Dancing In The Shadows of Love (23 page)

She shivers as I did, that day the holding camp girls, with their kicks and snarls mobbed me before my rage emerged and they began to fear me more than I feared them. I want to kneel next to the old crone and wrap her in my arms, for she is such a pathetic bundle of rags. But her face: her face is lined with wisdom and pain, for all that is best in her is all that makes the others hate her.

I gasp out my sisterhood with her; a sisterhood forged in the alienation from all that is normal. The
Sky Palace
alone can help those who fall outside that scrupulously guarded border of the land called Normality, for the citizens of that land will want to conquer; they will want to invade and consume and devour until there is no difference left, for their safety lies in their sameness. Safe for them, at least. Not for those like this sad, scared being and me. For the
Sky Palace
, with its
Spirit King
and all its angels, hasn’t ever helped either of us. We are the lost ones, and our greatest danger rests in our deviation from what has been decided is the norm.

She shifts, and tilts her head to listen, as if she hears the small sound of despair I make. She pulls herself upright; exhausted, she holds fast to a branch of the gnarled old bladdernut tree that overhangs the
kraal
. Looking into the threatening darkness, she arranges her face in a snarl that would make her fearsome if I hadn’t recognised the loneliness that lurks deep behind the ugliness. I’ve practised that grimace myself, in the small mirror above my bed in the cell that was my home for so many years.

‘Will they come back?’ she asks in an ancient tongue I’ve heard before, but only now understand.

‘The innkeeper is a good woman,’ someone else says in the same language. ‘She’ll lead them away and you’ll be safe.’

‘Will I?’ she asks and, tired of the struggle, tired of the dangerous alienation from all that is ordinary, she sinks to the ground. ‘Will I ever be safe?’

‘Trust me,’ he says from over my shoulder…

…I recognise him. He whispers false promises in my dreams every night, since first I came to the court and met him as he slouched in a
pitha
in front of the altar at St Jerome’s.

‘Trust me,’ Enoch says again.

I blink slowly, once, twice. I see
him
, not the shadows dancing, and squint around me, surprised there’s no change in our small private world. We still stand on a deserted beach, him and me, me and him.

I succumb to the temptation and rest my head on his shoulder. The tears come. Indulgent, selfish, I cry for all that I have lost: my Dalia, my innocence, for the me I could have been had I some colour to my skin. All hope abandoned, years ago, somewhere along the dreariness that is my life.

He caresses my face into his chest, enfolding me in his embrace, and my world changes. I learn the sweet cedar smell of his shirt and the soft silent comfort of an ancient promise that I am loved.

I am beloved.

Dalia told me that lie too often and I no longer believe in it. I wrench myself away and run as fast as I can to reach the court office. And Jamila. Jamila, my friend, a normal, uncomplicated woman, whose kindness has rekindled the hope I’d thought lost forever.

This time I run alone. Enoch stays where he is. As I begin to climb the steps that will take me off the beach and into the road where the court grounds nestle, I turn back. He stands there and watches me, his long hair lifted by the sea breeze that has sprung up, and the sun glinting silver off what might be tears.

I wipe my own face and take a few deep breaths. I am as ugly when I weep as when I am angry. Uglier, for tears make me weak and defenceless.

‘Where is the young
Master
?’ the old woman asks from deep within the collection of flowers she has for sale.

Jerked back from my self-pity, I reply, ‘I left him on the beach.’

She struggles to stand using, as her support, the trunk of the twisted old bladdernut tree under which, Jamila tells me, she has sold her flowers for years. The frailty of her age, visible in the trembling of her limbs and the white curls, reminds me of the crone I imagined hiding in an ancient
kraal.
And, in her face and in the way she moves, there’s a peculiar affinity between us. One forged in more than the few times I’ve bought flowers from her, before I visited the garden of remembrance, where Grace’s spirit rests.

‘You will not elude him,’ she says.

I glare, shaken by my tears, because, of course, I ran from Enoch. I do not allow others to see my weakness. No one’s kicked me, or betrayed me, since I hid my tears behind my rage. I won’t let that change, because a stranger saved a piece of abandoned seaweed and I cried into the smell of cedar-wood as he stroked away my pain.

‘I don’t want to,’ I say. Do I lie? I don’t know, but I think she does.

