Whose voice is that I hear, is someone calling?
"Nalantei, listen to me, child." It has begun. The shadows are deepening and she knows the voice that will hold her.
"Sir?"
"What is a flower?"
"A flower?"
"Yes, a simple thing to ask, what is a flower?" His eyes meet hers in the remoteness of the question; he does not hesitate, but is solemn and focused in the initial formality of his duty. She finds herself in an unwonted indignity, lying prostrate, in shame, awakened before a man, an elder, thrust into the present in wonder that her body's pain is not a memory and not a dream. In the color of his following eyes the man holds little remembrance of pain for her, or love, yet she is bound by the entreaty of his gaze and the demand of his voice. Still, pain grasps her as in anger, possesses like a claw; in this awakening, sensation is dominant, resolving finally into an almost human form..
"Answer me, Nalantei. What is a flower?"
"It is the color of joyfulness."
"Yes, that is true, but is it not first a thing that grows? Have they taught you well, daughter, to know that beauty comes of growth, and yielding to your nature?"
"We do not see flowers commonly."
"Listen to me, Nalantei! You will walk from us tomorrow and all that you carry is yourself and some remembrance of your clan here. You will see us rarely. The Samburu of Loiyangalani will no longer be your family. I am here to teach you as no elder has done. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir, but I am not so fit for learning."
"You are, and must be, daughter, as this is your time."
"But I hurt, and my stomach is . . ."
"We know your stomach and your heart are strong. You must listen to me."
"I will listen."
"And answer as I bid you?"
"Yes, and answer."
Leaning day is in the wind. Doum palm fronds are deeper green in late shadows. Familiar sprawling doubles bend — rustling, flowing, reaching out, but never to dissipation in the pure perceived air — yet soften as the broad and spotted land dissolves. An angularity of human forms progresses; silhouettes at a distance wave against the sky and the Jade Sea — wave if a palm and walk if a man, just distinguishable. The sun's descent on the western hills beyond the lake is for some moments a blinding scarlet, screaming at a distance an old but not forgotten desert threat, of tribal raids, of cattle lost. In this too brilliant reflected light the Samburu must turn to the east and the darkening giant, Mount Kulal, its broad form blending long into the evening air. This clarity of the sky, passing from a day of unimpeded sunlight into budding starlight, fulfills a contract with the mountain which, with the regularity of a bellows primed, projects the cooling air and darkness in a dry withering gale, a protracted avalanche of wind, sweeping past huts and palms out beyond the shore of Lake Turkana in measured pulses until the morning light. But the evening's broken calm portends no rage, as color fades and is forgotten in muted tones in this rest of earthly distinctions. The sky is clear as fire-lights are tended anew. The day is in the wind.
Yet where there is a voice there is a song.
Nalantei lies, raised as on a low altar in her mother's hut of palm. Voices intrude upon her consciousness. The words repeat, advancing and dispersing again — voices in a dream and voices that command, all in the haze of an old fire. It is to be the elders' night, and their words will possess her, because the man, Sopoitan, has killed his ox before her hut, and in this act, made an incontestable marriage.
Six elders sit, crowded near Nalantei in a half circle, opposite the weak fire. Nalantei's mother, Sienti, is silent and resentful among the elders, having of necessity granted them dominion in her home. The young mother, Teresa, Nalantei's friend and teacher, sits by the entranceway. In this unnatural association Teresa must support the new wife, Nalantei, but is apprehensive herself among the elders, knowing that she will soon be banished from this hut as the rituals proceed and night winds rise.
For Nalantei there is peace where consciousness wanes; there are moments when the local threat, though discernable, is withdrawn. Her sentience is a palm which rests in evening shadows, inured and ignorant of the torment which is an inescapable cycle. She is a woman now, Ngaibartani: purified, razed of god, and a wife.
"Nalantei . . . Nalantei, you know me, do you not?"
"Yes."
"And who am I?"
"An elder and age-mate of my father."
"What is my name? Do not be afraid. You may say it."
"You are called Lekapana."
