Pete Hamill - Forever

“Lie back,” Kongo ordered.

Cormac asked again where they were, and in an almost diffident way Kongo told him they were in a cave at the very top of the island of Manhattan. In a wild place. Just below the smaller river that cut across the top of the island. The trees were very tall and there were wolves in the forest. As he spoke, Cormac heard breathing from somewhere else in the cave.

“Will you bury me here?” Cormac asked, trying weakly to grin.

“You will not die. Not here. Not yet. Not for a very long time.”

Then a figure emerged from the darkness behind Kongo. Tall in her flowing white cotton gown. Her face as beautiful as Cormac remembered.

“Hello, Tomora,” he said in Yoruba.

She gave him a pitying smile in reply but said no words. Kongo moved out of the way. Tomora stretched out her brown arms, the sleeves of the gown falling aside. She closed her eyes and began to chant in Yoruba. Cormac knew that she was offering a prayer. To the wind god and the moon god, the river god and the forest god. Kongo bowed his head, closed his eyes, and responded to each call with a blurted word that meant “So be it.” She prayed to all the inhabitants of the Otherworld. She begged them to reject Cormac. She implored them to keep him here on earth. She urged them to heal the young man. To give him life.

“Here is a man who did not abandon me,” she said.

“A man who did not abandon any of us,” Kongo replied.

“Here is a man who gave his life to save another, one of us.”

“Gave his life for another, O mighty gods. I am the one.”

“Here is a man destined for more time on the earth.”

“This earth, this island.”

“We must reward him.”

“Reward him, O mighty gods of wind and moon, of rivers and forests. Give him life.”

Then they bowed their heads in silence, standing together at the feet of Cormac. Tomora turned to Kongo.

“Go,” she ordered. And he padded on bare feet into the darkness.

Tomora knelt beside Cormac’s head, her legs tucked under her. He could smell musk and forest, rain and the sea.

“O gods of earth and sky, heal him,” she whispered in Yoruba. “O gods of wind and rain and sun, give him life. Give him this place between rivers. Let wind and rain and sun fall forever upon his face.”

Then she ran her tongue over the scabs on his chest, licking their pebbly brown surface. She lifted him with strong hands and ran her tongue over his scabbed back. He felt his flesh shudder and curl like a flower at sunrise.

“Give him the gift,” she whispered, eyes tightly shut. “The reward of the just. The long-lasting gift of women and meadows and water. Give him your eternal gift and do not make it a curse.”

Then she was silent. Her eyes opened, liquid and dark. She kissed Cormac on the lips, and he felt her warm breath mingling with his own. She pressed her fingertips to each of his temples and then kissed each of his eyes until they closed into sleep.

When he woke, Tomora was gone and Kongo was dressed in the clothes of the American world.

“I must go soon,” the African said.

“Wait. Not yet.”

Cormac sat up without pain. His scabs were gone, the skin of his chest marked only by a thin white line. He was naked.

“How long have I been here?” he asked in Yoruba.

“In your time, almost three weeks, including the nine days when you were dead.”

“I understand your language.”

“Of course,” Kongo said, smiling. “My blood is mixed with yours and yours with mine. We always say that words are a kind of blood.”

Cormac began to say that he had dreamed a long strange dream.

“That wasn’t a dream. Tomora was here.”

Cormac stared at Kongo’s face as the African seemed to search for precise words.

“She gave you a gift,” he said at last. “A rare gift. More precious than diamonds.” He paused. “You must take it.”

And then, in careful language, turning his head to gaze at the walls of the cave, he explained.

The gift was life.

Long life.

Perhaps eternal life.

“You can live as long as the world lives,” he said. “When the gods are finished with the world, when they decide that they have seen enough, then all will die, and you with them. But even then…”

He waved a hand as Cormac rose, his joints stiff, hunger gnawing at him.

“You must understand,” Kongo said, his voice now solemn. “Even the gift of life has its terms. Its rules.”

Cormac lifted a blanket, covered himself against the chill.

“Otherwise,” Kongo said, “a man would be a god. Only gods have no limits.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t. Not yet, for you are a boy, too young. But you will. You will learn.”

“And how old are you, Kongo?”

He shrugged. “Old.”

Then he laid out the rules, the terms, the limits.

“Your life,” he said, “will be lived here, on this granite island, this Manhattan. If you leave, if you cross the waters, you will die, and be forever barred from entering the Otherworld.” He paused, letting Cormac absorb the words. “Choosing to leave would be choosing to kill yourself, and that would keep you from crossing over to the true place. The place where your father waits, your mother, the people you will love.”

Cormac thought: The Otherworld is always the Otherworld, no matter who tells of its existence. And in Africa or Ireland, suicide bars the way.

“You can be shot or stabbed, your bones can be broken, your blood can flow, you can sicken with disease and suffer its agonies. Life will not free you from pain. But you will not die.”

He was speaking without emotion, while Cormac listened. “But in order to live,” Kongo said, “you must truly live. You cannot simply exist, Cor-mac, like a cow or a tree. You must live .”

“I don’t know what that means. To truly live.”

Kongo paused again, his eyes wandering to the walls of the cave, to the blackness at the far end.

“To find work that you love, and work harder than other men. To learn the languages of the earth, and love the sounds of the words and the things they describe. To love food and music and drink. Fully love them. To love weather, and storms, and the smell of rain. To love heat. To love cold. To love sleep and dreams. To love the newness of each day.”

He stared at his hands.

“To love women. To pleasure them. To make them laugh. To be foolish for them. To protect them. To respect them. To listen to them.” He paused. “They are the lifegivers. To live is to love them….”

He picked up some doubt in Cormac’s eyes, a kind of smiling uncertainty.

“You will see,” he said. “The proof will be in your living.”

Cormac hesitated, intimidated by Kongo’s seriousness.

“There are only two ways to find release,” he said, and sighed.

“How?”

He closed his eyes and his brow tightened, as if he were receiving a message.

“I told you the first. If you leave this island, then you will die, and be forever banished from the Otherworld.” He smiled in a thin way. “But someday, if you choose, there can be an end, after all your living.”

He folded his arms across his chest, gazed at the walls of the cave.

“You will meet a dark-skinned woman,” he said. “Her body will be adorned with spirals. You will love her. She will love you. You will lie down with her here, in this place, you will enter her in this deep part of the granite island, and then, only then, if you wish, will you be able to pass to the Otherworld.”

A dark-skinned woman marked by spirals. So said the babalawo. The prince of spirits. The shaman. He gestured to a pile of Cormac’s clothes, dry and clean of blood. Cormac began to dress. Remembering their flight from death, the mingled blood, the sensation of riding Thunder through the night.