Leah had to sit in the front of the room all night long without saying a peep. She kept looking at Anatole, but after a while you couldn't tell really if he was on her side. He stopped mentioning
338
what a good shot she was and moved on to the subject of whether you should kill a rat for its skin or kill a rat for being a rat. Whatever that may mean. Tata Ndu said if it runs in a rat's skin it is a rat. Then they all got to yelling about foreigners, the army takeover, and somebody thrown in prison which if you ask me is at least a more favorable subject than rats.
At the end it got turned into another showdown: were we going to keep talking about this all night, or have a vote? Anatole was very against the voting. He said this was a matter to be discussed and agreed on properly, because even if Kilanga ran one white family out of town, there were a million more whites in the world and if you couldn't learn to tell a good rat from a bad one, you'd soon be living with both in your house. And, he said, don't be surprised when your own daughter or wife wants to shoot a bow and arrow behind your back. Well, everybody laughed at that, but I failed to see the humor. Was he calling us rats?
Tata Ndu had had just about enough. He marched up and plunked down two big clay voting bowls in front of Leah. It kind of made people mad when he did it.You could see them siding with Anatole, that it needed more talk. But, no, time's up. As for Leah, she looked like a chicken fixing to get thrown in the stewpot But was I supposed to feel sorry for her? She asked for it! With all her attention-getting mechanisms. Some of the men still seemed to think the whole thing was funny, so maybe they thought she'd shoot an arrow through her foot, for all I know. But when it came time to walk up and cast their votes, fifty-one stones went in the bowl with Leah's bow-and-arrow by it. Forty-five for the one with the cookpot.
Man alive, Tata Kuvudundu was not one bit happy then. He stood up and hollered that we'd turned over the natural way of things and boy, would we be sorry. He made a very big point of looking at Anatole when he said that, but he also seemed put out with Tata Ndu for the voting activity, which got backfired on him. Tata Ndu didn't say much, but he frowned so hard his big bald forehead wrinkled up like the bread dough when you punch it down. He held his big muscle-man arms across his chest, and even though
BEL AND THE SERPENT 339
he was an elderly man of fifty or so, he looked like he could still beat the pants off anybody in the room.
"The animals are listening to us tonight!" Tata Kuvudundu yelled out and kind of started singing with his eyes closed. Then he stopped. It got real quiet and he looked very slowly around the room. "The leopards will walk upright like men on our paths. The snakes will come out of the ground and seek our houses instead of hiding in their own. Bwe?You did this.You decided the old ways are no good. Don't blame the animals, it was your decision.You want to change everything, and now, kuleka? Do you expect to sleep?"
Nobody said a word, they just looked scared. Tata Ndu sat with his head thrown back and his eyes just little slits, watching.
"No one will sleep!"Tata Kuvudundu suddenly shrieked, leaping up and waving his arms in the air.
Everybody else kind of jumped at that, but Leah sat stock-still. Like I said, showing off. She didn't even blink. Then we all got up and left and she followed us out, and no one in our family said boo to each other all the way home. When we got to the door Father stopped, blocking the way. Oh, brother. We were going to have to stand out there on the porch and hear the moral of the story. "Leah," he said, "who is the master of this house?" She stood with her chin down, not answering. Finally she said, "You are," in a voice as little as an ant. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you?" "You are!" she screamed at him.
Mother and I jumped, but Father merely replied in a normal voice, "What occurred this evening may be of some consequence to the village, but it's of no consequence to you. God has ordained that you honor thy father and submit thyself to the rules of his house."
Leah didn't even move. Her chin was still tilted down, but her eyes were straight on him like nobody's business. "So," she said quietly, "you agree with Tata Ndu and the witch doctor."
Father sucked in his breath. "They agree with me. It's nonsense for you to hunt with the men. You're only causing trouble, and I forbid it."
340
Leah slung her bow over her shoulder. "I'm going with the men and that's final." Marched off the porch, right out into the dead of night, where supposedly the animals were wide awake and walking around like human beings. Mother and Adah and I stood there with our traps hanging open. You could have knocked us over with a feather.
