The Ancestors’ Long Shadow

by Danko Antolovic

part 1

“Stagnant existence laden with taboo is the norm of Man’s long tenure on Earth. Epochs of light are brief exceptions.” — Atua of the Ancestors

The two men were sitting hunched on the ground at the edge of the forest, staring idly across the shrubby plain before them, a flat, high plateau broken up by the silhouettes of a few great acacia trees in the distance. The rays of the slowly descending sun still felt warm on the men’s bare, bronze shoulders. They were father and son.

The older man had a taut, lean body that comes from spending one’s days in unwalled nature, under the open sky. His eyes shone lively in his tawny face, above a prominent broad nose, and his smile revealed two rows of healthy white teeth. This was the first time that he had spoken at length with his growing son.

“You have come of age, son,” the older man said. “You are tall, not a child any more. It is the right time that you leave the women’s care and begin to ready yourself for man’s duties.”

The son did not respond. He was a lanky youth, tall but not yet in possession of a confident, adult body like that of his father. But he had his father’s lively, attentive eyes, eyes that betrayed natural quick discernment. Somewhat shyly, he stared at the ground and pondered a sketching of shapes in the dust, which he had drawn with a small wooden stick.

“Is there a girl in our village that your thoughts turn to, son?”

Again, the young man did not reply. He looked quickly up at his father’s face, then back to the ground, and slowly shook his head.

“All right,” the father smiled good-naturedly, “you don’t have to tell me if there is. But I should tell you how things went when I was a youngster your age.

“By the time I was to take part in my first matchmaking dance, I already had my eyes on a girl. As you know, our young people are not allowed to spend time together, so I had spoken to her only furtively a few times, and I thought she liked me as well.

“At the evening of the dance, all of us bachelors sat on the ground in a wide circle, and the girls danced a fast, sweaty, noisy dance around the fire in the middle, to the beat of the drums and the wailing of shawms. As the dance went on ever faster, the girls became drunk with the beat and the movement, and we boys became drunk with the sight of their bare, glistening, writhing bodies in the light of the flames.

“When a girl felt she was ready, she would break away from the dance and approach the man she fancied. If he agreed, they would leave the dancing ground together for the surrounding darkness. If not, she went back to dance again and try with someone else later. One or two young rogues leaned back and showed off to the dancing girls, but most of us sat modestly hunched forward, waiting for the events to unfold.

“The delight of watching the ecstatic, stark naked dancers — my chosen girl among them — was marred for me by the fear that she might choose someone else. When she finally broke off, my heart stopped... but then she was standing before me, raising one dusty bare foot and placing it tenderly on my shoulder. That was the girl’s customary proffer, and at that moment her glistening young breasts and belly were the only thing I knew of in this whole world.

“She became your mother. But our togetherness did not last: not long after you were born she was bitten by a wild dog somewhere out in the bush; or it might have been some other animal, I don’t know. She came down with a bad fever, and was tended to by the old women in the Women’s House.

“I came to see her, but the Guardians of the House wouldn’t let me in. She was in her sacred days, they said, her blood was flowing and she was not to be approached by any man. I pleaded with them, argued, said that my poor wife was ill and I just wanted to be by her side. It was of no use: the old hags shouted at me, shook their walking sticks, and rattled magic trinkets in my face, threatening to lay a curse on me so I would die a horrible death. I had to remain outside.

“Several long days went by as I kept vigil near the Women’s House. Then I heard that she had begun having seizures. The hags finally relented and let me in. Your mother was lying on a cot, her body twitching, her eyes upturned; thick spittle drooled from her half-open mouth. She did not recognize me.

“I lifted her from the cot, and, savagely pushing a Guardian aside, I ran to the Giving Cave. There, with her in my arms, I threw myself before the Atua, crying, imploring Atua to save her, save my Lina. Atua took her in.

