Lord of Darkness
Page 54
His eyes were wolf-eyes upon me. But what could he do? I had spoken sweet words, yet not in any sweet tone. And he gave ground, and let me eat.
The music now began again, and singing and dancing, and crying, “Long live our Lord Imbe-Jaqqa! Long live our Lord Imbe-Jaqqa.” And some of the strongest of the warriors below commenced a kind of wrestling, that was most graceful and beautiful, like unto a kind of dance, for all its fierceness. This was the first time that ever I beheld Jaqqa wrestling. They twined their long arms, they matched each other’s movements like men in a mirror, they bent forward and backward, and leaped about, and pounced, and cast each other down with the greatest of elegance.
As for the lion, her flesh was not eaten, but her skin and head was taken, and used for ornaments in the Imbe-Jaqqa’s household. And all the week that followed I saw Jaqqas in the camp that were scratched and torn from the rage of the lion; and in this manner did these man-eaters train themselves to greater bravery; as though more of that commodity were needed amongst them.
The other thing they did for valor’s sake was hunting of elephantos to take their tails. This was not done, as among the settled Bakongo folk, to make ornaments out of the dark and glossy tail-hairs. Nay, it was the entire tail of the giant beast that the Jaqqas prized. For when any one of their captains or chief lords came to die, they commonly did preserve one of these tails in memory of him, and to which they paid a sort of adoration, out of an opinion they had of its great strength. They would say, holding up the shrine in which a certain tail was kept, “This is the tail of the elephanto of the Jaqqa Ntotela,” or, “This is the tail of the elephanto of the Jaqqa Zimbo,” or whichever. So to increase the number of these tails they did pursue the elephantos into narrow places, as I have told earlier. But the amputation had to be performed at one blow, and from a living elephanto, or their superstition would allow it no value.
I did not see this elephanto-hunting myself, for it was a most sacred thing that was done privately by Jaqqas to enhance their ghostly stature, and not the sort of quest on which one would invite a companion. But three separate times I saw a Jaqqa come running into camp holding a fresh-cut elephanto tail aloft, and each one of them was shining in the face, and altogether transfigured with radiant joy, as though the bloody thing he carried was none other than the Holy Grail of the Lord.
We saw elephantos often, wandering hither and thither across the land. And frightsome things they were to behold, at close distance, though they are in the main gentle and tractable creatures. As is well for all other creatures, when one considers their great size. For if there were an animal with the bulk of an elephanto and the spirit of a wolf or a she-lion, it should have conquered all the world.
When elephantos came near us, even the Jaqqas gave them a wide way, since, when angered, they are beyond being killed by any weapon, and do great destruction. They have great hanging ears and long lips, and a tongue that is very little, and so far in their mouth that it cannot be seen; but the snout or trunk is so long and in such form that it is to him in the stead of a hand, for he neither eats nor drinks but by bringing his trunk to his mouth. Also can he overthrow trees with it, to eat the tender shoots high up. Once I saw an elephanto take a boy around the middle with his trunk, that had done something idle to annoy him, and hurl that foolish boy far away, flying through the air with arms and legs wildly waving, so that he landed all shattered against a remote rock.
The male elephanto lives two hundred years or at the least one hundred and twenty, the female almost as long. They love rivers and will often go into them up to the snout, wherewith they blow and snuff, and play in the water; but swim they cannot, for the weight of their bodies. I know from reading the Greek and Roman writers that the elephanto can be trained, and made to bear burdens and be a beast of war, but the Africans do no such thing that I ever heard. The eye of the elephanto is very small, and high up along its head, yet it shows great wisdom and even a kind of sadness, and always when I looked at the eye of an elephanto I did feel a little shiver go down my back, for I told myself, This is a deep and thoughtful creature, that lives long and understandeth much, and has something holy in its aspect.
