The men from Pexton nodded, a warning, it seemed, that it was all true.
Our collective sweat could have filled a dry well when our probable fate dawned on us. We knew what guns could do, but we’d never considered death by bullets.
One of our grandfathers stood up and turned to a grinning and swaying Konga. “Please,” he said, “we don’t want soldiers in our village. Please, Konga Wanjika, son of Bantu Wanjika, I’m begging you, give these men their key. Your father was my second cousin, and I’m now speaking to you on his behalf. Don’t bring any more suffering on us. Drop the key on the ground, and I’ll pick it up and give it to them. Go bring their driver from wherever you’ve hidden him. Let us all wish each other a good night and go home.”
We thought Konga would heed the counsel of a man enlightened by age, a man who had lived long and mastered the difference between right and wrong. We thought the madman would remember that it was our duty to obey our elders and revere the words of the wise, a lesson we’d been taught and retaught since we were toddlers. In our cloud of bafflement, we forgot that, with the loss of his sanity, all that he’d been taught since birth had been washed away, diluted and pulled through his ears and out of his brain by that vengeful spirit. We forgot he was more newborn than adult now, possessing no sense of time, no awareness of the past or future, possessing only a faint consciousness of the spirit world from which we all came and to which we would return. We were reminded of how far from sane he was when he slid the key back inside his trousers and started laughing.
—
“Give him the key,” one of our mothers cried out. The rest of our mothers joined in. Please, they said, we don’t want soldiers coming here. We’re begging you.
“Are you going to sit there and watch a madman invite abominations to your homes?” the Leader said to our fathers and grandfathers sitting at the front of the gathering, looking from one face to the next. “You’re willing to die because of him?”
The soldiers might very well be on their way to Kosawa that moment, he said repeatedly. We ought to consider his words a final warning to get his key from that madman this very minute, or prepare ourselves for a bloody encounter.
The sound of our anguished murmurs rose. We could see clearly what lay ahead for us. We saw our village gone, poisoned and slaughtered. We saw in Konga our ruin.
We wanted no part of his madness.
The Leader pointed to our young men in the back and asked for volunteers to come up front, four strong young men to help him get the key from Konga.
No one stepped forward—we wanted to avoid a slaughter, but who among us dared touch a madman? Woja Beki moved close to the Leader and whispered in his ear.
“Is this some sort of a joke?” the Leader said, his expression a convergence of shock, pity, and disgust. Woja Beki shook his head. The Leader gazed at us as if we’d just been revealed to be from another realm, a realm in which the laws bore no likeness to the ones ordinary humans lived by. “How could you believe such a thing?” he cried, arms raised and flapping in exasperation. “No one dies from touching a madman. No one has ever died from touching a madman. Does anyone here understand that?”
How could he appreciate laws that had not been imprinted on his heart?
“Get me my key right now,” he said firmly, “or tomorrow you’ll all regret it.”
Woja Beki took a deep breath. Speaking as if he was using a borrowed voice he needed to treat with care lest he return it in a subpar condition, he looked at our young men in the back and told them that the future of Kosawa now rested with them.
“Your fathers cannot fight,” he said. “Your mothers are old, your wives are women, your children are weak. If you don’t do what is right, who will? I promise you, if you continue standing there and allow Konga to bring us harm, the wind will sing songs about a village that was laid to waste because its young men were cowards.”
One of the young men stepped forward. Speaking in a voice no more steady than Woja Beki’s, he said he would do it. His wife cried out, imploring him not to. His mother, her voice brittle, pleaded with him too. His father turned his face away.
Woja Beki nodded and half-smiled at him, a token of gratitude.
Three more young men came forward. We’ll do it, they said.
Don’t do it, voices cried from across the square. Do it, others shouted. Do you want to see them and their descendants cursed forever? the dissenters yelled, many rising to their feet. Do you want us all to be killed tomorrow morning? the encouragers responded, no less
