Roots: The Saga of an American Family

Among the men who were still alive, Kunta was one of the last who were able to climb down unassisted from their shelf and up the steps to the deck. But then his wasting legs began trembling and buckling under him and finally he, too, had to be half carried and half dragged to the deck. Moaning quietly, with his head between his knees, rheumy eyes clamped tight, he sat limply until his turn came to be cleaned. The toubob now used a large soapy sponge lest a hard-bristled brush do further damage to the men’s gouged and bleeding backs. But Kunta was still better off than most, who were able only to lie on their sides, seeming almost as if they had stopped breathing.

  Among them all, only the remaining women and children were reasonably healthy; they hadn’t been shackled and chained down within the darkness, filth, stench, lice, fleas, rats, and contagion. The oldest of the surviving women, one of about Binta’s rains—Mbuto was her name, a Mandinka of the village of Kerewan—had such stateliness and dignity that even in her nakedness it was as if she wore a robe. The toubob didn’t even stop her from moving with comforting words among the shackled men lying sick on the deck, rubbing fevered chests and foreheads. “Mother! Mother!” Kunta whispered when he felt her soothing hands, and another man, too weak to speak, just gaped his jaws in an attempt to smile.

  Finally, Kunta could no longer even eat without help. The draining shreds of muscle in his shoulders and elbows refused to lift his hands enough for him to claw into the food pan. Often now the feeding was done with the men up on deck, and one day Kunta’s fingernails were scrabbling to get up over the edges of the pan when the scar-faced toubob noticed it. He barked an order at one of the lesser toubob, who proceeded to force into Kunta’s mouth a hollow tube and pour the gruel through it. Gagging on the tube, Kunta gulped and slobbered the food down, then sprawled out on his belly.

  The days were growing hotter, and even up on the deck everyone was sweltering in the still air. But after a few more days, Kunta began to feel a breath of cooling breeze. The big cloths up on the tall poles started to snap again and soon were billowing in the wind. The toubob up above were springing about like monkeys again, and soon the big canoe was cutting through the water with froth curling at her bow.

  The next morning, more toubob than usual came thudding down through the hatch, and much earlier than ever before. With great excitement in their words and movements, they rushed along the aisles, unchaining the men and hurriedly helping them upward. Stumbling up through the hatch behind a number who were ahead of him, Kunta blinked in the early-morning light and then saw the other toubob and the women and children standing at the rails. The toubob were all laughing, cheering, and gesturing wildly. Between the scabbed backs of the other men, Kunta squinted and then saw . . .

  Though still blurred in the distance, it was unmistakably some piece of Allah’s earth. These toubob really did have some place to put their feet upon—the land of toubabo doo—which the ancient forefathers said stretched from the sunrise to the sunset. Kunta’s whole body shook. The sweat came popping out and glistened on his forehead. The voyage was over. He had lived through it all. But his tears soon flooded the shoreline into a gray, swimming mist, for Kunta knew that whatever came next was going to be yet worse.

  CHAPTER 40

  Back down in the darkness of the hold, the chained men were too afraid to open their mouths. In the silence, Kunta could hear the ship’s timbers creaking, the muted ssss of the sea against the hull, and the dull clumpings of toubob feet rushing about on the deck overhead.

  Suddenly some Mandinka began shrieking the praises of Allah, and soon all the others had joined his—until there was a bedlam of praise and praying and of chains being rattled with all the strength the men could muster. Amid the noise, Kunta didn’t hear the hatch when it scraped open, but the jarring shaft of daylight stilled his tongue and jerked his head in that direction. Blinking his eyes to compress the mucus in them, he watched dimly as the toubob entered with their lanterns and began to herd them—with unusual haste—back onto the deck. Wielding their long-handled brushes once again, the toubob ignored the men’s screams as they scrubbed the encrusted filth from their festering bodies, and the chief toubob moved down the line sprinkling his yellow powder. But this time, where the muscles were rubbed through deeply, he signaled for his big assistant to apply a black substance with a wide, flat brush. When it touched Kunta’s raw buttocks, the rocketing pain smashed him dizzily to the deck.

