Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible

“Why, that’s just what I need for my lobby in the Equatorial,” I joked, although the idea of those things being the former actual heads of living people was a bit much for three o’clock in the afternoon.

This was no fairy-tale kingdom, let me tell you. They forced women into slave marriage with the King for the purpose of reproducing their babies at a high rate. One King would have, oh, fifty or a hundred wives, easy. More, if he was anything special. Or so the guide told us, maybe to impress us. To celebrate their occasions, he said, they’d just haul off and kill a bunch of their slaves, grind up all the blood and bones, and mix it up with mud for making more walls for their temples! And what’s worse, whenever a King died, forty of his wives would have to be killed and buried with him!

I had to stop the guide right there and ask him, “Now, would they be his favorite wives they’d bury with him, or the meanest ones, or what?”

The guide said he thought probably it would have been the prettiest ones. Well, I can just imagine that! The King gets sick, all the wives would be letting their hair go and eating sweets day and night to wreck their figures.

Even though Leah and I had been crabbing at each other all week, that afternoon in the palace at Abomey for some reason we all got quiet as dead bats. Now, I have been around: the racial rioting in South Africa, hosting embassy parties in Brazzaville, shopping in Paris and Brussels, the game animals in Kenya, I have seen it all. But that palace was something else. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. We walked through the narrow passages, admiring the artworks and shivering to see chunks of bone sticking out of the walls. Whatever we’d been fighting about seemed to fade for the moment with those dead remains all around us. I shook from head to toe, even though the day was quite warm.

Leah and Adah happened to be walking in front of me, probably to get away from the guide, because they like to have their own explanations for everything, and as I looked at them I was shocked to see how alike they were. They’d both bought wild-colored waxcloth shirts in the Senegal market, Adah to wear over her jeans and Leah to go with her long skirts (I personally see no need to go native, thanks very much, and will stick to my cotton knit), and Adah really doesn’t limp a bit anymore, like Mother said. Plus she talks, which just goes to show you her childhood was not entirely on the up-and-up. She’s exactly as tall as Leah now; too, which is simply unexplanatory. They hadn’t seen each other for years, and here they even showed up wearing the same hairstyle! Shoulder-length, pulled back, which is not even a regular fashion.

Suddenly I realized they were talking about Father.

“No, I’m sure it’s true,” Leah said. “I believe it was him. I think he really is dead.”

Well! This was news to me. I walked quickly to catch up, though I was still more or less of a third wheel. “You mean Father?” I asked. “Why didn’t you say something, for heaven’s sake.”

“I guess I’ve been waiting for the right time, when we could talk,” Leah said.

Well, what did she think we’d been doing for the last five days but talk. “No time like the present,” I said.

She seemed to mill it over, and then stated it all as a matter of fact. “He’s been up around Lusambo for the last five years, in one village and another. This past summer I ran into an agricultural agent who’s been working up there, and he said he very definitely knew of Father. And that he’s passed away.”

“Gosh, I didn’t even know he’d moved,” I said. “I figured he was still hanging around our old village all this time.”

“No, he’s made his way up the Kasai River over the years, not making too many friends from what I hear. He hasn’t been back to Kilanga, that much I know. We still have a lot of contact with Kilanga. Some of the people we knew are still there. An awful lot have died, too.”

“What do you mean? Who did we know?” I honestly couldn’t think of a soul. We left, Axelroot left. The Underdowns went all the way back to Belgium, and they weren’t even really there.

“Why don’t we talk about this later?” Leah said. “This place is already full of dead people.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with that. So we spent the rest of our paid-for tour in silence, walking through the ancient crumbling halls, trying not to look at the hunks of cream-colored bones in the walls.

“Those are pearls that were his eyes,” Adah said at one point, which is just the kind of thing she would say.

“Full fathom five thy father lies,” Leah said back to her.

What the heck that was about I just had to wonder. I sure didn’t see any pearls. Those two were always connected in their own weird, special way. Even when they can’t stand each other, they still always know what the other one’s talking about when nobody else does. But I didn’t let it bother me. I am certainly old enough to hold up my head and have my own personal adventures in life. I dreamed I toured the Ancient Palace of Abomey in my Maiden-form Bra!

Maybe once upon a time I was a little jealous of Leah and Adah, being twins. But no matter how much they might get to looking and sounding alike, as grown-ups, I could see they were still as different on the inside as night and day. And I am different too, not night or day either one but something else altogether, like the Fourth of July. So there we were: night, day, and the Fourth of July, and just for a moment there was a peace treaty.

But things fall apart, of course. With us they always do, sooner or later. We walked into the little town to get something cool to drink, and found a decent place where we could sit outside at a metal table watching the dogs and bicycles and hustle-bustle go by, everybody without exception carrying something on their heads. Except the dogs weren’t, of course. We had a few beers and it was pleasant. Leah continued her news report about the all-important boondocks village of our childhood fame, which in my opinion is better off to forget. I was waiting for the part about what Father died of. But it seemed impolite to push. So I took off my sunglasses and fanned myself with the map of West Africa.

Leah counted on her fingers: “Mama Mwanza is still going strong. Mama and Tata Nguza, both. Tata Boanda lost his elder wife but still has Eba. Tata Ndu’s son is chief. Not the oldest one, Gbenye-they ran him out of the village.”

“The one that stole your bushbuck,” Adah said.

“Yep, the one. He turned out to be the type to constantly pick a fight, is what I gather. Lousy for a chief. So it’s the second son, Kenge. I don’t remember him very well. Tata Ndu died of fever from a wound.”

“Too bad,” I said sarcastically. “My would-be husband.”

Adah said, “You could have done “worse, Rachel.”

“She did do worse,” Leah declared. Which I do not appreciate, and said so.

She just ignored me. “Nelson is married, can you believe it? With two daughters and three sons. Mama Lo is dead; they claimed she was a hundred and two but I doubt it. Tata Kuvudundu is gone, dead, a long time now. He lost a lot of respect over the… what he did with us.”

“The snake, you mean?” I asked.

She took a deep breath, looked up at the sky. “All of it.”

We waited, but Leah just drummed her fingers on the table and acted like that was the end of that. Then added, “Pascal is dead, of course. That’s been forever. He was killed by the blue-helmets on the road near Bulungu.” She was looking away from us, but I could see she had tears in her eyes! Yet I had to rack my brains to remember these people.

“Oh, Pascal, your son?”

Adah informed me I was an imbecile.

“Pascal our childhood friend, who my son is named after. He died eighteen years ago, right before my Pascal was born, when we were in Bikoki. I never told you, Rachel, because I somehow had the impression you wouldn’t care. It was when you were in Johannesburg.”