We saw another ponderous famous beast in our wanderings through this district of Kalungu that I had heard much of, but had not previously encountered in Africa. These were rhinocerotes, which are a sort of elephanto, but not so tall, and without the snout or the great ears, but having horns upon their noses. Like elephantos, the rhinocerotes are massive and armor-skinned, and gray or white in color, with heavy flat feet, and they can make the ground shake when they run. I saw two first, that my Jaqqa wife Kulachinga pointed out to me, saying, “They are mother and daughter,” and soon after came the husband, such a monster as I could hardly believe, gigantic, like unto a fortress on four thick heavy legs. They went past without anyone doing them harm, and I stared after them as if I had seen three phantoms out of nightmare.
Kulachinga said, “Do you not have such animals in England, Andubatil?”
“Nay,” said I, “not rhinocerotes, nor elephantos, nor coccodrillos, nor zevveras, neither.”
“You have no animals, then?”
“Ah, we have cattle,” I said, “and sheep, and goats, and pigs, and dogs, and cats, and the like. And in the forests are great stags, and perchance a unicorn or two, though I think it is many years since one of those was seen upon our shores. But of rhinocerotes not a one.”
“What a strange land,” said Kulachinga.
And I thought to myself, Yea, how very strange, with its green fields like tended carpets, and its little hills, and its cool rainy air, and its oak trees and elms and such that did drop their withered leaves when the first chill blasts of autumn came by. I had by now lived half as long in Africa as ever I did in England, or close upon that, and I was growing used to ollicondi trees and palms and thorny things, and elephantos and coccodrillos. And in time even rhinocerotes would seem as comfortable to me as a roebuck on a hillside, I could readily believe.
I was in these days living in most congenial harmony with this Jaqqa wife of mine, and that of itself was strange. For surely we were not designed to companion one another. At the first we could scarce speak to one another, I having only the bare smattering of the Jaqqa tongue and she no knowledge of my languages. In my usual way I did come to be fluent quickly in Jaqqa-speech, but even that did not by itself augur any true marriage, since there are in England many millions of men and women who speak each other’s language as though they be native to it, and yet would make most woeful consorts to one another. And here was Kulachinga with her scarred and ridged skin, and her body all greased and oiled with strange substances of alien odor, and her hair done up with red clay and yet more grease, and she should have been as unsuited for me, and I for her, as a coccodrillo for a rhinocerote. But yet we did pleasantly together.
This was in part, I think, because she was a lusty wench, and I had always taken such keen joy in the pleasures of the flesh. When there is hot passion between a man and a woman, many other points of great difference can be overlooked, for lust is a bridge that links the most remote of islands. And we did frequently play the game of tangled bodies, and play it well, she in her Jaqqa style and me in my English way. She would not kiss, and often she liked to give herself to me dog-fashion, with her strong rump upturned, but no matter: I thrust, we joined, back and forth I slid in the deep but narrow channel of her, that was so frothing with the sweet natural juices of her, and into her, night after night, I shot my hot tallow and she responded with cries of delight.
It was the case that I had by gradual ways come to be enrolled in the very life of Africa by women who, stage by stage, were ever darker, ever more barbarous. My first instructress was Dona Teresa, who gave the outer appearance of a Portuguese woman, and one of serene beauty that any European would recognize; yet mingled within her somewhere was the seed of her African mothers, that showed only in the hue of her nipples and in the mysteries of her soul. After her had
come Matamba, that was pure black, a creature of the jungled interior of the land: still she was Christian, and spoke the tongue of Portugals, and stood midway between savage and white in spirit, if not in appearance. And then had come various tribal women, whose names I could not tell you, that had satisfied my lusts in Masanganu and other places along my pilgrimage, leading me step by step toward the depth of this black world: so that by the time I was given Kulachinga to be my Jaqqa bride, I was ready to embrace without reluctance that woman of the cannibal race, and sleep placidly beside her night after night, and only now and then reflect with amaze upon the journey I had taken to bring me over the arch of the years from Rose Ullward and Anne Katherine Sawyer, so sweet and English, to this my Jaqqa wife.
