Lord of Darkness

  “A virgin queen,” said Kinguri in wonderment, and Imbe Calandola did say the same words, wondering also. But neither of them would give me the lie, for I suppose they thought that a land where men had white skins and long golden hair could well also have women for its princes, and virgin ones at that.

  Calandola said, “I will send you to England, Andubatil, and you will tell your Queen to come here to me. Will you do that? You tell her, Imbe Calandola offers her this.”

  And he did move his yellow garment aside, to reveal a black yard that was as thick as the trunk of an elephanto, though not quite so lengthy, and two great heavy ballocks like dark round apples. At the sight of this formidable virile equipment several of his wives did clap their hands and laugh in delight or approval, and Calandola seized those women amiably by the flesh of their hinder parts, and hugged them against himself, and looked vastly amused by this jape.

  I said, when his roaring laughter had subsided some, “By all that is holy, Lord Jaqqa, you have but to send me to England, and I will deliver her your message, that I vow!”

  “And will she come?” asked Calandola, when that Kinguri had explained the meaning of my words to him.

  “That I cannot say, for she is a prince, and I cannot command her, nor can any man. But I will ask her: that I do pledge.”

  “Good. Good. How far does England be from here?”

  “Many days’ journey, Lord Jaqqa.”

  “Farther than the land of Kongo?”

  “Ten times as far,” I said. “Twenty times, perhaps.”

  Calandola said to several of his man-witches, “We will go to England some day, and drink of its wines. Eh? Eh? And spurt our fiery seed into the belly of its Queen.” And he did laugh and slap his arm, and called for more wine, his cup being empty. One of his wives supplied him, and he took his fill, putting back his head and letting the bloody sweet stuff roll down his chin. His last draught he did hold in his mouth for a time, and then spew it forth upon the earth around him in a wide spitting spray. Which seemed merely vile, but was, I learned later, a holy deed, a consecration of the soil by the Jaqqa way.

  When he was done with that he signalled to me in a sweeping fashion, waving his hand back and forth, but I did not catch his meaning.

  Kinguri said, “Take your clothes off from your body.”

  “Shall I?”

  “The Imbe-Jaqqa wonders if you be white all over.”

  “Aye, that I am,” I said, making no move to disrobe.

  “He would see it,” said Kinguri.

  “And would he?”

  “Come, no more delay. He would see it!”

  There was no refusing, I saw, and so I removed my clothes, which were half in tatters anyway, and stood naked before this crowd of Jaqqa warriors and witches and princes and the Imbe-Jaqqa and his many wives. Well, and my body is a good and a healthy one, and I have no shame of it; and to be naked here was less distressing than the other time in Mofarigosat’s town, where I was expecting the headsman’s mortal blow and did not welcome being shamed besides. All the same, it is no trifle to be revealed in front of strangers, even savages, and it was with discomfort that I exposed my private places. It was all the worse for me that Calandola had so lately laid bare his giant member and swollen ballocks: for compared by those I would seem most insufficiently male, though no woman has ever found me so.

  Calandola rose and came to me and did put his finger to my flesh here and there, pressing into it at belly and thigh to watch the way the color of it changed at his pressure. That seemed a marvel to him, and he did press at his own flesh in the same places to observe it. Then he tugged at the hair on my chest, he being perfectly smooth and sleek there, and he turned me about, I suppose to see if I were white on the other side, too, and he turned me back again. He had me open my mouth, where I had all the teeth God meant me to own, and he did touch those four front teeth that Jaqqas do knock from their heads. When he gripped my teeth I feared he meant to pull those teeth from me right there, with a twist of his mighty fingers, and the thought gave me a sickly tremor from my gut to my ballocks. But I showed no outer sign of my apprehensions. And great was my relief when at last he took his hands from my mouth.

