Blonde Roots

by Bernardine Evaristo

  I then exercised something I suspected he knew little of—self-discipline—and explained that we had been threatened by what we saw as bellicose savages intent on malfeasance, and that he should remember that I was on those shores to put a casketful of cowrie shells in his coffers.

  At that he began to calm down until, without warning, he clasped one of my hands in his, and shook it!

  I immediately withdrew said hand and raised the other to defend myself.

  “My dear Captain, hand-shaking is the custom here,” he guffawed, revealing teeth as dark and uncoordinated as his attire. “It is a salutation of goodwill. One gets used to it, then one adopts it.”

  That, I suspected, was his problem.

  “Please, let us put this regrettable air behind us because, as you have justly remarked, you and I must do business.

  “May I now extend a warm welcome to you and your men,” he declared, reaching out his arms in a gesture of ceremonious invitation, before adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “amidst such barbarism you would not imagine. Life is cheap in these parts, but easy on the trigger, eh, Captain?”

  I had not pulled a trigger on anyone, but let him think me a hotheaded brawler. Let him be wary.

  I was to spend the next twenty-four hours with Byakatonda who was, unfortunately, most prolix.

  “Pardon me for mentioning it, Captain,” he shouted over his shoulder as he suddenly strode up the beach leaving me, his guest, to trot behind him like a donkey. “But you’ll freeze your bollocks running around in that loincloth of yours. Now come, come, into the forest we go!”

  I followed him into the jungle, which was as evil as I had anticipated—sunless, soulless, colorless. It was seething with foreign insects, thick with rotting foliage and grave with an air of despair and devastation. Alien creepers threatened to block our path, the contorted arms of grotesque trees threatened to reach out and strangle me, the ground was matted with diseased leaves, and the damp climate chilled my bones. Shrill sounds shot out into the silence. Something hawhed up in the trees. From inside the undergrowth came sounds that were neither human nor animal.

  Demons brushed their icy lips past mine.

  I FELT WATCHED.

  It was like returning, Dear Reader, to the earliest days of the world when the trees and vegetation of the wilderness spread their tendrils and talons without the restraining hand of civilized man.

  As we penetrated deeper into the dark heart of Europa, my host began to prove cordial enough, prattling on about an impoverished upbringing on a maize farm in the outback of Great Ambossa. (As if I should admire him.)

  He showed no interest in the country he had left behind.

  The jungle had claimed him.

  The jungle was his home now.

  WE FINALLY APPROACHED a high wall in front of which ran a river. Our party hastened around it as Byakatonda told me it offered a circle of protection for the settlement inside.

  “Against what?” I asked in my youthful innocence.

  “The natives are a bloodthirsty lot, squire. Without these fortified walls, they’d be slaughtered in their sleep by marauding enemy tribes from up north. Those shipped overseas are the lucky ones. Surely even you knew that?”

  What a know-it-all he was.

  “My dear fellow, as an esteemed captain of the sea, I know many, many things, for example that we civilized nations are not without the urge to conquer and defeat ourselves, a minor fracas here and there, the occasional full-blown war. This is common knowledge to all learned men.”

  Byakatonda stopped short and grabbed my arm, pulling me toward him.

  “Listen to me, sir,” he hissed. “I’m talking about murder on a scale you would not imagine—one hundred million, and counting. Let us not forget the thousands of mini-wars since time immemorial. Sometimes they even go into battle and declare it is on behalf of their pagan idol—Xtia—the very one who commands Thou shalt not kill.

  “Now—look at this!”

  We had come to a spot where a bridge crossed the river, and he pointed up at two rows of poles lined either side, upon which were stuck what appeared to be heads.

  Surely not, I thought, before coming to the incontrovertible conclusion that it was indeed a parade of dismembered heads.

  I promptly keeled over and regurgitated what little was left in my stomach.

  “Be warned,” Byakatonda spat down my ear-hole as I was retching my life away.

  (Ye gads! Give me a fucking break!)

