Princess Bari (13 page)

I took a hesitant sip. There was no flavour at all, but it smelled like dried leaves and earth. I followed Lady Emily into the bedroom; she had me recline on the
chaise
while she lay down on the bed.

“Let's converse, Bari. You'll know what to do.”

I felt my back start to rise and fall, as if I were bobbing on the ocean, and then my body went slack and I felt like I was floating down a river. From between my fluttering eyelids, which insisted on closing, I caught a glimpse of someone standing over Lady Emily's bed. It looked like an older black woman wearing a heavy brown cloak made from a rough material.

“There's someone's behind you,” I said. “A black woman.”

Lady Emily was not startled at all.

“Yes,” she whispered. “That must be my nanny, Becky. She watches over me.”

I tried to sit up in order to greet Becky, but for some reason my arms and legs would not obey. Lady Emily's quiet voice reached my ears.

“Go to sleep, child. Go to sleep.”

*

I stand in a field with dry grass up to my waist. The setting sun looks like a deliciously ripe persimmon. It turns the whole sky a deep, orangey red. A slow rhythm, like distant drumming, vibrates in my ears. I can't tell whether or not it is my own heartbeat that I am hearing.

At the centre of the field, enormous stone mountains tower up out of the earth and seem to brush against the sky. The further I walk into the mountains, the more they resemble two palms opening. At the centre I see a large pit, like the mouth of some giant creature, gaping open in the middle of a wide clearing. The bottom of the pit is drilled here and there with dark holes that go so far down I cannot tell where they end. Black men, seemingly thousands of them, fill burlap sacks with stones dug from the sides and bottom of the pit with pickaxes and shovels. They haul the stones up rope ladders and march up the winding ledge that leads out of the pit, carrying their heavy loads.

To one side of the clearing, I see structures built from wooden planks, thatched roofs and white canvas awnings. White men sit in a circle beneath one of the awnings. One wears a white shirt and hat and has a moustache. I see soldiers in uniform.

I wander around inside the image. A rope ladder breaks and dozens of men are sent tumbling to the bottom of the pit. A gun goes off, and more shots follow sporadically. Then everything goes silent. The soldiers walk over to the fallen and inspect them.

I walk back to the field. The field is blanketed in the same black, fog-like shapes that I saw in my home country, and the low whoosh of the wind never stops. The sky is dim, as if the sun is on the verge of either rising or setting, and it is just as quiet. Spots of light appear here and there. Smoke rises from the roofs of a burned village, and embers fly over the burned grass and reeds. Everywhere, dead bodies are picked at by vultures and crows. The ground is littered with weapons. Did a battle take place?

I see trees. Baobab trees with their roots sticking straight up toward the sky. Ash, oak, acacia, marula. All kinds of trees tower over me like fortress walls, and at the centre I see a light. I slip between the trees, sliding toward the light. Patches of colour – white, ochre, grey, blue – appear in the light. People are there, dressed in colourful fabrics. I take a closer look and see that they are nearly all female: grandmothers, mothers, young women. And children: grandsons, granddaughters, newborn babies. The light is coming from an enormous bonfire rising from a triangular stack of logs. No one speaks.

They know that I am watching. And I know they are not alive. As I walk toward the bonfire, they cover their faces and step back to clear a path. Standing before the fire is a woman. She's been waiting for me. When I am standing before her, I see that it's Becky. She wears a headband laden with crystal beads on top of a headscarf, and on her body she wears a black skirt and a rough, brown cloth around her shoulders. Ostrich-tail feathers are stuffed in the back of the headband like scattered clouds floating over her head.

You must be Bari, the one my baby girl Emily sent.

She plucks one of the ostrich feathers from the back of her head and sweeps it along the ground, which splits open as if during an earthquake, and the people who were scattered about all crowd in at once, turn to shadows, and seep into the earth like fog, filling the crevasse. A hand sticks up out of the fog, then two arms, followed by a white man's face. It's the man with the moustache whom I saw sitting under the tent earlier. Another pair of flailing arms emerges, followed by the upper body of the white-haired man in the dark-red military uniform. The murky fog is less like a gas and more like a sticky, muddy bog. The shadows pull the two white men back down as they scream and shout.