  Then the Imbe-Jaqqa moved his close inspection of me downward a distance, and did take my yard in his hand, as coolly as though he were lifting a cup or a piece of fruit, and remarked on it to his brother. I knew not what he said. But being so idly handled of the membrum virile and so intimately discussed brought a blaze of hot color to my face: and that bright reddening so amazed Calandola that he let go my member and touched my cheek, to see, I suppose, how I had managed that trick of changing colors.

  Kinguri said, “The Imbe-Jaqqa wonders if all the men of England have yards like yours, Andubatil.”

  A little angrily I replied, “I think that they do, though in sooth I do not spend much time examining them. I venture that some are larger and some are smaller, but mine is quite the usual kind.”

  “We do not mean the size,” said Kinguri, “but the shape.”

  I did not at first comprehend the sense of his words. So he gestured, and the men of the court did push aside their loin-cloths and blithely bare their members, and lo! every man of them was circumcised.

  “Aye,” I said. “I understand now. We are not like you in that way, nor are any white men, except only the Jews. We have a few Jews living in our land, though they are supposed to be banned. But the rest of us do not cut our foreskins off.”

  “Why is that?” asked Calandola, when he had heard my answer.

  “Why,” I said, “it is not our way to do so. Under the Christian law that we obey, we leave that part untouched.”

  “But then you are not men!” said Calandola.

  “It does not seem that way to us.”

  “A man must have that part removed. For it is a female part, and all that is female in him must be cut away, when he enters into a man’s estate.”

  I did not propose to dispute this point with the Imbe-Jaqqa, it being a new philosophy to me, and difficult.

  “The Bakongo people of the coast,” I said, “leave themselves uncircumcised, now that they are Christian.”

  “And their men are mere women,” said Calandola. “Is it not obvious?” Deeply did he frown. “Your prince is a woman who will not admit a man to lie between her legs, and your men will not remove the female piece from their members. So there can be no children born among you.”

  “I assure you that that is not the case.”

  “But if your Queen—” He broke off, mystified.

  “She is the only chaste woman of our realm,” I said, which was not precisely the proper meaning I meant, but it sufficed. “And as for the men, we are quite able to perform our deeds of manhood as we are, which is as we came into the world, which is as God our Maker did intend.”

  I thought the Imbe-Jaqqa was angered at that. Perhaps he took God to be his direct rival, and cared not to hear His name. But his anger, if such it was, quickly passed, and he pointed again at my uncircumcised yard and said, “In this land you should be as we are. We will make you now as we are.”

  Which struck me deep with a fear that softened my bones. For I mistook the import of his words, being still mostly unfamiliar with the subtleties of the Jaqqa tongue, and thought that he was commanding me to undergo a circumcision on the spot. Whereas he was merely making a friendly offer, or perhaps it was a jest: I am not sure. He did beckon to one of his witches, who drew from a sheath a lengthy knife of commendable sharpness. I shrank back from him and put my hands over my private parts, which had shriveled to the size of a child’s in my terror. Covering myself in that way brought a hearty laugh from the women.

  I said miserably, “By your leave, great Lord Jaqqa—”

  “Come, Andubatil, we will not cut it all off! Only that one part!” he said, laughing.

  “I may not, O Imbe-Jaqqa.”

  “And why is that?”

  “It is forbidden among my nation to u
ndergo such a surgery, for that would make me a Jew, which was a slayer of our God.”

  “Your god is dead?” asked Kinguri quickly, with show of deep interest and surprise.

  “Aye, He was killed, but then He rose again—”

  “How say you?”

  Glad of the diversion of the talk away from the condition of my foreskin, I responded, half babbling my words, “When He came down to earth in human guise to save us, He was taken by enemies and nailed upon a cross, and a spear thrust deep into His side also, and so He perished, who was the Son of God and the Redeemer, but then as was prophesied He arose from the dead—”

  “The son of god? But you said it was the god that died!”

  “The Son is equal unto God,” I answered, “for He is one Person of the Holy Trinity, which be God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” Kinguri’s eyes showed me his mystification, and upon my soul I could not have given him much true enlightenment of these matters had he pressed me concerning them. But I hurried on, saying, “On the third day afterward of His crucifixion He did arise from the dead, and go to sit on the right hand of the Father—”

  “And who was his mother?” Kinguri demanded.

