Oontab [Episode 24]

Dakumet

One day, Dakumet took two of her female servants out of the palace telling the guards at the gate that she was going for a walk on the pathways. She took a silent walk with them, making one or two scanty statements about the evening and the sky and the trees and the animals. They affirmed everything she said. Dakumet hated the shallow conversations she had had to have with her servants who did not at all feel obligated to involve themselves in chatter with the Queen Dakumet. The only thing they could do was obey commands, like servants that they were. When she got to the edge of the bush on the other side of the stream, she commanded her servants to leave her alone with her thoughts.

“But my Queen, we are not allowed to leave you alone.”

“Is that so?” She sounded more taken aback by the reply than she was sarcastic.

“My, Queen, please, we would be in serious trouble if we go back to the palace without you…”

“Then go somewhere else and… well, go and play with bush rats or something.”

“But the King said…”

“Am I not the Queen? I have given you a command to carry out.” These ones were stubborn.

“Yes my Queen.” They finally budged, chorusing their response.

“Don’t come back until after dark.”

They looked at themselves, “Yes my Queen.”

“Now go.”

They turned and chose a direction, then they started walking away.

Secret Sins

“I missed you, my love.” The Queen said.

“As did I.” Someone Who Was Not The King replied.

They held hands and took a slow walk into the bush, to wherever they expected no one to notice them. They spoke and they laughed together, enjoying the fading sky of the evening, and it never occurred to them that they were wrong, because they had both stepped into the bubble of untamed love, and the world could not stop them.

Greda

“You are pregnant?!” King Greda exclaimed. 

“Yes, my King. I think so.” The Queen answered.

“Ah! Let’s not think so. It is so! We will celebrate!” The King was excited. He danced around his throne, grabbing his wife and holding her arm leading her to the rhythm only he could hear. The guards at the front door frowning and gritting teeth began to snigger at the display, but the King blindly danced away their ridicule and taking off his robe, he lifted her off the ground and danced with her, her weightless body in the grip of his hands. 

She tried to laugh, struggling once again to bury the thought she had fought for days.

She had not-so-willingly had sexual intercourse with the King for the first time 2 fortnights ago.

She became aware of the pregnancy 4 fortnights ago.

No one would find out, she concluded.

Samthanasmuths

Samnas was glad about the fact that the King has still not yet come to take the red dust. But if the King happened to show up when he was not expecting, Samnas was ready for him.

Fonjam

“I can’t take it anymore! I thought I could, but now it is impossible.”

“My love, you have to go on with this. If he catches us, I do not know what could happen to us. Let us not say anything about this. Go and be. Go and love him, else, he might find out himself.”

“Are you saying you don’t love me anymore?” Her eyes twinkled, probing, even though she was wearing a frown.

“That is not what I am saying. I do. But whatever is done is done. We have to move on and not destroy ourselves.”

Dakumet began to sob like a child.

“No, no. My Love, don’t cry. It is hurting me as much as it is hurting you. I love you with all of my heart, and nothing can change that.” Fonjam was breaking inside.

“I love you too, my love. But that is not why I am crying.”

He pulled her away from his chest and held her out for the gold evening sun to shine its light on her face. “What is it my dear?”

She sniffed, “I am carrying your child.”

She felt his body jerk.

“What?” She asked, startled.

“Nothing, my dear. I am only happy.”

“But what are we going to do?!” She yelled, sensing his disorientation. She had expected him to panic at the declaration; he was trying to hide his fear.

Fonjam did not want things to go this way. Fonjam’s head was spinning. Fonjam had turned himself into a figure head. Fonjam was in bigger trouble if the King, his close friend, found out about all of this mess. He felt his conscience call his name several times in mockery, and there was no comfort for him, so what comfort could he give the love of his life that everything was going to be fine? Words?

“Everything is going to be just fine, my dear. Keep the child; make sure the King does not find out.”

“I have told him already… that I am pregnant. I will never let him know that it is not his.”

“Then we are safe, my love.” He pressed her hard against his chest and felt through the softness of her well rounded breasts, his soul touch hers and they clung longer than they expected to, forgetting themselves in the pools of desire that sprung delightfully within them. They were safe, but for how long?

Anerborlu

One day, twenty-one fortnights later, Aneborlu the servant girl thought it would be soothing if she took a swim in the stream, while the other two slave girls went to meet up with their friends and get lost inexplicably for the next hour or so. Queen Dakumet had discharged them while she spent her time ‘privately’ in the bush; they had learnt not to object seeing as it had caused no harm to them so far. Aneborlu kept her distance, however, to honor the Queen’s word and not interfere. So she did both, swimming in the stream, but on a far end where she was not discoverable, keeping her own privacy as well. She maintained beneath the cove of a rock that had been eroded to look like the inside of a calabash, and she slapped gently at the water and wriggled as silently as she could, enjoying the pleasant cold sting the water had on her skin. She did not have this freedom back at the quarters so she had better made use of it while she could.

