Lament for the Fallen (9 page)

There it seems to lie spent. But, no, it is only resting. A ploy.

It roils and boils and twists and spirals, building itself into an explosive force. And then, born laughing and nameless, it erupts out of the valley, carrying its message of life and light.

As it goes, in a moment of humour and spirit, it snatches up all the laundry that the nuns have laid out early that morning. Caught unawares, the nuns can only watch as a colourful confetti of skirts and shirts and trousers goes parachuting up into the great blue sky.

Chuckling at the sport, the wind spreads out over the villages and towns of Malpensa and Iliham, and there something extraordinary happens. For the wind, with what can only be devious forethought, drops the nuns’ laundry neatly on to the washing lines of young couples across the two kingdoms. Astute observers note how some of the billowing clothes appear to steer their way into place.

The wind disperses, dissipates, a mere zephyr and then a dissolving whimsy. Gone for another year and leaving behind the lingering scent of spice and the returning spring.

If this had been all, it would already have been sufficient to earn the wind a new name. A young poet who saw the clothing flashing by was already toying with either of The Laundress or The Washerwoman when something entirely unprecedented happened.

From within each shirt and dress and trouser, from beneath a rainbow of fabrics ripe with the pungent smell of soap and softener, peers a small face.

Then a stretch and a yawn and tiny bodies emerge. The babies and young children are hungry and soon set up a fearsome bedlam as they demand their breakfasts.

As the young women of the towns rush to the young ones, warm milk and porridge ready with what must seem to be only coincidental good timing, the young men are already preparing their objections.

But as the cries of hunger give way to snorts and burps of happy contentment, the young men can only stand and stare in wonder at such glowing-cheeked serenity. The image of their wives cradling tiny vulnerable bodies, a look of joy, wonder and love on their rapturous faces as the bright spring sunshine makes flesh radiant and all about the tangy scent of life.

Three months of painstaking and carefully calibrated planning has led to this moment. An orchestration of nature, the women of two kingdoms, the nuns of the order, and the children themselves.

As they behold the tableau within the glowing light, the morning waits. As the hearts of baby and prospective mother stay their beat. As prospective fathers breathe the impossible scene.

The question: will the miraculous be accepted? Will it be believed that a capricious wind will snatch up laundry and orphans and deliver their soft payloads so perfectly to couples so clearly suitable to accept them?

The young men, their hearts frozen with regret and loss and the stench of death of so many comrades, stare in confusion and pain. They feel the moment and the choice: a world of ice and cold, or a world of laughter and light.

And they choose. Embracing their loves and accepting their new lives.

Afterwards there was much suspicion of the nuns, but it was impossible, after all. Indeed, it came as no surprise that the wind itself came to be seen as the arbiter of the eventual reconciliation between the two kingdoms and earned its new name.

And now, with the death of the last of the children of that wind after a long and joyous life untouched by war or regret, the tale of how the Stork got its name can finally be told.

It is a tale of strength, of danger, of planning, of comradeship and of bravery.

It is the tale of the conspiracy of women.

***

‘That is ridiculous!’ howls Oleg Deripeska from where he leans against the open door frame in the great kitchen.

‘Hush,’ says Katerina Esplanova where she sits rapt, the sun shining brightly on to her round red face and her eyes sparkling.

‘Yes,’ says the prim Irina Mabadov, who is reading from the recently released book, the pages spread open on the stained wooden table before her.

The room is full as people gather to listen to Irina’s reading. All the women glare at Oleg and, shamefaced, their young men follow suit.

Oleg splutters. ‘But it is preposterous,’ but quietly and then, downcast, lapsing into silence.

Settled again, Irina continues, her clear, husky voice resonating and filling the room with drama of days gone by.

9

The people of Ewuru are silent as Samara completes his tale. They are unsure that the story is even over.

There is emotion, and few are unaffected by this. They live within the borders of a failed state: a region subjected to unwarranted cruelty for centuries. Warlords and militia exercise random and unpredictable violence out beyond the town. People in the lands outside the free villages of the Akwayafe do not nurture life, honour life, and the soil there is poisoned.

They relate to the despair that follows conflict. And they love their children.

Many find that they are holding their young ones tightly as Samara speaks, fiercely protective.

But this is not a story. Not anything as they know it.

It has set a scene, described a place, and filled it with people and sounds and texture. Who is the hero? What was the triumph?

Samara nods in the stillness.

‘My father called these samara. I was never sure, as a child, whether he named them after me, or whether I was named after them. He never told me. He would always just smile and tell me, “You’ll know one day,” when I asked.’

He drinks from the jug of water at his side. Lights around the periphery of the amphitheatre shine on to the stage, insects clouding the brightness. Shrill chirps of frogs and night birds, and the distant heartbeat of the river.

The audience exhales, everyone realizing that they have been holding their breath. A few have a prickling sensation: the discomforting sense of being confronted by their own moral doubts.

While it may not have been a story like the ones they know, they have experienced something. An emotional quickening of the heart.

‘My father called them samara because they are like the propeller seed. They have the means to take flight, to be carried far and to take root and grow where they land. He intended that they offer lessons without preaching, and that they be beautiful. None must be a complete story, as no seed is a complete tree.

‘When I was a child, he told these stories only to me. Then, eighty years ago, he started telling them to the children of his friends. They are easy to remember, short enough to hold in one’s soul. Easy to make your own and tell again to others. Soon everyone knew his tales. We would hold gatherings, like this one, and my father would tell his samara. The gatherings became festivals. Many people would present their own samara.’

