One
Kejebba and Heath were strolling down the small town’s hard-baked dirt road
behind a man in a white shirt. Their bare feet hardly seemed to touch the warm
earth as they counted the freeloading flies squatting on the back of that so white
shirt. But there were too many and there appeared no pattern to their settling
which might have helped the boys get past twenty five or thirty around which
number the speckled mass became a confusing blur. They decided there must
have been more than a hundred. At least. They drew closer and closer to the
man in their determination to get every one of the flies properly counted.
Kejebba’s grandfather, if required to answer a silly question like ‘how many flies
can you see on that white shirt?’ would have simply said there were “many”. In
his world when it came to counting things, in general there was one, quite often
two or three and otherwise, many. Perhaps ‘more than a hundred’ was the latest
version of ‘many’.
But for the two boys the question was not so silly. They’d discovered the
fascination of counting. The infinity of numbers stacking unerringly one upon
another, building a tower that would surely reach up past the sky. And they were
intent on counting anything that sat still for long enough. Or the number of steps
it took to climb the hill overlooking the town or the number of breaths you had to
breathe waiting for the sun to come out from behind a cloud.
There was something comforting about the predictability of numbers and the
patterns they made. A way of probing into the future with a measure of certainty.
A way of wrapping up the past with clean, unambiguous shapes. But the real
beauty of counting was that it always took place in the immediate present. Each
number counted was a mark of the moment in which it occurred. The magic of a
moment marked, identified with a number, each number making itself one with its
instant before fading into the distance in an orderly queue with those that went
willingly before.
Of course the boys had no conscious inkling of such considerations, they just
loved counting. It was a skill recently learned. Like reading. But you didn’t need
anything in particular to do it. You didn’t even have to think. So, lost in the reverie
of their counting and now quite close to the man, they were profoundly shocked
when he suddenly turned around, scattering half of the black flies into the
evening air and out of sight. He’d stopped and was looking back over the heads
of Kejebba and Heath. They automatically pulled up, vaguely guilty for their
intrusion into the privacy of the man’s personal shirt; they looked first at each
other and then back over their shoulders to see what had attracted the man’s
attention. But they could see nothing which might have provoked the intensity of
the man’s gaze. By the time they looked back he’d lowered his eyes and was
looking straight at the grubby pair’s bewildered scuffling.
“What you boys doin’?”
Kejebba, the older of the two, shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something
inaudible. This seemed to make the man soften his look and reach into his
pocket from where he pulled out a small leather pouch.
He was not a tall man, dark-skinned, neat and cleanly put together, his shaven
head shining ebony pink in the fading light as he reached towards Heath offering
him something he’d taken from the pouch. Heath instinctively held out his hand
and received what looked like a quite large marble into his now lightly sweating
palm. The object was a dark cream colour, opaque and heavy, as though made
of something other than glass. Perhaps a metal. He glanced momently sideways
at Kejebba to see what his reaction was before looking up. But by then the
softness had gone from unknown man’s face. Deep in shadow, it seemed to
have transformed into an ugly mask. Heath’s stomach lurched up into his throat.
He was so busy swallowing hard to keep whatever was in there down where it
belonged, he hardly noticed the stranger turn on his heel and walk away into the
west where the sun had just sunk behind the town’s sentinel hill.
***
Between them now shone this mysterious gift. Heath rolled it into Kejebba’s pink
palm. He lifted it up to his nose and drew in a long breath. There, far away, like
an echo, the distinct sense of purple. Heavy and rich but so faint Kejebba thought
he’d tasted it.
“What is it?” asked the younger boy.
“It’s a marble.”
“It’s too heavy…”
“Looks like juju – we should show it to Babu. Here.”
Heath put the thing in his pocket with all the other bits and pieces agitating to
escape through the thinning pocket lining, the unlikely weight of the unexpected
gift dragging his pants down a bit; he had to shrug them up before they headed
off in the dying twilight for Kejebba’s place to see what his grandfather would say
about the marble.
The sudden black African night had already strangled all detail from the world as
the boys crossed into the warm cow-dung glow of the grandfather’s hut.
“You two little frogs should watch out for the Mbongola. They love to play with the
innocent – before eating them...”
Kejebba glanced at Heath, a knowing smile tickling the edge of his wide mouth
as they both acknowledged the old fairy-tale they’d been hearing since before
they could remember. It was a favourite of the old man who would shiver with
feigned apprehension as he rolled his shiny eyes and recite the warning narrative
to keep the children in at night, away from the ever-present and very real
dangers lurking in the predator darkness.
“We met someone on the road Babu.”