  “They are hung, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered, that is—the body chopped into four parts. It’s been common practice for over three centuries for those who commit crimes against their big Chief, the King. A powerful deterrent, don’t you think?”

  I knew not what to reply. Massive iron gates in the wall opened to release a procession of black-clad natives in a trance-like state.

  I struggled to my feet as we moved aside to let them pass.

  The lead native wore a vivid purple robe and carried two wooden sticks in front of him, the shorter horizontal one crossing the longer vertical one.

  Six of the taller males balanced a long wooden box on their shoulders.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when they started up a communal chant rendered in a babble of uncouth sounds which went something like this: ourfatherwhoartinheav ... and so on and so forth &c.

  A DEAD PERSON WAS in the box, Byakatonda informed me, as we watched them disappear into the thicket, who would shortly be buried in the ground, as was their custom. It was peculiar because they did not thrash and wail with woe at such times, nor use official mourners, but maintained what was called a “stiff upper lip.”

  As we passed through the gates of the settlement, the bitter aftertaste of vomit made me so queasy I felt my legs almost give way.

  “What can I expect inside?” I asked my host, trying to control the tremor in my voice, leaning one arm on his shoulder for support.

  “I dare not tell you,” he said with a smirk. “Except to say, welcome to my world.”

  As we passed native warriors on guard, I saw they were covered head to toe in cumbersome iron. How could they possibly fight freely in battle dressed so?

  Once inside the wall, Byakatonda informed me that he had won the natives’ favor through keeping up a steady supply of buyers for the slaves they captured for him, although he liked to go out on the hunt himself from time to time.

  Several winding paths branched out from the gates with square-shaped wooden dwellings lining either side. Yes, square!

  Natives loitered in the guttering like slugs in their own slime.

  All were emaciated and wore rags darkened with vile filth.

  Some lay stiff on the ground, flies buzzing around the death gasp of open mouths.

  Occasionally one of the cadavers stirred, which was rather a shock.

  Supplicant hands begged as we passed.

  Swaddled infants were held out by withered mothers who sat back on their haunches like chimpanzees.

  The first little bundle I looked into contained something so gray and still that it was more stone than child.

  I asked my host if mental illness was also rife in these parts.

  He replied that they were called the poor.

  I was most relieved when we came to a crowded square. But yet again I was at a loss for words when I witnessed a mad spectacle of many colors.

  Females paraded around wearing garments whose torso frames crushed their ribs so tightly that breathing must have been impeded. The material on these garments tightened around the neck appearing to choke the wearer. Circuitous structures hung from their lower halves, which expanded their hips to ridiculous proportions, and shoe objects were so narrow and pointed as to deform their feet.

  Quite how they managed to stay alive is beyond my comprehension.

  The males strutted about in torso garments that were nothing like our stylish lion or tiger pelts, but were designed to make their shoulders appear twice their normal width. Upon their
bottom halves were leg garments that came down to the knee, in some cases tied with ribbons! Objects upon their heads were so wide their faces fell into shadow.

  That they should dress like this and go abroad in daylight?

  “It is called ‘the fashion,’ ” my host chortled, slapping me on the back as if we had become great companions as well as mere compatriots. “For which they are prepared to suffer pain and even permanent disfigurement. Come! Let us go to the gallows where that crowd is amassing over there.”

  At the far end of the square, hundreds of jeering natives were jostling for position. Byakatonda deftly wove his way to the front.

  “Perfect timing. This lot are burglars. You may not approve the punishment, but we’ll all sleep a lot better without that bunch of ne’er-do-wells roaming the streets at night.”

  Directly before us was a horse-drawn cart on which stood five blind-folded natives whose necks were attached to ropes hanging from a single beam.

  A gong was sounded and the cart sped off, leaving the victims dangling by the neck, writhing and gurgling for an eternity, until they eventually went limp.

  At which point the crowd settled down into a satisfied silence and began to disperse.