  As he lay with his whole body feeling as if it were on fire, he heard men howling anew in terror, and snapping his head up, he saw several of the toubob engaged in what could only be preparing the men to be eaten. Several of them, in pairs, were pushing first one chained man and then the next into a kneeling position where he was held while a third toubob brushed onto his head a white frothing stuff and then, with a narrow, gleaming thing, raked the hair off his scalp, leaving blood trickling down across his face.

  When they reached Kunta and seized him, he screamed and struggled with all his might until a heavy kick in the ribs left him gasping for breath while the skin of his head numbly felt the frothing and the scraping. Next the chained men’s bodies were oiled until they shone, and then they were made to step into some odd loincloth that had two holes the legs went through and that also covered their private parts. Finally, under the close scrutiny of the chief toubob, they were chained prostrate along the rails as the sun reached the center of the sky.

  Kunta lay numbly, in a kind of stupor. It came into his mind that when they finally ate his flesh and sucked the bones, his spirit would already have escaped to Allah. He was praying silently when barking shouts from the chief toubob and his big helper made him open his eyes in time to watch the lesser toubob dashing up the tall poles. Only this time their grunts, as they strained at the ropes, were mixed with excited shouts and laughter. A moment later most of the great white sheets slackened and crumpled downward.

  Kunta’s nostrils detected a new smell in the air; actually, it was a mingling of many smells, most of them strange and unknown to him. Then he thought he heard new sounds in the distance, from across the water. Lying on the deck, with his crusty eyes half shut, he couldn’t tell from where. But soon the sounds grew closer, and as they did, his fearful whimperings joined those of his mates. As the sounds got louder and louder, so did their praying and gibbering—until finally, in the light wind, Kunta could smell the bodies of many unfamiliar toubob. Just then the big canoe bumped hard against something solid and unyielding, and it lurched heavily, rocking back and forth until, for the first time since they left Africa four and a half moons before, it was secured by ropes and fell still.

  The chained men sat frozen with terror. Kunta’s arms were locked around his knees, and his eyes were clamped shut as if he were paralyzed. For as long as he could, he held his breath against the sickening wave of smells, but when something clumped heavily onto the deck, he slit his eyes open and saw two new toubob stepping down from a wide plank holding a white cloth over their noses. Moving briskly, they shook hands with the chief toubob, who was now all grins, clearly anxious to please them. Kunta silently begged Allah’s forgiveness and mercy as the toubob began rushing along the rails unchaining the black men and gesturing with shouts for them to stand up. When Kunta and his mates clutched at their chains—not wanting to let go of what had become almost a part of their bodies—the whips began to crack, first over their heads, then against their backs. Instantly, amid screams, they let go of the chains and stumbled to their feet.

  Over the side of the big canoe, down on the dock, Kunta could see dozens of toubob stamping, laughing, pointing in their excitement, with dozens more running from all directions to join them. Under the whips, they were driven in a stumbling single file up over the side and down the sloping plank toward the waiting mob. Kunta’s knees almost buckled under him as his feet touched the toubob earth, but other toubob with cocked whips kept them moving closely alongside the jeering crowd, their massed smell like the blow of a giant fist in Kunta’s face. When one black man fe
ll, crying out to Allah, his chains pulled down the men ahead of and behind him. Whips lashed them all back up again as the toubob crowd screamed in excitement.

  The impulse to dash and escape surged wildly in Kunta, but the whips kept his chained line moving. They trudged past toubob riding in extraordinary two-wheeled and four-wheeled vehicles drawn by huge animals that looked a little like donkeys; then past a toubob throng milling around in some kind of marketplace stacked with colorful piles of what seemed to be fruits and vegetables. Finely clothed toubob regarded them with expressions of loathing, while more roughly clad toubob pointed and hooted with enjoyment. One of the latter, he noticed, was a she toubob, her stringy hair the color of straw. After seeing the hungry way the toubob on the great canoe had lusted after black women, he was amazed to see that the toubob had women of their own; but looking at this specimen, he could understand why they preferred Africans.

