice, the brazenness of his manner, perhaps the way he clenched his hands, caused them to reconsider. He dismissed the duo with a glance.

  The white sheets rose and fell. Rose and fell. Rose and fell.

  “I am one for tradition.” Orunmila bowed low and long, an exaggerated gesture, which had the subtle whiff of insult to it.

  Luci’Kobe stood behind Dinga, both nervous and tense.

  “Better than one who forgets. Especially his place.” Obatala’s eyes widened, registering a feigned shock and no light of recognition. “There’s a fine line between forgetfulness and contempt.”

  The courtly life was not for Dinga. He found the sheer gamesmanship of it all, their inane trivialities, wearisome and irritating, like a film of sand caught in his loincloth. Gerard took to it like flies to a corpse.

  “Illness strips so much,” Luci’Kobe whispered. “Who Obatala was. Their friends. Their family. The steady toll of loss. Illness is a winnowing of who we are. Unti
l we arrive at the core within the husk, knowing the fragility of flesh. When Orunmila learned of his father’s impending death, something shifted within him and softened between them. Despite his brazenness, he now attends to his father with the care of a doting nurse.”

  “He’s dying?” Dinga leaned closer to her as Orunmila appraoched his father, like a planet entering the orbit of the sun, not wanting to get too close. “He’s an orisha. Eternal.”

  “How can the eternal, the infinite, manifest on the physical plane?” Orunmila said without turning to them. “There are mysteries and profundities known only to Olodumare. Even from me.”

  The white sheets rose and fell. Rose and fell. Rose and fell.

  “My father, the father I knew, had a way of putting others around them at ease. Sometimes with inappropriate humor. Sometimes with a wistful smile. Or playful flirtation. When they were about their work, however, they were a serious person. They fought for life, their children. For them, every day of life was a victory.” Orunmila’s hand circled a spot near his father’s bedside. A chair rose from the ground like so much sand assembling a seat. “They were a tough person. A hard person. In constant pain without telling anyone. Another secret hidden from me. Yet all things come to an end. Sometimes the fight itself takes too much out of you. Their herbs and medicines sustain him, but that is not enough to call it life. Not worth the extra weeks or months. Can you understand that?”

  Dinga nodded in respectful silence.

  “Baba Arugbo.” Orunmila leaned low and whispered into his father’s ear.

  “I’m here,” Obatala said. “Who are you?”

  “Sometimes he recognizes me, sometimes he doesn’t. He lived his life until he couldn’t remember how to live anymore.” Orunmila raised his father’s hand to his face. “I am your son.”