Konga commanded Woja Beki to shut up and step aside.
We wanted to hoot with delight. We yearned to jump up and clap, but we didn’t—we were witnessing something extraordinary whose unfolding we dared not disturb.
Konga lifted his eyes to the sky, as if to commune with the stars. When he lowered them, he informed the Pexton men that they would not be returning to Bézam that night. The Leader and the Sick One and the Round One looked at each other and chuckled, amused at the idea that a madman was threatening to keep them captive. We thought it somewhat funny too, but we did not laugh, because Konga said it again, this time slowly, categorically: Gentlemen, you’ll be spending the night with us in Kosawa.
He meant what he was saying, we could tell from his tone, and the Leader could now tell too, because he stopped chuckling. He looked at us in confusion, asking us what was going on, what was the madman talking about, his tone at first beseeching before turning demanding; determined as he was to get a response from us no matter the means.
We uttered not one word.
The Leader glared at Konga. Wrath was gushing out of the Pexton man’s nostrils, but he had to contain himself. Raising his voice only slightly, he told Konga that whatever game he was playing was now over, it was time Konga handed over the key, he’d rather not use force, the night was certain to end badly if he did, he did not want that, considering how much Pexton cared for Kosawa, so it would be best if Konga quietly handed him the key so that this could all be forgiven and forgotten.
We did not expect Konga to obey, but neither did we imagine he would stare at the Leader for seconds, scoff, and burst into a prolonged laugh.
The Leader turned to Woja Beki, who quickly bowed his head.
“Get my key from him,” the Leader shouted at our village head.
Woja Beki made no attempt to move. It was obvious to us why the Leader would ask this of Woja Beki—the Leader could never debase his honorable personhood by getting himself, or his men, into a physical confrontation with an uncouth madman.
“Get my key from that idiot,” the Leader shouted again.
Woja Beki remained frozen in his spot, perhaps ashamed, likely afraid, to look into the eyes of the big man from Bézam.
What came afterward, we’d long fantasized about doing ourselves—some of us had done it in dreams from which we woke up smiling—but it did not lessen our shock when it happened, when Konga, laughing no more, walked up to Woja Beki and spat in his face. We giggled, we gasped in horror, we half-shut our eyes. Woja Beki, without raising his head, wiped the saliva that had landed on his lips. Barely glancing at Woja Beki, the Leader, now a gesticulating bundle of fury and befuddlement, resumed his shouting, yelling at everyone, anyone, to get his key from the madman, someone get his key right now, otherwise there’d be severe consequences.
Not one of us did or said a thing.
None of us took it upon ourselves to tell the Leader that Konga was untouchable. We did not attempt to tell him that no matter what Konga did, however much he humiliated or hurt us or scared us, we could not touch him, because we do not touch men with his condition. We did not tell the Leader that for decades no one had touched Konga and no one ever would, because to touch a madman was to invite the worst curse.
—
If the Leader had sat down with us, we would have told him Konga’s story, the story our parents repeated whenever we ridiculed Konga, every time they caught us skipping behind him around the village, laughing at his matted hair, his lone pair of trousers, his dirt-clogged fingernails. We would have told the Leader that Konga wasn’t born a madman and that, hard as it might be to believe it now, he was once a proud, handsome man.
If the Leader had asked, we would have told him that long before we were born, when our parents were children our age, dozens of young women in our village dreamed of becoming Konga’s wife and bearing sons as chiseled and long-limbed as him. His parents, long gone now, dreamed of the grandchildren their only child would give them. He was a fine farmer, a fine hunter, and a very fine fisherman. On any given day, our parents told us, Konga could be great at being anything—he was destined for a beautiful life. But then, one day, a hot day, he began complaining of voices that wouldn’t stop talking to him. They were laughing at him, he told his parents, imploring him to kill himself, telling him he was going to live forever. They appeared in his dreams at night and emerged from dark spaces during the day in the form of men, women, and children who’d been in the grave for so long they’d lost most of their flesh. They seemed determined to never let him go, badgering him in a language he couldn’t understand, surrounding him whenever he sat down to eat, chasing him around the village.
His parents took him to our village medium, who told them that nothing could be done—a vengeful spirit had taken Konga’s sanity as punishment for an evil committed by one of his ancestors centuries before Konga was born. Konga was to spend the rest of his life
