A River Called Time Read online

  Also by Courttia Newland

  Novels

  The Scholar

  Society Within

  Snakeskin

  The Dying Wish

  The Gospel According to Cane

  Short story collections

  Music for the Off-Key: Twelve Macabre Short Stories

  A Book of Blues

  First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  canongate.co.uk

  This digital edition first published in 2021 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Courttia Newland, 2021

  Map © Courttia Newland, 2021

  Map illustration by Jo Dingley

  The right of Courttia Newland to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on

  request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78689 706 0

  Export ISBN 978 1 83885 409 6

  eISBN 978 1 78689 707 7

  For Sharmila, my rock in rough waters

  CONTENTS

  Geb Timeline

  Part One: Being and Becoming

  1 May 2000

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  17 October 2020

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Part Two: The Book of the Ark

  23 November 2020

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Part Three: Awakening and Liberation (Ānava Samāveśa)

  21 November 2019

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Part Four: The Upper Room

  13 December 2020

  1

  2

  Epilogue: Śākta-Samāveśa

  27 November 1991

  0

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Geb Timeline

  5900 BC

  First Ta-Seti (Kushite) kings recorded

  5600

  First Kemetian Pharaoh recorded

  2500

  Foundation of Kerma, Ta-Seti

  2300–1500

  Origins of Hinduism grow from the Indus Valley

  1500

  First Ta-Seti pyramid

  1600

  First Kemetian pyramid

  1000

  Emergence of Abraham and beginning of Judaism

  900

  King David forms Jewish Empire in Israel and Lebanon

  463–383

  Lifetime of Confucius

  304

  Birth of Ashoka Maurya, Buddhist king

  3 BC–AD 27

  Lifetime of Jesus Christ

  50

  Buddhism introduced to China

  213

  Christianity tolerated in Roman Empire, emperors favouring religions based on Kemetian cosmology (maat)

  470–532

  Lifetime of Muhammad, founder of Islam

  553

  Qur’an written

  1245

  Rise of Aztec civilisation in Mexico

  1291–1375

  First Dalai Lama in Tibet

  1369–1439

  Lifetime of Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism

  1392

  Christopher Columbus lands in Guana. Trade and intercultural relations begin, lasting centuries.

  1434

  Henry VIII declares himself head of the newly formed Anglican Kemitic Temple, separating from the Roman Kemitic Temple

  1635

  Beginning of Hasidic Judaism

  1800–65

  Lifetime of Professor Harman Wallace, Kemetic scientist

  1814–18

  The Flash War, or War of Light. Dinium City devastated for 123 square miles, known as ‘the Blin’

  1830–1910

  Construction of the Ark

  2000–2020

  Hanaigh E’lul’s tenure as Governor of the Ark

  Part One

  Being and Becoming

  ‘The golden light of a candle flame sits upon the throne of its dark light that clings to the wick.’

  — Sefer ha-zohar

  1 May 2000

  1

  Void. Hum.

  Three hundred and sixty degrees’ expansion, pervading known and unknown matter.

  Breath.

  Existence.

  Him.

  The first time he was struck by a spontaneous nambula, Markriss Denny was eight years old. Feet pushing hard on pedals, body leaning against handlebars, the wheels of the bike ahead glistening with sunlight. His attention was seized and for a moment he saw the heavens in that shimmering rotation. He couldn’t take his eyes away. There was pain in the centre of his forehead. He was falling from his bike before he knew it.

  He must have blacked out, because the next thing he was lying on the pavement, elbows and knees raw, the bike a resting animal a yard or so from where he’d fallen. His friends stood over him. T’shari, Karis, Nesta. Markriss let them wrench him to his feet, limping back to his fallen metal steed, waving away their concern, their insistence he looked pale. Soon they rode in unison again, creaking gears and turning wheels a random symphony beneath them.

  They stopped outside rusting gates propped open with fallen masonry. Flakes of orange made the once grand entrance look diseased. Grass and weeds stood as high as their waists. A slight breeze made the strands rustle like a whisper of ghosts. They sat on their bikes, staring at the blighted metal. Silent.

  Nesta edged forwards, thin bicycle tyre nudging the gate. He rolled over crumbled stone, standing and stamping on the pedals to gain more power until he was over the obstruction, inside. They followed, one after another. Markriss, Karis, and T’shari, the skinniest child, always last, lifting his chin towards graffitied walls, brow arched, fearful.

  The building was huge. Not compared to the Ark of course, though it towered above their heads, four storeys high. They rode through warped frames of wooden doors into the main entrance hall, craning their necks to look at the roof. Fallen glass left the dusty brown sky exposed. Their school picture books showed chandeliers and birds wheeling overhead, but the boys saw neither. They got used to being alone, speeding up and down once polished marble floors, performing wheelies and long skids, creating miniature desert storms. When they grew bored, they explored alone.

  Markriss rode past closed ticket booths and parades of empty shops, to the platforms where sleek grand trains once stood. He left his bike against a marble bench and jumped onto the tracks, amongst long grass. Some of the weeds were long green strands that looked like wheat. He lay against cool steel, trying to imagine what it must have been like. The olden days. He closed his eyes.

