The Strange War Page 9

breaking down in tears next to the old woman’s bed. Only Balekimito herself was quiet amidst the wailing, weeping crowd. She reached for her sons’ hands, pulled her daughter to her and whispered, “I am with my children. I’m not dying alone. It is good.”

  With her still alert eyes, she looked around the hut and caught sight of her great niece Arobanai. She waved to her with her hand, which was transparent like a dry leaf, to come over. “You’ve become pretty,” she whispered. “Have you already picked out a boyfriend?” She grinned and grasped Arobanai’s wrist tightly. Arobanai, numb with shock, was crouching next to the old one’s bed. Balekimito fell asleep, but her grasp didn’t loosen. The girl remained crouching. The men and women kept their wailing down, so as not to disturb the old woman’s sleep. When the sun stood high above the camp, Balekimito stopped breathing.

  Now there was no longer any reason to hold back. Asofalinda suddenly had a hemp rope in her hands and placed a noose around her neck. Three men had to stop her from harming herself. Children crowded into the hut and then ran back out. They threw themselves on the ground and started beating the earth in helpless anger. The ancient Tungana and his wife Bonyo crouched in front of their hut, tears running down their wrinkled cheeks. Arobanai, still numb with grief, was huddling in the middle of the wailing and crying people. And the wailing and crying would never end because Balekimito would never again wake up. She was dead, not only just dead, she was dead forever, and would always lie there that way and hold on to her wrist.

  Not until Arobanai’s mother Kamaikan stepped up and softly bent the dead person’s fingers back, was Arobanai able to burst into tears too, to writhe on the ground, and cry her grief and terror away.

  Not until the evening did the camp slowly calm down. Weary from the sorrow, they all just lay in front of or in their huts. Then old Moke stepped into the middle of the camp and started speaking very quietly. People moved up closer to be able to hear him, and he said with his calm, melodic voice, “It’s not good for everybody to just sit around and be sad. The fires are going out and no one is cooking dinner. Tomorrow everybody will be hungry and too weak and too tired for the hunt. She, who was a good mother to us all, died well. Everybody should be happy that she lived so long and that she had such a good death.” He was answered by general nodding.

  Manyalibo said, “Yes, that’s right. Everybody should be happy. All this mourning won’t help anyone. It’s got to stop. We should have a party. We should call the Molimo and have a feast for the Molimo.”

  And Njobo, the great hunter who had killed an elephant alone said, “Yes, her death is a big thing, and we should have a big feast. We should celebrate until the moon has been full once and twice, or even three times!”

  The next day, two young men went from hut to hut with a lasso made of liana. They threw the noose into the hut and waited. The residents of the hut placed a few bananas in the noose, or maybe roots or a piece of dried meat. The young men acted as though they had to catch the offering and fight over it. Then they went on to the next hut. In the middle of the camp there was soon a well-filled basket on a pole next to the Molimo fire.

  The whole day, the young men made a big mystery out of the Molimo. Women were not allowed to see the Molimo. The young men indicated that the Molimo was dangerous, the great animal of the forest, and only men could deal with it. Arobanai, who, with her girl friends, was scraping out the inner bark of branches to get material for ropes, wanted to object angrily, but an aunt just calmly gripped her arm, smiled a little and shook her head. In the evening, after dinner, the women hastily withdrew with their children to their huts. The old men, the hunters, and the young men gathered around the fire and began to sing.

  Arobanai was playing with her young brother. Outside the men were singing. Just when Arobanai was just about to fall asleep, Kamaikam gave her a little push. In the glow of the burning embers, Arobanai could see that her mother was smiling and pointing towards outside. She listened. The men sang, and quietly so that they could not hear her, Kamaikam hummed along:

  “Around us is darkness, great darkness.

  Darkness is around us, great, black darkness.

  But if there is darkness,

  then the darkness is good.

  Darkness is around us, great black darkness,

  but if there is darkness,

  and the darkness belongs to the forest,

  then the darkness is good.”