Let me go!

Get us out of here!

Suddenly the crack vanishes, and the earth closes up. The shadows have resumed their original forms and are sitting and standing under the trees. The bonfire blazes again. From the entrance to the forest where I came in earlier, Lady Emily walks toward me, dressed in the same blue silk gown as before. Her eyes are wet with tears. She pleads with Becky.

Please release them.

Becky's face is impassive.

It's not me, child. The souls of the dead won't let them go.

How can they be set free?

Ask Bari.

*

Even before Lady Emily could say anything, my eyes were wide open. I could see the crystal beads on the chandelier that hung from the ceiling. Though my head was still foggy, the objects in the room and the leaves on the trees outside the window were in sharp focus. But the colours were all yellowed and faded, like an old photograph. I remained quiet for a moment until the colours were restored.

“You're awake!” Lady Emily said. She stood up and staggered over to me. “So, what did you see?”

I couldn't begin to describe all the visions I'd had.

“I saw hundreds, maybe thousands, of African men working in a mine. And I saw a lot of people die, too.”

“That would've been a gold mine.”

“I saw two men … One was middle-aged. The other, a soldier, looked like an old man …”

When I told her about the earth opening up and the two trapped inside the black smoke, she pressed her hands to her heart and lowered her head.

“Oh, you saw my father and grandfather.” She clasped my hand tightly. “You're a powerful psychic!”

Because I'd sensed that she shared my powers, I asked her: “What did you see?”

“I saw a long river. And a mountain on fire … And I think I saw a boat floating through the pitch black.”

“Did you see my grandmother? Or a white dog named Chilsung?”

“I couldn't see that far.”

I'd gotten a clear look at Becky and remembered her face and clothing, so I told her about the village with the giant bonfire.

“Becky worked for my family since I was four years old,” Lady Emily said. “I think what you saw might've been her hometown. She was a traditional healer. I was the only one who knew she was a shaman.”

Lady Emily looked around and then rummaged inside a drawer in her nightstand. She pulled out a small box covered in red velvet, opened the lid and showed me a leopard's tooth, some jewels and the bone fragments that Becky had used to cast divinations. Then she carefully took out a small figurine carved from ebony. It was about the size of a finger, and depicted a slim, dark-skinned African man. The eyes were long and slanted and the mouth was closed, the corners drawn down in a grimace. From between the legs rose a long, sharp penis – the moment I saw it, my hands started shaking uncontrollably, and I could feel a wave of heat roll from the back of my neck all the way up to my cheeks. I grabbed the doll from Lady Emily, stuck it back in the box and shut the lid. My breathing slowly returned to normal.

“That's Becky's husband in the world beyond. It's a custom where she is from, for shamans to marry the dead.”

“I have to go.”

Lady Emily placed her hands on my shoulders and spoke to me even more kindly than Auntie Sarah had.

“Can you come for just two days next week?”

“Okay.”

I had expended so much energy and time on Lady Emily that day that I was unable to give Auntie Sarah a foot massage. I said goodbye to her and headed back to Tongking. On the way, I kept thinking about that ebony figurine. Each time I closed my eyes, I felt as if it had turned into a giant person, and was right in front of me on the subway. It looked like Ali, in fact: like Ali was naked and standing before me. The brakes screeched and people poured on and off the train. I had my head down and my eyes closed when I heard a deep voice above me.

“Bari! Where're you going?”

Shocked, I raised my head. It was none other than Ali, the giant, looking down at me and smiling, his shoulders stooped. My eyes unconsciously slipped down to his crotch. I was sure that long, sharp penis would be hanging there. My face turned bright red.

“I made a house call, but now I'm headed back to the salon,” I said.

“I'm headed to work, too.”