  The mute disc of sun hadn’t moved by much when he woke. Markriss guessed he hadn’t been sleeping long. He climbed back onto the platform, studying the multicoloured lines of the Dinium route map, wheeling his bike into the entrance hall. There was no one. He thought they might have left, panicked for a moment, and then heard voices. Relief made him sag against handlebars. He smiled and hummed a soft tune, wheeling his bike in that direction.

  An open corridor, doors long ripped away or kicked down. Black-edged shadows. He paused, biting his lip. The rectangle of light at the opposi
te end was small, and far. Gloom seeped. Markriss called into the expanse. No answer. Partly, he was glad.

  The far-away voices of his friends reached beyond dark. Spun-cotton wisps, distant. He made up his mind, rolling over broken glass and wood, careful, into the solid length of night. Daylight seemed consumed by that murky length of corridor. He saw nothing, his own physicality mythical; the only knowledge he existed came from the warmth of his handlebars beneath his fingers, his own harsh breath. The beat inside his chest, hot blood. The corridor smelt musty, damp and old. Markriss could taste the odour. He covered his mouth, pushing with one hand, which made the going even tougher; the floor beneath him, thick with dust. He repeatedly bumped his tyre against what felt like heavy blocks of concrete.

  His bike wheel stuck. He pushed again. Still nothing. Again. No luck. He climbed aboard the pedals, resolving to do what Nesta had, stand up and push down hard.

  There was a moment before he did this when Markriss had an inkling of what was to come. An image of himself and his friends, sprinting on bikes, screaming faces static. Metallic banging from a place he could not find, like a football smashing against a chain-link fence. A chuckling peal of laughter somewhere beyond his peripheral vision. He felt the sound in his stomach, an ache.

  He snapped back into the moment, back in the dark corridor, sniffing. Urine. His nose wrinkled. Gotta get out of there. He rose to his feet, smashing down with both feet.

  The roar came from everywhere, echoing, bouncing from unseen walls. He was pushed violently, hitting something sodden yet hard, recovering to wrench the bike around and back the way he’d come, pedalling fast. He heard shuffling behind him, running footsteps and mushed words like a foreign language, obvious curses. He sprinted towards the light, shooting into the entrance hall and screaming for his friends at the top of his lungs, surprised to see them rapid-pedalling away, until he saw the vagrants behind him. Grimy faces of shining tar, they stumbled and wheezed, trying to run even though their lungs wouldn’t serve them, their clothes in tattered strips, clawing empty air like old viewscreen monsters. They chased the boys for yards before they gave up, legs faltering, hands on knees, shaking from rasping explosions of lengthy coughs. Markriss caught one last sight over his shoulder—the vagrants lying in dust, spotlit by shards of light from the broken ceiling, shuddering as though undergoing a group fit.

  He turned away, sprinting harder.

  They directed their bikes towards the gates, T’shari, Karis, Markriss, cheeks and foreheads damp with effort, tendons thick in their arms.

  Far from the Ark Station, almost two blocks away, they realised.

  ‘I thought he was with you!’ Markriss screamed over the handlebars. Karis trembled, sweat gluing baby corn-hair to his forehead.

  ‘Don’t shout at him, we all went off on our own!’ T’shari’s neck stretched taut, tendons protruding, a late entry to any argument, as was his way.

  No one dared go back. They waited a heart-wrenching fifteen minutes before Nesta returned, shoulders hunched, riding slow.

  ‘Ra . . .’ Smiling when he saw their surprise, their worry. It angered Markriss, though he said nothing. ‘You lot was scared, right? You shoulda hid. They got sickness. They can’t hurt you.’

  An ice cream truck a few blocks from the Ark Station, the young vendor leaning on his counter, tattooed and bored. A dig for change, excitement from Karis and T’shari, echoed in miniature by Markriss and Nesta. The joyful-bought whipped-cream cones, slow-melting vanilla; the sombre orange and lemon ice poles that bled sweet juice. They rolled their bikes towards a grass verge behind the truck, to a bench where they could sit.

  ‘You lot never seen a sickie before, yeah?’ Nesta licked at his ice pole, watching faces. ‘My uncle had it. He died. Only took three months. I was there.’

  T’shari, the only boy still mounted, rocked his bike back and forth, eyes cast at the pavement.

  ‘My cousin had it. He died. I wasn’t there. My parents wouldn’t let me see him. He was old anyway.’

  ‘My dad doesn’t believe in sickness,’ Karis piped up.

  ‘So what d’you think killed them?’ Nesta, leaping to his feet, waving the pole. Orange spatters flew. The youths backed off.

  ‘Dunno . . .’

  ‘Dunno . . .’

  ‘Dunno . . .’

  ‘Maybe cancer . . .’ T’shari’s offering, limp, useless.

  ‘You don’t catch cancer, so it can’t be . . .’