  Kunta darted a glance sideways as they passed a group of toubob screaming crazily around a flurry of two cocks fighting with each other. And hardly had that din faded behind them when they came upon a shouting crowd leaping this way and that to avoid being bowled over by three toubob boys as they raced and dove after a squealing, filthy swine that looked shiny with grease. Kunta couldn’t believe his eyes.

  As if lightning had struck him, Kunta then glimpsed two black men who were not from the big canoe—a Mandinka and a Serere, there was no doubt. He jerked his head around to stare as they walked quietly behind a toubob. He and his mates weren’t alone after all in this terrible land! And if these men had been allowed to live, perhaps they too would be spared from the cooking cauldron. Kunta wanted to rush over and embrace them; but he saw their expressionless faces and the fear in their downcast eyes. And then his nose picked their smell; there was something wrong with it. His mind reeled; he couldn’t comprehend how black men would docilely follow behind a toubob who wasn’t watching them or even carrying a weapon, rather than try to run away—or kill him.

  He didn’t have time to think about it further, for suddenly they found themselves at the open door of a large, square house of baked mud bricks in oblong shapes with iron bars set into a few open spaces along the sides. The chained men were whipped inside the wide door by the toubob guarding it, then into a large room. Kunta’s feet felt cool on the floor of hard-packed earth. In the dim light that came through the two iron-barred openings, his blinking eyes picked out the forms of five black men huddled along one wall. They didn’t so much as lift their heads as the toubob locked the wrists and ankles of Kunta and his mates in thick iron cuffs attached to short chains that were bolted to the walls.

  Along with the others, Kunta then huddled down himself, with his chin against his clasped knees, his mind dazed and reeling with all that he had seen and heard and smelled since they had gotten off the great canoe. After a little while, another black man entered. Without looking at anyone, he put down some tins of water and food before each man and quickly left. Kunta wasn’t hungry, but his throat was so dry that finally he couldn’t stop himself from sipping a small amount of the water; it tasted strange. Numbly, he watched through one of the iron-barred spaces as the daylight faded into darkness.

  The longer they sat there, the deeper Kunta sank into a kind of nameless terror. He felt that he would almost have preferred the dark hold of the big canoe, for at least he had come to know what to expect next there. He shrank away whenever a toubob came into the room during the night; their smell was strange and overpowering. But he was used to the other smells—sweat, urine, dirty bodies, the stink as some chained man went through the agony of relieving his bowels amid the others’ mingled praying and cursing and moaning and rattling of their chains.

  Suddenly all the noises ceased when a toubob came in carrying a light such as those that had been used on the big canoe, and behind him, in the soft yellowish glow, another toubob who was striking with his whip some new black one who was crying out in what sounded like the toubob tongue. That one was soon chained, and the two toubob left. Kunta and his mates remained still, hearing the newcomer’s piteous sounds of suffering and pain.

  The dawn was near, Kunta sensed, when from somewhere there came into his head as clearly as when he had been in manhood training the high, sharp voice of the kintango: “A man is wise to study and learn from the animals.” It was so shocking that Kunta sat bolt upright. Was it finally some message from Allah? What could be the meaning of learning from the animals—here, now? He was himself, if anything, like an animal in a trap. His mind pictured animals he had seen in traps. But sometimes the animals escaped before they were killed. Which ones were they?

  Finally, the answer came to him. The animals he had known to escape from their traps were those that had not gone raging around within the trap until they were weakened to exhaustion; those that escaped had made themselves wait quietly, conserving their strength until their captors came, and the animal seized upon their carelessness to explode its energies in a desperate attack—or more wisely—a flight toward freedom.

  Kunta felt intensely more alert. It was his first positive hope since he had plotted with the others to kill the toubob on the big canoe. His mind fastened upon it now: escape. He must appear to the toubob to be defeated. He must not rage or fight yet; he must seem to have given up any hope.

