MAMEENA—MAMEENA—MAMEENA!
That evening at sunset, just as I was about to trek, for the King had
given me leave to go, and at that time my greatest desire in life
seemed to be to bid good-bye to Zululand and the Zulus—I saw a strange,
beetle-like shape hobbling up the hill towards me, supported by two big
men. It was Zikali.
He passed me without a word, merely making a motion that I was to
follow him, which I did out of curiosity, I suppose, for Heaven knows I
had seen enough of the old wizard to last me for a lifetime. He reached
a flat stone about a hundred yards above my camp, where there was no
bush in which anyone could hide, and sat himself down, pointing to
another stone in front of him, on which I sat myself down. Then the two
men retired out of earshot, and, indeed, of sight, leaving us quite
alone.
“So you are going away, O Macumazana?” he said.
“Yes, I am,” I answered with energy, “who, if I could have had my will,
would have gone away long ago.”
“Yes, yes, I know that; but it would have been a great pity, would it
not? If you had gone, Macumazahn, you would have missed seeing the end
of a strange little story, and you, who love to study the hearts of men
and women, would not have been so wise as you are to-day.”
“No, nor as sad, Zikali. Oh! the death of that woman!” And I put my
hand before my eyes.
“Ah! I understand, Macumazahn; you were always fond of her, were you
not, although your white pride would not suffer you to admit that black
fingers were pulling at your heartstrings? She was a wonderful witch,
was Mameena; and there is this comfort for you—that she pulled at other
heartstrings as well. Masapo’s, for instance; Saduko’s, for instance;
Umbelazi’s, for instance, none of whom got any luck from her
pulling—yes, and even at mine.”
Now, as I did not think it worth while to contradict his nonsense so
far as I was concerned personally, I went off on this latter point.
“If you show affection as you did towards Mameena to-day, Zikali, I
pray my Spirit that you may cherish none for me,” I said.
He shook his great head pityingly as he answered:
“Did you never love a lamb and kill it afterwards when you were hungry,
or when it grew into a ram and butted you, or when it drove away your
other sheep, so that they fell into the hands of thieves? Now, I am
very hungry for the fall of the House of Senzangakona, and the lamb,
Mameena, having grown big, nearly laid me on my back to-day within the
reach of the slayer’s spear. Also, she was hunting my sheep, Saduko,
into an evil net whence he could never have escaped. So, somewhat
against my will, I was driven to tell the truth of that lamb and her
tricks.”
“I daresay,” I exclaimed; “but, at any rate, she is done with, so what
is the use of talking about her?”
“Ah! Macumazahn, she is done with, or so you think, though that is a
strange saying for a white man who believes in much that we do not
know; but at least her work remains, and it has been a great work.
Consider now. Umbelazi and most of the princes, and thousands upon
thousands of the Zulus, whom I, the Dwande, hate, dead, dead!
_Mameena’s work_, Macumazahn! Panda’s hand grown strengthless with
sorrow and his eyes blind with tears. _Mameena’s work_, Macumazahn!
Cetewayo, king in all but name; Cetewayo, who shall bring the House of
Senzangakona to the dust. _Mameena’s work_, Macumazahn! Oh! a mighty
work. Surely she has lived a great and worthy life, and she died a
great and worthy death! And how well she did it! Had you eyes to see
her take the poison which I gave her—a good poison, was it not?—between
her kisses, Macumazahn?”
“I believe it was your work, and not hers,” I blurted out, ignoring his
mocking questions. “You pulled the strings; you were the wind that
caused the grass to bend till the fire caught it and set the town in
flames—the town of your foes.”
“How clever you are, Macumazahn! If your wits grow so sharp, one day
they will cut your throat, as, indeed, they have nearly done several
times already. Yes, yes, I know how to pull strings till the trap
falls, and to blow grass until the flame catches it, and how to puff at
that flame until it burns the House of Kings. And yet this trap would
have fallen without me, only then it might have snared other rats; and
this grass would have caught fire if I had not blown, only then it
might have burnt another House. I did not make these forces,
Macumazahn; I did but guide them towards a great end, for which the
White House [that is, the English] should thank me one day.” He brooded
a while, then went on: “But what need is there to talk to you of these
matters, Macumazahn, seeing that in a time to come you will have your
share in them and see them for yourself? After they are finished, then
we will talk.”
“I do not wish to talk of them,” I answered. “I have said so already.
