Downstairs the air is thick with the smell of a thousand purple petals; beaten into a frowzy mulch by morning dew and afternoon heat; and the twice daily stampede of twice daily travelers. The soft ground is patterned by the busy piercing of shoes- stiletto spikes and platforms; gumboots and brogues wearing the ground as they themselves have custom to be worn.
She stands in the shade of the old tree, chewing on her thoughts as she spits broken fingernails out from between her teeth. It’s shortly after lunch hour and the atmosphere is laden with siesta fantasies impelled by the ugali-madondo Mama Safi serves at the mkombizi down the road. She looks closely at her nails; bitten down to the quick in a subtle attack of nerves.
The sky is changing, shifting shape slowly: massive clouds like battalions changing strategy. It looks like it might rain soon. She shakes her head, bemused; only here can a hot day brew a tropical storm. A family of ants makes a procession up her arm, teasing the edge of her folded sleeves. Red sleeves they are: she pauses for a minute to consider the implications. Too obvious; she should have gone with the olive string top from last season.
Well she’s here now no turning back. She’s here to see him; the drummer. He’s upstairs waiting for her and she knows it. She’ll let him wait; why not?
Meanwhile she makes a bridge for the ants with her finger and they climb across onto the tree trunk to disappear into deep valleys of bark carrying little boulders of food between their pinchers like the conveyer belt in a sushi bar. The askari is watching her from his little banda: his little Chinese radio, complete with a neck strap and an AM/FM dial powered by shiny silver antennae, blasts Radio Ramogi and the latest from Tony Nyadundo, calling out in the strange rhythms of the great lakes’ distant shores. He clicks his tongue and smiles to himself, amused at her strange behaviour; he then plumps up his raggedy old jacket to use as a cushion for his head. As he settles into a delicate doze she shouts across to him to remind him of their old joke: Good morning, how did you sleep? Like a night watchman. He blushes, embarrassed at being caught on a break that is probably well deserved; but then he winks and invites her to share his banda so than it’s her turn to be embarrassed. It’s not long before his doze turns into a deep slumber and she’s left to herself in the courtyard apart from a friendly old German Shepherd who licks at her knuckles and the radiant blossoms that lend their colour to the old tree, giving it new life only to be rejected and ride down on a stiff wind to land in her hair.
She’s been standing under the tree for a full half hour before he pokes his head out of the upstairs window and hollers something foul at her to let her know she’s suitably late. Glancing down at her watch she pulls her face into an expression of complete surprise before she looks back up at him. His hands fly into the air as he stomps off muttering obscenities. A grin infects her face in anticipation of the thunder to follow. She’s keen to inspire him to rage. By the time she’s negotiated; slowly, calmly, the three flights of stairs, the crash of palm on heated drumskin is almost paralyzing.
Her instinct in the face of his arrogant jembe rhythms is to silence, and she moves into the room cautiously now; stopping in one out-of-sight corner to kick off her shoes, and another to frantically upturn her bag in search of notepaper or something equally irrelevant, only so that he won’t see her hands shake. The drumming stops as abruptly as it started and when she finally looks up he’s watching her: sweat dripping from his face and bare chest heaving. His hands; thick with calluses and hard from years of playing, are all that remain from his angry balcony self. They are large and discolored; rippled with craters where the skin has broken and formed new skin that didn’t get the chance to settle in before it was torn open again by a need for sound. He picks at them inattentively, lost for a long moment in her face.
She has her tongue pushed into the space behind her lower lip, making her mouth look fuller than it really is: a subconscious habit that he recognizes from a long time ago. The look she gets when her thoughts soak her up like a sponge on a wet counter and she retreats into a space to which he’s not welcome. Her hair is a strange length; too short to tie back and yet it falls forward into her eyes so that every so often she frowns and raises her hand to push it away, as though it belonged to someone else. From her ears hang big rings, and from them hang beads that jingle ever so deliciously, like an ice cream truck coming round the corner. He smiles, encouraged by what about her is familiar, only to remember that things are different now.
His hands shift to caress his drum, and he casts his sad eyes onto its full belly. As he watched her she had been fidgeting distractedly wishing things could be easier between them. With his drum he is different. She stares at him as he wraps his long legs around it, feet together in a perverted heel-to-toe arrangement. He leans into it and as he coaxes a gentle rhythm out of it, his body falls forward into its dark tone and once again he disappears, swallowed up by something she compares with obsession.
