FLESH AND THE DEVIL by Kola Boof

by Kola Boof

  “Calm down, brother”, said the one leaning closest over Shango’s body. He gently pushed Shango’s chest back into prone position and told him, “You have been asleep for four days. We found you on the plains beaten and kicked into a coma. We nursed you back to health and stayed with you...all of us that surround this bedding...until your dreams let you go.”

  “I am Prince Shango Ogun. Son of the Kofi of Ajowa! I am not your brother!”

  The God warriors burst into a hearty laughter.

  “Yes...we know who you are. What nerve you have--coming anywhere near the city of Yitembo. But you are what...sixteen? Seventeen? Just a young lion full of juice and adventure.”

  Yitembo!

  Shango got a lump in his throat. Yitembo. The city of God’s most vicious, most merciless killers--the legendary throat eaters. One of the throat eaters patted him on the head, laughing, and remarked, “Yes, young one...you have a lot of courage. We like that in a man.”

  Just then, the animal hides of the doorway were shoved aside by a mighty gold plated black arm and in ducked one of the most famous, notoriously skillful warriors in all the history of men, war and killing. His very name had become synonymous with victory and domination--Sumboo the Great.

  “Prince Shango Ogun...allow us to introduce you to our leader...Chief Sumboo the Great...throat eater of God.”

  Shango nodded, respectfully and nervously. In fact, he felt the great urge to pee. He had heard of the terrible, merciless Sumboo all his life, as all West African boy children did by myth and legend, but to be in his presence was like standing next to the spot where Thunder had announced it would soon strike. Electrifying.

  “So...you’ve come back to the world, ha?”

  Shango was surprised by the softness of Sumboo’s voice. It wasn’t deep, commanding or fiery. It was tender and confident, level pitched at all times. He towered over the room, his body huge, muscled and swarthy. He wore a lion’s head over his own head and dead lizards hung from the acid-burned gristle that had once been his ears.

  He asked Shango, “Who were the men that attacked you?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Could it have been apes?”

  Shango drew a blank. For some reason he muttered, “All I remember is the moon...it was so bright.”

  “Ahhh”, said Sumboo, carefully. He nodded. “The moon detected the scent of your woman in your blood. Before you did.”

  “Woman?” asked Shango, incredulously. Then he noticed again...the sound of the softly falling rain outside the hut. And he could smell blooming sea anemones. Their scent bursting at the bottom of the ocean.

  “Yes, your woman”, replied Sumboo the Great. “You’ve done nothing but dream about her and call for her every since we found you. In fact, your cry was so passionate and needy that you brought rain upon us. But that is her way of coming to you. Her way of healing you.”

  “What name did I call her by?”

  “You called her by the name that means ‘love’ in your language ‘rain’ in our language. The name of your people. You called her--Ajowa.”

  “But, I don’t have...”

  “Trust me”, said Sumboo coming closer, his yellowish-brown lion’s eyes staring into the chambers of Shango’s mind. “There is a woman in your journey. A powerful and ancient woman. A woman of your blood. That is why the moon confronted you. That is why we took pity on you and have not ripped out your throat and eaten it. Because...this has to do with the rain, my brother. It has to do with the sky and sea. The earth. The fires burning at her core. This has to do with...loneliness.”

  “Yes”, muttered a weary Shango, his sensibility racked by pain and confusion. “I’ve been hiding at the bottom of the sea for months now. No one understood that I didn’t want to be married yet...because...I am very lonely. And that loneliness would only alienate my new bride and bring us children...conceived in silence.”

  “And there is nothing more sorrowful”, said Sumboo the Great. “Than a child conceived...in silence.”

