A NOVEL SET IN PREHISTORY
The Oak People
Chapter 22: The death of Koru
Bidari
While he is still a way off, Bidari hears the sound he has been dreading ever since the rains began: the high-pitched keening of the women. Koru! Breaking into a run, he reaches the cave and passes into the dark interior. The main chamber is unusually empty. He makes out a knot of figures around the passageway that leads up to his sleeping place. Pushing past old Bakar and the children, he thrusts his way through the wailing women. She is there, on the ground, propped up against the wall.
‘Ama!’ He is on his knees beside her, clutching her cold hand. Still he cannot think that she is gone. ‘Ama! Wake up!’
He begins to chafe the icy hand between his warm palms. Frantically, he throws himself on top of her and, forcing the slack mouth open, breathes his own hot breath into her, again and again. There is no movement.
He pulls back and her jaw, with its folds of loose skin, drops lifelessly onto her chest. A terrible panic takes hold of him. Don’t leave me, Ama! He sees her now, sitting by his father, sharing out the meat after a hunt, laughing.
Bidari stares at the pale faces of the women, tongues darting from side to side as they make the lament. The air is thick with horror and fear. He hears his brother’s voice. The women make way and Koldo appears, dragging Nuno behind him, their figures filling the small space. The undulating sound falters and falls away to a silence. Nuno lowers himself awkwardly onto the ground beside Koru. His head wound is almost healed but still he has not come back to himself. The hand which reaches out to touch his mother’s face shakes, his fingers struggling to find her cheek. There are tears in his eyes.
‘Where do you want to make the circle?’ Koldo asks. Nuno turns to look at him, blank. ‘The circle,’ Koldo repeats. ‘Will you make it here?’ Nuno’s face remains empty.
Turning away from the corpse of his mother, Koldo pushes through the huddle of bodies and down the slope into the lower cave. Bidari follows him to the small hearth, Nuno shambling after them. Koldo has taken ash and is spreading it on the ground.
The sounds of mourning start up again and for the first time, Bidari thinks of Ansa. He doesn’t remember seeing her face amongst those of the women. It is late for her to be out on the mountain alone. Should he go to look for her? More than anything, he just wants to sit, to stare at the flames and feel the warmth.
Koldo is busying himself, preparing the ground, ushering old Bakar over to the hearth. At last, all the men are gathered around the ash layer. Panic begins to rise again in Bidari’s chest.
‘What if she is only sleeping?’ he blurts out. ‘Let’s wait till the morning.’
‘No!’ Koldo is adamant. ‘Her body is cold. Balqa is approaching his death. It’s the right time.’
Bidari glares at Koldo in the firelight. Can he never wait for anything, not even for their mother?
Koldo turns to Nuno, instructing him like a child. ‘Brother, you must search for her in the place of the dead. When you have seen her, we can dig the trench.’
Bidari has been trying not to picture his mother’s body, anointed in death red, disappearing little by little under the loose earth of the burial shaft. Now that Koldo has spoken, the picture will not go away.
Koldo gives Goi the drum and he starts the death beat, the slow, rhythmic thudding of bone on skin echoing around the walls of rock. Nuno is peering ahead, his face troubled.
‘What is it?’ Koldo asks, but his brother only looks puzzled. ‘He needs something to draw with,’ Koldo decides.
Tipi fetches a stick and Nuno holds it poised above the dull white ash bed. The drum beat grows more insistent and Bidari can feel his heart thumping in time with it.
‘Start with the circle’, Koldo prompts.
There is a glimmer of recognition in Nuno’s eyes. Using the stick, he begins to describe a circle in the ash, but his hand trembles and the circle trails off into a straight line. Nuno tries again, tongue clenched between his teeth, but each time he starts from a different place till the ash is a mass of crossing lines which hold no meaning.
There is anguish in Koldo’s face and something else that looks like fear. Bidari cannot bear it. He quickly rakes over the ash layer, then takes the stick from Nuno and draws a large circle in the ash, ignoring the gasps of disapproval.
‘Now make the shape of our mother.’ He gives the stick to Nuno and settles back on his heels. ‘Let the drum beat take you to the place of the dead.’
Bidari closes his eyes. Everything will be all right. Nuno will travel to the far place and see Koru’s spirit there, safe and happy. In the dark behind his eyelids, Bidari gives himself to the sound of the drum and the keening of the women. His breathing slows.
At last, he opens his eyes to find Koldo staring at him, dumb with pain. Nuno has drawn nothing inside the circle and the stick is lying discarded on the ground. He is staring out, through the cave mouth, at the night sky.
‘Did you see her?’ Koldo asks.
Nuno turns his head. ‘Who?’
‘Our mother, you fool!’ Koldo’s voice is sharp with fear. ‘Did you see her in the place of the dead?’
Nuno’s face crumples. ‘Ama? Is she dead?’ he cries.
Koldo turns away, spitting onto the ground.
The misery lying curled in the pit of Bidari’s belly uncoils itself and strikes out at Koldo. ‘Leave him alone!’
Koldo turns on Bidari, his face livid with rage. He picks up the stick and hurls it onto the fire. ‘Don’t you understand? He can’t see for us any longer. He’s no better than a child!’