Ali got off at Elephant and Castle with me, and we had kebabs at a Turkish restaurant nearby.

I returned home late that night and lay down next to Luna, who was fast asleep – but I kept tossing and turning. I would doze off for a moment, only to jerk awake. My ears hummed with the memory of my grandmother telling me one of her old stories. It was the one about Princess Bari, which she'd shared with me on snowy nights in the dugout hut across the Tumen River.

“Grandma, continue the story,” I said. “You said Princess Bari scrubbed clothes and cooked food and chopped wood and did all kinds of menial labour and travelled all the way to Hell. And she saved the souls who were suffering there and went through Hell herself and came all the way to the western sky.”

“Yes, yes, you remember it well. When she gets to the western sky
,
she is stopped by a
jangseung
– the wooden totem pole that stands guard at the border has come to life and is waiting for her. She loses a bet with him, and he recites the deal she must make:
three by three is nine
. She will have his babies and cook and clean for him for nine long years in exchange for the life-giving water. How do you suppose she met him in the first place? She avoided the blue and yellow paths and stuck to the white path, getting help along the way, but suddenly this giant, black totem pole of a man appears before her.
Aigo! Aigo!
What is she to do? If she falls into his clutches, all will be lost. She has to be clever and talk her way out.”

“Grandma, did Bari ask the totem pole how to get to the western sky?”

“Yes, yes, and the
jangseung
tells her: ‘There's no such place. You have to live with me. My grandfather didn't marry until the age of ninety-one, as he found no woman before that. I'm lucky to have met you, so now you must live with me.' Bari keeps talking, trying to distract him as she edges away from him, but he throws her over his shoulder.”

I recited Princess Bari's lines: “Hey! Put me down! We can walk together.”

“So they begin walking, her in front and him behind. As they walk, he tells her he lives in an earthen cottage with a straw mat for a door. Then he says he lives in a big house with a grand, tiled roof. Finally he says: ‘Forget it, we'll just live in the first place we see.' When they find it, it's more of a shack than a house. The door is just a flimsy straw mat. With the sun shining brightly down on Bari, it seems she will be stuck with him for good once they are married and spend their wedding night together, so she sets out a bowl of clear water in the courtyard, lets down her hair and throws herself on the ground, kicking and keening.”

Then Grandmother mimicked the totem pole's voice: “Ah! Why are you crying?”

I answered as Princess Bari: “Today is the anniversary of my grandfather's death.”

“Bari stays up all night mourning. The next day, as evening approaches, she lets down her hair again, draws fresh water from the well and falls to the ground, weeping and wailing.”

“Why are you crying this time?”

My turn again: “Today is the anniversary of my grandmother's death.”

“On the third night, she mourns again.”

“Why are you crying this time?”

“Today is the anniversary of my father's death.”

“The next night she flops down and cries again, and he asks her what significance that day has.”

“Today is the anniversary of my mother's death.”

Grandmother grumbled comically: “ ‘Huh! Did your whole family get the plague? How did they all die one after the other like that?' Then the fifth night rolls around …”

“Grandma, Princess Bari has to marry the totem now, right? What does she do?”

“Well, first, she pleads with him.”

I continued in Bari's voice: “I beg you! If you and I are to marry, then we must pray to our ancestors first. But how can we do that in this messy, dusty old house? We'll hold memorial rites for our ancestors today, and cleanse and purify ourselves for the next three days. After that, we'll be ready for a proper wedding ceremony. I'll clean the house and sweep the floor, while you go chop us some firewood.”

“How dare you order me to chop wood?”

“Why aren't you leaving?”

“I'm afraid you'll run away.”

Grandmother took over Bari's part: “ ‘You idiot! How on earth would I get away from you? I can't go anywhere, so hurry off. I'll tie this thread around my wrist and give the other end to you … so hurry off now.' She begins cleaning the house and sweeping the floor. The stupid fool leaves. But he comes rushing back before it's even lunchtime, looking like he's fallen and cut and bruised himself along the way.”