  Markriss, sitting higher on the verge, lost interest. He stared across the street at a broken building wedged between the One Tic store and a shop called Mama’s Day that sold maternity wear. A sliver of storefront lit by red fluorescent lights placed above the awning to form letters, the letters creating words: TEMPLE OF SEBEK THE MEASURER. Twin symbols—three circles placed inside each other housing a small triangle—bookended the name. Men and women clothed in long white robes drifted in and out, holding thin black books to their chests. A sign was placed on the pavement, green chalk on blackboard, imploring passers-by to ‘Find the Neter Within. Join us in worship: 11–3 / 6–10. All welcome.’

  His mother, Willow, called them Kushites, or Nubians like herself. Some noticed the ice cream truck and crossed the quiet road. Markriss didn’t want to stare, though he was fascinated. A man, broad in his cheap suit, smiled as he bought a cone for his pebble-headed son. Markriss’s lips twitched. He looked away, caught.

  Willow didn’t go to temple, though she had a shrine in her podroom. She believed in Neter, not religion. He wasn’t quite sure how his mother separated the two, and never had the courage to ask. Markriss considered himself lucky that she didn’t force him to pray twice daily, like his friends whose parents were Ila, Nandi, Yoruba, Abaluyia.

  He lifted his head, searching beyond the ice cream truck, the temple and its followers. Above, the skyline undulated in a frosted brown haze, a broad smudge that stained the horizon.

  That evening he played World Cup outside with his brother while the filthy sun descended, casting dusk like a curse. As Ninka was five he couldn’t play to the best of his ability, though Markriss still enjoyed the game. Their street was a discreet row of red brick houses, backed against one another like continuous Siamese twins. His brother was born on the living-room floor, his mother’s moans climbing the stairs to his podroom, where he’d been banished with a neighbour to await Ninka’s arrival. Markriss himself had been born in the local hospital after his mother’s waters broke and he didn’t arrive. When he was ventoused into the world, some eighteen hours later, his parents had lived in the house for less than a year.

  Chasing the ball, running, he had an abrupt vision of a sleeping face lit by restless candlelight, eyes cast heavenwards, blind; more flickering lights, larger than the candles, the ancient stutter of a cinema reel projected onto the blank screen of their eyes. He saw himself, his mother and father standing to attention beneath the wailing screech of gears, the everlasting blast of a train horn. Unknowing, Markriss was granted his second premonition.

  His brother began to splutter and cough, overheard by Willow, who called the boys inside. Markriss trailed behind. He wanted to dismiss the pictures in his mind, alarmed after what he’d seen that afternoon, those lurching, failing bodies. He couldn’t tell his mother he’d been playing in the derelict station; he’d be grounded, possibly beaten, and he wasn’t even sure his assumptions were correct. Ninka always coughed, fell over, bumped his head. Most infants did. It wasn’t worth the risk of a beating to tell his mother what he’d seen over what was probably just grit in his brother’s throat.

  The boys ran straight into the kitchen, believing dinner was about to be served, only for Willow to hurry them through the tiny space and push them into the garden. Unlike the confines of the house, the garden was their mother’s refuge. Three times the size of her kitchen, twice the size of their living room, it was where she grew spinach and mint, parsley and oregano, which often ended up on the family plate. A fruit-bearing apple tree stood on the
far left. A fence at the furthest end was wrapped with a blackcurrant bush, plants that sighed with the wind. Willow never stopped reminding the children of their luck. Many nights saw their mother on her deck-chair, long slim legs straight as pool cues, smoking a cigarette constructed, in part, from one of the plants grown in her airing cupboard.

  Long accustomed to Willow encouraging use of the garden, the boys followed her wishes with little protest. At the bottom of their mother’s haven, just past the berry-laden fence, in a man-made valley 200 metres from where the boys stood, lay a rusting, dirt-brown train track. The majority of the city’s poor were found in regions much like the town where Markriss, Ninka and Willow lived, while the rich lived nearer Dinium’s centre, a bare desert of dark earth leading to high walls surrounding Inner City—the Ark. Karis told Markriss that beyond those walls were streams of honey, all the computer games a boy could play, even nudie magazines given by generous men on street corners. Markriss argued white-heat dismissal, never knowing whether to believe him. At night, in his sleeper, he dreamt it was true.

  His mother called them to this spot once every six months. For once every six months the train transporting the lucky to Inner City ran along the track at the end of their garden. Being ‘lucky’ seemed to mean you had to make an exceptional amount of money, be a renowned artist of any kind, or a teacher, or a great fighter, or adept at any skill that could benefit the world within those walls. Though many complained it was slave labour in disguise, few of the poor found courage enough to decline the opportunity, if or when it came.

  Willow agreed with the optimists, for on those nights she walked them down the garden until they were immersed in the smell of mint and the buzz of insects. Pollution soaked the clouds like mud-stained cotton wool. In all the picture books he’d read the sky was blue. He’d often wondered why book characters never wore the ugly black masks that covered the faces of people on the streets of his town. When he’d asked his mother why, she said he thought too much and told him to go outside and play.