"I am Lekapana, as you say, who has known you since your birth, as I am your father's second. In my forty-eight years I have lived among my cattle at Mount Kulal and have walked to the summit of Mount Ng'iro, and have blooded my spear as a warrior. I have seen the years of drought and the better years when the rains came calmly without a flood, when I shared the meat of my oxen in Ilmugit celebration only to see the dark answer of the rinderpest, when with our full stomachs we watched the falling bodies of our cattle, all in waste; or then again, I have lived when the rivers ran in anger as if disturbed from sleep or death, and buried men and cattle, and it seemed that the prayers of so many to Ngai for rain were answered in dark laughter as the earth was broken and our wells were submerged. But I have learned the purpose of his will. Ngai is love. In only hours the raging plunder was finished. It was the cause that the grasses grew to feed our cattle and goats and donkeys. And I have seen a certain courage: A flower rose in the resolved but broken soil, beginning as a thin stem, but growing in its way toward sunlight to find color in fulfillment such that its race would live. But I have also seen a stem wither in an unpropitious place in drought and never reach its purpose. Do you understand? Nalantei, it is not enough that you grow, and your new color is not the end of your growing. Do you know what you are?"
"I am a flower."
She thinks perhaps this is what it means to be a woman. But in this rite of anguish and imminent removal she has become more than a visual object, a bloom in the dust, more than a creature of local birth who flits among the elders as a living distraction to deeper purpose — a sylvan fly, a dust-grey bird — but now truly a soul sharing in some way that purpose of the elders, if only a taste, a touch. Might it be granted that she too observes the same squint to light's angle, too sharp at dusk over Lake Turkana, and when it begins, the tilt to darkness? And might they apprehend as she does the first fall of the Kulal bellows that bends a brittle bush, and share a vision of the weaver bird — sheltered at the single Euphorbia, that feels the evening drift as a feather is lifted on its back, yellow fading to grey (earth's color but not essence) yet sings to the menacing shadows before his retreat to a night-resisting nest to wait, small feet grasping as he swings within, his hut tethered to the tree limb, suspended in the open night air, in trust of the tether, (grass drying to inflexibility in the same wind) bird made, floating — now that they acknowledge her, now that they must speak?
"Nalantei, do you know why we give you to this man?"
"Because it is my time." Lekapana rises to face her. She does not look at him but remains lying, propped on her side, with her eyes nearly closed.
"We give you to Sopoitan because he is a worthy man who will care for you. . . Do you know that we would not give you to a mean man?" Silence. "Answer me, Nalantei, as this is a grave time which you must never forget, the beginning of your second life, and your family."
"A grave time."
"What do you say? Do you know that Sopoitan is a worthy man who has won the respect of the elders of our clan?"
"You say so."
"Do you doubt this?"
"No."
She hears in the distance the rhythm of young men, the warriors, muran, whose dance is energy, hope, and the boasting of freedom. It is the marriage dance, and the muran sing in pride to the girls who mock their pride, as all glow in the resonance of ochered passions. She may stand to observe but will not join them, though it is her dance, an entreaty to joyfulness that wells deeply: the voices in song rising, calling, falling deeply, a range from bovine to bird in the punctuation of sandal slap and exhalations. They leap high upon thin long legs, knees nearly locked, as their taut calves, like loaded springs, release them upward. She recognizes through the rising dust the most beautiful among them whose long braided hair, red and shining, floats behind in the apex of a leap, much as the muran themselves seem to float behind the smiles, behind the laughing calls and shining sweat which forms like crystal beads on their foreheads. She wonders if they even think of her, Nalantei, who might have been among them, who might have stood tall and quiet behind the most colorful girls, her chin forward to show her soft smooth neck, her hands grasping, pulsing, her whole body in motion to the mounting intensity of song. But as sound in distance lags and dissipates, so her passion floats, her body weakened almost to resigned consent, the sound more significant than the song. Their song is fragile, the words becoming indistinct until only the deep drum of earth resounds from beneath their feet. ["Nalantei"] She turns for the last time toward the dancers to watch one muran, whose solo dance resembles the leaping of a widow bird, dark and proud in ambition, as he strives to surmount the summit of pale grasses. ["Nalantei"]
Whose voice is that I hear, is someone calling?
"Answer me, Nalantei, did you hear them when they first approached our village?"
"Who?"
"These two men, here."
"What men?"
"These elders, your husband Sopoitan, and Lekiso, his second, who sang. Surely their voices were beautiful as they came to us yesterday, singing as the morning rose. Was it not so? Everyone said their song was the awakening from a perfect dream that such beauty and love were expressed by them."
"Yes, an awakening. . . They sang well, I remember."
"The clan elders of the Lngwesi all commend Sopoitan. He is a fine speaker and tends his cattle to great advantage. He has wisdom in age, and has a muran son and a daughter by the first wife, Naperu. Even today the junior elders seek his counsel. Will you respect him as he is due?"
"As he is due."
~~