The shocking, fearful words come at Bidari like blows, depriving him of breath. The drum beat stops abruptly, leaving only a throbbing silence.
‘How can we bury her then?’ he cries. He will die rather than let Koldo bury his mother like this. She might wake under the earth, unable to breathe. Fear makes Bidari reckless. ‘Why did you shout at him?’ he hisses at Koldo. ‘He just needed more time. I could have made him see.’
In the shadows by the hearth, Bidari doesn’t see the blow coming. The side of his face explodes with pain. He feels for his eye but the cut is below it, on his cheekbone. The first drops of blood are gathering where the skin has slit. Koldo’s anger has not abated.
‘You think you can do something? It’s your fault he’s like this — that the Sakaitz attacked him. You were meant to be keeping watch.’
Koldo turns to Nuno, pulling him into an embrace, stroking the matted hair and the scar on his scalp.
‘Look what they did to him,’ Koldo cries. ‘I wish it had been you, instead of him.’
Both Bidari’s cheeks are burning now, with shame and rage. He stares at his brothers, locked together, weeping. He has never felt so alone.
Outside, morning is beginning to lighten the sky. Bidari stumbles up and wanders away. No-one tries to stop him. He crosses the floor of the cave and looks up to see Bo, standing in the shadows by the wall. His child, Hua, is asleep in her arms. The passageway which winds up to his sleeping place is narrow, but she doesn’t move out of his way. Instead, as he passes, she reaches out and wipes away the blood from his face. The tenderness of the girl’s touch brings tears to his eyes.
The women move back and Bidari sits beside his mother, but it brings him no comfort. Instead, the empty shell of her body begins to disgust him, as if it were the carcass of a beast, and he closes his eyes. There, behind his eyelids, he sees the mound of Bo’s breast in the growing light, rising up as she reaches out to touch him, the nipple small and tight. Despite everything, he feels himself grow hard and he is ashamed.
Gashi approaches him uncertainly. ‘Is it done?’ she asks. ‘Can we prepare the kho?’
Bidari shakes his head in despair. ‘No. Nothing is done. Nuno couldn’t make the circle.’
There is a gasp from Esti and the smell of fear intensifies. The corpse of his mother seems to loom bigger and bigger in the small space. Bidari can sense how the women long to be rid of it.
‘What can we do?’ Gashi asks.
Before Bidari can answer, there is a scuffling noise in the passage behind and Ansa appears. She has been running and her body is streaked with mud; there is dried blood on her leg. When she sees the motionless body of Koru, she stops in her tracks. She opens her mouth and lets out a terrible sound, like the scream of a speared boar. The skin on Bidari’s neck prickles.
He watches in horror as Ansa throws herself on top of his mother’s body, clutching at her hands, stroking her cheeks, imploring Koru to wake up.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she wails, again and again.
A hard bud of anger swells and opens in his belly. Koru is his mother, not hers. She should be comforting him, not shaming him in front of the women, with her wild crying. He goes to restrain her but Ansa is already pulling back from the corpse.
‘She’s gone where the dead go,’ Ansa whispers. ‘Just like Ama.’
Gashi reaches over to grasp Ansa’s shoulder, a new light in her eyes. ‘What did you say? Do you see Koru in the land of the dead?’
Ansa stares up at Gashi, uncomprehending. She turns back to Koru and takes her hand. She begins prattling to the corpse.
‘Tell me about the mantis — the part where he wraps his son in the cloak. Tell me again, Ama.’ She rocks forwards and backwards on her heels.
Unsettled by Ansa’s howling, the children huddle close to their mothers. Only Gashi seems to understand what is happening. She peers round at the others intently.
‘Koru’s spirit has reached the far place. Ansa can see her. Look! She’s talking to her.’
Ansa is stroking Koru’s cold hand. She seems not to hear Gashi. ‘Please, Ama, tell me about the boy’s eye. Will Zeru grow fat again like him, like Balqa?’ She settles back and looks up expectantly into the pale, dead face.
Repelled, Bidari turns away from the sight of his wife, blabbering like a mad woman. But Gashi draws him away from the tutting of Esti and the frightened faces of the others. Her strong face is alive with hope.
‘I will start mixing the kho, for the burial. Bidari — you must tell Koldo and the others.’ Her hand is heavy on his arm, her voice insistent. ‘Tell them there is no need to wait. Ansa has seen Koru in the place of the dead.’
Bidari is wary of approaching Koldo again but there is no need. As always, Koldo’s anger, which flares up like burning twigs, has died down just as quickly. When he sees Bidari coming, he gets to his feet and, taking hold of Bidari’s face, examines his swollen cheek. He gently cuffs the top of his brother’s head.
‘Ansa is talking to our mother — as if she can see her spirit,’ Bidari says. Koldo steps back to think, his head turned to one side. ‘Ansa doesn’t see us,’ Bidari continues. ‘Gashi says she has gone to the far place.’
‘Is our mother there?’ There is hope in Koldo’s voice.
‘Yes — she is speaking to her.’
The fear begins to lift, chased away by the morning light seeping into the cave. The spirit of Koru has left the Nose of the Antelope and made its journey to the far place. Now they can bury her body.
Thank you for reading. Chapter 23 coming soon …
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