Samara is silently weeping. ‘Each year my father would present a new tale. We never knew what he would come up with next. I do not have this talent. I am an ordinary man. I remember listening with my family, seeing how much my father was loved by my people. I felt such pride and joy.

‘He used to call the festivals “Sowing the Seeds”, because people would take the stories and complete them on their own. The stories would grow in meaning through the retelling and through memory.’

He takes another sip of water. ‘My father ended his life twenty years ago. I still do not know why. This –’ his voice trembles, ‘– this was my favourite of his stories. It reminds me of why we must not make war. It fills me with joy for those who are precious to me.’

Samara sits quietly, lost in memory. ‘I thank you for listening.’

10

‘Wait,’ says Joshua, his breath in short gasps.

He and Samara have been running in the jungle outside Ewuru, parallel to the river. This is the third day, each day going a little further and a little faster. The path through the jungle is a tangle of fallen branches, buzzing and biting insects, rotting vegetation and bare, twisting roots. All hazards to the unwary.

They settle into a walk so that Joshua can recover. The humidity amongst the trees is sweltering. The trees sweat. Joshua, with his hands on his hips, breathing hard, is dripping, a sticky stream running under his collar and pouring through an already drenched shirt. Samara is dry, his trousers and shirt unmarked as if he has newly put them on.

Joshua, deliberately slowing his breathing, shakes his head. He breaks away from the path, heading down the bank to the river. He slips off his shoes and shirt and buries his head in the water. Cupping his hands, he drinks.

The water is warm and heavy with silt and tannin draining out of the forest. The river is wide here, perhaps thirty metres across. A tree-covered island rises out of the centre, the pressure of the current raising a ridge of water that crests and breaks in slow syncopation.

Mud has caked on the bank, cracking into dry plates, rimed with mineral salts. Yellow and blue butterflies, like so many gossamer leaves, kaleidoscope up and down, some licking at the crust while others bobble for position above.

On the far bank, a troop of monkeys emerges. Black, dog-like snouts, brown-grey fur and walking on all fours. Their hind legs are shortened under narrow hips, and their backs slope up to broad shoulders. The biggest male barks, baring wicked-looking canines.

‘Those are drill? I thought they were extinct?’ asks Samara.

Joshua is still rinsing his head and shoulders. He squeezes water out of his tightly curled hair and wipes his face, then looks up.

‘We use the genetic library from the sphere. Our university began reintroducing indigenous species about twenty years ago.’

Samara slowly crouches, not wishing to startle the drill. ‘Yes, the sphere were always meant to be a complete snapshot of everything that is known about Earth. It would be there. I never expected that it would be used in this way. Not out here. Symon was right. There is something unusual about your people.’

Joshua stares at him, questioning, guarded.

‘What are your people doing, Joshua?’ he asks.

‘We make our own way. There are no countries south of the Sahara and no one knows what happens outside the connect. How we suffer,’ says Joshua, his voice terse.

Samara puts up his hands, palms facing Joshua. ‘I am not your enemy, Joshua. I will not interfere.’ He pauses, looking again at the drill, now returning to the forest. ‘Everywhere I travel, all I see is broken. No one builds. No one thinks for tomorrow. There are no dreams.

‘In your people, though, I see something different. You are not just cycling through the same day. You are building. Your village could almost be modelled after one of the small orbital cities. You honour learning, stories, beauty.

‘I am sorry if I have intruded, Joshua. I have no wish to cause you concern,’ he says, compassion in his tone and posture.

Joshua wonders, how far do I trust this man? He makes a decision and grapples for ways to explain. He looks at the island, the wave before it. ‘Do you see the trees, Samara?’

‘Yes, mahogany, iroko, obeche, sapele wood and walnut. I would not expect such variety on one small island?’

‘That is Tait Island. My great-grandfather took pictures of this place when he came here. There was nothing. The trees were logged and dragged away. Oil pipelines criss-crossed the forest. Pirates broke those pipes to steal the oil. Great lakes of black filled the swamp and clogged the river, killing trees and fish and life. There were fires. Smoke filled the sky from many small refineries.’

Joshua is staring at Samara intently.

‘My great-grandfather, also Isaiah, went to university in Abuja. The big men still ran the country. They made their money out of oil bunkering. I have his diary, and he wrote about the journey by road.

‘He went with another boy from Zango, his village on the Gagere River. The first two boys to go. Everyone was very proud. You understand, the journey was only 450 kilometres by road, yet it took three days. Every few kilometres, a roadblock with soldiers. Hundreds of people selling goods to the buses. Children sitting next to their parents.

‘So many people gathered together were a target for Boko Haram and other terrorists. The roadblock needed its own security, its own soldiers for protection.

‘All along the highway, long rows of half-built petrol stations, weeds growing in the cracks in the concrete forecourts. Even so, soldiers guarded them. Politicians would syphon fuel and keep it in the tanks underground. Then they sold it over the border where there were no fuel subsidies and pocketed the difference. There were half-built hotels, stadiums, all with grass growing through the foundations. Everything was corrupt.’

His voice is sour, his face filled with contempt.

‘Two village boys in the big city. They were angry with what they saw but did not know how to fight it.

‘The printers were already in Abuja: first plastics, then metals, then cellulose. It was expensive, a novelty, and the equipment was beyond our villages. As the two boys began their studies, people began building the first cities in the sky. Such technology became cheaper. Affordable even here. Suddenly oil was not so valuable. The big men started to fight and now there is no Nigeria, just a region governed by militia and random violence.’

A gust of wind breathes through the trees. Otherwise, the forest is still.

‘When was this?’ asks Samara.

‘It was about a hundred and fifty years ago. When was your city built?’