“Soon, the answer came: ‘It is too late; I cannot save her. If you had come before the seizures had begun, she would have lived. All I can do is relieve her suffering.’ I knew that Atua never deceives and is never wrong.

“Blind anger filled my chest: What sacred days, what magic trinkets and curses?? They had killed her with their abominable stupidity, stupidity passed down through generations of Guardians. I wanted to ask Atua for a weapon, anything: a club to smash their empty, ancient heads, a lance to drive into their withered chests... But I didn’t do it: I knew that the village would put to death anyone who touched the Guardians. I wasn’t ready to die righting this wrong. And it would not bring Lina back...

“When Atua returned her to me, she was in a deep sleep, her twitching gone, her face sweet as it was before. I laid her on the ground and sat next to her through the day; she died peacefully later that night. In the morning I carried her out of the cave and buried her in a place in the forest, near an ancient tree where, as she had told me, she liked to play as a child.”

The young man looked at his father with surprise: “You laid Mother to rest by yourself, Father, all alone?”

“I did,” the older man replied curtly. “I did not want the villagers disturbing her final sleep with their silly wailing, their chants and cymbals. The Elders came to me later to upbraid me for breaking the funeral customs, but I yelled at them rudely enough that they turned around and left me alone. They have left me alone ever since.”

Taken aback a bit by his father’s words, the youngster fell quiet and returned to drawing his shapes in the dust; the father watched him in silence. Since the events surrounding his woman’s death, the father had lived a lonely life in a hut at the outskirt of his village, apart from men’s communal house. This boy, until now raised by various aunts and grand-aunts, was his one real link to his people. He did not want his son to become a village outsider like himself.

“You like to be alone, don’t you, Abel?” the father addressed his half-stranger son by name for the first time. “To ponder things and think for yourself?” The youngster nodded hesitantly.

“I don’t reproach you. I like my solitude, too. But the people of the village will expect more from you; first of all to be a father of children. You are now old enough to take part in our nuptial dance later this year; your peers and older men will laugh at you if you try to skip it.

“Don’t worry: if you like a girl, talk to her beforehand, as I did. And if you don’t want any girl that chooses you at the dance, sit it out and wait another year; there is no shame in that. But if you do leave the circle with a girl, be sure you keep her happy until the morning. Nothing worse can ever happen to you than your girl going back to the dancing circle alone; you might as well leave the village, because you will never see the end of mockery and scorn.”

The sun was sinking toward the distant mountains in the west. The father reached into the bag at his waist and retrieved a short pipe. He filled it with some dried leaves from a pouch, then reached into his bag again and produced a small gadget that yielded a tiny flame when he clicked on its side. After a few attempts at lighting it, an aromatic smoke began to pour from the pipe.

“They say that people once knew how to make fire,” he said, “by swirling a stick against a piece of soft wood, or something like that. I’ve never tried it... Instead, we just ask Atua in the Giving Cave for these fire-makers. When we get sick, we ask the Cave; when our tools break, we ask the Cave... Damn, the fire-maker is dead.” And he impatiently threw the gadget into the nearby bushes.

“At least you won’t have to fight in wars, son; we haven’t had any wars in a while. I was still a small child when I watched our warriors prepare for their last big raid against the Roons. The warriors came down from the Giving Cave laden with knives, spears and man-catchers, and they gathered by the Men’s House, shouting and stomping. The Elders smoked long pipes and fingered magic trinkets while muttering curses to lay misfortune on the detested enemy; Guardians smeared noxious potions on the warriors’ weapons, to ensure the enemy’s certain death. Then the warriors took off for the coast, where the Roon settlement lay.

“Some warriors came back, some did not. Those who did brought with them severed heads of the enemy, with which they adorned Men’s House as proof of their valor. I was little then: it took me a while to gather courage to look at the heads.”

Listening to the story, the young man seemed to lose some of the reticence in the presence of his father. “I heard about it, Father,” he replied. “The Elders told stories to us children about the bravery of our men, and how fierce, horrible and misshapen the Roons were.”

