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A Tiger does not proclaim its tigritude. It pounces.

—Wole Soyinka

When sleep accepts one week, it becomes death. My father’s earthly cloth, as per tradition, must wait in his hut until the fourth day before he is confirmed dead, his death officially announced in the community, and mourning commenced. Today is the said fourth day my father’s sleep abides. At dusk, he would be pronounced dead, sliced open, his heart and liver excused from the rest of what’s left of him, cooked, and served to me. All these because my father was not content being just human; he had to leak into tigritude.

The first time my father leaked into tigritude, I was twelve. I had gone out to ease my bladder. The clip of Moon was low-pitched as if the sparks of sky lights took a short toilet break. The rough mud wall of my hut scratched my fingers as I navigated to the back of the house. I had hardly, hastily, shifted my loincloth before the urine had its way, not even waiting for me to position my…you know what. As the urine excused itself, my shoulder slouched in immense relief. Storms of avian and arboreal utterances kept me company. By the time I was done and flapped my…you know what…for remnants, my shoulder and jaw were at par. I stretched, yawned noiselessly, and made to head back to my hut. At this point, either my eyes were adjusted to the opaqueness, or the dreaming night-lighters were back, because I was able to make out the shadow of a forest meat strolling casually out of my father’s hut. This forest meat did not shake its bum-bum like a Sheep or a Goat. It moved like a fatigued Dog, but with some pride and majesty in its steps. We did not have Dog. Now, I thought perhaps nnaanyi Eze’s Dog, for whatever reason in this world, maybe confused by the coal night, mistook our compound for theirs. But what was it doing coming out of my father’s hut? The forest meat yawned. It was a hushed yawn, but it refocused, at least in my head, the outlines of the forest meat. It had whiskers. Cats were not that big now, were they? Plus, we owned no Cat. It took a few more steps, crossing one leg in front of the other, the way Amaka did when she forced her hips to shake like a Mare’s while acting as if she wasn’t. It was at this point that reality kicked in for me. I was looking at a wild forest meat of whatever species exiting my father’s hut. My father was dead then, wasn’t he, silently eaten in his sleep, because if he screamed, wouldn’t we have heard? The realization of my fatherlessness was the first element that rendered me immobile with shock. The second, and the most potent element, was the appearance of the forest meat: Tiger. I dried up instantly. A fabric of silence swathed the world. The night either stopped their singing or their voices listed below my consciousness and did not make it into my ears. A shade of draft absconded with my voice. My voice was not the only deserter. My spirit, without question, took a step or two out of my body. I became a standing, stiff, dearly departed; mute, mute!, watching Tiger walk toward me. The only option woven into my senses was nothing. That Tiger held me spellbound. Because if not, explain to me how it was that I stood there, my body completely immobile, my hands weighing like stone-filled bags, my mouth slightly opened, right in the face of an approaching Tiger! Perhaps I might have shouted for help had the wild Cat not actually, realistically, magically got my tongue. 

The Tiger walked majestically, ma-jes-ti-cal-ly, and looked straight into my eyes. Only a spell could render someone stiff in the face of such a threat. Face to face with Tiger and unable to put my mouth, hand, leg, body!, to use, the only option open to me was to stare into Tiger’s eyes. Tiger must have wanted me to look at it. I was under its stronghold. I had no control. I looked at Tiger’s eyes, in Tiger’s eyes, and into Tiger’s eyes, and I knew. My brain decoded fast. My immobility did not change course, just my sensibility. I was, without question, staring into the eyes of my father. My father had the most unique set of eyes, you see. His eyes were as light brown as Tiger nuts. His irises were oval, not round like the rest of ours. I would later realise that my father’s eyes were indicia of Tigers’, but that night, I recognised my father’s eyes in Tiger’s body. Those eyes wore a certain kind of tenderness on their sleeves. Their softness was so profound it must be what held me spellbound, what assured me I was safe. Tiger leapt past me, its cottony fur slightly brushing my arms, into the bush and away. Blood swooshed back into my body, dissolving its lifelessness. The night songs rushed into my ears the way water moves during erosion. I even felt cold. No, I was not cold prior when I went to put my…you know what…to natural use. The night was warm before and after Tiger. The cold I felt must have come from me, a consequence of my relief or release from Tiger’s hold. A normal human being would have broken into a shout of cry. But everything, light, sound, sky, me, was abnormal that night.