She inches closer to him and sniffs out the drums’ hot leather smell. Not as pungent as that of a dead animal but strong enough that you wouldn’t forget it. From afar he seemed a part of that same smell but now that she’s right beside him she can tell the difference, an intimate difference she learnt over time. The drumming fades away discreetly like a wave in its lowest ebb and finally they are together, all challenges of physicality and psychology surmounted. He looks up at her, looking down at him.
Outside the afternoon sun has retreated behind dark clouds and the sky struggles to peer down at them from what patches remain of blue. The sound of traffic in the distance shakes the sleepy askari back into an afternoon that has the urgency of an approaching evening and he panics in awaking to find himself alone under a rapidly darkening sky. As he stretches, long limbs too long confined, that crackle and pop to recover their length, he looks up to bring to sight the sonorous roar that pours from the third floor window. In gentle wafts and violent spills, it rocks with the contrary choreography of mighty machismo and temperate infatuation.
He was a musician himself once; a long time ago in a village which now seems far away enough that it might have had basis only in fantasy. The thought of it warms his heart slightly and he whistles three times to call to the old dog which rushes over to have arthritic fingers comb stiffly through its mane. In the village, even the old dogs are different. Thin though they might, be they are tough and never would be seen groveling for food or soliciting for attention at the heels of contemptuous masters. At night they howl at the moon as like the griots of old they recall the histories of the land and read patterns in stars set against contrasting backdrops of blue day and night sky. They dig deep into the parched soil to bury rare bones under the roots of dreamed harvests as dry repositories of ritual. He recalls long nights where deep sleep was interrupted only by the sharp snap of twigs breaking under the bare feet of nimble footed maidens rushing across the fields to midnight rendezvous in the flimsy shadows of maize crops laid to waste by monkeys that screeched wickedly to make public lovers’ secrets.
He stands up straight on crooked knees reaching blindly for the bakora he cast away scornfully in exchange for youthful daydreams behind closed lids. Its wooden handle, once beautifully engraved, is now worn smooth and shiny, and stained dark where his wrinkly thumb has time and time again met with bent fingers in a tight grip lubricated by customs of struggle and sweat. As his body recovers from its arduous attempts at rest, he inches forward towards his memories straining all the while to hear the beautiful cadence of the drums of old.
The lesson is well under way. She has her own drum; shiny and new, strung tight and waiting to be broken; balanced delicately between her knees in awkward imitation of his own more casual carriage. Her gentle inflection is distinct from his; slow and silent but steady, foiling his unevenly emotive eruptions with a constant canvas of pulse, like the lifelong strokes of hearts beating. Crimson dewdrops of blood squeeze out from beneath her fingernails in protest of the punishment being meted out against her soft hands. Eventually; perhaps to stop the hot tears gathering fast in her eyes from spilling forward onto prized drum skin, she drops the beat and cradles her suffering fingers against her chest. He looks up, surprised that she could be so audacious as to discord their symphony. As his irritation drifts through the cool afternoon air between them, her tear dams’ break open and silent tears stream determinedly down her face.
He reaches out to drown his hands in the heat of her face and finds himself lost in the depths of all within her that is broken. How’ve you been? Yeah, grand you know. Nought so much. Howsu? I’ve missed you. What you stupid-like? Whatchu on about? He moves closer to her and she is enclosed in the faint envelope of his scent. His features shift out of focus and his long locks fall onto her cheeks, tickling her face. She smiles. He smells like her shampoo: citrus against a mixed berry; vaguely feminine but not yet offensive. She sighs: a tired sigh, weighty with the darker memories of a time long past. Between them now there can only be hurt, for the edge of the drum is where affection comes to die. The beginnings are always the same after all. He touches her and she lets him; their faces joined so that she breathes in what he has disposed of. The heat reaches its’ fingers into them to weave them together in an endless warren of body and spirit. He kisses her and the vessels of her intellect crack and fall open; and from them pours a soft, warm liquid that confuses her so that she drifts as though on cloud into a land where milk, toast and honey are staples and this man, her drummer, is good and true. And her vision is blurry. And her head rolls backwards to escape the heat, but the chill of the night air is just as bad in combination with his tongue running lightly along the shadows on the inside of her neck. His hands, calloused drummers hands, slip their deformed digits into hers; still bleeding from his instruction but more perfect then he could dream for himself. Their fingers dance in quiet imitation of the eight legged web weavers; and she is lost where he is found.
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