voice from the cushions on the floor. I inwardly winced to think she had been watching me, though I hope I showed nothing on my face. I cleaned myself and lay down on another pile of cushions. They were too soft, and soon I pushed them aside and slept on the wooden floor, which was more comfortable, though something in between would have been nicer.
Before I slept, though, Mwabao Mawa asked me sleepily, “If you don’t undress to sleep, and you don’t undress to drop, do you undress for sex?”
To which I just as drowsily replied, “That I will tell to those who have a practical reason for such knowledge.” Her laughter this time told me that I had a friend, and I slept peacefully all night.
I awoke because of a sound. In a building where there is not only a north, south, east, and west, but also an up and down, I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. But it was, I realized, music.
Singing, and the voice, which was distant, was soon joined by another, which was closer. The words were not clear. There may have been no real words. But I found myself listening, pleased by the sound of it. There was no harmony, at least nothing that I could recognize. Instead, each voice seemed to seek its own pleasure, without relation to the other. But there was still some interaction, on some subtle—or perhaps merely rhythmic—level, and as more voices joined in, the music became very full and lovely.
I noticed a motion, and turned to see Mwabao Mawa looking at me.
“Morningsong,” she whispered. “Do you like it?”
I nodded. She nodded back, beckoned to me and walked to a curtain. She drew it aside and stood on the edge of the platform, naked, as the song continued. I held on to the corner pole and watched where she was watching.
It was the east; the hymn was to the imminent sun. As I watched, Mwabao Mawa opened her mouth and began to sing. Not softly, as she had yesterday, but with full voice, a voice that rang among the trees, that seemed to find the same mellow chord that had originally been tuned into the wood, and after a while I noticed that silence had fallen except for her music. And as she sang an intricate series of rapid notes, which seemed to bear no pattern but which, nevertheless, imprinted themselves indelibly in my memory and in my dreams ever since, the sun topped a horizon somewhere, and though I couldn’t see it because of the leaves above me, I knew from the sudden brightening of the green ceiling that the sun had risen.
Then all the voices arose again, singing together for a few moments. And then, as if by a signal, silence.
I stood, leaning on the pole. It occurred to me that once I had shared Mueller’s delusion that people with black skins were fit only to be slaves. One thing, at least, I had learned from my embassy here, and one thing I would take away: a memory of music unlike any other ever known in this world. I leaned there, unmoving, until Mwabao Mawa closed the curtains.
“Morningsong,” she said, smiling. “It was too good an evening last night not to celebrate today.”
She cooked breakfast—the meat of a small bird, and a thin-sliced fruit of some kind.
I asked; she told me that the fruit was the fruit of the trees the Nkumai lived in. “We eat it as soilers eat bread or potatoes.” It had a strange tang. I didn’t like it, but it was edible.
“How do you catch birds?” I asked. “Do you use hawks? If you shot a bird, it would fall forever to the ground.”
She shook her head, waiting to answer until her mouth was empty. “I’ll have Teacher take you to where the birdnets are.”
“Teacher?” I asked
As if my question had been his cue, a moment later he was standing outside the house, calling softly, “From the earth to the air.”
“And to the nest, Teacher,” Mwabao Mawa answered. She walked out of the room, on to the next room where Teacher would be waiting. Reluctantly I followed, making the short jump to the other room, and then, without even a