But then, to my horror, Calandola did make a signal most imperious, and a second of his wives was thrust forth out of the crowd of them.
What, and was I meant to massacre the Imbe-Jaqqa’s entire harem, one by one? God’s death, I would not! Lieutenant or no, Kimana Kyeer or no, chief of all the warriors or no, I would not! On that I meant to stand firm, and not be swept away again by Calandola’s bluster or by his strange resistless power to command. I looked about in appeal to Kinguri, who even then I understood to be more reasonable a man than his great brother, and I began to frame some words of protest. But Kinguri was smiling; and so, too, was the woman who had come forth out of the group of wives.
“The Imbe-Jaqqa is well pleased with you, Andubatil,” said Kinguri, “and he gives you this favorite among his women, to be a wife to you.”
God’s wounds!
I a cannibal, and a cannibal’s husband! Well, and what was I to say? I looked at her close.
She was of that early womanhood that Matamba had had when first I bought her out of slavery: sixteen years, or perhaps even younger, it not being easy to tell. Her flesh was ripe, with high heavy breasts and great round buttocks, and solid smooth thighs like ebon columns, and everything about her was youthful and firm, with her skin drawn tight over the abundant vigorous flesh beneath. Her eyes were mild and her smile was gentle, but her face was not beautiful to me: for even though her features were sharp and well sculpted, and indeed were graceful and far from coarse, she was so heavy adorned with the cicatrices of their barbarous fashion that she scarce seemed like a human being, but rather some sort of fabulous monster. Ornament in the shape of lightning-bolts and triangles and serpents had been laid upon her cheeks and forehead, and between her breasts, and down the outside of one thigh and the inside of the other; and each of her buttocks, which were bared where her tight loin-cloth passed between them, had a design of circular rings, one within the other, raised amazing high. Then also she was oiled with the grease of the fat of men, which gave her a high shine but made her reek most strangely, and her hair, which was long, did hang in heavy plaits waxed with oil and red-colored clay, and sprinkled with the scent of something much like lavender, but more sour. And this woman, and not Anne Katherine, whom I had all but forgot, was to be my wife, I who had been unmarried since Rose Ullward’s time. God’s bones, such a strange dream has my life been, such a walking sleep of phantasms!
The cannibal woman came to me, all demure, eyes downcast, and knelt, wife-like.
“Raise her, Andubatil,” said Kinguri.
I drew her to her feet.
“How are you called?” I asked.
“Kulachinga,” she said, in a low murmur barely within the range of my hearing.
“She is full of juice, Andubatil!” Calandola cried. “She is soft and tender! A fine wife for the Kimana Kyeer!”
I looked at him and saw that he had brought forth his Romish gear, his cassock and his chalice and his crucifix. He had donned the cassock, and now did bang the crucifix against the chalice most gleefully, to signal a new start to the festival, which now had become my wedding feast. No meat remained, but they brought forth fruits and great store of wine, and there was more dancing—first the wild capering of the old Jaqqa manner, and then a renewal of the hornpipe I had taught them, and the longways dance—and all the while bridegroom and bride stood in the midst, hand in hand, as flowers were showered upon us.
This went on for some hour and more. And then to us came Calandola, and laughed and put one hand to the small of my back and one to hers, and pressed us together so that her breasts did flatten into me, and pushed us back and forth, by way of miming that it had arrived time now for the consummation of our nuptial.
God’s cod, was I to perform it in front of them all?
Surely such a thing would be impossible, I being full of wine, and half dead with weariness, and shaken by all the frenzy and clamor of the evening, so that it would have been hard to couple under any circumstance, but trebly so with a whole tribe of leering cannibals looking on. And also this Kulachinga being so remote from my ideal of beauty, with her oiled skin and mud-thickened hair and the cicatrized scars all over her. And her with her memories of Imbe Calandola’s massive yard in her, so that how could I begin to equal him?
Well, and yet I told myself I would essay it, come what will.
