Over the city of the Snake the sun sank red dry, leaving the Place of
Kings hot in the electric air of magic and world happenings. The people
were still confined to their huts, trembling in the knowledge that for
three days love must be eschewed, no water drawn nor any food cooked with
fire; nor might any man, woman or child leave the precincts of the
compound.
All the night Bakuma crouched in her hut listening in awe to the swish of
the ghosts through the air, to the moans, groans and howls of the wizards
doing battle with them. Tightly did she hold the amulet as she strove to
conceal curiosity regarding the welfare of Zalu Zako; for did her mother
suspect the presence of this evil spirit would she cause Bakuma to take a
decoction of the castor-oil plant in order that the demon might be
expelled; and the more to aid her conquer this unlawful impulse to peep
without did she most persistently recite to herself the fate of the
daughter of MTasa, the foolish Tangulbala whose body had been discovered
impaled upon a tree by the angry spirits of the dead, because she had
rashly ventured forth the third day after the death of the grandfather of
Zalu Zako. Bakuma dared not mention the name of one who had died, for, as
everybody knows, such an impious person runs the risk of summoning the
ghosts to their presence.
The “putting out of the fire” had changed Bakuma’s prospects, had made
Zalu Zako heir-apparent, implying half a hundred responsibilities, the
chief of which was that now he was compelled to choose his official first
wife, she who would be the mother of the “divine” Son of the Snake: an
alteration that excited Bakuma to frantic clutching at the amulet. Would
the charm work or would it not? How to insure that it would be
efficacious? Marufa’s greedy demands worried her. She feared even if she
obtained the goat that he might require something else as well. Anybody
knows how greedy doctors are and how wealthy. He would be sure to increase
the fee, knowing the value of the prize. Bakuma only possessed one really
valuable article, and that was a charm against sterility; but this was the
last thing that she wished to part with as the only possible occurrence
that could ever divorce her from the position of chief wife, once she had
won Zalu Zako, would be failure to provide the male heir. She was
impatient, too, at the delay caused by the three days’ tabu. Time was
important. Soon she would be under the ban of the unclean which entailed
the curtailment of her liberty again, and she dreaded that possibly the
charm might grow stale. The greatest need for speed was MYalu’s suit. As
her father was dead she belonged to his brother. Already MYalu had offered
four tusks of ivory and three oxen for her. Her uncle was lazy, mean, and
greedy. Fortunately he thought that by waiting he could get double that
amount. Yet MYalu might decide to pay the price demanded. Once Zalu Zako
had selected her as his bride, her uncle dared not accept any other man’s
offer, no matter how wealthy he might be; besides, the old man would not
wish to refuse a relationship with the heir to the king-godhood.
Again her cousin was sick. The diagnosis of Yabolo, the wizard, was that
her soul had wandered in sleep down to the river and had been swallowed by
a fish. Yabolo had caught the fish and lured the soul into a tree, but now
he demanded such a big price to restore the errant soul to the girl that
her father, Bakuma’s uncle, would not pay it, so she would surely die;
then they would all have to be exorcised, which inferred a further loss of
relative freedom for another four days. Indeed with all these actual and
possible delays it seemed to Bakuma that some one had made much magic
against her. Unless she knew who he or she was, how could she employ the
same means to annul the terrible effects? And more, how could she obtain
the wherewithal to pay the fees of the best doctors? Life was very
complicated to the daughter of Bakala.
Up on the hill of MFunya MPopo had the magicians been busy all the
afternoon after the “putting out of the fire.” Zalu Zako and the chiefs
also were barred from the sacred enclosure; for being mere laymen they
could not hope to withstand the evil spirits of the dead. Even Bakahenzie
and the inner circle of the cult were compelled to employ the most potent
methods of protection to preserve them from being bewitched or slain
outright.
After Bakahenzie, Marufa, Yabolo and two other master magicians had
released the souls of the dead King by making incisions in the body with a
sacred spear to the thrumming of the drums, the mighty groaning of the
other wizards, and the persistent wailing of the dead man’s wives, the
corpse was borne by twelve doomed slaves to the temple and there interred
with the gouts of blood shed by the prophetic goat, the nail parings and
hair clippings of his lifetime, and his personal effects.