  ••

  The days spent healing in Yitembo stretched into a secret suffering for Shango, because no matter how hospitable his hosts were, he could not overcome his fear of them. The city was comprised of “men only”, a population of roughly five hundred, and when they weren’t having competitions to see who could hypnotize a wild lion the fastest or who could throw their spear the farthest, they worked long, sweaty hours with iron; smelting, cooking and grafting it for their King, Katanga. For dinner they would actually eat the ripped out necks of wild animals, and Shango had been fine with that, but on the occasion that a few of the men dragged two Sula women into town, gang-raped them and ripped out their throats for a stew, Shango became despondent and utterly out of spirits. He decided that he should leave early.

  “But you’re not done healing”, said Sumboo.

  “I witnessed two women being raped and eaten”, he complained.

  “What’s wrong with that? We kill not just for war and sport, but also for fun. We are the most feared warrior clan in Africa, because we have relinquished our humanity. Why else do you think that your own father’s army, as mighty as it is, has not been able to defeat the God tribe?”

  Shango kept his eyes low and just shook his head in dismay. Sumboo laughed and told him, “You must stay until your body is healed, young warrior. This is a dangerous region to be traveling in. Especially since you are a not a God, but an outsider.”

  Sumboo explained that none of the throat eaters had been raised by mothers--they were all given to the warrior clan as infants and raised all their lives within the walls of the killing camp. Iron-making, war and each other was all they knew.

  “Not only that”, laughed Sumboo, “but the Moon kicked your ass. You need to be taught how to fight.”

  “But how do you fight the moon?”

  “Not with your heart and not with astonishment. Like controlling ones penis, it takes mental concentration. You’ve seen us hypnotize lions and pythons, haven’t you? Well it’s no different with the Moon, only you ignore it.”

  “I always thought the moon was beautiful before now.”

  “It is beautiful. But it’s missing half of itself. The moon is not a man, Shango, and it’s not a woman. The moon is both. But the Sky and the Sea were male and female according to the old myths, unable to join. They stole one half the moon to make land. Thus Sky and Sea were finally able to touch, but at each other’s throats. I don’t know the whole story, I’m just telling you what the Ashanti told us.”

  “The Ashanti?”

  “Yes. Those are the children of the God tribe that defected from our nation a few hundred years ago, because they disagreed with our belief that humans come from the Moon. The Ashanti believe that all humans come from the Sky, not the Moon. And your people believe that we come from the Sea”, said Sumboo, doubtfully.

  “We do come from the Sea!” said Shango Ogun. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you God and Ashanti people, you must be without education, because everything came from the ocean!”

  Sumboo the Great burst into laughter and pulled back the turtle plates that protected his genitals. He took his penis in his hand, showing it to Shango, and said, “You see this black snake...as long as the whole world bows to it, I don’t care where we come from. This is the ruler of the people, Shango. Because I am born under King Katanga, I kicked your father’s ass, I kicked the Ashanti ass and I kicked the Berber and the Fulani ass. Not one has defeated this black snake.”

  In Shango’s silence, he noted that Sumboo’s penis wasn’t half as big as his. So this was very perplexing, a lesson in itself, because Shango wondered how Sumboo could be the toughest warrior on earth and have a smaller snake than he did?

  “Let me ask you a question”, said Shango, suddenly. “Have you ever been attacked by the Moon?”

  “No...but I’ve seen dying men claim it. With their last breath, they spoke of seeing two moons. You’re the only one I’ve ever known to come out of it
alive. That is why we did not eat your throat. The bruises on your flesh could

  not have been made by stones or apes. I was curious to know what had befallen you. Once I learned it was the Moon, I was greatly impressed, because your survival speaks of something even greater than the size of your snake. It testifies to the strength of your mind. Your belief in yourself, young one, is what fuels your mind with power. It’s the mental power, Shango, that decides whether a man live or perish. You must always know that mere muscle is no match for wisdom and faith. You will recognize a real man, because he is very, very...very sensitive. And sensitivity is the highest form of intelligence. You cannot achieve wisdom or keep the faith without sensitivity.”

  ••

  In the Okebo river, the men gathered by the hundreds and bathed one another as they sang songs of old wars and their longing for new wars.

