There was a long time when no one spoke. Then the king entered and went to the upper end of the house, where a sort of throne was set for him. Unlike his nobles he was dressed in extreme simplicity, in a short loin-cloth of the purest white, and another band of white cloth about his head. The blackness of his skin and the whiteness of these stark garments gave him an overwhelming kingly radiance, a brilliance, that far outshined the gaudiness of the others.
He was a strong-built man, going somewhat to fat. When he took his seat all the others clapped their hands and saluted him, crying, “Nzambi! Ampungu!” Which I learned afterward means, “O Most High God.” For this king of Loango is thought by his people to be God Himself, and I suppose if he were to meet the Pope, he would expect the Pope to kneel to him, the Maloango being of a higher rank.
The king accepted this homage pleasantly until he had had enough. Then he looked toward us and uttered a greeting, or so we thought, that went, “Byani ampembe mpolo, muneya ke zinga!”
“He is bidding us welcome,” murmured Oliveira, who replied loudly in Portuguese, “In the name of His Most Catholic Majesty Philip the Second of Portugal and Spain, we thank thee, O King of Loango, and may the blessing of God and His Son descend upon thee and all thy kingdom.” Or words to that effect, said most resonantly, which he then repeated in the native tongue.
It was not for many years that I came to understand the real import of the Maloango’s greeting, when I did hear it again, with time having given me a fluency in his language. For the words Byani ampembe mpolo, muneya ke zinga have actually the meaning there, “My companion, the white face, has risen from underground and will not live long.” A strange greeting indeed! But not at all meant as a threat, though Oliveira, had he comprehended its sense, might well have construed it so. Its meaning rises from the belief of the blackamoors that the white man is a ghost that ascends from the bottom of the ocean with his ship, and so long as he keeps to shipboard he will live forever, but once he comes ashore, he is doomed to an early death. This, I suppose, because so many Portugals have succumbed to fevers and fluxes in this land. And that perhaps explains why they give us such deference, since we have the holiness of imminent decease overshadowing us like dark gleamings.
These formalities and others like them ran on for some hours. Oliveira interpreted for us, but I think not very well, for he frowned and strained to hear, and muttered to himself as if not understanding, and when he translated for us, I think he was inventing the half of what he told us, for it made precious little sense to me. I listened with care, of course knowing nothing of what I was hearing, but I did succeed in learning some five or six words simply from having them repeated in certain contexts that left me no doubt. It seemed not a difficult language, once your ear be attuned to it, and privately I considered that I might win more safety and privilege among the Portugals if I came to know the native tongues better than they did, they apparently having little aptitude for such things.
After long and wearying parley, coming to no purpose that I could discern, the king did call for drink. There was on either side of him an official to serve this purpose; the one on the right it was who handed him the cup, and the other on the left gave warning to the assemblage, by means of two iron rods about the bigness of a finger, and pointed at the end, which he did strike one against the other. Straightaway the whole gathering dived for the ground, as Faleiro had said they would do, and hid their faces in the sand so long as the irons continued making their noise. It was an astounding spectacle to behold those grandees in their fine robes, every one groveling down on his nose while the monarch took his wine. We did not, but all of us spun around and looked another way, and I closed my eyes besides, lest some reflected bit of the king’s image glance into them while he drank and cost me my life.
When all of that was done, the nobles rose up again, and according to custom did signify that they wish him health, with clapping their hands, that being a sign of respect, as with us in Europe the putting off the hat. Wine now was distributed generally to the house, and a meal was served also, of fried fish with a sauce of honey, and a thick porridge made of the ground-nut, which is a pea, somewhat bigger than ours, the pods of which grow in the roots, underneath the ground. This last stuff was improved by the juice of a hot pepper, the pili-pili, that was like eating fire. It produced in the mouth an intense burning sensation and made the sweat stand out all over my skin. I thought I would perish of tasting it, and even the Portugals, who eat a lustier diet than we English do, were hard put to swallow much of the stuff. But I did eat my fill and gradually accustomed myself to it, and in time, over the months and years ahead, I would come so much to dote on the pili-pili that food without it came to seem devoid of taste, as it still does for me.
There was some obstacle toward our buying the elephanto teeth we had come here to purchase. I know not what it was, for the Portugals would not confide with me on so delicate a matter, and I was not privy to the urgent conferences between Faleiro and the officials of the Maloango’s court. Perhaps it was a religious problem—the season not being right for commerce—or perchance the Loangans were seeking to increase the price of their goods; but I was not told, and I did not ask. These matters did, however, create a delay of many weeks in our leaving Loango.
We lived in small rude houses built especially for us, and were fed on the native foods. We talked often of going hunting for game, but we did not do it, on account of the great heat, which I think made us all lazy. Likewise we did not touch women. Faleiro told me that women were available to us—not citizens of the city, who were jealous of their virtue just as Christian women would be, but slaves, who were abundant here. But I had no hunger for them, and I think none of my companions either, except possibly one or two of the lustiest, and those not often.
