This is my entry into the anthology Language, Culture and Development, Africa Vs Asia Volume 1, that we are currently editing. It is an extract from my novel A DARK ENERGY I started writing 23 years ago. I now want to publish it. WARNING!! You may need a dictionary by your side.
Extract from A DARK ENERY
Chapter 11
They arrived at the graveplace at about three, at three, the self dispossessed hour. At three o’clock, they visited the lost hour, that hour that undresses self into itself. They were still some voices rising up, some people were singing, some people were speaking, trying to shape reality into ideas, trying to transform the world of words and songs into the reality that faced them. He knew that in this quite place songs will always be sung, voices will always be heard.
The leaves on the vibrant fig tree expressed a surest green. On this Fig tree, to the left of the graveyard, the brain-fever bird was doing twelve-ton scales on its own electronic harmonium. Its songs felt like they were meant for this youthful cadaver that they were now circling. They were a line of shrouded faces circling her, no mist of breathe, every face at the grave place was staring askance at her face, in its intense rehearsal of its own doubt. Some were even afraid that her immortalness would reach out and uncoil around them.
The big green meat flies were also making songs of their own with their engine voices as they hissed around this mangled body. Sometimes those meat flies were also circling, haphazardly, this young cadaver. They rocked themselves and the land rocked them, thus they rocked the land, and the songs were slower. The blackness in Don’s heart was dripping on a soundless keyboard, creating a harmonium he could only feel but never heard. His brain's lymphatic nodes were bubbling to this piano's keys, dripping clenching ivory whips.
The air around the graveyard was dark even if it was still late afternoon of a summer day, beaten too thick and it had the smell and feel of something being pressed through Don’s nostrils and throat forcefully. The feelings inside him were haunting the skin of light, clear and real.
As he made his way in the circled queue of those seeing Lillian's face for the last time, circling her casket and, having a last glimpse of her, he was thinking of what he would experience when his eyes see her face again. He knew he had already entered the world of what-ifs, and the in-betweens.
Is she still alive, serving time? And, he was also thinking.
Will I say a special prayer?
He tried to break-free mentally. He told himself he had to face her with absence of doubt. And then, he saw her face which he knew was detached from the rest of the body but had been set in such a way as to make it appear whole, as if a string of some sort had been used to connect those discarded parts. He was amazed by how she did it, creating such perfect wholeness within her decapitated body as if she still was a whole umber shell. Her eyes seemed open and her eyes, now dark, fear unaware, backlit with hope for him, surveyed him with years she wanted for herself. He did not want to think that she had raged and raged as they were slicing her head. Raging against the dying of her light!
"What if she could still feel the pain....?" He didn't want to think that he had always been a soldier of misfortune, that every life and every death is really nonnegotiable. He really wanted something. He wanted to have something that he could hold, that he could own to himself.
Yet, his mind confronting this actuality met its own match. There was nothing to really grasp there, that there was nothing perhaps beyond hearing and seeing or even the omission of these things. Is she in the half way house of words, songs, thoughts? There is none to ask. Yet he couldn't stop his mind from returning back to her reflection skewed in scarlet blood, her neck cut by a knife like a chicken, blood spotting her lemon green dress, her creamy white shoes, her sage green handbag.
Because he circled her casket like everyone else was doing that doesn't mean that he knew what he was doing.
When they finished goodbyes, and when he had swallowed his quite goodbyes in his heart they sang songs for her again. He sang along to the sounds that still lied deep within him, to the sounds that he knew would never restrict him again. Some people sang songs to console themselves. He sang the same songs to control. Some people sang songs to release, to please, too intense and strange to add to his discomfort. He just sang along to these stone-skipping songs, defeating his hallucinations. His face would jerk into life, here and there, when an untuned note echoed off their creaky notes. The breezy wind was lifting those hymns to lurch and swoop all over the grave place.