The old gentleman continued to stir the pot, squinting his eyes away from the
stinging spiral of smoke curling slowly towards the chimney. Heath sat down on
the floor next to Babu and peered into the mass of hubbly bubbly spotting the
occasional recognisable bit of vegetable. A chunk of goat – he decided it must
have been goat from the sweet aroma seeping into the small room - otherwise
one bit of flesh chopped up and cooking looked pretty much like another. The
goat though had a very distinctive smell, gamey, unmistakeable. The evening
meal was nearly ready and he could feel his mouth filling up with anticipatory
saliva. As his tired mind relaxed back into the security of Babu’s place he began
drifting into a half sleep, the numbers and patterns of flies he’d been trying to
count that afternoon played across his imagination as the sounds of the night
insects animated the images in his mind hustling with one another for
ascendancy. The marble appeared and seemed to push all the counting aside. It
was huge. As big as a world. Everything else vanished and there weren’t enough
numbers to measure the size of the giant orb pulsing in the half light of an
incompletely imagined object floating somewhere in space. It had one great eye.
The eye looked familiar. Suddenly it was a goat’s eye. Its tail flicked, it lowered its
head and butted him with its hard horny eyeball. He opened his eyes to see Babu
shaking him awake.
“You want to eat or dream?”
Heath sheepishly wiped the cooled line of overflowed saliva from the side of his
chin and accepted with a small nod the bowl being offered by Kejebba’s
grandfather.
“Sorry Babu.”
“Don’t be sorry. Eat.”
The background sounds of hunting gekkos, a near-by curlew calling for its mate,
the Doppler whine of mosquitoes all mixed with the gratified breathing, chewing
and swallowing of three human beings filled all available thought space.
When the meal was finished and the long silence finally collapsed with a few
appreciative murmurs, Heath reached into his pocket and fished out the marble.
In the soft light it seemed not only to reflect the yellowish flame from Babu’s
single lamp but also to generate an uncanny faint blue iridescence. Together the
combined sensation was of a greenish, slightly sinister ambiance. The old man
reached out and took the shiny thing from Heath’s hand.
“Where did you get this?”
“The man we met.”
“Did he say who he was?”
“No...do you know what it is Babu? We didn’t have a chance to ask him before he
just…walked off.”
“Why do you think he gave it to you?”
“Don’t know. We were following him, counting. The flies on his shirt…”
“What? Counting flies? Why?”
Kejebba decided to join the conversation.
“He just suddenly turned on us as though someone had called him. He’s not from
around here. I’d never seem him before. He took it from a leather pouch. I think
there were more in there.”
“It’s a seed.”
“A what? A seed? For planting?”
“No. Not for planting. For dreaming. A special kind of dreaming. But it’s powerful
magic. There’s a price to pay. Did he give it you Heath? Or Kejebba…”
“He gave it to Heath. Frightened him too.”
“No he didn’t, but he looked like he was going to whip me for taking it. Why would
he want to give it to me?”
“I don’t think he wanted to frighten you. Or whip you. The man who gave it to you
is Ngede, they come from across the border. Looking for people who are … a
little bit vacant. Perhaps unfettered. Ripe. The seed is not always a good gift. Not
always bad. Depends on… I don’t know…many things. Maybe your counting
drew his attention.”
“What should I do with it Babu?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do with it. It’ll do with you - more than you can
imagine. If you keep it. The old stories tell it as a plumb line to draw a straight
path through spiralling time. An ancient story often told, rarely heard. Be mindful
of its unconcern for you.”
Now
Heath
was
getting
nervous.
A
‘little
bit
vacant’.
That
didn’t
sound
too
good.
He
remembered
his
time
in
boarding
school
and
the
priest’s
sermons
about
idle
minds
being
the
devil’s
playground.
But
this
‘seed’
came
from
a
different
tradition,
a
much
older
culture.
Babu
said
‘from
a
very
long
time
ago’.
Heath’s
anthropology
teacher
had
told
the
class
some
African
cultures
had
existed
for
more
than
one
hundred
thousand
years.
Trying
to
match
or
compare
them
was
confusing.
Very
confusing.
He
put
the
now
charged
thing
back
in
his
pocket
and
resolved
to
find
some
container
for
it.
Maybe
a
small
metal
box.
Then
to
try
and
forget
about
it
-
and
Babu’s
explanations.
Spiralling
time?
He’d
not
heard
that
before.
He
always
thought
time
went
in
a
straight
line.
Linear
history.
Like
counting.
But
a
seed
for
dreaming
a
straight
path
through
spiralling
time?
It
was
all
a
little
bit
much
for
the
young
boy.
So
it
wasn’t
long
before
he
forgot
about
the
quietly
shining
marble.
He
hadn’t
even
found
a
container
for
it.
It
lay
buried
in
the
dark
of
one
of
his
drawers
snugly
sheltered
by
ripped
t
shirts
and
holy
shorts
that
were
all
too
small
for
him,
forgotten
things,
mementos
in
a
world
where
forgetting
made way for new impersonations.
