“I am remembering. It has been a long time since I spoke your language.” He came closer, peering at her. Finally, he smiled and shook his head. “You are something more than an old woman,” he said. “Perhaps you are not an old woman at all.”
She drew back in confusion. How could he know anything of what she was? How could he even guess with nothing more than her appearance and a few words as evidence? “I am old,” she said, masking her fear with anger. “I could be your mother’s mother!” She could have been an ancestor of his mother’s mother. But she kept that to herself. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“I could be your mother’s father,” he said.
She took another step backward, somehow controlling her growing fear. This man was not what he seemed to be. His words should have come to her as mocking nonsense, but instead, they seemed to reveal as much and as little as her own.
“Be still,” he told her. “I mean you no harm.”
“Who are you?” she repeated.
“Doro.”
“Doro?” She said the strange word twice more. “Is that a name?”
“It is my name. Among my people, it means the east?the direction from which the sun comes.”
She put one hand to her face. “This is a trick,” she said. “Someone is laughing.”
“You know better. When were you last frightened by a trick?”
Not for more years than she could remember; he was right. But the names … The coincidence was like a sign. “Do you know who I am?” she asked. “Did you come here knowing, or …?”
“I came here because of you. I knew nothing about you except that you were unusual and you were here. Awareness of you has pulled me a great distance out of my way.”
“Awareness?”
“I had a feeling … People as different as you attract me somehow, call me, even over great distances.”
“I did not call you.”
“You exist and you are different. That was enough to attract me. Now tell me who you are.”
“You must be the only man in this country who has not heard of me. I am Anyanwu.”
He repeated her name and glanced upward, understanding. Sun, her name meant. Anyanwu: the sun. He nodded. “Our peoples missed each other by many years and a great distance, Anyanwu, and yet somehow they named us well.”
“As though we were intended to meet. Doro, who are your people?”
“They were called Kush in my time. Their land is far to the east of here. I was born to them, but they have not been my people for many years. I have not seen them for perhaps twelve times as long as you have been alive. When I was thirteen years old, I was separated from them. Now my people are those who give me their loyalty.”
“And now you think you know my age,” she said. “That is something my own people do not know.”
“No doubt you have moved from town to town to help them forget.” He looked around, saw a fallen tree nearby. He went to sit on it. Anyanwu followed almost against her will. As much as this man confused and frightened her, he also intrigued her. It had been so long since something had happened to her that had not happened before?many times before. He spoke again.
“I do nothing to conceal my age,” he said, “yet some of my people have found it more comfortable to forget?since they can neither kill me nor become what I am.”
She went closer to him and peered down at him. He was clearly proclaiming himself like her?long-lived and powerful. In all her years, she had not known even one other person like herself. She had long ago given up, accepted her solitude. But now …
“Go on talking,” she said. “You have much to tell me.”
He had been watching her, looking at her eyes with a curiosity that most people tried to hide from her. People said her eyes were like babies’ eyes?the whites too white, the browns too deep and clear. No adult, and certainly no old woman should have such eyes, they said. And they avoided her gaze. Doro’s eyes were very ordinary, but he could stare at her as children stared. He had no fear, and probably no shame.
He startled her by taking her hand and pulling her down beside him on the tree trunk. She could have broken his grip easily, but she did not. “I’ve come a long way today,” he told her. “This body needs rest if it is to continue to serve me.”
She thought about that.This body needs rest . What a strange way he had of speaking.
“I came to this territory last about three hundred years ago,” he said. “I was looking for a group of my people who had strayed, but they were killed before I found them. Your people were not here then, and you had not been born. I know that because your difference did not call me. I think you are the fruit of my people’s passing by yours, though.”
“Do you mean that your people may be my kinsmen?”
“Yes.” He was examining her face very carefully, perhaps seeking some resemblance. He would not find it. The face she was wearing was not her true face.
“Your people have crossed the Niger”?he hesitated, frowning, then gave the river its proper name?“the Orumili. When I saw them last, they lived on the other side in Benin.”
“We crossed long ago,” she said. “Children born in that time have grown old and died. We were Ado and Idu, subject to Benin before the crossing. Then we fought with Benin and crossed the river to Onitsha to become free