Tiny tufts of invalid clouds left over by those small clicks of rain that had shivered on their way to the graveyards were like the minister who seemed so lonely- so far away- as they were both ministering an unheard sermon. The minister was not speaking from the heart about mend and glory but was using a scripted speech that had nothing to do with Lillian. The late afternoon twilight exposed the sky's godless blue, such blue was shouting in the skies.
The breezy wind was playing with the dropped decaying leaves of the fig tree's disrobing like a child playing alone. Every restless leaf was a restless soul, hustled and bustled in the wind and, the wind was scattering slowly the leaves around and about to the westerly direction. Scattering the smell of death around the grave place since this westerly breezy wind was scented sickly sweet with the miasma of Lillian and her grave tidings.
The five or so crows, on top of the nearby shrub of pucker trees to the east taunted and squawked their own supposed twenty-one gun salute. Their sharp notes surfed the wind. They had a feel for rhythm and an ear for sound repetition. One of the crows flew away as if something out there called it. Its shadow staining sunbright heads below with something darker, a smell of something primal, something naked, raw…, a wail of unbelieving loss. Don kept following its flight in the skies. It kept calling out and the other four crows followed through. He didn't know where they were herding towards, maybe there were herding to another grave place; to do another of their gun salutes. When he had lost those crows into the expanding skies, he looked down from the sky. The grave men were now lowering Lillian into the grave.
He thought he hadn't seen well, then he looked again. Yes, they were lowering Lillian's casket down into the grave. When he saw her being lowered down into the grave that's when he really started to think that all along that he hadn't been dreaming. It really was happening. He had lost her to the dust just like he had lost his parents twenty four years before. When his parents died, he didn't know what to do. He was a child, he supposed, he couldn't have done anything, really. He hadn't cried when his foster parent had died in his last year at the University. He just didn't have tears for him! He wasn't going to cry now. He might have turned out a weeping male wreck if he started on it. To be private in a public place was rare self possession, he psyched himself.
He had also been given to think that it was better to harden into granite than to soften into powder but he wished for the ground on which he stood to just open up. And let him inside it and then cover him from this loss.
Someone outside the grave lifted up a stone whilst someone inside the grave signalled, caught the stone and lowered it into the grave to layer it on top of the casket of Lillian, to protect her from the soil, from instant decay. Lillian's casket was deeper inside a smaller grave hole inside the bigger grave hole, so this stone was layered on the ledge that separated these two parts of the grave, and then the soil would come on top of this layer of stones. The stone spawned silence as the children and women started to leave this grave place. Leaving the men to burry Lillian! Don could not only know those boulders of stones as stones, he also could tell them as sadness.
He wished the grave they had lowered Lillian into could have demanded for him, by refusing to be filled up by the soil. He could have entered it, happily. No! The grave started to play hide and seek with him only that he never found out anything from it. The grave started laughing deviously at him as they were filling it up with the dark grey clay soils by lengthening.
Even when they were filling it up, it lengthened, lengthened by the spirit puddles of those damp cloths of rain that had drizzled on their way to the graveyards, over an hour before. The grave continued lengthening; lengthened by the spirits that had been hidden by the Priest's ecclesiastical pomp and the singer's circumstantial songs. The grave's laughter lengthened, all around this grave place and, it lengthened from the people's muted groans, their silent cries and even by the silence now at this grave place. It didn't even stop laughing, lengthening in laughter, as the noise of the soil, as it was hitting the bottom of her grave and the grave-men's silent talk and signals. The grave kept lengthening; it lengthened, as the heaviness of the earth in mid-summer, thick as cake. And the wind kicked up, swirling brute facts back and forth across this grave place.
The grave started making fun at him. He felt it starting to mock him. It started challenging him.
It said, and it's only him who heard it.
"I have triumphed over you man by taking Lillian away from you and leaving you with nothing, what do you really have now?" In another moment it said, nonchalantly.