‘Good,’ she smiles. ‘Good!’ She rustles among her buckets, full of flowers. Her clothes, ragged and dirty with age and poverty, brush the blooms and knock a few petals off the older flowers. ‘Ah-hah!’ she says, as she finds, hidden beneath the aspidistra and daisies, a small bunch of white roses. She holds them aloft, like a laurel wreath after a great conquest. ‘For you,’ she says, and holds them out.

My walk with Enoch has made me forget I’d planned to visit Grace. I wanted to tell her of the joy of this day: that Jamila has invited me to dance. But the prickle of the thorns against my heart, and the dampness of the long green stems, reminds me.

I clutch the roses and dig in my jeans’ pocket for some small coins I always carry. The old flower seller refuses to take them.

‘It is your gift,’ she insists.

‘For what?’ I ask, embarrassed.

A finger, arthritic with neglect, touches a bloom, then touches my chest where the ache from Enoch’s nearness, the impossibility of his nearness, ticks dully.

‘You hope,’ she says, ‘when you could hate.’

I want to howl out a denial. For I, I who can see into my heart, I am so full of anger that hope is barely a seed watered by Jamila’s friendship. In silence, I bury my nose in the fragrant blossoms and think of Dalia. Where is my Dalia now? Does she ever remember me as I remember her?

‘Go,’ the old crone says. ‘Go visit the angel of Grace.’

I refuse to cry again. Instead, ‘I’ll buy double tomorrow,’ I promise.

‘I go home today,’ she says. She begins to empty water from the pails and places her leftover blossoms in a large wicker basket. ‘I’ve paid the last of my debts, the young
Master
says.’ She stops stacking the rusty tin buckets, one into the other, and sighs into the future she alone can see. ‘Today I go home.’

Faced with her satisfaction, I can say nothing.

When I arrive for work every day, it’ll be strange not seeing her here under the old bladdernut tree, the guardian of the gate into the court grounds. ‘
Hamba kahle
.’ I give the farewell blessing, for I wonder how she will eat, and where she’ll sleep on her journey. She’s so poor I can’t imagine she’ll be able to buy much in the rural areas. ‘Do you have enough money for food? For a taxi?’ I begin to dig in my pocket, about to insist she takes what I will not miss.

‘Sweet child,’ she sighs, and lays her healing touch on me once more. ‘Sweet, sweet child.’ She nods towards the beach, where a distant Enoch stands. ‘The young
Master
will take me home. You worry about yourself. Go,’ she says and pushes me towards the court gates. ‘Go!’ She shoos me away.

I leave and take her gift with me into the sacred garden where we remember the loved ones. I lay the white roses at the foot of the angel that protects Grace’s ashes. Driven by impulse, I kneel before its celestial face. Unbidden, the nearly forgotten words begin to tumble out,
O Great
Spirit King
, I begin,
warrior wild, look upon a little child
…

• • •

When I return to the office, Jamila is radiant with excitement, and full of wedding talk.

‘Sorry I was so long,’ I say. Do I want her to notice the tear stains on my cheeks and the grass stains on my jeans? Perhaps, if she asks about them, I will talk to her about my walk on a beach.

‘Not a problem,’ she says. ‘You’ll never guess who ‘phoned!’

I do guess, of course, for there’s only one person these days who puts that specific smile on Jamila’s face. Chuki Samanya.

The woman has been relentless in her pursuit of a friendship with Jamila. In a relationship, can one avoid corruption by the flaws of the other? I must trust Jamila’s judgement. I look at her, all brittle animation and restless fingers tapping, as she waits to tell me her news. After her bitter experience with Daren Samanya, I don’t understand her preoccupation with the woman who is his wife.

To make her happy, I say, ‘I can’t guess.’ Then I ask what she wants me to. ‘Tell me who called.’

‘Chuki Samanya,’ she announces. ‘Chuki called. Oh, Lulu, that’s every day she’s phoned this week!’

‘That’s great,’ I say, and try to mean it. ‘What did she want?’

‘Oh, this and that. She asked how the plans are coming along.’ A slight frown mars the smooth skin of her forehead. ‘When I see her I’ll ask her what’s best for the table settings.’