But for what other purpose did you take the trouble to come here?”
“Oh, to bid you farewell for a little while, Macumazahn. Also to tell
you that Panda, or rather Cetewayo, for now Panda is but his Voice,
since the Head must go where the Feet carry it, has spared Saduko at
the prayer of Nandie and banished him from the land, giving him his
cattle and any people who care to go with him to wherever he may choose
to live from henceforth. At least, Cetewayo says it was at Nandie’s
prayer, and at mine and yours, but what he means is that, after all
that has happened, he thought it wise that Saduko should die of
himself.”
“Do you mean that he should kill himself, Zikali?”
“No, no; I mean that his own _idhlozi_, his Spirit, should be left to
kill him, which it will do in time. You see, Macumazahn, Saduko is now
living with a ghost, which he calls the ghost of Umbelazi, whom he
betrayed.”
“Is that your way of saying he is mad, Zikali?”
“Oh, yes, he lives with a ghost, or the ghost lives in him, or he is
mad—call it which you will. The mad have a way of living with ghosts,
and ghosts have a way of sharing their food with the mad. Now you
understand everything, do you not?”
“Of course,” I answered; “it is as plain as the sun.”
“Oh! did I not say you were clever, Macumazahn, you who know where
madness ends and ghosts begin, and why they are just the same thing?
Well, the sun is no longer plain. Look, it has sunk; and you would be
on your road who wish to be far from Nodwengu before morning. You will
pass the plain of Endondakusuka, will you not, and cross the Tugela by
the drift? Have a look round, Macumazahn, and see if you can recognise
any old friends. Umbezi, the knave and traitor, for instance; or some
of the princes. If so, I should like to send them a message. What! You
cannot wait? Well, then, here is a little present for you, some of my
own work. Open it when it is light again, Macumazahn; it may serve to
remind you of the strange little tale of Mameena with the Heart of
Fire. I wonder where she is now? Sometimes, sometimes—” And he rolled
his great eyes about him and sniffed at the air like a hound. “Farewell
till we meet again. Farewell, Macumazahn. Oh! if you had only run away
with Mameena, how different things might have been to-day!”
I jumped up and fled from that terrible old dwarf, whom I verily
believe— No; where is the good of my saying what I believe? I fled from
him, leaving him seated on the stone in the shadows, and as I fled, out
of the darkness behind me there arose the sound of his loud and eerie
laughter.
Next morning I opened the packet which he had given me, after wondering
once or twice whether I should not thrust it down an ant-bear hole as
it was. But this, somehow, I could not find the heart to do, though now
I wish I had. Inside, cut from the black core of the _umzimbiti_ wood,
with just a little of the white sap left on it to mark the eyes, teeth
and nails, was a likeness of Mameena. Of course, it was rudely
executed, but it was—or rather is, for I have it still—a wonderfully
good portrait of her, for whether Zikali was or was not a wizard, he
was certainly a good artist. There she stands, her body a little bent,
her arms outstretched, her head held forward with the lips parted, just
as though she were about to embrace somebody, and in one of her hands,
cut also from the white sap of the _umzimbiti_, she grasps a human
heart—Saduko’s, I presume, or perhaps Umbelazi’s.
Nor was this all, for the figure was wrapped in a woman’s hair, which I
knew at once for that of Mameena, this hair being held in place by the
necklet of big blue beads she used to wear about her throat.
Some five years had gone by, during which many things had happened to
me that need not be recorded here, when one day I found myself in a
rather remote part of the Umvoti district of Natal, some miles to the
east of a mountain called the Eland’s Kopje, whither I had gone to
carry out a big deal in mealies, over which, by the way, I lost a good
bit of money. That has always been my fate when I plunged into
commercial ventures.
One night my wagons, which were overloaded with these confounded
weevilly mealies, got stuck in the drift of a small tributary of the
Tugela that most inopportunely had come down in flood. Just as darkness
fell I managed to get them up the bank in the midst of a pelting rain
that soaked me to the bone. There seemed to be no prospect of lighting
a fire or of obtaining any decent food, so I was about to go to bed
supperless when a flash of lightning showed me a large kraal situated
upon a hillside about half a mile away, and an idea entered my mind.
“Who is the headman of that kraal?” I asked of one of the Kafirs who
had collected round us in our trouble, as such idle fellows always do.
“Tshoza, _Inkoosi_,” answered the man.
