The Butterfly Heart (10 page)

I find it hard to ignore anyone. If someone calls me, I have to answer them. Madillo doesn’t seem to have that problem: in fact I think she likes ignoring people. But she wasn’t there, so I stopped and approached the small hand. “Yes?” I said, hoping my voice would reach her as I didn’t want to go too close.

“You are worried about your friend? The little girl with the smiling face?”

“Well … a bit worried.”

“Bring her to me. I will fix everything,” she said. Then the hand disappeared back into the bushes and it was as if it had never been there. I suppose she is so small that her footsteps aren’t loud on the grass.

Now I don’t know what to do. What do I say to Winifred, “Come and meet Fred’s great-grandmother, an ancient witch with a bad memory, she’ll sort everything out”? But if I don’t tell her, the great-granny may get into a wild twitching rage and that’s me done for.

Madillo had caught up with me by then and I found out the reason for the delay – she held out her hand and there, clutching her finger, was a tiny chameleon.

“It was trying to cross the road. I rescued it. I think we’ll have to keep it, as it’s too small to look after itself. I found the mother squashed.”

I felt ill. Perfectly ill, as if I was about to fall over right then and there. It was like the time I fainted when we had to go to Mass at school. The church doors were shut and it was so hot I couldn’t breathe. I remember looking at the priest and he seemed to get bigger and bigger, then the air around me went red. He loomed. The same thing had started to happen: the little chameleon grew and grew on Madillo’s finger, so I closed my eyes and waited. I didn’t faint, and once I had started breathing again I told Madillo to leave the chameleon on the hedge outside Fred’s house because the great-granny was looking for chameleons and she would take it in. Sometimes Madillo can see when I’m not going to give in and she just does what I say. Not very often, but today it happened like that.

I wish I was back to my rational self: when I didn’t believe in things I couldn’t see. When I didn’t start sacrificing small helpless chameleons on the altar of the great-granny. Life was easier then.

I
will go to the girls tomorrow when I get back. I have a story for them that they will like. I hope they have not yet done anything about Winifred.

I know the boy who lives next to them, through Nokokulu. When I look at him I think he sees things in the same way as she does. She did not pass this on to her son or his son, the big one who makes a lot of noise. But I think the small boy has it. He does not know this yet and maybe he will never know it, but it is there – I can see it in the way his eyes watch me. I only met Nokokulu when I came to Lusaka, and it was then I learnt that she knows what will happen before it does; that she feels no fear. She knew me when she met me on the road for the first time and she called me by my birth name, Chishimba.

I was named for the falls near Kasama, for the guardian spirit that stays in the cave near the bottom of the falls. This cave is a place of peace and rest, a place without hatred or vengeance. I try to live up to my name, but there are times like now when I have to put it aside. The old woman reminds me of my name when she sees me. She is the only one in this new life of mine who knows it. To everyone else I am Ifwafwa or the Snake Man.

Ifwafwa
came today. It seems so long since we told him about Winifred and I wanted to ask him many things. But if you ask him too many questions he closes his face up and you know he won’t answer any of them. He told me once that if I am too impatient, my life will be ended before it has even started. Which is a slight exaggeration, as I have already had several years of my life, a little more than a start. I’ve learned not to be impatient with him by creating an imaginary wall in my brain. It is a stone wall that cuts off the question area. And it is very high, too high for questions to climb over. Today I had to put a roof on as well, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to help myself.

Ifwafwa mostly sits in the same place: just near the gate to our house, next to a large rock that Dad put there when we moved in. Dad liked the shape of it and Ifwafwa does too, because it warms his back when he sits against it. Sometimes, when the sun is very hot, he sits in the shade of the
muombo
tree that grows outside the garden. He told me that its red leaves, which arrive before the rains come, bring hope. Today his snake bag was empty.

“I have brought you no snakes today, but I have a story you will like,” he said to Madillo. “It is the story of the Kariba Dam.” Then he turned to me and tilted his head to one side. “And you, too, will like the story but you must be silent if you want to hear it.”

As if I’m the noisy one!

“This is a sad story told by the BaTonga people who live up along the banks of the great Zambezi river. The river was home to Nyaminyami, which in English means “meat meat”. Not a beautiful name for a river god, but a real name. He was a kind god who lived peacefully in the river with his beloved wife.”