"There is no need for me to hurry up my closure, stupid; did you think you deserved anything, really, fool!" It said to him that it was now like the trees around this grave place. It was here to live forever. That even at that, trees were exceptional people, not like humans, not like him. They lose their leaves without such a fuss, they stay at the same place all their lives, do not ask for anything. Any favours, and never bothered anyone. They just accepted what was there for the taking.
"But the sun isn't waiting for you, fool." Then it cackled in laughter as the evening started hugging the trees by staring out between the shivers of leaves. The long lines of images haunting the late afternoon hours, and the afternoon hours were now a glimmering filament waving at the sun. The tall sprawling Mopani trees, the three poplar trees hunched like three old men and the hulk of the baobab tree some distances from the grave place, to the western side, started to yield a schema: consuming a role, in dancing with the fading daylight, he realised that he could never really cover the grave's challenging laughter and stare.
When he realised the grave they had lowered Lillian into could never convince him that she was really dead he left this grave place, all alone, for the small forest nearby. He knew that deep down his heart he had not encased Lillian in the soils. She hadn't crumbled into dust, that he still hadn't buried her. He had refused to bury her by leaving this grave-place for the forest. It was all a lie; there had been no corpse but two dissected parts that seemed like were of Lillian. There had been no coffin, not even a grave that he could see. His million whys had no goodbyes, no answers? They hadn't been any farewell. They had been no song, no sermon, no flower, and no departing hour under the Mubvaropa tree. To which he could even add his own unshed tears, corroding the bottoms of his eye sockets with their want to be let out. He couldn't let them out, even though they were killing him, destroying his eyesight.
The Lillian that he loved was still touching his shoulder like the westerly wind, so there was no need to cry for her, when she was still that alive in the wind. She was still calling his name. They were still expecting their first son together. Lillian was still dreaming with him even as he was traversing this small forest. He still felt the laughter of his first son echoing in the voices in his heart. He refused to accept he had attended a funeral. He could never end this chapter.
I know I have to rehearse at forgetting so as to let her go!
He walked and walked until he was lost in this small forest. Thinking he should retrace his footsteps, but he hadn't left any footmarks to follow back out of this forest, so he started wondering up and down the dales of this forest and gaze about, unseeing; plodding the little ways off the old logging road, runaway thoughts blaring in his head like a stuck car horn. These unleashed thoughts were cropping powerlessly over the treed forest.
In the seeded speckle of light the night was glowing with pinpricks of misunderstanding, the lightness of the dark pressed him against the land so he couldn't really fly with the wind. Marram grass was whispering, calling him with a discourse of the saints. He was seeing this grass flattening in loops like two dogs running fast. One shrill note set black crowned night herons loose from the Mango trees, a murder of wings silencing the amassing whispering sounds of Marram grass. The only other sound he heard was that of the dried listless leaves, alive to every stirring of the wind; the wind garlanding wordlessness around his throat. It was only the wind that he could measure himself by.
By the time he found his way through all the countrified roads of this small forest, to the graveplace again, it was dark. It wasn't that dark, though, because the sky had three moons. One was a dark halo, the halo that was inside him. The other one was the colour of milk, a creamy milky colour. The third one was orangey-red, a thirsty orangey-red, but all the three moons were shinning a faint trail of light as the moons were moving with him, even as he was plodding the forest. Sometimes the moons were a black halo, sometimes milky, sometimes orangey-red, sometimes so small and, he was trying to catch up with those three moons; grim, ungraceful, gargantuan things.
When he returned back to the graveplace he knew he had returned for a certain purpose. He hadn't really been lost all the time he was plodding in the small forest. he had been on his way to this graveplace. The forest acted as a place one could go to be alone but that it had also become a place he had gone to be alone in a certain way. Something was reinforced when he was in that forest. he had become like Orpheus who risked going into the underworld to retrieve the woman he loved. Though he still didn't know the answers he had gone to forest to figure out; for the answers he knew were not the answers. He had eaten through the answers already. He should have gone there to learn the questions. Now he had returned back to the graveplace to do exactly that.