  “He was born of a virgin, Mary by name—”

  “The Queen of your land, then, is the mother of your god?”

  “A different virgin,” said I, “a long time ago, and not in the same country from which I come.”

  “But a virgin also, was she? What color was her skin?”

  “Why, like mine.”

  “No darker?”

  “We do not hold it to be the case that she was dark.”

  “And the god, he is white also?”

  “We do not think of Him as having a color, or a size, or any of the attributes of mortal flesh.”

  “But he can die? Is that not an attribute of mortal flesh?”

  “It was His son that died,” said I, beginning to think it might have been easier to submit to circumcision than to have to explain these complex and cloudy matters to the cannibal prince.

  “Ah,” said Kinguri. “And why did he let himself be killed, if he was a god and the son of a god?”

  “To redeem us from the sin that came upon us in the original paradise, when our first father and our first mother did wantonly eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and thereby brought wickedness and death into the world, that had been created free of it.”

  Looking most pensive and perplexed, Kinguri held up a hand to shut off my flow of doctrine. “Let me understand these things. Your god, who was his own son by a virgin mother, did come to the world to save you from death, which had come upon you when—”

  At that Calandola did break roughly in, demanding, “What are all these words?”

  Kinguri turned to him, and again the two engaged in lengthy talk, this time on the mysteries of the Christian faith as I had begun to expound them. How much sense they could make of it all, I know not; but the essence of the thing is that they grew so interested in these fine holy niceties that the question of my circumcision slipped away from the Imbe-Jaqqa’s mind for a time, and the man-witch did put away his blade, and when Calandola returned his attention to me he had lost interest in my foreskin. Which is just as well for me, I having little need of that part of my body but yet no wish at all to see it severed from me by a pagan savage, and I being somewhat past the age when any such surgery is agreeable.

  The Imbe-Jaqqa now proceeded to question me on how I had come to this part of the country, he having last seen me on the coast with the Portugals. I explained how I had been pawned to Mofarigosat and falsely abandoned there by Pinto Dourado, and told of my narrow escape from the block, and of my flight into the forest. This interested Calandola greatly.

  During this conversing I grew much wearied of standing with my privities exposed, so I begged permission to put on my clothes once again; but Calandola, saying, “Those are no fit garments,” ordered Jaqqa raiment to be brought for me. Several women came forth, and drew from a wooden chest a handsome piece of green palm-cloth that they wrapped about my loins, and then Kinguri took from his own waist a string of bright beads, and one of the witches gave me a collar of shells polished very smooth. I felt at first in this stuff that I was costumed for the masquerado, playing the part of a wild jungle-man, but it was with amazing ease that within the hour I came to feel comfort in such garb, as though I had worn it all my life. My worn and frayed old clothes they took from me and I never saw those things again.

  “A feast!” Calandola now did cry. “Make ready a feast, for the English Andubatil!”

  These words, which I understood full clear, did strike me with horror deeper than any other. For they brought me face to face with something I had attempted not to consider, since first I had resolved to give myself over to these man-eaters, and that was their choice of favored meat. Oft do we put out of our minds that which we have no stomach to contemplate; and in this case was it most literally the truth that I had no stomach for it. But the moment was coming when needs I must deal with it. I had taken refuge among the Jaqqas; they had clothed me as one of their own; they were mounting a grand feast in my honor.

  Could I then refuse their hospitality?

  Politely had I declined circumcision, by the claim that it was a matter of religious belief not to give myself over to it. Well, and I had kept my foreskin, though at the time I still was not sure I would be excused from the surgery altogether. But how, at a feast, could I turn away the meat they would proffer me? More religious qualms? Would they accept that answer, or would Calandola’s lively spirit, that had been so amused by my whiteness of skin and the virginity of my Queen, suddenly turn against me, so that in wrath he condemned me to the stew-pot? Perilous indeed it was to throw myself upon the mercies of these cannibals: for they were devils, in good sooth, and I was minded of that old saw, that he who sups with the Devil must have a long spoon.