She was done enjoying her swim and thought she should get dressed and join the other servants and meet up with them on their way to collect the Queen. She hung her cloth around herself and held it with one arm as she went to take her beads and earrings and hair ties which lay on the surface of a lone rock along the path to where they had left the Queen. When she had started taking off in the opposite direction, she heard noises behind her. It sounded like laughter, and when she heard it again, she thought she should check and see what it was. It was in the same direction the Queen had been left alone, so she hesitated for a bit, considering the Queen’s command. When she heard a man laugh the third time, she impulsively proceeded, curiously but cautiously towards the source, taking cover behind a long line of trees on the right side of the path. She was now going in the same direction she and her fellow servant girls had come when the Queen had sent them away. 

She swallowed deeply. 

She stooped behind a group of trees standing together in a small crowd and when she felt a huge root against her bottom, she was shaken, but when she realized it was harmless, she sat. Then she looked around trying to trace where the noises came from. Then she noticed movement where the Queen had been sitting and trimming pieces of wood. She saw a stack of small strips of wood that she assumed were accumulated over the long periods of the Queen’s hobby of carving wood at that spot. Then she saw the crown and when she pushed the shrub that had blocked the corner of her sight, she saw two sets of feet! When the man sat up, she regretted having to see who it was before she was able to release the shrub back into her face and duck her head, more in shock than in hiding. She knew exactly what was going on, but she fought herself to believe it was not true. But it was true in all dimensions. Fonjam was making Queen Dakumet laugh in the secrecy of the deep bush.

Tokisi

“Why are you beating up your friends? Do you know how old you are?! And you are still living with your parents and causing trouble for them when you should be married and get your life started!” The man spoke as though he were not one of the parents he was talking about. He took his cane, raising it to the ceiling of the house as he spoke, struggling to keep his balance as his daughter folded her arms and tapped her foot on the ground, frowning.

Tokisi, the man’s daughter hissed and replied, barking at her father, “Father, you know just exactly how things should be! But what have you done about it? Nothing! Whose fault is it? I have done my own part in this house and I am fed up cleaning your droppings, old man!”

“Heh?!” The old man was enraged, almost hitting her with his cane. He was already considering it was a good idea when his wife came into the scene.

“Heh?!” He repeated, pointing at her. “Woman, can you imagine the things your daughter is saying? Why have you let her grow this way…?”

“Wait oh! She is your daughter too! Don’t push her mistakes on me!” Tokisi’s stepmother, Shaha squealed back at her husband. She was to a very large extent, younger, compared to the man she was married to, and in fact, not much older than her daughter. They were apart by not up to a difference of ten years. She had taken the place of her late mother when her Tokisi was thirteen years old. Tokisi’s mother had died at childbirth. “In fact, she is your very daughter and not mine!” The woman emphasized.

The stubborn girl was nodding and tapping her foot like a village market dancer gearing up for a dance routine.

“You say her mistakes?! Mistakes, you call them? Do you know what a monkey is? A monkey that keeps its child on its back does not know when the child stretches its long hand and plucks a mango from a tree! This girl knows her left from her right, or I should expect that, but she deliberately does these disgraceful things at her age!”

“Papa, don’t even push the blame back on me like that! We had an argument the other day and one of the girls came back to make jest at me! Now should I have sat back in your cane chair like you do and say the gods will take vengeance for me?! I did what I had to do!”

“Hehm! You! Shut up! And do you think you did a nice job? They beat you up, it is obvious. And because you let them rough you up twice, they will come back. When you had the chance to marry the King, you let it slip like it was a joke.” The Shaha clapped her hands and slapped her laps at the drop of her tone.

“You, don’t even start talking about that…” with the level of their tones, the old man was no longer struggling to keep up with the quarrel. He stood and stared, leaning on his cane for support. “If it was not for that cheat, Dakumet, I would have made it! She did not even compete! She just walked in and married the King!”

Papa was now shaking his head in disbelief. He would never figure women out, especially in his old age and ill health.

“So that is what it is all about, eh?” Papa asked.

“No, Papa, that one is completely different, I don’t know why this woman brought it up… It was simple, we argued, and I made my point…” and turning to Shaha, she clapped her hands and said, “and you are wrong. I showed them the harder side of my fists!” She was now clenching The Harder Side of Her Fists at her Shaha.

“Ahhh…” Shaha started when Papa puffed the highest yell he could manage, his voice breaking in the process.

“BOTH OF YOU; KEEP IT QUIET IN MY HOUSE!” Both of them were now tapping one foot each on the ground in scattered rhythms. They had quieted themselves and due to the silence that followed, they reduced the sounds of their foot-tapping.

“This is not called for; whatever it is. You have already tarnished the image of this house and you are scattering the ashes of what is left in my face! Please, let us live in peace with our friends and neighbors… even if not for their sake, but for me. I am going very soon, and you don’t want to be the cause of that.” Papa, meaning ‘I will die very soon’, pleaded with his wife and child. He had wasted all the years he had to restore whatever dignity he had to its place, but he had failed, not even able to keep a small family of one wife and one child. He began to regret the death of his first wife now, more than ever, and if you could see his heart, it was withering like a malnourished flower or a flower in a hopeless wasteland.

Tokisi and her stepmother threw rock hard glances at themselves, then at the old man and went their way. Maybe the last string on which that family stood was finally cut.

To be continued...

- Telsum Bini