Turning back to this grave place was now the most interesting thing he had ever done in his life. He would now face the grave with a sure truth. The truth was; he was imagining lifting her back out of this page of the earth that had encased her. It was ridiculous to still be thinking Lillian could be negotiated for over and through the soil, yet it’s exactly what he had returned back to do.
The late evening birds, sorrowful birds, woefully sad singers, had retreated into the night's receding darkness. They had given up on him with their commentary and chatter, slapping time, a staccato riff on a darkening sky beat. Listening intently to their voices he heard dissonance, of a doubtful drummer. It didn't help him some because it couldn't shift the effect of this undesirable that was inside him into indecipherable.
Two Owls entered the proceedings, an orchestra apologising for not sensing death all along, hanging their thoughts on the moon's nook. In their music they created a bluesy note, a darker bluesy note expanding, deepening the other evening birds’ song- the owls’ thudding hoot of angry blood demanding for vengeance, rumbling, "It never rains for you", "what are you going to do," "it never rains for you," "blood for blood," "it never rains for you," "what are going to do?". The music was there in the songs but the words were lost to the wind, except for the rhythms. "It never rains for you", "what are you going to do," "it never rains for you," "blood for …."
He came to the lower side of Lillian's grave and sat down by his haunches. The night had made nest in hallow of her grave and her killed scent had been killed by the miasmas of the packed grave. The hallow curve of the grave was speechless. He touched the soil of Lillian's grave with his two hands in order to really be sure that the grave was really there. The mound was there. He remembered it had been a monumental effort that had rolled that grave up. Her grave was now a blonde expanse pock-marked with giblets like hail on the landscape. This fresh mound was casting eerie shadows pockmarked by the shadows of the halo moon. It was obvious that she had left the land blank and that, she had scribed on it.
Don didn't want to think that someday a tree would grow on top of Lillian's grave or something else like weeds or roses, perhaps. These- feeding on her love; getting all the nourishment from Lillian's body that was now being denied to him.
I must create ancient Mexican premature and miscarried bebes into clay look-alikes using Lillian's grave soils for ritual returning, he thought. Ceramic and ash Lillians to hold in his hands, not to bury in the graves as had happened to Lillian. Or he could have buried her with a small painted alabaster stature like the ancient Egyptians did. In fact he could have created two of these and, he would have kept one for himself. This ushtabi would help her doing work in the afterlife, so also for him in this life. They would have a lot of time together, he thought. Now he was alone. He knew I would be alone for the rest of his life, maybe he would be buried with a mouse as ancient bachelors were buried with in Zimbabwe, for accompaniment in afterlife. His own body was a warehouse of pain. He wished the tears could be made to flow from his eyes to make a sea so that this grave could be touched and be swept away from existence by the tears.
He couldn't help asking his wife and child where they were now. "Where are your skulls, what is my sin?" He groaned the question without real words coming out.
And Lillian seemed to shine through the grave like a brilliant wreckage of his broken dreams. Smiling at him, the planet whose gravity he now orbited, tugging at his shores, telling him that.
"Life doesn't owe its serenity to such impatience. You are broken, Don; you have to go for repairs, home." These tread tides of sentences nearly drawn in words that even ancestors couldn't speak. Telling him that the pain's real home was not to be there with her but to be with the living; he had to let her go so that she could find rest where she was. He accepted her admonishments and advice. He left for the sanctuary of the living. He returned home with the gun that he had been carrying on him for days. He hadn't buried the gun with Lillian. This gun was more than an ushtabi, a mouse, or an ash Lillian for Don. It represented the hunger and hurt that stayed inside him. He will never give it back.
His face was etched with a new darkness. He was so exhausted. He had been buried with someone. The sky above was painted a purplish night blue. As he left the grave place the insane light of those moth-eaten half moons were throwing shadows on the grave, bleaching the grave, leaving it ancient, softer, flatter, bluing in the dusk. A general purpling was on the western skies as the fading amber light of the moons send him homebound. It was still on the twenty sixth, late evening; that those moons were now sending him homebound.