“What was her name?” asked Madillo, excluded from the keep quiet rule.

“What would you like to call her?” said Ifwafwa.

“Mahina, maybe? There is a Tonga-speaking girl in our class who told me that’s the name of the moon. I like moons.”

“A good name for her. So they lived in peace and harmony, troubling no one. When the rains were slow to arrive and the land was dry and thirsty, Nyaminyami would come slowly to the surface of the water and allow those who hungered to cut pieces of meat from his long, snake-like body. He was a creature of many forms: fish, snake and dragon, all in one body.

“One year, before any of you were born, Nyaminyami swam to one end of the Zambezi river and his wife, Mahina, swam to the other. They did not know what was about to happen, they were just enjoying a good slow swim. If they had known, they would have stayed together.

“Men came to the river with machines and they closed it off. They built a wall to stop its flow and they created a giant sea where before there had been nothing. The BaTonga people were forced to move from their homes, the animals ran away and the trees that had been there for thousands of years wept and died.

“Nyaminyami was angry that his wife was trapped many miles away. He stirred up the waters and the floods came. But when they died down, the men returned with even bigger machines and continued their work. Nyaminyami tried again and this time the wall broke and the machines were washed away. But the men did not give up.

“Meanwhile the BaTonga people were saddened because men had died in the floods. They begged Nyaminyami the river god to stop causing the floods, and he agreed. Which meant that he was never to see his wife again. Never to swim with her in the cool depths of the Zambezi, never to jump out of the water to greet the sun. Mahina had been the one who would heal Nyaminyami after he had fed the people, but she could do this no more. Without her he was lost, so he said farewell to the BaTonga people and disappeared silently, never again to show himself.

“But there are times when this great false sea shakes and shivers, when loud tremors come from the deep, when men hide in their homes for fear of the dark waters. That is Nyaminyami reminding them that he will always be alone without the bright light of Mahina to shine on him. He is letting the people know that he has not forgotten what they did. He is there, down among the drowned roots of the ancient trees. Remembering.”

Ifwafwa sat back and closed his eyes, as he always does when he gets to the end of a story. Like I said before, I don’t think he has ever told us one with a happy ending. Here we were left with an eternally sad creature lurking at the bottom of the Kariba Dam, its only thrill in life being to throw a few storms.

I then waited to see if Ifwafwa would mention Winifred. He didn’t. I decided I had to ask the question, otherwise I’d never sleep. “Ifwafwa … do you remember what we asked you about?”

He looked at me with disappointment in his eyes. “Little one, don’t be asking me. I remember everything.”

Which is not strictly true. He remembers more than most people but not everything. I didn’t want to be the one to remind him of the day he left his bag of snakes behind. (Although there was some excuse because it was a very hot day and I know that if it’s too hot my head gets foggy.)

“Ifwafwa,” said Madillo, “one day you forgot the bag of—” I couldn’t let her go any further, so I gave a loud yell. She got such a fright that she didn’t finish her sentence and I was rewarded with a small smile from Ifwafwa as he picked up his bicycle and waved goodbye.

I
went to the house today where young Winifred lives. I could not see her but her mother was there, sweeping the yard. Her back was bent low and there was no music in her. She is a young woman still, and strong – she does not look as if she has the disease yet. But it is a silent creeping disease, so it may have started its journey. She took no notice of me. It is mainly the children who notice me, they like the sound my bicycle makes. They like being afraid of the snakes when they know they cannot harm them.

I watched the mother for a long time. She looks like Winifred, but as with her daughter, the light has gone from her eyes. She swept and swept, even though there was nothing left to clean; the dust was quiet. When she went inside she closed the door. If she left it open, the small wind would make the house cooler.

I am scared of this thing I am going to do. My granny told me when I was very small that I should only use my gifts for good. It is hard to always do what is right, but I think this is right. The old man does not care about people and I know he would not listen if I tried to talk to him. He is a man who thinks great things about himself, a man who walks with his stomach before him, proud of all the beer that he fills it with each night. Proud to be a big man when all around him people are being emptied out by illness. Proud that he has a house with four brick walls and a roof. He needs that pride taken from him, and it is only the pale snake that can do this.

He is no good for this girl. He is no good for her mother, who is becoming old with the thought of him.