“Yes, they said the same things when I was a boy,” retorted the father. “Anyway, one day I did muster the courage. I went to the front of Men’s House, and I stared at the dead faces of Roon warriors. It was true that they looked different: their hair was long and straight, unlike ours, their noses were smaller and their cheeks broader. But even then I did not think them horrible, and I wonder now how many little children in the Roon village had looked in fear at the faces of our dead warriors.”

“The Elders tell many stories,” the father continued, with a bemused smile, “some good, some silly. They say that in very ancient times evil beings came to live in our land, the land of True People. They were called Dawendi; they looked like people, except for their eyes, which burned bright in different colors: one Dawendi would have crimson eyes, another green, yet another yellow or blue.

“Dawendi were powerful and wealthy. They held in their magical power the Atua, who was their servant. Atua gave them everything they wanted, so in their wealth they became haughty: they beat and killed our men, lusted after our women, orphaned our children. Our ancestors, the True People, tried to suade Atua with magic to give us some good things too, to no avail; Dawendi magic was much more powerful. At last our warrior ancestors rose up and chased the Dawendi away in a great battle. Atua remained, and is our provider now.”

“And that was how Atua came to our land, Father?”

“That is what the Elders say, but I have my doubts.” The father frowned, now drawing deeply from his pipe. “For I know another story, and that one is true because I witnessed it myself. You were but an infant at that time. A man had come back to our village after being away a long while. He had disappeared from the village in shame on the morning after a nuptial dance, and no one expected to see him again, but he came back after a few years.

“He lived quietly among us for a while, and as people’s curiosity got better of them, they began to ask him about his travels. He spoke of many things he had seen, and he told us that he lived in the Roon village for some time before returning. The people there were prosperous and contented, he said, and they, too, had a cave like our Giving Cave, with Atua residing in it. Their Atua was given to them by a great hero, the Son of the Sky, who had come to their land many ages ago to make their life better and help them in time of hardship.

“He told us some fanciful Roon stories about the Son of the Sky too: how he cured the sick with his touch; how he walked on land without leaving footprints in the dust, and on the waters off the shore without wetting his feet. Poor man, he should have kept all of that to himself! For when these stories reached the Elders, a great hue and cry arose: ‘Blasphemy! Sacrilege! There is but one Atua, the one who was won by the True People in a great and valiant battle against the Dawendi! To say that Atua has anything to do with those filthy Roons is an abomination and we, the True People, will lose Atua’s favor by talking like that!’

“Suddenly the whole village was in a lather. The villagers seized the traveler and, filing in a great procession, brought him before the entrance of the Giving Cave. Several warriors were holding him with man-catchers’ loops slung around his neck; he had a bewildered look, and his head and face were scratched bloody by the man-catchers’ spikes. The Elders chanted praises and supplications to Atua, the chants repeated by the gathered villagers. Finally, to a loud shout by all who were assembled, the warriors thrust the spikes into the condemned man’s throat and neck. He slumped to the ground quickly.

“Once his prone body had ceased twitching, one of the Elders approached with a heavy knife and, with skilled strokes, sliced off the top of the dying man’s skull. The Guardians and the Elders gathered around; holding the body seated, they scooped into the skull with their hands and lapped up the contents. Soon other villagers crowded around, clamoring for their share.”

The young man felt his stomach rise. Without saying a thing, he stood up, tottered away a few steps, and, leaning onto a tree, vomited to within what seemed like a hair’s breadth of his life. It took him a long while to recover. When he turned around, trembling, his father was on his feet too, standing behind him:

“Yes, son, that is what I did too, that day. Go back to your dwelling now and get some sleep.”

“One question, Father. What did Atua say?”

“Nothing, Abel. Atua said nothing.”

The old man turned around and skillfully, like a cat, wound his way in the dim light back to his solitary hut.

* * *

Proceed to part 2...