  “A feast!” they all cried. “A feast!”

  Whereupon the Jaqqas rushed as though caught by a whirlwind out of the house of the Imbe-Jaqqa, though each, as he took his leave, did spin about and make a sign of respect to their terrible master. Calandola and Kinguri and the wives and witches were the last to leave, and they took me with them. Across all the town of the Jaqqas did we walk, and into the town of Calicansamba, and to the open square where the three gigantic metal tubs were seated. Now was the feast prepared before our eyes, to the accompaniment of much beating on drums, and hellish playing of trumpets and fifes, and awful screeching on other instruments the like of which I had not seen before, that were something like the viols of Europe, but with only a single string.

  Fires were lit, and the kettle-water was heated. And into the kettles went these things:

  The flesh of a cow, that was butchered before us with a single stroke of a sword against its neck, and then fast work done with a flaying knife.

  The flesh of a goat, slain the same way.

  The flesh of a yellow dog, that howled most piteously until the knife took its throat.

  A cock. A pigeon.

  And into each pot, also, the body of a prisoner that they summoned out from a pen and slew before my eyes. These were three heavy-muscled warriors of some interior tribe, that spoke out curses in a language I did not know, and raged, and pounded his fists together. As much avail them to rail at the Angel of Death! Each of these three was killed with a wound that preserved the blood within his body, and fell away from life with a long sighing gurgle of despair, and then the blood was carefully drained off by artisans whose science this was, and shunted into the storage vessel where that fluid was kept. Jaqqa carvers next did work upon these new corpses to make them ready for the cooking, and when they were well carved to fit the vessels, in they went, alongside the other meats.

  To the bubbling cook-pots also were added fruits and vegetables of the region, heaps and mounds of them, the bean called nkasa and the hot pepper and the onions, and cucurbits, and I know not what else: for I must tell you th
at my brain was so numbed by seeing those protesting men slain and chopped and put to boil that I failed to observe some of the latter details of the cooking.

  And all the while did the drums resound, the trumpets shriek.

  And what did I think, what did I feel?

  Why, I tell you on my oath, I felt nothing. Nothing did I feel. For there comes a time, I tell you, when the mind is so overladen by strangeness and shock that it merely sees without reflecting and that was what I did now, standing beside the lord of the cannibals and his brothers and the priests of the tribe. And I said nothing, I thought nothing, I only watched. This was what the voyage of my life had brought me to, that I had drifted as though by sea-wrack to this place at this time, among these harsh folk, and they were readying their evening meal. And God in His wisdom had caused me to be here, wherefore I was not to ask questions of Him.

  I did pray, though, that when it came to the serving out of the meat, they would give me to partake of the cow, or of the goat, or even of the dog, and of no other kind of flesh.

  Now the palm-wine did flow freely, the Imbe-Jaqqa drinking in his gluttonous way from his special skull-cup, and having his wine mixed with blood the half to the half, and all the others of us taking our fill from a seemingly limitless supply that came in vessels of wood. My head did sway and my face came to be flushed and moist. There was dancing, most lewd and lascivious in its nature, by the younger men and some of the women, and the drums grew even louder, so that they pounded against the temples of my skull like hammers.

  Calandola now rose and stepped from his garment. Several of his wives reached into the vat where the human fat was stored, and gathered the same and rubbed it on his naked body to renew his gloss, covering every inch of him, his belly and his thighs and his huge privities and all else. After which, new ornaments were drawn upon him with colored stones, and he clothed himself once more in his beads and shells and fine waist-cloth. Some of the wives did also swab themselves with the glistening fat, but no others. There was loud singing, and forty or fifty women did come and stand about the Imbe-Jaqqa, holding in each hand the tail of that wild horse called the zevvera, which they switched back and forth. The handles of these switches, so it was said, contain a potent medicine, that protected the Imbe-Jaqqa from all harm.