  Shango quite enjoyed the merriment, because the men lit wooden brotherhood pipes and smoked a sweet brown cannabis. They splashed water, made jokes about one another’s penis’s, laughed at their various fart sounds and asked Shango incessant questions about what it was like to be raised by a mother and surrounded by virgins. He told them the most tender stories he could remember, but their eyes remained like those of crocodiles.

  Finally, as some of the warriors began washing his buttocks for him, Shango told them, “I’m off to sleep”. He quickly left the river, his body light and airy from the cannabis.

  He thought, of course, that he would end the night by drifting into the comforts of his guest hut and falling into a deep slumber, but before he could reach the west totem compartment of the village south, he came upon a wild and dazzling fire show.

  Some of the warriors were dancing in unified lines, their heads crowned with human skulls as they twirled fire torches and sang praises to a group of Gods who had dragged in four tall, muscular strapping black Mandinka warriors.

  The Mandingos were bound by the neck and hands and Shango found himself possessed, unable to tear himself away from watching the hysteria of the ceremony, although he knew it would be ghastly and inhumane.

  Sure enough--they ripped out the Mandingo throats and twined them on sticks to roast in the fires. But that was not the thing that made Shango pack up his belongings and run off like a bat taking to night.

  No.

  It was when he saw them cut away the genitals of the roasted Mandinka bodies--their cocks and balls--and cover them with fruit jelly before gobbling them down whole.

  This much he couldn’t abide having printed as memory on either his heart or his mind. He packed up his things and tiptoed out of Yitembo’s rear gate, because it had no bridge, very few guards and led directly into the river. He raised his spear to one of the look-out men and then took one of the canoes of the riverbank and started rowing himself down the river, going south, because that would place him back in Ajowan territory.

  “He seeks his woman”, sneered the guard with a sinister chuckle.

  “Ajowa-land...sweet home”, Shango whispered. He paddled as hard as he could to get a quick speed. He nearly cried the word, “...home.”

  ••

  Within hours, Shango didn’t have the strength to paddle himself any further. His muscles ached and his joints were sore. Pain racked his teeth, his back and his knees. All around him was bleakness, because although the moon shone brightly, the jungle remained dense and mysterious and the river was just endless night water.

  By the glow of the canoe’s torch, Shango noticed an occasional crocodile float by, and he made it a point to stay as far out in the center of the deepest water as he could, but once he was too tired to move forward, he worried about the sounds that moaned from the black water, because truly, they were increasing.

  “I should have sailed in daylight”, he told himself. A lump forming in his throat as he wondered, “Why am I out here, away from home? My servants should be tending me.”

  Just then...some giant groaning creature hit the boat!

  “Woaah!” the Prince hollered.

  Boom!

  The torch of fire leaned over--then the water ate it.

  “Woaah, woaah!”, Shango screamed in terror as he tried to grip the sides of the boat, but the canoe flipped over, capsizing his weakened his body, and his heart became a bubble in his throat.

  He splashed and kicked, desperately, but the procession of swimming hippopotamus’s cared little about him. They kept right on going, their nightly river crossing guided by ritual and the whole caravan of them suddenly groaning and moaning the song of their species as Shango grabbed onto one of them and tried to keep from drowning.

  Luckily, they were hippos, and therefore uninterested in killing or eating him. Like elephants, they would find his presence annoying, but they would also ward off crocodiles and snakes and do all they could to help him make it safely to the other side.

  “Bless you”, he screamed out, as the female hippos threw him off their backs and nudged him onto the pull and sway of the charging males. Shango held onto the males until he was literally traveling above water, his beaten body clinging for dear life to the backs of the herd.

  Upon reaching the riverbank, Shango tried to thank them, but the males grunted and did what hippos do--they spit water on him and farted belligerently, their anger forcing chunks of hot shit to fly from their rear ends so that the overwhelming funk of it caused Shango to turn around holding his nose and disappear into the jungle.