Perhaps
Sub-Prioress
Kapera and her lover, the charity
Prior
, were correct, all those years ago. Perhaps I am the
Levid’s
Child, for a wave of envy swallows me up. Wouldn’t a woman such as Chuki Samanya have many friends? Does she have to usurp mine? Jamila is the only friend I have; the only one I want. And when she talks of this socialite, this Chuki Samanya, I hear what she does not say, this exquisite who is my friend Jamila.

There’s hurt, concealed in that simple statement, and anxiety. But most of all there’s a deep fear of rejection. As if I’m in her skin, I break out in a sweat, the hair on my arms rises as a breath of darkness, dangerous and enticing, sweeps past me to wrap around Jamila.

‘Don’t see her,’ I blurt out.

She’s startled out of her distraction. ‘Why ever not?’ she asks.

My fear is so great I kneel before her and clutch her hands in mine. I try to chafe them, or is it my own I try to warm? For this close Jamila’s face is calm and implacable.

‘Her husband. Daren.’ Even though Jamila has never told me exactly what happened, the memory of it tore at her essence. I clutch her hands tighter and say, ‘Think of what he did to you.’

She drags herself free, and gives me a reproachful look. ‘How can you judge Chuki by her husband? As a servant of the
Spirit King
, I hope I’m not so judgemental! Chuki isn’t responsible for her husband’s Errors.’

Oh, Jamila, I want to cry. Dear, sweet Jamila who sees no iniquity in the world. What I can tell you about life! Don’t you know, I want to say to her, don’t you know that friends can betray you too?

She is hurt and disappointed. All I can do is rise, dust my knees off and walk back to my desk, all the earlier joy of this day a faded memory.

How can I tell her what waits for her? She’ll be hurt. She’ll be lost. A blight has evaded all of us who love her and seeps steadily into her light.

Even I, who of all of them have tasted betrayal, will be unable to save my friend from the sunless spirit that waits to rape her kind and loving essence. I’m familiar with the scent of betrayal. Dalia made me breathe it and live it for ten long years. I smell it again, heavy around Jamila.

What can I say to make her believe me? People who cannot be trusted also wear the faces of angels: unrepentant, they do not care whom they devour along the path to their perdition. I can’t save her from this nameless dread and I’m afraid, so afraid, the next sacrifice demanded by this malicious world we live in will be Jamila.

Pure and innocent Jamila.

“Sometimes we are devils to ourselves
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers.”

‘Will you be alright without me?’ Dawud asks for the tenth—no, the hundredth time—as they call his flight. Granny Zahra does not yield as she watches the hordes of young men and women, some dressed in army green; others, like them, in civilian clothes. All of them are there to say goodbye; a few weep and hold onto their loved ones, pressing branches of buffalo-thorn into their uniform pocket as if some premonition tells them the only way they’ll come home is when the ancestors gather their spirits.

A fleeting premonition of danger threatens Jamila and she wants to put her arms around Dawud and beg him to stay but, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Granny Zahra. The old woman stands rigid, with dry eyes and a cotton handkerchief twisted into tight little knots in her fist. Her lack of emotion gives Jamila the determination to contain her fears.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she says.

In that moment, she means it. Although, over the past fortnight, there have been times when the panic almost consumes her. She blames the
Pale One
.

‘Go with Dawud,’ Lulu urges. ‘I can manage the office.’

There’s a compulsion to Lulu’s advice; a leitmotif of murky emotion that hooks into the recesses of Jamila’s equanimity. It almost turns her into the same unhappy woman she’d been after The Battle of the Balcony. That’s how she remembers it now. The Battle of the Balcony. But she’s finished with unhappiness. The young Jamila has returned, inspired and strengthened by the vision of a dew-dropped
Spirit King
-mask welded to an old school gate. Chuki Samanya has shown her how she triumphed over the
ezomo
within, and won her personal war, as the
Spirit King
will help Dawud win
The War
he goes to fight.

But when Lulu speaks in that compelling way, her eyes burning with an intensity that reminds Jamila of the strange glitter in the court gardener’s eyes, she wavers. She steadies herself with the image of Chuki Samanya’s admiration as she spoke of how even Daren Samanya—once, Jamila had thought, the
Levid
himself—respects her. She is Jamila Johnson to Chuki: Jamjar no longer.

‘I’ll stay,’ she says to Lulu. ‘Someone must care for Granny Zahra.’