Babi Yar Symphony

Chapter 3

5 3 Vigil… How does one keep vigil, and for what? And yet we must. Whether on the mountain top as he did, or in the crumbling smoke-filled drinking places teeming with harlots and drunks, or inside the forest where once Simandu tore open the neck of his own son, we must. Simandu. Rich merchant. Libation merchant. A lorry went in the wrong direction, that of Tignere, with kolanut load. The totemic python shed its skin in severance of blood link and in obedience Simandu marched his lone son into the forest and performed the rite. The head was allowed to hang from a tree-branch while the body was offered to the bowels of the earth. But the lorry never came back. It was not long before the double loss rose to triple. We must keep vigil. Watch over the soul of the earth. Simandu’s lorry never came back. Libation wasted. Blood lost. Jesus kept vigil. Munira did. The day they picked him up he’d just returned from his own on Mount Bakingili, a mound of larva freshly unearthed from the crust of Mount Fako and pushed downhill to the brink of the Atlantic Ocean where it now sat on what had once been a flourishing palm plantation. The larva was still warm underfoot ten years after the eruption of the main mountain. He sat on a rock that had thrown its jagged face at him the way a bad woman throws her eyes at you and makes your blood heat up. The warmth trickled up the crags and filtered into his kaki shorts, through his kente jumpa and right into his hair. A night of watchful thought draped in low clouds. How does one keep vigil over the soul of the earth? The sins are many. So many the stars in the firmament pale in comparison. The cup tasted bitter to its drinker. That bitterness has not gone away. The nightmares of brutality and stealing, of cupidity and murder, they all colour the flags of life men hoist everyday, everywhere. There’s no more innocence; hardly any more generosity. Simandu took his son into the heart of the forest and returned alone. The words of a daughter saying daddy let me zip it for you had driven him to the mountain where he’d spent the night with nothing but a thin cotton shirt to fight the penetrating cold. Thank God, the molten larva provided a warm sheath that took away some of the bite. 6 Vigil. Avowal of his own weakness. His individual safety. His escape. All that. And his wife and daughter. Did he for one moment consider them? The town would rise to news of his escape. Curious eyes would come and stand by the gate and peer into the house of the man who had escaped. And would exclaim: Here! He passed through this gate! I’m not so sure. A man running away will not pass through the gate. Yes, you are right. He vanished through the back of his house. Maybe he even stumbled and fell a few times. What does that matter? Coward. Just one big coward. His wife and daughter would become showcases of his cowardice. Did he think of all that? They would be questioned for his whereabouts. His house would be searched, his belongings – or whatever was left of them – ransacked, his wife, maybe even his daughter, abused. The real word was rape. Raped. It had happened to other wives and daughters for more benign offences. At times even for no offences at all. If Tendo was languishing in prison today, it had not always been so; only that the police had come – two reckless, tattered sergeants - one night, had asked him out of bed, and had raped his wife, then his eight-year-old daughter, with him looking on, mouth gagged. They had done all that and had slapped and kicked him in the face. Then proud of their act they had turned to return to their station. He’d fought the gruelling numbness rapidly and seized hold of an axe and planted it on the lower column of the one who had opened the dance of rape. The surviving one had vanished into the night and Tendo had been picked up the following morning and charged with the murder of a police officer. All of this because a barmaid in El Dorado had preferred him to the slain rapist, and he had been...