The Jaqqas were already building a bower for us under a vast ollicondi tree, piling high the torn-off limbs of some flowering shrub, most sweet and fragrant both of wood and leaf, arranging them in a roundel, with an open place for us to lie at the center. And they clapped and danced and sang, and pantomimed us into the bower, and pantomimed also the joining of man and woman with the finger-mime. And grinned their jack-o’-lantern Jaqqa grins at me. I was gamesome for anything, I the man-eater, I the bead-wearer, I the woman-killer, I the Kimana Kyeer, I the English Jaqqa, Andubatil.
I took my fair young bride by the hand and I did draw her down upon the soft tender young grass.
Then we made away with our loin-wraps and our shells and our beaded bangles, of which Kulachinga wore great store about her neck and arms and legs. And when we were naked as Eve and Adam we faced each other, and she made a little whistling sound through the places of the missing teeth, and said, “Andubatil.”
“Kulachinga,” said I.
Her skin was bright by the flaring torchlight. I touched her skin and drew my fingers along the greased tracks, over the ridges and hillocks and bumps of her ornaments. I held her breasts in my hand and let the weight of them arouse me, for they had a great merry exuberousness. I cupped the buttocks of her, and touched her hot thighs, with their markings high and strange. And she with great sly skill did caress my arms and my back, and then went lower, to my rump, even sliding her fingertips between my buttocks and into the hole a little way, which felt passing strange to me but excited me. And from there she traveled to my yard, which had not hardened yet except a little, but she took it deftly with the fingers of one hand, and drew upon it, as one draws on the udder of a cow, a gentle firm tug, and with the other, most skillfully, this woman Kulachinga Jaqqa did seize my ballocks, stretching her fingers about to contain them both. And to my amaze I did respond despite all of the challenge of the public moment, and grew stiff and huge to her touch, and she laughed just as a little girl will laugh when presented with a pretty frock, a playful laugh of pleasure in her own attributes, and she drew me down on her and widened her thighs to me and with one good thrust I speared her, while from all about me the jungle resounded with the crying of my name by the Jaqqas, “Andubatil, Andubatil, Andubatil!” In and out, in and out, moving easily and surely, and Kulachinga lay back, her head lolling, her lips slack, her eyes open but the dark of them rolled up far into her head, and I reached down and with the tip of my finger did burrow in the thick hair of her, and found her hard little bud, and touched it only twice and she gasped and moaned and had her fulfilling. Which we did three or four times the more, until at last she drew her knees up toward her breasts and outward, and clamped her heels against my back, and with sudden violent movements of her hips did push me onward to the venting of my seed. After which a heavy sweat came upon me like unto that caused by the greatest heat of the jungle, and rivers of hot fluid did burst from my every pore, so that I was slippery as a fish, and I sank forward onto her breasts and she held me and I dropped into a sleep that was none very different from death itself, I trow, for I did not dream and I did not know I slept, but lay like a stone until morning. And so did I pass the first night of my life among the Jaqqas, and so also did I accomplish myself on the night of my wedding to my African bride Kulachinga.
TWO
FOR ANOTHER two months did the Jaqqas remain at the town of Calicansamba, until they had utterly laid waste to everything that had belonged to those people, and most of the villagers had fled to Cashil and Mofarigosat and other lords, and the town had become an empty thing where those mean beasts the jackal and the hyaena did roam, snuffling fo
r scraps. Then the word came down from Imbe Calandola and his viceroy Kinguri that the tribe was to take up its wanderings again, and they did gather their cattle and their gourds laden with palm-wine and their weapons and make ready to go on the march, inland toward the mountains of Cashindcabar.
These mountains be mighty high, and have great copper mines, which the blackamoors do work, going in and taking the ore and melting it some, and hammering it to use for ornaments and weapons. The Jaqqas do none of this themselves, but only prey on the metal-working tribes. Kinguri explained this to me as a matter more of religion than sloth, saying, “It is forbidden by our custom to draw metal from the earth, this being a shameful handling of our mother. But we must have tools; and so we do allow lesser nations to engage in the commerce of metals on our behalf.”
