Song for Night

The Soul Has No Sign

I build a fire and slowly roast the fish. I love the smell — the dry crackle of its oil dribbling into the fire, its scent of mud and something else. It reminds me of home, of warm gari soaking in sea-salted water and the damp funk of the Cross River sweating against its banks.

When it is cooked, I eat slowly, the flesh exploding in fluffy pink clouds that taste wistfully of smoke. Every time I eat fish, I remember Grandfather’s story of the lake in the middle of the world and the fish that live there. I can hear his voice in my head now. I can see clearly the night he told me.

There is a lake in the middle of the world.

Grandfather said.

This is the oldest truth of our people. This is the oldest lie.

A lake of fire and water. This lake is a legend of the Igbo. It is invisible, hidden in a fold in time, but there.

That day we were fishing on the Cross: a breathtaking river over two miles wide, in many places etched out of the horizon only by the line of palm trees on the opposite bank. It was dotted with sandbanks — many of them a good acre big. These glistening white mounds humped the river every dry season and lasted months, developing a whole ecosystem of water hyacinths, bull rushes, fluorescent white egrets, basking hippos or crocodiles, and fishermen camps.

There are many tales about how the Cross got its name. There are always many tales here, Grandfather said. Don’t trust any of them, he always cautioned. Trust all of them, he warned. Some say it got its name because the Igbos are Hebrews who wandered down to West Africa from Judea and some of them brought fragments of Christ’s Cross with them. Some say it is because in the past the Igbo used to crucify thieves and murderers on its bank. Some say it was named after the frustrated British engineer who worked for the Colonial Service Works Department. Not that he was named Cross. Just that he refused to make sacrifices to placate the water spirits, so the mother of them, the mami-wata, pushed down every bridge the man tried to build across it to link the first colonial capital of Calabar with the hinterlands. This was long before the capital was moved to Lagos, which I guess had friendlier spirits.

Eight bridges this unnamed British engineer tried to build, until in frustration he threw down his T-slide and retired to Sussex muttering about “bloody nigger river can’t be crossed, I won’t let it become my cross.” But it did. He carried it around Sussex until mami-wata came for him on his deathbed, or so I imagine. Still, the Cross flowed: a magnificent river.

Canoes; some no bigger than single-person kayaks, others bordering on small schooners and ships, glided up and down the river, skating like dragonflies, propelled by the powerful pull of oars or poles exerted by knotted biceps.

That was a special night: the gentle slap of the water on wood, the rustle of drying salt, the calls of river birds, the strange hippo barks, and the ticklish smell of the herbs burning gently to drive away mosquitoes wove magic around my senses.

I trailed my fingers in the water, sifting as if for a morsel of archaic wisdom carried by the river’s memory. Grandfather said this river was older than Job.

“In the Bible?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, smiling.

He said when the earth was young and this land still a dream, the river cut its path through a mountain, a tear of sweat racing down a giant’s face.

“How do you know?”

“Because it speaks to me. Hush, listen.”

I couldn’t hear anything.

Neither of us paid much attention as we drifted down the delta to the mouth of the sea. I must have fallen asleep, fingers still trawling the water for wisdom, because I woke to the dry rasp of a tongue on my fingers. Startled and unsure what creature it was, I drew my fingers back with a yelp. A dolphin clicked at me in laughter, dousing me with salty water as though in benediction, and vanished in a white spray for the ocean.

“Lucky boy. What a blessing,” Grandfather said. “That dolphin has just taken your soul for safekeeping — always.”

“My soul? Does that mean I will never die?”

“Maybe.”

That was when he told me about the sacred lake with the pillar, half-water, half-fire, all woman.

“We believe we were the first sentient beings in the universe. Our father, Amadioha, sent a bolt of lightning down to strike a silk cotton tree and the tree split open revealing man and woman. But after Amadioha made men, they ran wild with the lust of power in their noses. Who knows why? Maybe Amadioha wasn’t skilled in making people, all his manifestations seem as though made by a mid-tier elemental. So, God, not Amadioha, sent down its essence. It descended as a pillar: half-fire, half-water. It descended to and arose from the surface of a dark lake in the center of the earth. This new deity we call Idemilli. To control our excess and ensure our evolution, Idemilli took all the power from men. Now, to enter into the confines of power we have to be deemed worthy enough by the guardian.”

“And what does this guardian look like?”

“She is a woman all fire and water and more brilliant than a thousand suns; at least those who have been lucky to see her say so.”

“Why is she a woman?”

“Because she has to be.”

“Tell me more about the lake. Does it still exist?”

“Some say it always has, in some dimensional warp.”

“Have you ever seen it?”

“Even if I had, you wouldn’t believe me and I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Does everyone know about the lake?” I asked.

“No.”

“Is it sacred?”

“Very. It is the repository of human souls who are yet to gain access into the world: a source of great power for any dibia who enters there. Legend says that the fish in the lake guard the souls, swallowed deep in their bellies.”

“Why the fish?”

“Because the ancestors are concerned with the living, angels with the running of the universe, and neither elementals nor men can be trusted.”

“And this lake is real?”

“Very.”

“But it sounds like a tall tale.”

“It is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nobody does. Everybody does. It is real because it is a tall tale. This lake is the heart of our people. This lake is love. If you find it, and find the pillar, you can climb it into the very heart of God,” he said.

“Where is this lake, Grandfather?”

He tapped me on the breastbone.

“Here. It is at the center of you, because you are the world.”

“How will I find it?”

He taught me a song. We sang it over and over, together, for the rest of the night until I couldn’t tell where his voice ended and mine began, and where mine ended and the river began and where the river ended and my blood began.

But I have forgotten that song. I wish I hadn’t because I think it would bring me much comfort to sing it. Oh well, I think, eating the last of the fish, wondering whose soul I can taste smoking down to my stomach, and if anyone has eaten mine yet.