I knocked on my father’s hut. No answer. The whole world was prohibited from entering my father’s hut without an invitation. But that night, I damned the rule and softly pushed the door ajar. The outline of my father’s sleeping form lay spread out on his Bamboo bed like a body lying-in-state. His long legs extended slightly over the length of his bed. His body was almost the same colour as his irises, if not a shade lighter. His muscle-packed arms lay out beside his torso. His hair was full and bushy and fresh. He was not bleeding. His cheeks and jaw pullulated with beards. He looked fine and absent. I was at ease that Tiger did not eat my father, but my father was not there. I went closer. His stomach did not rise and fall. I was afraid to breathe because the air in the room seemed insufficient to keep both of us alive. There did not exist even the slightest sound from him. I went closer still. I did not realise I had been walking on my toes until my toes hurt. I knelt beside him, raised my hand to touch him, and dropped my hand. My heartbeat sunk the night rhythm. My father was dead. My father was dead. I raised my hand again, and this time I rested the tip of my index finger on his arm. He was soft and warm. I closed my eyes and let out the breath I did not know I withheld. It was only after that breath expelled that my auditory faculties registered his skeletal breathing, a refund of soul left behind to woo his body alive. I did not shake him. I did not attempt to wake him. I quietly exited the space, lay on the warm sand beside his hut, and went to sleep. 

My eyes opened to slips of yellow feet only-one-God knows how many hours later. Sun was just making her way back from whatever land she spends the night, and Moon headed to wherever she spends the day. Bird songs sounded different, as if a new species had taken over the day shift. It was chilly. Those legs, with toes curved inwards as if hiding their faces, surely belonged to my father. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, stretched, and yawned. My father’s foot was slightly in front of the other and curved. His jaw sat between his thumb and index, his right elbow on his left wrist. His face was a board of benignity. His lips wore a smile so light I would have missed it had I blinked. I rested the heels of my hands on the ground to support me as I propelled myself up, but he asked me to sit down his child. I took the weight off my arms and relaxed my back against the wall. My father did the strangest thing ever: he sat on the ground. No, kings don’t sit on the ground. Why should they? The whole point of kingship, of the throne, was to elevate them above the masses on the ground. My father sat beside me. It was our secret, he said, his sitting on the ground. Though it felt intimate, I nibbled at the fear that he was dead, and this was his ghost. He smelled of fresh forest papers, the kind so wealthy in greenness it would haemorrhage if rubbed together. Why was I sleeping in front of his hut, he wanted to know. I looked at him and quickly away because his eyes reminded me of that Tiger. My father taught me, since I was old enough to recognise myself as human, that whenever I talked to someone, I must look them in the eye because the eyes were the door to the soul hence their ability to vocalize the mind’s musing—which the person, if they be sneaky and horrible, would conceal by their teeth-laughter, and if they be good-intentioned, would conceal by their shy, eye-laughter. That morning, however, I dared look away from my father’s eyes. I was not the only one breaking the rule; he was sitting on the ground, wasn’t he? His deep voice echoed his question. I was not sure what to tell him. I was not even sure why I slept on the ground, why I did not head back to my hut. If I told him that I worried something had happened to him and I wanted to be sure he was fine, he might call me weak. If I told him Tiger spent delicious time right in front of me and did not enjoy me, he might question my sanity. If I told him I dared enter his hut, he might berate me. So, as my father’s son that I am, I looked into his eyes, as disconcerting as they made me, and asked him where he was last night. His expression skimmed over confusion, skated through pride, and settled onto a stage of rich smile. He did not take his eyes off mine for one second, my king of a father. Columns of water lodged in my eyes, but I held my own. Lions do not sire Lynxes. He would concede if I talked to him first, he said. The red sand wore pug marks, which disappeared into my father’s hut. Unless those marks fell from Moon, and they did not, a wild forest meat passed there. Curiosity unlocked my memory, spurring a prolixity of what I saw last night. I did not look into his eyes as I spoke, rule or no rule. I relinquished the privilege of knowing if he believed me or not. We should enter his hut, he said, lest someone saw us sitting on the ground. Together, we scattered the pug marks on the sand before entering his hut.