  I had barely digested what had happened when, at the opposite end of the square, another crowd raised a loud cheer.

  “I spared you that one. They put a fellow’s head on a block and chop it off.”

  In the next breath Byakatonda told me that soon enough he would take me to his house for a hearty meal and thereafter we could begin the business at hand.

  To be quite frank, Dear Reader, I had quite lost my appetite.

  Yet no one could have prepared me for what I saw next.

  I smelled a terrible burning. Perhaps they are roasting one of their strange animals, I wondered.

  Byakatonda conducted me to the third corner of the square, and as we neared I saw that one of their females, of middle years with a skein of black hair, had been tied to a stake in the middle of a fire.

  She was being burned alive.

  Yes, alive.

  Whoosh! Her hair went up in flames and although she screamed, no sound came out.

  My body went into convulsions for a third time but my stomach was empty.

  What can I say, Dear Reader, but the horror, the horror ...

  She was apparently a woman who is called a witch, that is, one accused of consorting with their chief demonic figure, called the Devil.

  The fate of a witch is to be bound, weighted and thrown into the river. If she sinks she is innocent, although she is by now of course dead. If she floats she is considered guilty of witchcraft and they will set her alight.

  Did anything in this hellhole make sense?

  MURDER IN THE SQUARE was the settlement’s Saturday-afternoon entertainment. The next day they went to the temple to worship the god who told them not to carry out any of these unspeakable acts.

  “You have to remember that they are not like us, Captain, not like us at all,” Byakatonda said, studying me intensely to gauge my reaction.

  “I do not need reminding of that,” I countered, looking up at a sky drained of color, drained of life, drained of humanity, drained of sanity.

  Would that I were gone from this abominable place.

  I had seen and heard enough.

  BYAKATONDA LIVED SOME DISTANCE from the market, and although the landscape was bleak I was relieved to be invigorated by a light breeze. As we made our way there, he continued to fill me in on more of the other customs and traditions of this foul society.

  The previous Saturday, Byakatonda had seen a native strapped into a basket filled with wasps until he was stung to death; a couple of months earlier, one was put into a barrel spiked with nails and rolled downhill. The rack was popular for forcing confessions too—stretching a person until their bones popped out of the sockets.

  Unable to hear any more, I decided to put an end to this litany of evils and asked what the hell this thing called a Saturday was. He explained that it was the natives’ system of ordering time into what they called days. Seven of these days constituted something called a week, and four of these weeks constituted a month, although the amount of days in a month varied from between twenty-eight and thirty-one. And three hundred and sixty-five of these days constituted a year. Except in the years when they didn’t.

  I tried to see the reason in it.

  I’m still trying.

  I asked why he had chosen to spend his life among the heathen tribes, to which he replied, “Here I am someone—the big blak chief among the little whyte natives. In Great Ambossa I was a nobody. So why do you think?”

  I admired his honesty, if not his sarcasm.

  We passed barren fields draped in a sinister diaphanous mist. Evil-looking pagan idols had been stuck in the center of the fields. Wooden sticks attired like natives with hair made of straw.

  As my head began to clear, Byakatonda’s conversation took a more humorous turn. I was told that the natives were awfully superstitious. This is what they do for good luck.

  They must touch a piece of wood, cross two fingers over each other, hang a horse’s shoe on the front door, pass a black cat in the street, and repeat “white rabbit” three times as soon as they wake up on the first day of each month.

  “Why not a pink pig?” I joked, beginning to feel myself again.

  Conversely, it was considered unlucky to walk under a ladder, to break a mirror, wear the color green, spill salt or pass another person while walking upstairs, and the thirteenth day of their creation called a Friday is so unlucky some never get out of bed on that day for fear of what might happen to them.

  By the time we arrived at his dwelling, my spirits had been lifted.

  It was all quite hilarious.

  My host revealed that when he eventually returned to GA to live a life of luxury, he planned to form the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Beliefs and Customs.

  One began to warm to him, finally.