Mostly did we spend our days resting, playing games with dice or knives, and drinking the heavy sweet palm-wine, and talking of our homelands. These Portugals were generally coarse folk, and I never once heard them speak of anything but gaming or wenching or drinking or fighting or gathering treasure. Not a word came from them concerning poetry or plays, that any Englishman who was more than a common churl would have been brim-full with discussing. One day when I told them of the richness and joy of our theater, and of Master Marlowe’s play of Tamburlaine that I had seen, and the wonderful play of Hieronimo and the Spanish prince that was done by Thomas Kyd, they looked upon me as if I were speaking in Greek, and paid me no heed. And one of them that was named Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues, that seemed to have a special dislike for me, did scowl and hawk up a great wad of spittle almost at my feet and say in his idle lolling way, “These English sailors would have us think they are all poets and scholars, to shame us. But I think they do but feign their poetry, and give themselves high airs, for that the English have long been only a race of peasants and clod-grubbers, and are shamed by it now, and do lately pretend to a finer breeding.”
“Ah, and are you so finely bred, then?” I demanded hotly, with a rage beginning to pound in the vault of my head, for it was only by heavy effort that I could rein in my temper.
“You have heard my name,” said he disdainfully.
“It means nothing to me.”
“I am not at all surprised,” replied this Caldeira de Rodrigues, and turned himself from me as though I had been dissolved into air.
I might have called him out for a brawl, but that I still had some mastery over myself, knowing that whether or no I be pilot for these men, I still was in a subservient place. And yet it was a close thing, my fury being so strong at his mockery: only the touch of a hand on my arm—Cabral’s, I think—kept me at the last from leaping at him.
I learned from others, a little after, that this snotnosed scornful jay was the son of one of Portugal’s great dukes, and close kin to the old royal family that had fallen from power: and so he was far superior in birth to almost anyone else of Angola, except perhaps for Don João de Mendoça, that was also of high origin. Caldeira de
Rodrigues and his elder brother Gaspar, they said, were exiled from Lisbon for their ruinous high living and stark criminous pastimes, which went too far even for men of their great standing, and were sent to Angola to sweat themselves into some semblance of virtue. He was a man of eighteen, very slender, pretty almost in a womanish way, though there was an ugly and hard glint in his eye, and a dagger at his hip that I knew he would be quick to use. His face was marred by a purple blemish of the cheek that took back some of the prettiness, and his beard grew only in places, with foolish barren patches between. All in all I liked him little, and was sorry to have him among my shipmates.
During this time of delay I sometimes did wander about the district, either by myself or with one or two of the more amiable Portugals, and rarely without some blackamoor guards also following us to see that we did not cross into holy ground. That thing we nearly did, one time, when we walked back toward the harbor and spied one of their idols, a little black image that is known as Kikoko. Kikoko is a mokisso, that is, a witch-spirit, that lives in a little house along the main highway, and everyone who goes by him claps hands, or makes a gift, as an offering.
I knew these mokissos had great power over the blacks, and I thought that power might extend even to us: for who knows how long the reach of the Devil’s arms may be? All that I heard led me to tread cautiously in the witch-world. In Loango, they said, this mokisso will sometimes take possession of a person in the night, and he babbles frantically for the space of three hours. Whatever the frantic person speaks, that is deemed the will of Kikoko, and all the tribe obeys it, and they make a great feast and dancing at the house of the one who speaks.
Though I had much respect for this evil being, yet did I want, out of curiosity, to look upon Kikoko in his little house. But the blacks stood before him and made a frightful gesture at me with their spears, and I weighed anchor swiftly and went elsewhere.
There was one diversion concerning these idols. A new one had been carved and was arriving by sea from a town to the north, when it slipped from the hands of its bearers and fell into the water. Though they sought mightily for it, they could not uncover it below, which was deemed a great calamity. The king of the land sent for us, and told us what had befallen, and asked if we had some way of bringing up the statue. Very few of the Portugals were able to swim at all, but I had that skill, so I stripped off my garments and went down, and thought I had sight of the mokisso, but the water was too deep and my breath not sufficient, so that I came to the surface empty-handed.
“I will try again,” said I.
“Nay,” said Faleiro, “do not drown yourself on behalf of these pagans, Piloto, for we do have greater need of you.” And I did not dive a second time.
On another occasion Cabral and Andrade showed me the burial grounds of the kings of Loango. This was at a place called Loangiri, two leagues without the town. Here the teeth of elephantos were thrust into the ground all about, to make a great shining white palisado, and the whole burying-place was ten roods in compass, that is, a fine estate for anyone. Cabral said, “These elephanto teeth alone, if we could but have them, would be worth half a kingdom. But also, beneath those mounds, they have buried with their kings all manner of treasure, pearls and jewels and such, of a value too high to count.”
I stared at him wide-eyed, this Cabral having seemed to me to be a man of honor, as honor is reckoned among the Portugals.