  But even if he managed to escape, where would he run? Where could he hide in this strange land? He knew the country around Juffure as he knew his own hut, but here he knew nothing whatever. He didn’t even know if toubob had forests, or if they did, whether he would find in them the signs that a hunter would use. Kunta told himself that these problems would simply have to be met as they came.

  As the first streaks of dawn filtered through the barred windows, Kunta dropped fitfully off to sleep. But no sooner had he closed his eyes, it seemed, than he was awakened by the strange black one bringing containers of water and food. Kunta’s stomach was clenched with hunger, but the food smelled sickening, and he turned away. His tongue felt foul and swollen. He tried to swallow the slime that was in his mouth, and his throat hurt with the effort.

  He looked dully about him at his mates from the big canoe; they all seemed unseeing, unhearing—drawn within themselves. Kunta turned his head to study the five who were in the room when they arrived. They wore ragged toubob clothing. Two of them were of the light brown sasso borro skin color that the elders had said resulted from some toubob taking a black woman. Then Kunta looked at the newcomer who had been brought in during the night; he sat slumped forward, with dried blood caked in his hair and staining the toubob garment he wore, and one of his arms hung in an awkward way that told Kunta it had been broken.

  More time passed, and finally Kunta fell asleep again—only to be awakened once more, this time much later, by the arrival of another meal. It was some kind of steaming gruel, and it smelled even worse than the last thing they’d set in front of him. He shut his eyes not to see it, but when nearly all of his mates snatched up the containers and began wolfing the stuff down, he figured it might not be so bad after all. If he was ever going to escape from this place, thought Kunta, he would need strength. He would force himself to eat a little bit—but just a little. Seizing the bowl, he brought it to his open mouth and gulped and swallowed until the gruel was gone. Disgusted with himself, he banged the bowl back down and began to gag, but he forced it down again. He had to keep the food inside him if he was going to live.

  From that day on, three times a day, Kunta forced himself to eat the hated food. The black one who brought it came once each day with a bucket, hoe, and a shovel to clean up after them. And once each afternoon, two toubob came to paint more of the stinging black liquid over the men’s worst open sores, and sprinkled the yellow powder over the smaller sores. Kunta despised himself for the weakness that made him jerk and moan from the pain along with the others.

  Through the barred window, Kunta counted finally six daylights and five nights. The first four nights, he had heard faintly from somewher
e, not far away, the screams of women whom he recognized from the big canoe. He and his mates had had to sit there, burning with humiliation at being helpless to defend their women, let alone themselves. But it was even worse tonight, for there were no cries from the women. What new horror had been visited upon them?

  Nearly every day, one or more of the strange black men in toubob clothes would be shoved stumbling into the room and chained. Slumped against the wall behind them, or curled down on the floor, they always showed signs of recent beatings, seeming not to know where they were or to care what might happen to them next. Then, usually before another day had passed, some important-acting toubob would enter the room holding a rag over his nose, and always one of those recent prisoners would start shrieking with terror—as that toubob kicked and shouted at him; then that black one would be taken away.

  Whenever he felt that each bellyful of food had settled, Kunta would try to make his mind stop thinking in an effort to sleep. Even a few minutes of rest would blot out for that long a time this seemingly unending horror, which for whatever reason was the divine will of Allah. When Kunta couldn’t sleep, which was most of the time, he would try to force his mind onto things other than his family or his village, for when he thought of them he would soon be sobbing.

  CHAPTER 41

  Just after the seventh morning gruel, two toubob entered the barred room with an armload of clothes. One frightened man after another was unchained and shown how to put them on. One garment covered the waist and legs, a second the upper body. When Kunta put them on, his sores—which had begun to show signs of healing—immediately started itching.

  In a little while, he began to hear the sound of voices outside; quickly it grew louder and louder. Many toubob were gathering—talking, laughing—not far beyond the barred window. Kunta and his mates sat in their toubob clothes gripped with terror at what was about to happen—whatever it might be.