Father went crazy. We'd always wondered what would happen if we flat-out disobeyed him. Now we were fixing to see. He lit out after her with his wide leather belt already coming out of his pants as he stomped through the dirt. But by the time he got to the edge of the yard she was gone. She'd vamoosed into the tall grass, and off she was headed for the jungle, where it was plain to see he'd never find her. Leah can climb trees like a chimpanzee, when nobody's even chasing her.
Instead of coming back, he acted like he'd just decided to stroll out there for the sake of thrashing the trees with his belt, and man alive, he did.We heard him for an hour.We peeked out the window and saw he'd cut down a whole stand of sugar cane by lashing it with his belt. We started to get scared about what he'd do when he finally came in, for there was really no telling. Our doors didn't lock, but Mother came in our room with us and helped us push the beds around so the door was blocked. We went to bed early, with metal pot lids and knives and things from the kitchen to protect ourselves with, because we couldn't think of anything else. It was like the armor they had in the nights of old. Ruth May put an aluminum saucepan on her head and slid two comic books down the seat of her jeans in case of a whipping. Mother slept in Leah's bed. Or lay there quiet, rather, for really none of us slept a wink. Leah came in the window before dawn and whispered to Mother awhile, but I don't think she slept either.
Half the village was in the same boat with us, even though I guess for different reasons. After the way Tata Kuvudundu carried on at the meeting and gave off the evil eye, nobody could sleep. According to Nelson that was the one and only topic of conversation.They said their animals were looking at them. People killed the
BEL AND THE SERPENT 341
last few they had?goats, chickens, or dogs. You could smell the blood everywhere. They put the animals' heads in front of their houses in calabash bowls, to keep away the kibaazu, they said.
Well, why were they dumb enough to vote for Leah anyway, is what I asked Nelson. If they knew it was going to get Tata Kuvudundu so riled up? Nelson said some of them that voted for her were put out with Tata Ndu, and some were put out with Father, so everybody ended up getting what they didn't want, and now had to go along with it. Nobody even cares that much one way or another about Leah, is what Nelson said. Oh, well, I told him.That is what we call Democracy.
Strange to say, at our house the next morning it was suddenly peace on earth. Father acted like nothing much had happened. He had cuts and poisonwood boils on his arms from all his thrashing in the bushes, but yet he just drank his tea at breakfast without a word and then put some poultice on his arms and went out on the porch to read his Bible. We wondered: Is he looking for the world's longest The Verse to give Leah on the subject of impudence? Is he looking up what Jesus might have to say about preachers that murder their own daughters? Or maybe he'd decided he couldn't win this fight, so he was going to pretend it never happened and Leah was beneath his notice. With Father, life's just one surprise after another.
Leah did at least have the brains to make herself scarce. She stayed either at Anatole's school or out in the woods having a bow-and-arrow contest with Nelson to see who could shoot a bug off a branch. That was the kind of thing she usually did. But there was plenty of nervous tension left in our household, believe you me. Ruth May peed in her pants just because Father coughed out on the porch. And guess who had to be the one to get her cleaned u
p: me. I did not appreciate what we were being put through, all because of Leah.
That evening was the night before the hunt, with Leih still keeping her distance. But her pal Anatole found an evil sign outside his hut. So we were told by Nelson. Mother had sent him over to the school to take Leah some boiled eggs for dinner, and he came run-
342
ning back to tell us Anatole was over there looking like he'd seen a ghost. Nelson 'wouldn't say what the evil sign was, just that it was a dreaded kibaazu sign of a bad curse put on Anatole. We kind of thought he might have made the whole thing up. Nelson could be dramatic.
