The Paramount Chief had many wives. A newly arrived missionary,
determined to convert the great man, opened his attack by asking why he
had so many wives. The answer was disconcerting: "For political
reasons." This matter of the Chief's was a rock upon which all
missionary endeavours foundered. The Chief must discard all his wives,
save one. The Chief was determined to keep them all.
To another reformer he said: "Leave me alone. Do what you will with the
children and young people. Leave me to myself. You have shown me that my
beliefs are foolish. You have not proved to me that yours are any
wiser."
A third good man, about to transfer his activities to other fields,
offered to present the Chief with his bright brass bedstead provided he
became a Christian.
"Let me see it," said the old heathen. The bed was produced. "I have a
better one. I paid a trader ten head of cattle for it." So no bargain
was struck.
I think there must have been some grounds for saying that he clung to
his many wives "for political reasons," because they, or at any rate
some of them, were more trouble to the Chief than they were perhaps
worth.
There was Mavevana, for instance, who was large and fat and therefore
very beautiful from a native point of view, but whose tongue was a
constant source of strife without and within the harem.
I should explain that each wife had her own group of huts. These
groups--there were seventeen of them--were surrounded by a high reed
fence, strengthened by sharply-pointed poles. The harem was a village
within a village. Outside the fence the common people lived.
Each woman had her slaves. A strong guard of fully-armed men patrolled
the harem at night. Old Sikoro, the keeper of the harem, was about day
and night.
Then there was Mironda. Poor Mironda, who later paid, as women do, be
they white, black or yellow.
Mironda was rather nearer to yellow than to black. I think she had some
European blood in her. One does not often see a native woman with hazel
eyes nor with freckles; and besides, she was very tall and slim.
As a special mark of his good will the Chief once took me through his
harem. That is how I first came to see Mironda.
The woman aroused my interest. When we entered her compound she glared
at her lord and master as a caged beast does upon free men. She did not
for a moment take her eyes off him. She never so much as glanced in my
direction. Her eyes caught the light once and reflected it as do those
of a cat, a tiger. Yes, that was it, she put me in mind of a caged
tiger.
She clasped her hands continuously during our short stay. The click,
click, click of her ivory bangles drew my attention to her hands. Her
hands and her wrists were very small, her finger nails long and sharp. I
noticed her hands particularly because she had solid ivory bangles on
each arm from wrist to elbow. These bangles were very small and, as they
were solid, could only pass over very small hands.
I saw this curious woman twice only: the second time was some years
later.
As I have said before, old Sikoro was the keeper of the harem. I hated
him instinctively the moment I first set eyes on him: I hated him more
when I heard the whole story.
Sikoro had only one eye. In his youth he had had smallpox, which pitted
his face remorselessly and destroyed one eye. He wore a soldier's red
tunic, the colour dimmed with age and dirt. Perched on his head was a
tall cone-shaped fur cap which he plucked off whenever he met a
superior. He was always plucking it off, not because he was really
inferior in the black man's social scale to all he so saluted; on the
contrary, in view of his office, he was an important person; he was over
polite because he chose to appear humble.
The man knew his power well: his occupation gave him the ear of the
Chief. All realized this and were ready to show him the respect which
was justly his due: Sikoro was before them in showing respect, which was
unnecessary. Men did not understand this humbleness of his and feared
him. Sikoro loved their fear.
The woman, Mironda, alone had no fear of him. She despised the man and
did not try to hide it. She often refused to see him. It was only utter
boredom that induced her to admit him to her compound at all. The truth
is he was a great gossip and was the link between the harem and the
outer world. Sikoro knew everything, was an authority on everything, and
the first to hear all news.
Now this is what befell Mironda. I don't blame her; no one could. I
consider her a victim of circumstances. The old, old story. A young and
impulsive woman, an elderly, much married lord, a well-favoured young
man. The long and the short of it is that Mironda was in the end
divorced; but the manner of that divorce enrages me whenever I think of
it.
One morning she was sitting on a mat in the shade thrown by the
overhanging thatch of her hut. She was singing in a low voice and
threading beads picked with the point of her needle from a wooden bowl
held by a small girl slave.
The father of Mbututu
Was killed on the sand bank
Wei ye-i, wei i-ye,
Wei ye-i, wei i-ye,
The father of Mbututu
Was killed on the sand bank
Wei ye-i, etc.
The monotonous chant in a minor key was interrupted by someone
scratching on the reed fence.
"Go," said Mironda to the child, "see who it is."