As we passed toward Cashindcabar, the Jaqqas took the spoil all the way as they went. The towns of the makers of copper bells and chains and bracelets did unresistingly surrender their hoards, out of fear of Imbe Calandola. Also did he take from them their goats and their cattle, and destroyed many of their palm-wine trees, in that manner most wasteful that the Jaqqas practice. And now and then when the hunger for human meat came upon the tribe, they did choose a few townsfolk whose flesh they coveted, and killed and ate them in their great feasts, which were ever a heavy spectacle to behold.
This devouring of men was done not only for the flavor of it, though that was very dear to the Jaqqas, but also because it did strike terror into the nations of this land, being so unnatural and monstrous. Thus it invested the Jaqqas with a mantle of strange grandeur and frightfulness: offtimes a town would surrender without a struggle, so fearful of the Jaqqas were they.
Onward did we proceed, looting and eating, eating and looting. I took each day as it came, and lived easily my life among them, doing as they did by quick nature, the way one breathes without thinking on it. Yet also did I hold myself back in at least one part, that was the observer, the scholar of their doings and the doings of the nations that were about them. For I did know that no man before me had had the opportunity to witness such things, and that if God’s grace ever brought me to a place where I might set down my experiences, I would have such a tale to tell as few wanderers and journeyers before me had had, except peradventure for the great Marco himself, of Cathay.
In the mining country of Cashindcabar I saw how the working of metals is carried out among the Bakongo peoples, who used molds of wax to shape their bangles, the wax melting away and leaving the bracelet or armlet behind, full formed. In the working of iron they are very skillful also, and even amazing. For the blacksmiths do light a fire on the ground and, sitting nearby, practice their art in a most tranquil way, using neither hammer nor anvil. In the place of the hammer they employ a piece of iron large enough to fill the hand, and whose shape resembles a nail. The anvil is a piece of iron to the weight of some ten pounds, that they place on the ground like a log. On this they do their forging. The bellows is made of hollow logs over which a hide has been stretched. They raise and lower this hide by hand, and in this way blow air on the fire; this serves them very well and without difficulty. With these three simple instruments they do fashion all their iron goods, even the most elaborate.
I asked a blacksmith what art of magic he used in accomplishing this, and he replied most blandly, “It is in the arm, the directing of it, the weight of the thrust. Which we learn as boys, and it must be of the soul, of the inner spirit: I mean there is a mokisso in it, or the work is worthless.” And perhaps that is true of whatsoever labor any one does, in any land, that if there is no mokisso in it, and the spirit is not just right to aim the thrust and shape the weight of the task, then it matters not what fine tools you do employ.
These blacksmiths have other special skills. If someone is troubled by a disease, he goes to the blacksmith, makes some payment to him, and has his face blown on three times by the bellows. When you ask them why they do this, they reply that the air that comes out of the bellows drives the evil from the body and preserves their health for a long time. At one of the mining towns under Cashindcabar all the lordlings of the Jaqqas did form a long line, that stretched far out into the country, and one by one all the day long they came forward to have the blacksmith of that place blow air thus into their faces.
Gold is of little interest to all these peoples. At Cashindcabar I picked up a Jaqqa hatchet to admire it and found some gold inlaid into its handle, along with other workings of copper. This I showed to Kinguri.
“Where is this metal to be found?” I asked.
“You mean this copper?” said he.
“Nay, not the copper, but this other bright stuff, which is gold.” I said the name of that word to him both in English and also in Portuguese, which is ouro, for I had never heard any African name for it, they having so little respect for it.
“Gold?” said Kinguri. “Why, this other metal is copper also, but of another color.”
“Aye,” I said, not wishing to dispute it, “and from whence does this other copper come?”
“Out of a river that is to the southward of the Bay of Vaccas,” he said, “that has great store of it. In the time of rain the fresh water drives grains of this metal out on the sand, and we gather it then, for it is not forbidden to us to take metal that we find lying on the surface of our mother’s breast. It has a good shine, but it is soft and useless stuff.”
