Dogs in the Sun

Chapter Eleven

121 Dogs in the Sun Chapter Eleven T ankeh Winjala’s house stood at some distance away from the village centre, so that if Nwemba was a living organism that house would not be anywhere near its heart but somewhere at the extremities from where, like bunions, it would jot out. The distance of that house from the heartthrob of Nwemba was made bigger still by the smug compactness of the village itself which lay nestled together, like chicks burrowing into their mother’s wings. The roofs pieced into a blanket sheath with only tiny openings between them; in certain places they were so close that they blended uninterruptedly into each other, eave to eave, whole house to whole house. The track separating it from the heart of the village was not long; not the kind of distance that required getting up in the young hours of the morning to cover. In fact the house could be seen from any part of the village even if from certain points, like from Chief Ndelu’s palace, watching it filled one with a sizzling sensation of distance. Only, there was no other house so remote as this one, no other house draped in such an eerie mantle of aloofness. But for all its being eccentric, Tankeh Winjala’s house still was, like a nail on a toe, part of Nwemba. Nwemba felt its distant presence, lived it. It lay at the same time outside the village and within it. Its twin aura of being and not being shrouded it in a uniqueness that was both attractive and intriguing. Nwembans felt both fascination and repulsion. They could not talk about Tankeh Winjala’s house without a puzzling sensation of familiarity. 122 G. D. Nyamndi Not many people had been inside the house. Tankeh lived alone, as if in self-imposed solitary confinement. No wife. No children. One cock, too old to be eaten. No hens. A weird force enveloped his existence, and his house. Apart from the sturdy neatness of their bamboo panelling, the external aspects of his house would have passed it off for just any ordinary house in the village. The enigma of the inside did not seethe through. The house stood on a mound, on that same rise where the patriarch Nwembwana had driven his spear into the crackled ground in a double act of victory and possession. That place had remained a sacred ground for many seasons, acting as shrine and libation place. Maybe on account of its forbidding aspect, it had gone down well as a dwelling place for the gods. The few withered pear trees and scanty panting grass about provided a natural setting for a pantheon. But out of boredom of the gods or man’s innate urge for change, the functions of the parched mound had been moved to the lush marshy shores of Mantum, somewhere just before the river swerved into a fall. Nwemba now poured libation amid a permanent, sun-creased cloud of surging drops from the crashing waters of the Mantum. Tankeh Winjala had taken possession of the abandoned sacred place almost immediately afterwards. Not a defiant act. No. The place had come to him as a reward for halting Nwemba’s eight-season-old shame in wrestling bouts with Tazim. Season after season, eight seasons long, Nwemba had returned from combat with Tazim cowed by defeat, numbed by shame. Old mothers had gone about naked. Many times shrivelled breasts had been bared in agony to heedless gods. An old woman’s sorrow is a thing to dread. But the ancestors had not hearkened. No heed. Nwemba was forlorn. Then Tankeh Winjala had come, grown into manhood, not many moons after his father Winjala the Crude brought him back from Meamba at the abrupt end of his service to the white man. He hadn’t only ended the run of 123 Dogs in the Sun shameful defeats; he had silenced many Tazim wrestlers with the violent arrogance of a wounded fighter. In the end Tazim had sued, and Chief Ndelu had used the truce to settle Tankeh Winjala on the site once the dwelling place of the gods. Wrestling was good sport among the youth of Meamba; at least in the days when Winjala the Crude worked there as gardener to Pete Harrington. Everyday, as he left for the white man’s house, he would call his son to his...