The child put down the bowl of beads and ran to the fold in the fence
which formed the gate. She looked out. A glance was sufficient. She ran
back past her mistress and into a far hut, muttering as she went
"Ma--we! Ma--we! It is Sikoro!"
Mironda moved uneasily on her mat, then fell to fumbling nervously with
the brightly-dyed bark patterns which ornamented it.
Sikoro slouched into the compound, removing his fur cap as he came. Just
inside he knelt down and sat on his heels, placing his cap on the ground
beside him. He arranged his voluminous skirts carefully round him and
then clapped his hands very respectfully.
Mironda did not look at him. After a short interval Sikoro broke the
silence.
"Good day to you, Morena."
"Yes, good day."
"And has the Chief's wife slept well?"
"She has."
"And the slaves of her house, have they slept well?"
"They have."
"And is the Chief's wife pleased with the new shawl chosen by Sikoro as
a gift from the Chief to his wife?"
"It is all right."
Sikoro relapsed into silence and Mironda did not speak. Presently the
man got up and, in a crouching attitude, shuffled nearer and sat down as
close as possible to the edge of the woman's mat without actually
touching it. To touch the mat of the Chief's wife would have been an
offence, to come so near to it was studied insolence.
Mironda looked up angrily, met the bloodshot eye of Sikoro and opened
her mouth as if to speak. Instead of doing so, however, she looked away
and examined the work upon which she had been engaged when the man
arrived.
Sikoro grinned and, detaching from his belt a small gourd, emptied some
snuff into the palm of his hand.
This was a deliberate insult to the Chief's wife and conclusive evidence
to her, if indeed she needed it, that she might now expect the worst.
Sikoro blew his nose unpleasantly and loudly sniffed up the snuff from
the palm of his hand. Then, clearing his throat, he said: "Someone has
stolen one of the Chief's heifers."
"Eh."
"A yellow one which the Chief might well have sold to a Jew."
"So."
"It is no great loss to the Chief, as the heifer is barren."
Mironda's eyes blazed with fury; she had no child.
"The thief has been caught."
"What will be done with him?"
Ah! he had aroused her interest at last. Sikoro smiled pleasantly as he
said: "He will, of course, be strangled."
"Will not the Missionaries prevent it?"
"The Missionaries? They do not know and may not know for many days, and
anyhow, what could they do?"
"The white man's Government will prevent the killing of people."
"No doubt the white man's Government will do many foolish things, but
the Magistrate has not yet come."
"He is coming soon."
"But they strangle Miyobo to-day, now."
No name had been mentioned before: indeed it was not necessary even now;
Mironda had known Sikoro's errand from the manner of entry into her
compound.
The abominable man leant forward and repeated: "Now, now, now," then put
his hand to his ear. The woman listened, too, and heard distinctly the
shriek and gurgle of a dying man: then silence save for the pattering of
slaves' feet and their shrill inquiries and conjectures. Miyobo had been
strangled just outside the compound in which the woman sat.
Mironda looked at Sikoro with wide eyes of fear. He, of course, enjoyed
the situation. Did he not hate this woman for her overbearing pride? Had
not she and Miyobo fooled him more than once, and had it not been the
merest chance which had delivered them into his hand?
His one eye contracted with merriment, a cruel smile lifted his lip and
disclosed a row of sharply-filed teeth--the tribal mark of a subject
race; he was a freed slave.
Pointing to the bangles on the woman's arm, Sikoro asked: "What are you
doing with the Chief's ivory?"
One by one Mironda took her bangles off and placed them on the mat
before her.
"Is not that the Chief's new shawl?"
The wretched woman took the garment from her shoulders and laid it on
the mat beside the bangles.
"And why," said Sikoro, "do you sit on the Chief's mat?"
Mironda slowly rose to her feet.
"And is not this the Chief's hut?"
This was the last word, the full sentence of divorce; she, now a common
woman, had no right to stand where she stood. She looked hastily round
the compound and then walked silently to the gate and so out.
The man gathered up the ivory bangles and tied them in the shawl. He
rolled up the mat upon which Mironda had been sitting and tucked it
under his arm. Then, spitting contemptuously on the ground, he followed.
* * * * *
Some years later I saw Mironda, clothed in the rags of a slave woman,
begging food at the Mission station.
When the wife of the Chief is divorced, her fall is gradual. For a space
she becomes the wife of a head man, who presently passes her on to
someone lower in the social scale, and so from hand to hand she passes
until she becomes the consort of a slave.
In Mironda's case she first became the wife of Sikoro; surely a no more
cruel punishment could have been devised for her.