“But surely you will not covet the things of a cemetery!”
With a shrug he said, “But this is not consecrated ground. They are but pagans, and if they choose to waste their precious things by burying them, why, it is our duty to God to unbury them, and carry them off for some use.”
“Your duty to God,” said I in wonder, “to rob the dead?”
“They are but pagans,” Cabral repeated.
And he and Andrade spoke of a time to come, when Christianity would be spread into this land of Loango, and the priests intended to persuade the king at that time to have his ancestors reburied in a Christian graveyard. “And at that time,” said Andrade, “we will take all these heathen treasures from the ground, to our own great profit and the saving of the peoples’ souls.”
“Aye,” I said, but not aloud, “save their souls by stealing out of graves. Look to your own souls, Portugals!”
But we did not trespass that day upon the royal burying-place. We only stared in awe at that great wall of lofty elephanto teeth that ringed the place, and I smiled to see the greed that glistened in the faces of my friends Andrade and Cabral, and after a time we returned to the town.
TWO
BY SLOW and easy stages Faleiro began to prevail in his negotiations, and it seemed sure that the Loango folk would trade with us at long last. I was heartily glad of that, for this idleness wearied me, and I was eager to feel the sea-breezes against my face. I confess with no little shame that I longed also to return to the arms of Dona Teresa in São Paulo de Loanda: for although I had managed to be virtuous enough for several years of chastity after leaving England, I had had my slumbering lusts reawakened by her, and it was not easy now to return them to their disciplined repose. So betimes at night I imagined her satin-smooth breasts in my hands and her thighs wrapped tight about my hips, and I played such fantasies with her in my mind as previously I had been wont to do with Anne Katherine. Anne Katherine herself, I fear, was becoming only a shadow in my memory by this season, for it was four years now and some months since my leaving England, and all my prior life was growing pale and unreal to me, like something I had once read about in a book. The bright sunlight of Africa did eclipse for me the poor pale gleam of England. Africa was become my only reality now.
So I dreamed of Dona Teresa’s tawny nakedness and I gobbled the fiery stews and porridges of Loango and I roamed the town to study its ways, learning a bit of its language and discovering of its customs. I found another mokisso-house near the port, where an old woman dwelled named Nganga Gomberi, which means the priestess of the spirit Gomberi, and the blacks told me that once a year a feast is made there, and Nganga Gomberi speaks from underneath the ground, giving oracles. I asked to be let to see this old witch, hoping she would cast a horoscope that would waft me back to England, but they would not show her to me.
I saw an even stranger thing, that is, a white Negro, as white as any white man, but with curling hair and thick lips and a flat nose. This was in the marketplace, when I heard a great stir and a murmuring, and there he came, with the crowd giving way on all sides. Oliveira was with me, and he said, “Hsh! Keep care! That is a holy man!”
“God’s blood, what is it?”
“It is called a ndundu, which is born white and stays that color all its life. They are always brought up to be witches, and serve the king in witchcraft. He has four of them, they say, and no man dares meddle with them.”
Indeed, this ndundu was passing through the market sampling this food and that, taking a bite and a bite and tossing away, and all this while he was allowed to go as he pleased. He came within five yards of me and turned to stare, for I with my blond hair was as strange to him as he was to me. Our eyes met, and his were red, red where mine were blue, the red eyes of a demon from Hell, that I have never seen otherwise.
Toward me he did make certain holy gestures, that were like the writhing of a madman, with much waving of the arms and crooking of his fingers. And in a hissing voice he cried out, an evil croak, saying, “Jaqqa-ndundu! Ndundu-Jaqqa!” The meaning of that is “white Jaqqa,” which even then I understood, though I could not fathom the sense of the appellation. And he did say other things, just as mystical, which left me sore bewildered. We looked at one another a long while, and then I looked away, unable to meet that diabolical gaze any more; and I felt a chill even in so much smothering heat, as though the gates of the Inferno had opened before me and released a blast of the icy wind of Satan. White Jaqqa! What madness was that? Ah, and I would learn; but how did he know?
While we were thus becalmed at Loango ther
e were three special prodigies, that is, things that were out of the ordinary even for the people of Loango.
The first of these was a miracle of the king, to make rain fall. It was the rainy season then, but all had been dry for some weeks and the people were suffering, for the crops could not thrive. So according to the custom and usage of the land they came to the king and begged him to bring the rain, and he did decree a great rain-making festival, which we all attended. On that day all the lords and armies of the surrounding districts came to Loango and held a tournament and display before the king, brandishing their spears, dancing and leaping about, and showing their skill with the bow and arrow. The best of these was an archer who would have put Robin Hood and all his men to shame, and did such wonders of splitting one arrow with another, and bringing down birds on the wing, that I did not think were possible except in storytellers’ tales. When he had done his feats he came forward and spoke with the king, who embraced him and gave him food and drink with his own hand.