  Every night the men sang the songs of the Molimo. And the women withdrew to their huts and acted as though all of this was none of their business. When the men sang, the great animal of the forest answered them. He called with the voice of the buffalo, with the voice of the antelope, with the voice of the elephant. He called with bird voices and leopard and monkey voices. And then the men sang again and hummed their songs around the fire. The songs came from close by, from far away, from the north, and from the south.

  Sometimes the men sang until the early morning. Every man had to take part. Every man had to spend the night singing and eating, eating and singing. If one of them fell asleep, it was said, the great animal of the forest would eat him.

  “They don’t need to act like that!” said Akidinimba sullenly, when she was picking berries with Arobanai and other girls. “I know what it is. It’s a big pipe, a pipe made of bamboo. They blow into it and shout and sing. Yesterday it was Ausu who was running around in the forest with the pipe.”

  “He’s got a beautiful voice!” said Arobanai.

  “We’re not supposed to talk about those things!” said Kidaya. “Women don’t talk about those things!”

  But at night, when the men were singing, Kamaikan smiled and hummed along, and Aunt Asofalinda told a story, “Once, a long time ago, the Molimo belonged to the women. The women sang the songs and ran through the forest with the Molimo. The forest is good to us and watches out for its children. That’s why we sing songs for him, to make the forest happy. But sometimes the forest sleeps, and then bad things can happen. Then we wake up the forest; then we fetch the Molimo so that the forest wakes up and doesn’t forget its children in its dream.”

  “And why are the men now running with the Molimo?”

  “Oh, the men. They always think they know everything. They say they are the big hunters. They know how to deal with the animals of the forest.”

  And Kamaikan smiled mysteriously and told Arobanai to be patient.

  In the fifth night of the the Molimo, Kelemoke came to her in her hut. Arobanai was totally amazed. “If you don’t sing with the men, the great animal of the forest will eat you!” she said and poked him in the side with her finger. Kelemoke laughed quietly. “Why should it eat me? Your mother and aunt are sleeping. Your father is singing. What better time is there for love? Why should the animal of the forest eat me if we’re doing what everybody does?”

  Every other night or so, Kelemoke found the chance to sneak away from the Kumamolimo. Arobanai crept out of the hut, and they usually met at the bopi, the children’s playground. There they giggled and whispered and played the game of love. It was all the more exciting because it was forbidden. A boy and a girl from the same hunting group could not marry. And Arobanai knew whom she wanted to marry. It was Tumba, a boy who hunted with Abira’s and Motu’s group. But, in the meantime, why shouldn’t she amuse herself with Kelemoke, the strongest hunter among the young men, who could have had a wife a long time ago, if he hadn’t had to wait. He had to wait until a close female relative from his group was of marriageable age and at the same time a girl from another group came to him. They could then have an exchange: the female relative could marry a man from the girl’s group, and he could marry the girl. If the hunters didn’t exchange their “sisters,” it was possible that one day a group would be without women. No girl would have said no to Kelemoke, but she, Arobanai, was the most beautiful. That’s why he had chosen her. No girl had such beautiful breasts as she had, and such slender legs and such a round bottom. When the moon would bless her with the blood, then th
ere would always be time to marry.

  The next day brought heated debates and bickering. Sefu had arrived, the old trouble maker. It wasn’t that they didn’t like him, that sly joker, but why did he have to set up his own camp, just fifty steps away from the big camp? He considered himself the leader of five families. How could five families organize a hunt? “It’ll be the same as last time,” said Asofalinda, Ekianga’s sister. “If he needs something, he says he belongs to our camp, but if he has something we’d like, then he says he’s just passing through.” She imitated Sefu’s whining voice. When the laughter had died down, Masisi, who was related to Sefu, said, “It’s good to have many hunters and many nets.” “Yes, and many eaters!” said Asofalinda.

  It turned out that Asofalinda was right. Sefu didn’t often give anything for the Kumamolimo, the food basket that had to be filled every day. “It’s not my Molimo,” he said during the day. But when he had given something, or rather, when someone from his camp had given something, then Sefu came and devoured large portions. When he had eaten his fill, he sang a little and took the first opportunity to disappear back into his hut. “If he doesn’t behave himself,” the young men threatened, “we’ll go find him in his hut, and if we find him