His bed, empty of him, confirmed his living. He started by telling me that I was a man, a king-in-waiting, as if I needed a reminder. Last night, he said, his soul leaked into tigritude. He leaked out of his body and took the form of Tiger. Yes, it was really him that I saw. A shadow of disquietude rose from the floor, holding its chilly blanket. It was only in folktales that I encountered stories of people shapeshifting into forest meats. Fear covered my body in goosebumps. Had I not seen Tiger, had I not seen my father’s body laid out like a fabric awaiting wearing, had I not noted the pug marks that morning, I would have thought my father was making a great-grand fool of me. The truth sat in his eyes as confidently as my father sat on his throne. If I would not tell anybody, he said, he’d really appreciate it. Of course, I would not tell anybody. Secret-keeping was my shtick. Where did he go, though? To the forest. To do what? Just explore. Well, I’d like to leak into tigritude with him next time and visit the forest. He chuckled. Through the crevice of the wooden window, past our bodies, and onto the wall opposite us, grains of sunlight moved. I was still too young, my father said. When I was old enough, I would be cooked in the ọgwụ that imbued one with the powers to simply leak out of their bodies or to take flight without wings.

When sleep accepts one week, it becomes death. My father’s mortal cloth, as per tradition, must wait in his hut until the fourth day before he’s confirmed dead, his death officially announced in the community, and mourning commenced.

I last saw him the evening before he slept on. I was chopping wood when my third mother belched out a deep guttural scream, a scream too deep for even a man’s voice, “My God has killed me! My God has killed me!” Sun was incredibly hot that morning. The axe fell from my grip, and I instinctively ran toward the sound. My second mother, on seeing me approach my father’s hut, threw her big build in front of the door, and assumed a bellicose posture. I stopped right in my tracks. As the king-in-waiting, I was not allowed to see the corpse of the last king because kingship never dies in this land—it simply moves into the body of the next king. My second mother’s performance of obstruction, therefore, could only mean that my father’s corpse was in that hut.

Something left me.

Something left me.

Strength stood up and left me. 

My body fell into the throes of weakness. Unmasked panic plicated my second mother’s forehead. My third mother’s horror-ladened voice boomed out from my father’s hut, screaming his name, screaming his name. My birth mother and all my mothers’ children poured out of only-one-God knows where, rushing into my father’s hut, crying out of my father’s hut. Only I was barred. My second mother stood by the door as if to make sure, her jute lappa laxed on her chest. I realised the futility of standing there, amidst cries that could only come from the soul, asking our father not to do this, to please not do this, calling on the entire community to come o that Goat has eaten Lice from their head o! I turned on my heels and ran. It was only the breeze and me on the road. If there were other road users, I neither saw nor heard them. I ran in the direction of the dibia’s, a cognoscenti in spirituality. I was close to her shrine when I espied her walking toward me. I was nearly out of breath. She was on her way to my compound, she said. Hmm, bad news has the fastest legs! She rattled her staff. Her lappa was compromised white like nzu. Ekete circled her small waist. The circular spots from nzu on her arms, neck, upper chest, and legs made her look as if she were wearing Snake’s body. I looked away from her body and at her face. She laughed, full teeth, pulsating tongue, as if all was well with the world. One of her upper front teeth was so black it looked absent. Her wiry hair was white as her lappa. Hold your heart, she said. I placed my palm on my chest. She shook with mirth. Seriously? Grief danced to the sound of my name, she said. I must hold my heart with my hand because a weak king and a headless neck are the same: useless. My father is king, not me. Was, she said. My patience was thin air. If she could please come and save my father. Was that not where she was headed before I stopped her? 

