the seat of his robes. He wore beaded sandals on his feet. Belekun threw himself down on some cushions and rugs, waking up a pink dust. He still did not invite me to sit. Laid out on a plate beside him were goat cheese and miracle berry, and a brass goblet.
“You truly are a hound now.”
He chuckled, then laughed, then laughed into a brutal cough.
“Have you had miracle berry before lime wine? It makes the whole thing so sweet, it is as if a flower virgin spurted in your mouth,” Belekun said.
“Tell me about your brass goblet. Not from Malakal?”
He licked his lips. Belekun the Big was a performer, and this show was for me.
“Of course not, little Tracker. Malakal went from stone to iron. No time for the fineries of brass. The chairs are from lands above the sand sea. And those drapes, only precious silks bought from eastern light traders. I am not confessing to you, but they cost me as much as two beautiful slave boys,” he said.
“Your beautiful boys who didn’t know they were slaves before you sold them.”
He frowned. Somebody once warned me about loving to grab fruit low to the ground. He wiped his hand on the robe. Shiny, but not silk, for were it silk he would have told me.
“I seek news of one of you, Basu Fumanguru,” I said.
“News of the elders be only for the gods. What be they to you that you should know? Fumanguru is—”
“Fumanguru is? I heard he was.”
“News of the elders be only for the gods.”
“Well you need to tell the gods he is dead, for news on the drum did not reach the sky. You, though, Belekun …”
“Who seeks to know of Fumanguru? Not you, I remember you as just a carrier.”
“I think you remember more than that, Belekun the Big,” I said, and brushed my bulge on the way to grabbing my bracelet.
“Who is it that will know of Fumanguru?”
“Relations near the city. It seems he has some. They will hear what became of him.”
“Oh? Family? Farmer folk?”
“Yes, they are folk.”
He looked up at me, his left eyebrow raised too high, goat cheese lodged in the corner of his mouth.
“Where is this family?”
“They are where they should be. Where they have always been.”
“Which is?”
“Surely you know, Belekun.”
“Farming lands are to the west, not Uwomowomowomowo, for there are too many bandits. Do they farm the slopes?”
“What is their livelihood to you, elder?”
“I only ask so that we may send them tribute.”
“So he is dead.”
“I never said he was alive. I said he is. We are all is, in the plan of the gods, Tracker. Death is neither end nor beginning, nor is it even the first death. I forget which gods you believe in.”
“Because I don’t believe in any, elder. But I will send them your very best wishes. Meanwhile they wish for answers. Buried? Burned? Where is he and his family?”
“With the ancestors. We should all share their good fate. That is not what you wish to know. But yes, all of them, dead. Yes they are.”
He bit into some more cheese and some miracle fruit.
“This cheese and miracle fruit, Tracker, it is like sucking a goat’s teat and sweet spices come out.”
“All of them are dead? How did this happen, and why do people not know?”
“Blood plague, but the people do know. After all, it was Fumanguru who angered the Bisimbi in some way—he must have, yes he did, of course he did—and they cursed him with infectious disease. Oh we found the source, who was also already dead, but nobody goes near the house for fear of the spirits of disease—they walk on air, you know. Yes they do, of course they do. How could we have told the city that their beloved elder or anyone died of blood plague? Panic in the streets! Women knocking down and trampling their own babies just to get out of the city. No, no, no, it was the wisdom of the gods. Besides, no one else had contracted the plague.”
“Or the death, it seems.”
“It seems. But what is this? Elders have no obligation to speak of the fate of elders. Not even to family, not even to the King. We tell them of death only as a courtesy. A family should regard an elder as dead as soon as he joins the glorious brotherhood.”
“Maybe you, Big Belekun, but he had a wife and children. They all came to Kongor with him. Fled, I heard.”