“Tshoza! Tshoza!” I said, for the name seemed familiar to me. “Who is
Tshoza?”
“_Ikona_ [I don’t know], _Inkoosi_. He came from Zululand some years
ago with Saduko the Mad.”
Then, of course, I remembered at once, and my mind flew back to the
night when old Tshoza, the brother of Matiwane, Saduko’s father, had
cut out the cattle of the Bangu and we had fought the battle in the
pass.
“Oh!” I said, “is it so? Then lead me to Tshoza, and I will give you a
‘Scotchman.’” (That is, a two-shilling piece, so called because some
enterprising emigrant from Scotland passed off a vast number of them
among the simple natives of Natal as substitutes for half-crowns.)
Tempted by this liberal offer—and it was very liberal, because I was
anxious to get to Tshoza’s kraal before its inhabitants went to bed—the
meditative Kafir consented to guide me by a dark and devious path that
ran through bush and dripping fields of corn. At length we arrived—for
if the kraal was only half a mile away, the path to it covered fully
two miles—and glad enough was I when we had waded the last stream and
found ourselves at its gate.
In response to the usual inquiries, conducted amid a chorus of yapping
dogs, I was informed that Tshoza did not live there, but somewhere
else; that he was too old to see anyone; that he had gone to sleep and
could not be disturbed; that he was dead and had been buried last week,
and so forth.
“Look here, my friend,” I said at last to the fellow who was telling me
all these lies, “you go to Tshoza in his grave and say to him that if
he does not come out alive instantly, Macumazahn will deal with his
cattle as once he dealt with those of Bangu.”
Impressed with the strangeness of this message, the man departed, and
presently, in the dim light of the rain-washed moon, I perceived a
little old man running towards me; for Tshoza, who was pretty ancient
at the beginning of this history, had not been made younger by a severe
wound at the battle of the Tugela and many other troubles.
“Macumazahn,” he said, “is that really you? Why, I heard that you were
dead long ago; yes, and sacrificed an ox for the welfare of your
Spirit.”
“And ate it afterwards, I’ll be bound,” I answered.
“Oh! it must be you,” he went on, “who cannot be deceived, for it is
true we ate that ox, combining the sacrifice to your Spirit with a
feast; for why should anything be wasted when one is poor? Yes, yes, it
must be you, for who else would come creeping about a man’s kraal at
night, except the Watcher-by-Night? Enter, Macumazahn, and be welcome.”
So I entered and ate a good meal while we talked over old times.
“And now, where is Saduko?” I asked suddenly as I lit my pipe.
“Saduko?” he answered, his face changing as he spoke. “Oh! of course he
is here. You know I came away with him from Zululand. Why? Well, to
tell the truth, because after the part we had played—against _my_ will,
Macumazahn—at the battle of Endondakusuka, I thought it safer to be
away from a country where those who have worn their karosses inside out
find many enemies and few friends.”
“Quite so,” I said. “But about Saduko?”
“Oh, I told you, did I not? He is in the next hut, and dying!”
“Dying! What of, Tshoza?”
“I don’t know,” he answered mysteriously; “but I think he must be
bewitched. For a long while, a year or more, he has eaten little and
cannot bear to be alone in the dark; indeed, ever since he left
Zululand he has been very strange and moody.”
Now I remembered what old Zikali had said to me years before to the
effect that Saduko was living with a ghost which would kill him.
“Does he think much about Umbelazi, Tshoza?” I asked.
“O Macumazana, he thinks of nothing else; the Spirit of Umbelazi is in
him day and night.”
“Indeed,” I said. “Can I see him?”
“I don’t know, Macumazahn. I will go and ask the lady Nandie at once,
for, if you can, I believe there is no time to lose.” And he left the
hut.
Ten minutes later he returned with a woman, Nandie the Sweet herself,
the same quiet, dignified Nandie whom I used to know, only now somewhat
worn with trouble and looking older than her years.
“Greeting, Macumazahn,” she said. “I am pleased to see you, although it
is strange, very strange, that you should come here just at this time.
Saduko is leaving us—on a long journey, Macumazahn.”
I answered that I had heard so with grief, and wondered whether he
would like to see me.
“Yes, very much, Macumazahn; only be prepared to find him different
from the Saduko whom you knew. Be pleased to follow me.”