Kulachinga had no wish to learn Portuguese, and did not even know English existed. Only rarely did she show curiosity about that other world out of which I had fallen. Indeed she was not of a searching and probing mind at all, which set her apart from Dona Teresa and from Matamba, both of whom I remembered fondly as being lively in their wit and perceptions and eagerness for learning. Kulachinga did not know what nation she was native to, though it could have been no more than a few years since she had been adopted into the Jaqqas. Nor would she speak to me at all concerning her marriage to Imbe Calandola, except to say, “He was a good husband to me,” and not a word of what the carnal ways of that dark lord might be, or what it was like to have been one of so many wives. Soon I saw that I would learn little from her, and learning has ever been one of my passions. Yet was I content simply to dwell with her, and let her comfort me after I had been a troublesome day on the field of battle, and to take from her the bowl of palm-wine and the meat she had roasted for me at nightfall. And often did I reach for her in the night, and take her breasts into my hands, and slide my stiffened yard into her ready entryway. So when I was with her I was a happy man.
FOUR
WHEN WE had done with the sacking and consuming of the town of Kalunga, which we did entirely ruin, we arose and entered into the province of Tondo, which was a deep way to the north and east. To be sure, this was the direction opposite to that in which I most wanted to go, which was toward the coast. But I could no more than influence the Imbe-Jaqqa in the movements of his army than I could control the surge of the tides. And also I was finding life among the man-eaters uncommon pleasing, which was the last thing I would have expected. To run free with them in pagan revelry was like the throwing off of tight garments and constricting boots, and going naked and easy of spirit. Among the Portugals, whom I had found to be generally a people of deceit and petty treacheries and little mean betrayals, I had been a captive and a slave; but among the Jaqqas, who were monsters but yet bore themselves with a certain lofty nobility, I was a prince. So I was in little hurry to depart them. I abided my time in the forest without distress, becoming more Jaqqa in my ways each day, and thinking, I had already waited a dozen year and some to see England again, I could wait a little more.
We came to the River Kwanza, that I had sailed many times in going between the coast and the presidio of Masanganu. Both those places now were far to my back, we being a long way inland, beyond even the supposed silver-mining place called Kambambe. Following along the south side of the river and continuing ever eastward, we entered the domain of a lord that was called Makellacolonge, near to the great city of Dongo.
Here we passed over mighty high mountains, and found it very cold, we being near naked in the manner of jungle folk. In these steep passes the air was very blue and sharp, and there was frost on the ground at morn, like a little white crust; though by midday in the full blast of the sun we were greatly hot, and remained that way until twilight, when all the heat fled from the world. The things that grew on the high country were different from those of the lowland, there being no palms or vines or creepers, but instead certain things without stems, with fleshy thick leaves that bore pale stripes and spots, sprouting on the earth, and out of the heart of them came high spikes trimmed with a myriad little red flowers, that was most beautiful and strange.
On the other side of these passes the Imbe-Jaqqa did camp his forces for some days, making no attack on Makellacolonge. We sent out our scouts and our outriders, to get the lay of the land, but we did not move forward, nor did we give our enemy any hint that we were in their territory. Calandola often consulted his man-witches, and most particularly the nganga Kakula-banga, that was oldest and holiest of that kind. The Imbe-Jaqqa looked solemn and distant much of the time, but did not share with us his captains the nature of his fears.
Yet he had it in his mind to attack Makellacolonge when the omens were right. For we did gather a score of times to plan our strategy, Calandola and Kinguri and the ten other high captains and I. And the Imbe-Jaqqa did shape and reshape his plan, so that it shifted like a running stream in a shallow bed; but one thing was always constant, that I was to be the center of the thrust. “You will take up your post with your musket,” said he, “and when the trumpet sounds, you will give your fire, five times into the town, and then—then—then—”
It was the and then that was always changing. I had never seen Calandola to be so indecisive. For his mind was altogether scattered and would not come into clarity.
It was at this time that often he took me aside, and walked with me, saying little, but I think carrying on some sort of colloquy with me in his mind, a long discourse that he did not deign to share with me, but which satisfied him. Plainly I was the favorite, now. I saw his brow knitting and his jaw working, yet he gave me little hint of what occupied his soul. I came to feel close to him, withal, and there were moments when he appeared to be not some kind of titan and monster, but only a man, albeit of great size and strangeness, with a man’s cares on his spirit.
And finally he told me in one of these long walks together, “I think they are planning my overthrow. Do you think that also, Andubatil?”
