Aminatta Forna - The Hired Man

My father used to call this god light.

On a tree on the edge of the ravine a colony of crows shelters and with the end of the rain they become twitchy and raucous, hopping along and between branches, others hunched and watchful sit facing the ravine. Forty, fifty of them. Not so long ago I hunted these birds for food. For no reason, except that I feel like it, I lift my rifle and send a shot into the sky. The air vibrates with movement. I lower the rifle. A stupid thing to do, but who cares. Something about them bothered me. Perhaps they reminded me of the woman earlier in the day, hovering around the Barac house, waiting for something, for a death. And yet they are beautiful birds: the intensity of their colour: black beak, eye and feather; when they stand and tilt their throats to the sky, they look noble in their own way. As a child I collected every feather I found, examined one under a magnifying glass: the filaments and threads, all the varieties of blackness. Even now I find it hard to pass a crow feather and not bend to pick it up, just to hold it for a few moments before giving it to Zeka who loves to play with them and carry them to his bed. The farmers hate the crows and trap or shoot them, hang the corpses on the fences to rot, as a warning to others. A time-tested method, the birds’ bodies rotate in the rain and wind, their heads flop on the ends of their necks, execution victims. The ends of their feathers lift and flutter like the clothes of hanged men. And yet were it not for the crows the roads would be littered with road-kill carcasses and the woods, fields and hills with the rotting corpses of every animal that ever died. I watch as the birds hover overhead, circling in the currents of air over the ravine. In less than a minute they’re back, every single one of them. There must be something in the ravine, a deer that’s fallen over the edge maybe, possibly still alive and the crows holding on until it’s too weak to fight before they stab at it with those murderous beaks. I put my gun on my shoulder and move closer to the edge. Kos, by my side, swings into the lead, because now we are doing something interesting.

Within a few metres of the edge the smell starts, unmistakably a decomposing animal corpse. High, strong and sweet, it has a quality about it I can only think to describe as alive. It seethes, enters your nostrils like a swarm of tiny insects. The rain had cleared the air and now the heat of the sun releases the stink, along with the smell of earth and rotting leaves and something else, wet ash.

Autumn rains have left the ground soft. The earth gives way beneath my boots. There are tyre tracks. Someone has been up here, hunting from the back of a pick-up truck, dazzling the deer with the headlights and then chasing them down, possibly to their deaths over the edge. On the grassy slope which borders the steep edge of the ravine a couple of rocks have come loose and rolled away, leaving streaks of earth. A crow swoops and another: defending their find from me, this intruder. I expect to see a buck with a broken neck, but there is nothing. In the place where the ravine shelves less steeply some of the topsoil has washed away. I climb down, it’s easy enough and Kos outpaces me. Her fur is raised and her nose is down, suddenly she’s very interested, zig-zagging, sniffing the ground. Whatever is there has been buried and the foxes have got to it, and now the rain has done the rest. Kos barks. She barks and bounces the way she does when she has found something and wants my attention. I know because of the pitch of her bark, which is both a call and a warning: she has found something she either cannot handle alone, like a large boar, or else cannot understand.

A human body. Wearing a blue wool sweater, a polo-neck stained with what at first looks like earth or blood, but is actually scorch marks. I squat down to take a closer look, to check the unbelievable truth of what I am seeing. The face has been burned away, the nose is gone, the nostrils are dark holes, the lips are no more, the gums shrivelled and the teeth are bared like an animal’s and black in places. Reddish, singed hair, like doll’s hair. Fingers curl around a handful of soil. Candle-coloured fingers. A woman sprawled and stiff on her back, legs open, knees bent.

Everything else disappears.

I stand up. My heart is beating wildly, the blood rushes to my head. I try to call Kos but my throat has closed and my mouth is dry, I can hardly make a sound, much less whistle. I step forward and yank her collar. I look around, but there is nobody watching us except the crows. For a moment I feel dizzy, the periphery of my vision is closing in black. I have stopped breathing and when I begin again I breathe hard, inhaling the awful smell deep into my lungs. The thoughts come fast, as I try to rationalise what I am seeing. I even think that perhaps this is some kind of overflow from the cemetery, where at one time the burials had become too many. Rogue gravediggers, perhaps, disposing of bodies they are paid to bury. But I know better, I know evil when I see it, the smell of it.

I was right about the foxes. There are more bodies, buried less than a metre down and they have been unearthed by animals and the elements. A short distance away an exposed shin, partly eaten, I can see the teeth marks, the torn flesh and gnawed bone. There is clothing: shredded and burned. I pick up a stick and use it to turn over pieces of a garment: denim, a jacket perhaps. It too is partly burned.

The bodies haven’t been here for very long. My stomach bucks and the bile rises. I bend over and retch, drily save for a string of yellow. I have a terrible thirst. I pull the collar of my shirt across my mouth and poke in the earth with the stick, the wet leaves and ash with the stick. A twisted leg. The heel of a trainer. A yellowed hand, bent sharply at the wrist. Beneath the fingernails there is dirt. Dark unravelled entrails, strewn about by the birds, I suppose, caught in the low branches of a bush. The belly itself is a dark, gleaming hollow and the flies, chased away by the rain, are returning in their scores, bluebottles buzzing loud as bees. Every few seconds I have to stand to breathe, there’s a light wind that comes from the west. I turn my face into it until I can bring myself to look again. I have a duty. I count. There are at least five people, though there could be more.

A crow swoops down and rises back to the branch with a coil of intestine in its beak. The sudden movement makes me start and straighten. I lose my grip on my rifle and it lands on the corpse with the open belly. As I reach for it my hand touches the cold flesh and I snatch it back, I fight the urge to flee. I wonder again if I am alone here, whether I am being watched by whoever did this. I stand there, listening, holding my breath, but there is no sound. I am alone, standing on the edge of a ravine: the landscape I know so well is suddenly a new danger. Now the silence is terrifying. I turn and run. Once away from the ravine, under the cover of the trees, I stop. Up in the trees the other crows start to squabble over the piece of entrail. I try to think what all of this means. Of one thing I am certain: these are not the men I killed and threw into the swimming hole. Those men, the soldiers, are long gone. I have dealt with death. I dealt with the deaths of those men, disposed of their bodies. But these deaths are different. These are different people. These are people I know. One of them, the one with red hair, is a woman.

I think I know who she is: the baker’s wife, mother of the Mongol daughter. Perhaps the Mongol is buried there, too, the whole family. I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Things in Gost had begun to get to some people.

Grace, the first to see the damage, was red-eyed with crying. Laura stood with her hand over her mouth and her arm around her daughter. Matthew was sitting at the outside table, sleep-slow, his mind fractionally behind his body. He’d been woken up by Grace’s shouts.