So we went out of Tshoza’s hut, across a courtyard to another large
hut, which we entered. It was lit with a good lamp of European make;
also a bright fire burned upon the hearth, so that the place was as
light as day. At the side of the hut a man lay upon some blankets,
watched by a woman. His eyes were covered with his hand, and he was
moaning:
“Drive him away! Drive him away! Cannot he suffer me to die in peace?”
“Would you drive away your old friend, Macumazahn, Saduko?” asked
Nandie very gently, “Macumazahn, who has come from far to see you?”
He sat up, and, the blankets falling off him, showed me that he was
nothing but a living skeleton. Oh! how changed from that lithe and
handsome chief whom I used to know. Moreover, his lips quivered and his
eyes were full of terrors.
“Is it really you, Macumazahn?” he said in a weak voice. “Come, then,
and stand quite close to me, so that _he_ may not get between us,” and
he stretched out his bony hand.
I took the hand; it was icy cold.
“Yes, yes, it is I, Saduko,” I said in a cheerful voice; “and there is
no man to get between us; only the lady Nandie, your wife, and myself
are in the hut; she who watched you has gone.”
“Oh, no, Macumazahn, there is another in the hut whom you cannot see.
There he stands,” and he pointed towards the hearth. “Look! The spear
is through him and his plume lies on the ground!”
“Through whom, Saduko?”
“Whom? Why, the Prince Umbelazi, whom I betrayed for Mameena’s sake.”
“Why do you talk wind, Saduko?” I asked. “Years ago I saw
_Indhlovu-ene-Sihlonti_ die.”
“Die, Macumazahn! We do not die; it is only our flesh that dies. Yes,
yes, I have learned that since we parted. Do you not remember his last
words: ‘I will haunt you while you live, and when you cease to live,
ah! then we shall meet again’? Oh! from that hour to this he _has_
haunted me, Macumazahn—he and the others; and now, now we are about to
meet as he promised.”
Then once more he hid his eyes and groaned.
“He is mad,” I whispered to Nandie.
“Perhaps. Who knows?” she answered, shaking her head.
Saduko uncovered his eyes.
“Make ‘the-thing-that-burns’ brighter,” he gasped, “for I do not
perceive him so clearly when it is bright. Oh! Macumazahn, he is
looking at you and whispering. To whom is he whispering? I see! to
Mameena, who also looks at you and smiles. They are talking. Be silent.
I must listen.”
Now, I began to wish that I were out of that hut, for really a little
of this uncanny business went a long way. Indeed, I suggested going,
but Nandie would not allow it.
“Stay with me till the end,” she muttered. So I had to stay, wondering
what Saduko heard Umbelazi whispering to Mameena, and on which side of
me he saw her standing.
He began to wander in his mind.
“That was a clever pit you dug for Bangu, Macumazahn; but you would not
take your share of the cattle, so the blood of the Amakoba is not on
your head. Ah! what a fight was that which the Amawombe made at
Endondakusuka. You were with them, you remember, Macumazahn; and why
was I not at your side? Oh! then we would have swept away the _Usutu_
as the wind sweeps ashes. Why was I not at your side to share the
glory? I remember now—because of the Daughter of Storm. She betrayed me
for Umbelazi, and I betrayed Umbelazi for her; and now he haunts me,
whose greatness I brought to the dust; and the _Usutu_ wolf, Cetewayo,
curls himself up in his form and grows fat on his food. And—and,
Macumazahn, it has all been done in vain, for Mameena hates me. Yes, I
can read it in her eyes. She mocks and hates me worse in death than she
did in life, and she says that—that it was not all her fault—because
she loves—because she loves—”
A look of bewilderment came upon his face—his poor, tormented face;
then suddenly Saduko threw his arms wide, and sobbed in an
ever-weakening voice:
“All—all done in vain! Oh! _Mameena, Ma—mee—na, Ma—meena!_” and fell
back dead.
“Saduko has gone away,” said Nandie, as she drew a blanket over his
face. “But I wonder,” she added with a little hysterical smile, “oh!
how I wonder who it was the Spirit of Mameena told him that she
loved—Mameena, who was born without a heart?”
I made no answer, for at that moment I heard a very curious sound,
which seemed to me to proceed from somewhere above the hut. Of what did
it remind me? Ah! I knew. It was like the sound of the dreadful
laughter of Zikali, Opener-of-Roads—Zikali, the
“Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born.”
Doubtless, however, it was only the cry of some storm-driven night
bird. Or perhaps it was an hyena that laughed—an hyena that scented
death.