I pressed him to tell me more precisely where this river lay, but he could only say, southward of the Bay of Vaccas, that is, the bay about Benguela. Certainly I had heard nothing from the Portugals about finding gold there when we made our voyages thither; it was slaves that they sought, only slaves and slaves and slaves. But I may hope that one day Englishmen will scoop up this easy gold of the river-sands, if ever we do displace the Portugals from that part of the globe. And so I set the information down now that it not be forgotten.
Kinguri became my close companion in these first months of my wandering with the Jaqqas. Though he was a frightful man-eater and monster and all of that, yet also was he a person of thought and wisdom, with a far-seeing mind, that would have carried him to a high place in whatever country he was born: it was only the jest of fate that gave him off to spend his life in so barbarous a fashion. In this tribe he was a counsellor and companion to his elder brother the Imbe-Jaqqa, but in no way was he a partner in the government, for Calandola held that absolute unto himself. There was not room in that great tyrant’s soul for a sharing of power, though I know it to be true that he did love Kinguri and hold him in high esteem—while at the same time he was jealous of him, and most watchful that Kinguri should not usurp so much as one shred of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s authority and privilege.
Since in time I came to be close friend, if “friend” is the true and proper word, both to Calandola and Kinguri, I felt the pull of conflict sometimes between these two, and was much torn in my loyalties and strained by their brotherly rivalry. But the extent of that was not apparent to me at first, though of course any man of even slight wisdom knows that there are risks in getting too close to princes, or of seeming to favor the brother of a prince over the prince himself. The prince does love his brother, but also does he fear him, and for good reason, generally: so then does he fear the brother’s friend.
But there was more than mere court intrigue to all this, for the brothers did have a feeling for me that went beyond such simple intrigue. Each wanted for himself the mokisso that was within my white skin; each coveted me, each desired me, almost as rival lovers do, for each thought I had in me that which would illuminate and exalt his spirit.
I had some hint to this early, when the man-witch Kakula-banga, a high sorcerer of the tribe, came to me to paint me with magic signs to warn off the threat of zumbi. Those spirits were much in fear just then. This witch was a small wrinkled man with one eye and a scar that made much of his face seem that it had been melted in flame; but that one eye saw with keen sight. And he said, as he drew his zickzacks upon my skin,
“Calandola is fire, and Kinguri is snow, and so Calandola does rule, for fire rules over snow. But yet snow can kill, and it is a passing cold death.”
“What is the meaning of this witch-talk, old man?” said I.
“That you lie between the flame and the ice, and both can burn you, O Andubatil Jaqqa. But you cannot endure both burnings. You will have to choose, some day, between Kinguri and Calandola, as will we all. Give it thought, O Andubatil Jaqqa! Give it thought!”
But these dark forebodings had no substance for me, except in the most broad way, that I knew one must be careful in the proximity of great men. In every realm, and not only that of the man-eaters, does greatness glut itself on the blood and flesh of those who are not so great, and who hope to rise, and die in the rising. Beyond such wisdom I knew nothing here, and resolved to watch and wait, and tread carefully.
From Kinguri I learned something of the history of these dread Jaqqas. They had come, he told me, out of the land known as the Sierra Leona, that is high above and inward somewhere in Africa. But long ago did they leave that place, giving up all settled habitation and wandering in an unsettled course. Thus they dispersed themselves as a scourge, one might say as a pestilence, throughout much of this continent, invading this land and that, and over time drifting southward through the kingdom of the Kongo and onward to the eastward of the great city of Angola, which is called Dongo. Thus they came to infest both these territories that the Portugals have colonized, and to threaten constantly against the little Portugal outposts and the Christian blackamoor nations that the Portugals have made subject to themselves.
As they marched, the Jaqqas in time transformed themselves into the likeness of the tribes they conquered. For they allow the bearing of no children of their own, but adopt into their nation the strongest and best of their foes’ children, as I have already told. Thus in all their camp there were but twelve natural Jaqqas of the true blood, that were their captains, and fourteen or fifteen women. For it is more than fifty years since they came from Sierra Leona, that was their native country. But their camp is sixteen thousand strong, and sometimes more, and all of them know themselves only as Jaqqas, being without any knowledge of the tribes from which they were taken, or concealing it if they do.