5.

It is dusk. Miisi is sitting on a three-legged stool near the angel’s trumpet shrub with his back against the hedge. His double-story house is a ruin. The roof and parts of the walls on the top floor are in disrepair. A man stands above him. Miisi feels imposed upon because he cannot see past the man. The man is covered with bees. He has a single hair on his head as thick as a big rope.

“Get up and come with me,” the man says.

Miisi knows he should ask: who are you? Come with you to where? But instead, he whines, “You know my hip is bad,” as if he and the man have known each other for a long time.

“If you don’t come with me now, you’ll have to find me. I am not easy to find.”

“But my hip—”

“Hurry up.”

The man has started walking. Miisi stands up reluctantly. There is nothing wrong with his hip, yet it has been giving him pain for a long time. He is worried that neighbors are going to see him walking properly: they’ll think he is a liar. Miisi hides behind the man covered in bees. It is critical that no one sees him walking without a limp.

They walk through his compound and out toward the main road, only they don’t seem to be getting closer. A few bees fly off the man and then settle back. Miisi is not bothered by the bees. It is as if he has lived with men covered in bees all his life.

Miisi and the man are standing on a hillside. They are surrounded by trees. The place is familiar even though Miisi is sure he has never been there. The bee man touches a tree and looks it up and down. “This tree will be at the center,” he says, as he walks around it, still looking it up and down. “It will make the central pole.” Miisi is puzzled but the man adds, “Find a tall man, ask him to take ten strides,” the bee man takes a stride, “In every direction around this tree and build a dwelling.”

Now they are standing at another end of the hill. Miisi and the bee man have been together on the hillside for years now.

“This is Nnakato,” the bee man points to the ground. “You must retrieve her and lay her properly.” He looks at Miisi: even his eyes are bees. The eyes are stern as if Miisi is a silly child. “You must observe everything carefully so that when you return with your brothers you can identify the sites. Nnakato is near a rock. You see that tree with a red bark? Don’t cut it down. It is the same tree from which she hanged herself. You can sit under it when your head throbs or when you’re anxious. Let its water drip on you. Come with me.”

They move from site to site instantly like ghosts yet Miisi feels as though they have been touring for a long time. The sun is very bright, but the man’s bees are not bothered. Miisi wants to warn him that the sun will kill his bees, but he remains silent out of respect.

They are standing in a wide clearing. The bee man is pointing out Miisi’s family. Miisi knows all of them because he buried them there.

“Bring Nnakato over here. That is Baale on my left. Don’t disturb him. Lay Nnakato on his left. When you return Kintu, lay him on Nnakato’s left. The sun must set behind them. However, Kalemanzira must be laid on Baale’s right. Come with me.”

Miisi looks back trying to catch a glimpse of Baale but the bee man is hurrying. They stand on a heath. All Miisi can see is desolation. The bee man leads him to a mound. He bends and blows the dust away.

“There he is.”

“Who?”

“Your father. Haven’t you been looking for him?”

“Oh, him,” Miisi remembers looking in rolled mats, behind doors, under tables, behind trees everywhere all his life. His father is a smiling face without a body. The smile is of shame rather than happiness. Miisi looks away.

“How did he get here?”

“Humans walk,” says the bee man but Miisi wonders how a smiling face walked. “He loved you.”

“Thank God he died. If he loved me he would have killed me.”

“He loved you.”

“Mother loved me.”

“Come with me.”

Miisi is seven years old. He is walking behind the bee man. The man’s single hair rises on his head but collapses under the weight of the bees and trails on the ground like a snake. Miisi suppresses the childish urge to step on it: the bees would sting his feet. Miisi knows he has been with the bee man for a long time because he has grown a goatee like a Japanese wise man. This worries him because his beard normally thatches the entirety of his jaws. Yet he is still seven years old. The bee man points at a patch of ground overgrown by shrubs.

“That’s where the lad is.”

The bee man stands away from the grave. The grave hums. It is a metallic hum. Miisi listens: it is the hum of an electricity transformer near his school. Miisi wants to reassure the bee man that the lad is harmless. People are harmless when they are asleep.

“This is my home.” The man points to a cave covered in bees. “I’ll not return to your house. Go back and find your brothers. Return and build the house. Then wash in the gorge below the hill.”

Miisi returns home. In no time, he and his many brothers have built the house but they are all monkeys swinging on trees.