blots of blood seeping through linen, of uneven shape, that sometimes look like the skulls of ill-born men.
I traced the rivers of the map until my finger took me to Ku, which lit nothing in me. I wondered about it, that once I wanted more than anything to be Ku, but now I don’t even remember why. My finger took me across the river to Gangatom, and as soon as I touched that symbol of their huts I heard a giggle from my memory. No, not a memory but that thing where I cannot tell what I remember from what I dream. The giggle had no sound, but was blue and smoky.
The day was going, and we were setting to leave at night. I went to the other window. Outside, the prefect ran up to a mound, making himself black against the sunset. He pulled off a long djellaba I had never seen him wear, and stood on a rock in a loincloth. He bent down and took up two swords. He squeezed the handles in his hands, looked at one, then the other, rolled them around his fingers, until he had a firm grip. He raised his left hand, holding the sword in blocking position, dropped on one knee, and swung the right so swift it was if he was swinging light. He let the swing throw him up in the air, where he spun and sliced and landed on his left knee. He jumped up again and charged with the right and blocked with the left, sliced his left sword to the right side and right to left, stabbed both in the ground and flipped over, landing in a crouch like a cat. Then he went back up on the rock. He stopped and looked this way. I could see his chest heaving. He could not have seen me.
The old man shuffled again. He took out a kora, larger than I thought it would look. The base a round, fat half of a gourd that he steadied between his legs. The great neck tall as a young boy, and strings to the right and to the left. He took it by the bulukalos, the two horns, and sat by the window. From his pocket he pulled what looked like a large silver tongue rimmed with earrings.
“Great musicians from the midlands, they stick the nyenyemo to the bridge so the music leaps buildings and pierces through walls, but who needs house jumper and wall piercer in open sky?”
He tossed the nyenyemo to the ground.
Eleven strings to the left hand, ten strings to the right, he plucked on and it hummed deep into the floor. I have not been this close to music such as this in many years. Like a harp in the many notes rising at once, but not a harp. Like a lute, but not sharp with melody like a lute, and not so quiet.
Outside Sogolon and the girl, she on a horse, the girl on the buffalo, rode out west. Footsteps shaking the floor above us meant the Ogo was moving around. I could feel the floor shake under him until I heard a door slam open. The roof, maybe. I went back to the maps. The old man built a rhythm with his right fingers and a melody with his left. He cleared his throat. His voice came out higher than when he spoke. High like a cried alarm, still higher, with the top of his tongue clicking the top of his mouth to make rhythm.
I it is who is speaking
I am a southern griot
We now few we was once all
Hide in dark I come out of
The wilderness, I come out of
The cave, I come out and see
I was looking for
A lover
I want get
A lover
I did lose
Another
I want get
Time make every man a widow
And every woman too
Inside him
Black like him
Black that suck through the hole in the world
And the biggest hole in the world
Be the hole of loneliness
The man lose him soul give it ’way
For he was looking for
A lover
He want get
A lover
He did lose
Another
He want get
A man when he eat like glutton
Look like a man when he starve
Tell me can you tell one from two
You glutting by day
Then you starving by night, yeah
Look at you, fooling you
You want find
A lover
You want get
A lover
You did lose
Another
You did lose
A lover
You did lose
A lover
You did lose
Another
You did lose
Then he plucked the strings and let the kora alone speak, and I left before he sang more. I ran