Pipes of uncooked cries called my attention to the fact that we’d reached my chockablock compound. Sticks of stretched hands pillowed me with cottony pats. As comforting as they were, I did not want to accept that my father was dead. So, I shrugged their hands off me. The dibia stamped her rattling staff harder on the sand as if to oust the noise. When it did not work, she raised her voice in a loud song. That did it. The cries diminished. Barrels of humans rolled out of my father’s hut. The dibia entered my father’s hut alone. When she came out, she positioned her eyes to the sky as if the questions flung at her came from there. Has he gone on the compulsory journey? In a mellifluous voice, she answered, Yes, he’s gone on that journey and has arrived. She found him in the thereafter, at a welcome ceremony held for him, drinking wine with his ancestors. My world took a deep inhale. What happened to him? Death. My world would not exhale. Would he come back? She smiled. If not because she understood grief, the great fool who asked that question would have gone home inside this (she beat her ọgwụ bag) as a gyrating Cockroach. She spun on one foot, a woman too agile for the eighty years she’s spent on Ana’s Earth, and vanished into thin air, leaving just her footprints as a sign that she once stood there. While umms sat on ahhs, I walked to my hut, locked myself in, and received the warm worms of saltwater slithering down my eyes. Whether men cried or not, I cried. Whether kings cried or not, I cried. Whether I should be ashamed of myself or not, I cried. My father, a strong presence in my life since I became human, my confidante, my secret-keeper, my best friend, had moved on, just like that, without even a word of goodbye? How could he walk away and just go straight into drinking wine with his cohorts when I could not even face another day here without him? 

A soft knock awoke me the next morning. My birth mother opened the door without my invitation and shut the door behind her. She seemed to have aged in the few hours since I saw her. She was slightly thinner and frailer. A dot of dried saliva lolled at the corner of her lip. She sat beside me. Her scoop of grief-confirming silence sprayed the room with the mellow trail of our agony. If my father had awoken, she would have said so. Was he awake? We’re waiting for two more days to find out, she said. My ears refused to hear what my brain already understood. We must find someone to wake him, I said, to help him. We would find out in two days, she said stiffly. I shook my head. She touched my shoulder. Her touch was allaying. I did not want to be comforted. I just wanted my father. What did he look like? Asleep, she said. And what? She sighed. And what? She sighed deeply, perhaps considering whether to tell me or not. He went to bed and did not wake up, she said, as if I did not know. Sleep was the last thing he did, what he’s still doing; what else? He had marks on his body, she said. My heart sank into the blood wells of my stomach. What marks, for goodness’ sake? Three bloodless gashes per scratch all over his body. Did it look as if he was attacked by a wild forest meat? She would bring my food, she replied, and left me. I understood. There was nothing more to be said really. In the darkness of my hut, alone with me, my Chi, and my senses, I told myself the truth that my father leaked into tigritude at night and was attacked by either a real forest meat or a shapeshifter like himself. His attacker offed him. Because it was his soul which was deleted, his body, left empty in his hut, remained what it was: nothing. Nothing. 