Well, no, sir. Next morning bright and early, Anatole found a green mamba snake curled up by his cot, and it was just by the grace of God he didn't get bit on the leg and die on the spot. Good luck, or a miracle, one. They said he usually always gets out of bed before daybreak and goes out for his constitutional and would have stepped right on it, but that morning for some reason he woke up too early and decided to light his lamp and read in bed awhile before getting up, and that's when he saw it. He thought someone had thrown a rope inside his house for another evil sign, but then it moved! No more signs; this was the true evil thing! The story went buzzing around the village quicker even than if we'd had telephones. People were running around because it was the big day and they had to get ready, but this gave them something extra to think about, and boy oh boy, they did. I don't care if they were followers of God almighty or the things that bump you in the night, they were praying to it now, believe you me. Thanking their lucky stars that what happened to Anatole hadn't happened to them.
Adah
BETO NKITUTASALA means: What are we doing? Doing, we are what? Alas atuti knot eb. Alas. The night before the hunt there was no sleep at all. Eye on sleep peels no eye! We thought we were looking, but could not see what was before us. Leopards walked upright on the paths and snakes moved quietly from their holes. The S on the floor -was not for sleep.
People are bantu; the singular is muntu. Muntu does not mean exactly the same as person, though, because it describes a living person, a dead one, or someone not yet born. Muntu persists through all those conditions unchanged. The Bantu speak of "self" as a vision residing inside, peering out through the eyeholes of the body, waiting for whatever happens next. Using the body as a mask, muntu watches and waits without fear, because muntu itself cannot die. The transition from spirit to body and back to spirit again is merely a venture. It is a ride on the power of nommo, the force of a name to call oneself. Nommo rains from a cloud, rises in the vapor from a human mouth: a song, a scream, a prayer. A drum gives nommo in Congo, where drums have language. A dance gives nommo where bodies are not separate from the will that inhabits them. In that other long-ago place, America, I was a failed combination of too-weak body and overstrong will. But in Congo I am those things perfectly united: Adah.
The night before the hunt, while no one slept, every muntu in Kilanga danced and sang: drums, lips, bodies. In song they named the animals that would become our feast and salvation in the morn-
344
BEL AND THE SERPENT
345
ing. And they named the things they feared: Snake. Hunger. Leopards that walk upright on the paths like men. These are the nommo, they chanted, these bodies living and dancing and joining together with slick, black other bodies, all beating the thing with feathers: beating out the dear, dear hope, a chance to go on living. But muntu did not care if the bodies lived or died on the morrow. Muntu peered out through the eyeholes, watching closely to see what would happen next.
Before first light we all came together at the edge of the village, not down by the river, where Our Father would have gathered us, but away from there, on the side toward the hill, where our salvation lay. We made our march into the field of elephant grass, tramped upon the big hill rising. Grass as tall as living men, and taller, but dry and white as a dead woman's hair. With sticks the men laid the tall grass down. They beat it in unison as if beating down grass were a dance, grunting softly in a long, low rhythm that ran back to us from the head of the file. Men with bows and arrows, men with spears, even a few with guns were up ahead of us. Their chant was the only sound in the cool morning haze. Children and women folio-wed, carrying the largest baskets their arms were able to circle. Mine hung on a strap over my shoulder because my arms do not circle well. Behind us came the oldest women, carrying smoldering torches, greenheart poles wrapped in palm-oil-soaked rags. High up they held their torches, bruising the air overhead with the smoke of our procession. The sun hung low on the river, seeming reluctant to enter this strange day. Then it rose redly into the purpled sky, resembling a black eye.
At a signal given by Tata Ndu our single file divided and curved outward to either side of the hill. A solemn wishbone of eager, hungry people?that is how we might have appeared to the muntu dead and unborn who watched from above. In half an hour the fronts of the two lines met, and we hungry wishbone people of Kilanga completed our circle around the hill. A shout fluttered up. The fire starters laid down their torches.Younger women opened their pagnes and ran forward, fanning the flames like moths dancing before a candle.