  He found a narrow footpath and began traveling upon it, but as it went along, he noticed that he was climbing a hill, and he wondered to himself, “I thought I took the river south...not north? Got-Baggah!”

  He climbed and carried on, his heart racing as the white moon bore down on his chocolate back, but upon reaching the top of the hill, he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of a large, copious, night and swan mysterious...placid...black lake. It startled him, because he had not remembered even the sea to look so breathtakingly beautiful, the lake’s onyx surface shimmering under a pearly moon as though it were charcoal melted down and mixed into blood vessels of pure, liquid silver.

  Around the edges of it were the laziest, fattest crocodiles Shango had ever seen, their plump necks strewn with ribbons of flowers and their beady little eyes just as beguiled and enchanted by the lake’s plush ever-growing garden as Shango was.

  It was a volcanic garden, that much Shango knew, because the pungent smell of fresh sea anemones rose up from the lake’s silvery membrane while crescent lilies, wild flowers and African violets rustled in the breeze, mimicking the sensual scent of a burning jungle gardenia. The earth upon which he stood was very cool against his feet and the soil was of a fine silk-like quality. Royal dirt. Darker and richer than the crow’s blood in a coffee bean.

  Suddenly--Shango heard a child singing.

  He strained to hear it, his head leaning forward, but the words were of the God language, and he couldn’t understand what they meant.

  Still, the voice was beautiful, melodious...

  He lifted his right foot, put one foot in front of the other, and walked bravely towards the lazy, fragrant basin of the crocodile encircled lake.

  Walked right in.

  ••

  Princess Ife Ife felt the vibrations of an animal moving about the land that was not familiar to her. Immediately, she stopped with singing and ceased her long, delicate fingers from stringing the gold and vermilion quilt she was weaving. She looked up and peered out over the lavender stems of white pooku violets...her doe-like eyes searching for the sign that it was only her Aunt Thiaroye or just her imagination.

  But then she heard one of the crocodiles roar and snap its jaws!

  She jumped up, her heart beating wildly and her head leaning out as her eyes searched, suspense fully, through the light steam that rose like a thin fog on the surface of the hot lake.

  Ife Ife stared straight ahead until, suddenly, she saw a man...step into the moonlight.

  He couldn’t be a God, she thought, be
cause his coloring was deep dark brown instead of charcoal, and he wore no flowing robe of indigo. He was tall, very muscular and wore his flesh bare like a Mandingo or an Ajowan or a Serahuli with only the genitals covered. He approached very slowly, forever mindful of the crocodiles, his hands raised over his head in surrender. He spoke using the Mende language--a language that various tribes used when trading or visiting other Africans. He said, “I come in peace...I am lost.”

  Ife Ife stared at him for a very long drawn out moment before ordering the flower-necked crocodiles to clear a path for the naked foreigner by clucking her tongue and making a high pitched squeal.

  Her body, which was skin and bones by Ajowan standards, trembled nervously as the tall stranger came close enough for their eyes to meet, and once their eyes became mutual windows, their curiosity laced the air.

  He thought to himself--I’ve dreamt of her.

  And she thought--Didn’t I make him up once?

  Shango looked down upon her, his stare unabashedly masculine and aggressive, because instantly, Ife Ife’s beauty took his breath way. She couldn’t have been anymore than fourteen or fifteen, but if memory served him right, that was considered adulthood for females in the God tribe.

  She was soft, lush and delicate, her radiant skin blacker and more silvery than the surface of the lake, and like the women of Shango’s tribe, she kept her head shaven, decorated with spirit paints and adorned with trinkets of gold, ivory and crystal--a woman’s cleanly shaven head being the continental symbol of African femininity and proper breeding. Her forehead, however, was even more spectacular, thought Shango, because it was high, oval and flattened, a beauty trait of the Ashanti tribe achieved by the mother massaging and palm-pressing the infant’s skull during the years when it was still soft enough to be shaped.