I left for the bush. I climbed a forest stick with vigour, unafraid of any creatures there before me. Forest meat took my father from me. Any forest meat whatsoever—even if it was Snake, who possibly could not have been responsible for my father’s transition—that made the mistake of crossing me had better said their final supplication prior. Ablaze in agony, I hungered for salvo, for extermination. The bush was too small to contain my rage and me to say nothing of any oxygen-consuming being. No, I did not need any weapon. My fists were all the weapons fashioned against any unfortunate. I did not encounter even Ant. Good for them. The mystery of the forest’s mettle offered a much-needed solitude. I did not want anybody to say even one word to me about preparations for burial. My father’s strong-willed enough to defy death. He’d come back. I was not ready to be king yet. I was not even married, wasn’t that signal enough of my not-readiness to be king? How could he die? Why was he not content being just human? Why did he have to leak into tigritude.

The next day would bring ndi nze na ọzọ, the titled mensches of the land, coming to my compound, meeting me in my father’s obi—where I went to wait for them because I knew, as per tradition, they would come—telling me to choose what part of my father I preferred to eat. I was not ready to answer that question until my father’s death was confirmed, I said. My father was dead, they said. His death would be confirmed tomorrow. They had to move fast. Part of the royal ceremony of the dead was the coronation of the new king, which must precede the burial of the dead king. Only a king could preside over the burial of a king. Nobody else, except a king, was worthy of handing a departed king over to the spirit world. Before the coronation, the king-in-waiting must take a part of the last king in him. It was up to me to decide what part of the old king I wanted to consume. If I admired the insight—inside the seen sight—of my father, then I might want to eat his eyes. If it was his ability to move fearlessly, then I might seriously consider eating his feet. Wise words had it that one of my ancestors requested to eat his father’s nose raw, dried snort, and all; he wanted the breath of his father to be in him. Would I like to try that? By eating a part of the king, the throne maintained the same king from time immemorial. It’s like a chain, a thread of movement of the king, both in body and mind. My father could not be buried until I was crowned king. I could not be crowned king unless I had eaten a piece of the king, literally carried the king over into my own mortal husk. Am I hearing them?

They talked as if I were ignorant, as if all the twenty-plus years of my life had not been spent learning the customs. What part of my father would I eat? My father leaked into tigritude and died as Tiger. My father was Tiger in composure, emotion, voice, eyes. Tigers consummate a deep grasp of overwhelming love because of their immense kindliness and emotions. My father was the most empathetic and bravest man. I would want to be a king like him, a father like him. His heart would give me his benignity and his liver would give me his valiance.

Am I still hearing them? What part of my father would I want to eat?

His heart. His liver.

Today is the fourth day. I have been in my hut all day. I have no sense of time. All I know is that dusk would make it one week since my father agreed to sleep. A miasma ramparts his hut. But it does not count. Only dusk today would confirm my father a dead person. Dusk would bring the titled men here, dressed in white. They would converge in my father’s hut, cut him up, extract his liver and heart, put them in the new gourd bowl they would come with, and give them to the mother of the king-in-waiting to cook. Whatever else they’d do in there, I do not know. My father did not teach me up to that. My birth mother would cook the organs in new pots. She would serve me in new Gourd bowls. She would break the bowls that carried the raw organs, the pots she cooked them in, and the bowls I ate them with. In the middle of the night, she would go unaccompanied to bury them at a location whose knowledge she would take to her grave. It’s only after that that she and her two co-wives would begin their performance of widowhood. It’s only after that that I would commence the ceremony of coronation. My tongue would be cut with the blade of truth and justice, joining the curve of my essence with those two spirits for life. The crown of my head would be washed with my father’s blood, cleansing it of every debris, making it fit to wear the crown. My father’s soles would be peeled off and laid on the ground for me to stand on so that…

“My child.” 

My mother stands before me. In her hands is a large Raffia tray; on the tray are two lidded bowls; in the bowls is food, possibly akpụ and ofe onugbu, cooked with my father’s liver and heart. I stare at the bowls, at my mother’s eyes, at the bowls.

 

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KASIMMA is an author from Igboland—obodo ndi dike. Find her on Twitter @kasimmam and Instagram @Iamkasimma.

Featured Image by Juan Camilo, courtesy of Unsplash.