Our circle was so large the shouts we heard from the other side seemed to come from another country. Soon all sound -was swallowed by the fire. It did not roar but grumbled, cracked, shushed, sucking the air from our throats and all speech with it. The flame rose and licked the grass and we all moved forward, chasing the line of brightness ahead of us. Chasing flames that passed hungrily over the startled grass, leaving nothing of life behind. Nothing but hot, black, bare ground and delicate white filaments of ash, which stirred and crumbled under the trample of bare feet. Now the men rushed ahead with bows cocked, impatient for the circle to shrink toward its center. Smaller and smaller the circle ungrew, with all the former life of a broad grassy plain trapped inside. The animals all caught up in this dance together, mice and men. Men who pushed and pranced, appearing to us as dark stick puppets before the wall of fire. The old people and children came along slowly behind. We were like odd ruined flagpoles, bent double, with our bright clothes flapping. Slow scavengers. We fanned out across the hissing black field, picking up charred insects. Most common were the crisp nguka caterpillars, favorite snack of Anatole's schoolboys, which resembled small twigs and were impossible to see until I learned to sense their particular gray curve. We picked them up by the basketful until they filled my mind's eye so completely I knew I would see them in my sleep. Easier to find were the dikonko, edible locusts and crickets, whose plump abdomens were shrunk translucent like balloons half-filled with water. Caterpillars one after another I laid on my tongue, their char crisp bristle taste a sweet momentary salve to a body aching for protein. Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not.
The fire moved faster than we did, we the young and elderly shepherdesses of dead insects. Sometimes I stood up straight to let the blood run from my head to the numb slabs of muscle at the backs of my thighs. Mother held on tight to the hand of Ruth May, her chosen child, but also stayed near me. Since the terrible night of the ants, Mother had been creeping her remorse in flat-footed cir-
346
cles around me without ever speaking of it, wearing her guilt like the swollen breasts of a nursing mother. So far I had refused to suckle and give her relief, but I kept close by. I had no choice, since she and Ruth May and I were thrown together by caste, set apart from Leah the Huntress. By choice, we also stayed far from Rachel and Father. Their noisy presences, of two different kinds, embarrassed us in this field of earnest, quiet work. Sometimes I set a hand above my eyes and looked for Leah, but did not see her. Instead I watched Ruth May crunch thoughtfully on a caterpillar. Soiled and subdued, she looked like a small malnourished relative of my previous sister. The faraway look of her eyes must have been the muntu of Ruth May, chained to th
is briefly belligerent child through forelife, life, and afterlife, peering out through her sockets.
The fire ran ahead at times, and sometimes flagged, as if growing tired like the rest of us. The heat was unspeakable. I imagined the taste of water.
As the ring burned smaller we suddenly caught sight of its other side, the red-orange tongues and black ash closing in. The looming shapes of animals bunched up inside: antelopes, bushbucks, broad-headed warthogs with warthog children running behind them. A troop of baboons ran with arched tails flying as they zigzagged, not yet understanding their entrapment. Thousands of insects beat the air to a pulpy soup of animal panic. Birds hit the wall of fire and lit like bottle rockets. When it seemed there was no more air, no more hope, the animals began to run out through the fire into the open, where spears and arrows waited. The antelopes did not leap gracefully as I imagined they would; they wheeled like spooked horses around the inside of the circle, then suddenly veered out as if by accident or blindness. Seeing their companions shot in the neck with arrows, they heeled in panic, sometimes turning back to the flames but mostly running straight on, straight toward people and death. A small spotted antelope fell down very near me and presented me with the strange, singular gift of its death. I watched its heaving sides slowly come to rest, as if it had finally caught its breath. Dark blood leaked from its delicate black mouth onto the charred ground.
I
BEL AND THE SERPENT 347
For every animal struck down, there rose an equal and opposite cry of human jubilation. Our hungry wishbone cracked and ran slick with marrow. Women knelt with their knives to skin the meat, even before the hooves stopped beating the ground in panic. Of the large animals who came through the fire?bushbuck, warthog, antelope? few escaped. Others would not come out and so they burned: small flame-feathered birds, the churning insects, and a few female baboons who had managed against all odds to carry their pregnancies through the drought. With their bellies underslung with precious clinging babies, they loped behind the heavy-maned males, who would try to save themselves, but on reaching the curtain of flame where the others passed through, they drew up short. Crouched low. Understanding no choice but to burn with their children.