“Who could overthrow you, O Imbe-Jaqqa!”
He glared at me most fierce and said, “Give me no courtier talk now! I have enemies in this nation.”
“They are unknown to me.”
“And unknown to me also,” said he darkly. “Yet I feel them crowding about me in the shadows. There are men here hungry for my place. There are men who would cast me down.”
I knew not what to say; I said nothing.
He leaned toward me, his eyes near to mine, and muttered, “It would be a great wrong. They cannot achieve my tasks. They lack the strength within their souls. Do you know what I say, Andubatil? There is strength of body—” and he snatched up a stout log, that lay before us, and snapped it in half as though it were a straw—“and there is strength in here, which is a different strength.” He pounded upon his vault of a chest. “I have that strength, and they do not, and so I am the one Imbe-Jaqqa! And so I must remain!” His eyes grew wilder, his face became slick with sweat. He was moving from a solemn brooding humor to one of mad intensity and rancor, and I felt the huge force of him gathering like a great rock rolling down the side of a mountain, to crush all below. “Look, there is the world, Andubatil! Fouled! Stained! Corrupted! And it is given to me to cleanse it! Not to them is it given, but to Calandola, to go forth into that rotten and debased and unsound world, and make it clean and holy. They do not understand that. They think of power, not of purity; they think of ruling, not of cleansing. And I will not allow them to displace me. An’ I know them, I will break them, as I break these.” Whereupon he dropped to his knees, and seized on all sides the fallen wood of the forest, and bundled it into thick faggots, and broke those faggots with no effort, and scattered the pieces aside. “I will break them!” he cried.
You will say, from my account of his words, that he was mad. And yea, there was madness in him. But also was there a terrible strength, and a force, and a burning heat of conviction, that you could only have known, had you stood close beside him as I stood close beside him.
“Who is it that opposes you, O Lord Imbe-Jaqqa?” I asked.
I pledged him that I would, for how could I say him nay? But I knew no traitors, not then.
The planning of the new war proceeded, and went on endlessly, as if the enemy that Calandola faced was Portugal itself, and not just some little lord of the inland. I think he was held immobile by his own doubts, he who all his life had been a stranger to doubt and hesitance. So still he embellished and enhanced his plans, which always exalted the part of the Kimana Kyeer and his peerless musket, and made the white Jaqqa ever more central to the conquest that was seemingly never to be begun.
I noticed that after these goings off with Calandola for such private discourse, I began to see less of my first friend Kinguri, who now hung back, and sought my company rarely. I remembered the warning of Kakula-banga, that I would have one day to choose between Calandola and Kinguri, between fire and ice, and I bethought me that perhaps I was being maneuvered now toward making that choice. But I could do nothing in that regard except watch, and wait.
Also did I watch, at Calandola’s behest, the ten captains of the nation. But although I now knew them one from the other, and had some idea of each man’s soul, I saw little enmity in them toward Calandola. In the wranglings of the high council, I did perceive that certain of the lords always disposed themselves at once toward any measure that Calandola proposed, and some frequently took issue, and gave their support of times to counter-measures suggested by Kinguri. The ones most solidly with the Imbe-Jaqqa were Kasanje and Kaimba and Bangala, and the adherents to Kinguri they were Kulambo and Ngonga and Kilombo. But that of itself said nothing: for frequently a king’s most loyal and loving advisers are those men who dare to offer him independent judgment, and the traitors are those that feign total submission. Of the other lords, Zimbo and Ntotela were men both old and wise, who did not seem to have the stuff of treason in them, and Ti-Bangala was a mighty and lion-hearted hero, and Machimba-lombo, though full of pride and often trembling like an overtuned harpstring from some hidden rage within him, had so many times on the field of battle risked his own life in the defense of the Imbe-Jaqqa that I could not imagine him false. So it seemed to me that Calandola, like many a Caesar before him, was inventing conspirators and enemies out of moonbeams and cobwebs, for his rule here did seem absolute to me, and maybe only a torment of his soul did require him to contrive such fears. Yet I remembered that the first Caesar had had conspirators indeed about him, and not mere moonbeams; therefore did I keep my eyes open.