  THE SAVING OF SOULS

  Dear Reader,

  We have now arrived at that part of my story concerning the purchase of slaves.

  Byakatonda’s domicile was, thank goodness, constructed in the Ambossan mode of architecture. It did not imprison like a square box but its walls curved into a circle. It was not built of flammable wood, but of solid, high-quality, low-maintenance mud.

  Annoyingly, rather than our sitting cross-legged on the ground and eating with our fingers like normal people, I was directed to sit at a table and forced to struggle with steel implements more suited to farming or warfare than eating.

  A “winter stew” was served, which contained the following: meat so tough and stringy its threads got trapped in my teeth, a cabbage-vegetable-thing that consisted of thin, green, watery membranes as tasteless as wet leaves, and floating on top of the stew were dumplings made of flour and water that rather resembled the corpses of bloated mice.

  When I asked for chilli pepper to spice it all up, my gracious host retorted that his palette could no longer take it and if I wanted it I should have brought some off the ship with me.

  Charming!

  He was a loathsome, cantankerous fool after all.

  I was offered a drink called tea, which looked like dirty water and tasted like boiled straw.

  I do assure the Reader that somehow, however, I managed.

  It transpired that my host lived with one official wife and knocked up as many unofficial ones as he could muster. The official wife, who went by the appellation of Janet (JAAA-NET), was, unsurprisingly, a native. Wisely, she was kept out of sight.

  He boasted that he had spawned many half-breeds whom he occasionally caught sight of as they scampered around the lanes and fields of the settlement like little orangutans.

  “Dinner” over, we ventured behind the house to a massive yard where the slaves (chained, slothful, thankfully docile) were corralled in a cattle pen. Apparently it was no longer safe to store them in cages
on the beach due to the warmongering northern tribes who created such a nuisance.

  Byakatonda complained that the all-powerful Association of Ambossan Slave Traders planned to build a fort on that very coast in the near future, which would probably scupper the nice little business of independent traders such as himself.

  He introduced me to his trusted “boy,” Tom, a stumpy, wrinkled, white-haired Europane of some sixty seasons.

  I immediately clasped my own hands firmly behind my back so that he could not grab one and shake it.

  “God-days Capitin-sir. Wi gotte fyne bunsh wiggas fo yoo. Strang, helthie buks ind wenshez. Wi bin waytin longe tyme yoo aryve. Wi alle redy fo yoo. Me beete thim if git oute of hande sew yoo goh and chooz, sir. Jesh goh rite on in ind pik em oote.”

  Yes, indeed I would.

  I entered the pen and embarked upon the task at hand. I prodded for fast reflexes, squeezed muscles for strength, joints for pliancy, inspected private parts for venereal taints, teeth for good health, and carefully assessed the young females for the curvacious potential that could triple their price.

  The chosen ones were led by Tomashara-whatsit to the empty pigs’ pen on the other side of the yard.

  The procedure was going tolerably smoothly when all of a sudden one of the natives, just as I was bending him over to examine his anus, erupted in a fit of pique. He spun around and shook his fist in my face.

  I had already noted that he was sinewy but solid, not in the first bloom of youth but not too old to do a good day’s work in the fields of West Japan either. Lurid red hair loitered past his shoulders.

  Two of the guards immediately pinned his arms behind him while he frothed and fumed in Mumble-Jumble, which Byakatonda translated for me, so that I would know what I was dealing with.

  I rather wished he hadn’t.

  “You must help me, sir! You are my only hope. I am Jack Scagglethorpe, a hardworking, God-fearing, law-abiding citizen from the north. This lady here is my dear wife, Eliza, and these are my girls, Alice and Sharon. Those kidnapping devils came into our cottage while we were at dinner, and before I could get up and protect my family I was sent flying to the floor with a blow to my head that knocked me out. They’d already taken my Doris last spring, and on the way here they dragged my eldest Madge into the woods. We heard her screams. Oh Lord, we heard her screams.