Upon the hill of MFunya MPopo, soon to be a temple and sanctuary, sat Kawa
Kendi beside the New Fire tended by Kingata Mata, facing Zalu Zako, MYalu
and the lay chiefs, while upon his own hill slaves were tearing down his
old hut, erecting a temporary palisade around the quarters of his wives
who were forever forbidden to him, and beginning the building of the new
temple.
As the violet shadows were creeping from one hut to another did Bakahenzie
and his satellites return from the ghoulish offices of the dead. Zalu
Zako, the chiefs and magicians arose to the wild beating of the drums and
the wailing chant of the hereditary troubadour with the five stringed
lyre. With Kingata Mata carrying a brand of the newly lighted sacred fire,
was Kawa Kendi led in procession through the deserted village to his
sacred home.
Under the hard stars set in a dry sapphire, the fire cast yellow flickers
upon the carven features of Kawa Kendi. In the still heat the distant
wailing of the women from the opposite hill drifted into the continuous
throb of the drums, the plaintive wail of the singer, and the hysterical
groaning of the magicians, yelling ferociously ever and again to
intimidate the baulked spirits around the magic circle.
Then was a white goat, previously selected from the flock of Kawa Kendi,
slain by Zalu Zako, disembowelled by Bakahenzie, and the entrails rubbed
upon the brow, the chest and the right arm of the slayer of man, a
ceremony of purification designed to protect the royal executioner by
appeasing the justly angry spirits of the dead; to Marufa were given other
parts of the slain beast to smear likewise upon Zalu Zako, the son; and
Yabolo ran screaming with portions to the quarters of the women of Kawa
Kendi: for must every blood relative be so enchanted lest the vengeful
ghost seek substitute victims.
As a pallid moon rose, as if fearfully, above the deep ultramarine of the
banana fronds, was a magic potion brewed from certain herbs in enchanted
water, with which the King, Zalu Zako, his son, and the King’s wives were
laved. Amid a tempest of screams and drums rose Kawa Kendi purified, to be
driven by Bakahenzie and the wizards back to the hill of his father,
leaving the assembled lay chiefs squatting humbly and in dread of the
spirits abroad in the night. While the procession leaped and twirled,
screamed and groaned to the frantic thrum of the drums through the blue
darkness, the magicians ran and pranced through and around the village,
seeking any blasphemer who dared to look upon sacred things; banging on
hut doors and shaking thatches, the more to terrify the shrinking
inhabitants.
Without the gate of the old enclosure all remained, except Bakahenzie and
the four wizards who encircled Kawa Kendi and Kingata Mata and hustled
them across the clearing. With his back to the dim form of the idol stood
Kawa Kendi as behind it grouped the master magicians. From the base
Bakahenzie took two large gourds and gave them into the keeping of Kingata
Mata.
Came an abrupt cessation of the drums and cries. The wailing of the women
behind the temple died. The tense air pulsed with electricity. A cock
crowed feebly in the village. Then at a rippling splash of the drums and
the sudden screaming of the wizards, they began to push the idol. The base
had already been loosened in the earth by the slaves. The idol began to
totter. Louder screeched the magicians; faster fled the drums. Slowly the
idol leaned and subsided on to the shoulders of Kawa Kendi. Grasping the
mass firmly upon his bent back, he bore the burden out of the enclosure
and down the hill.
Behind his unsteady steps pranced and yelled the doctors with more
prodigious a noise than ever before as they scourged the King’s legs and
arms with cords of fibre. Through the listening village panted the King.
As he gasped slowly up the hill the thrashing was redoubled. But into the
new enclosure the King staggered, let slide the heavy mass into a hole
prepared for the sacred feet and, gleaming blue points of sweat in the
faint moon, let out a hoarse yell, proving to the assembly of magicians
and chiefs that he was powerful enough to bear the burden of the world and
moreover that none could wrest his office from him.
No time was given for the incarnation of a god to recoup from his labours.
The motive principle of the accusation and for the death of the king was
the drought. That only concerned the soul of the tribe in the person of
Bakahenzie. For him and his brothers of the inner cult, while certain
pretensions of power over the supernatural were for the “good of the
people,” the truths of magic and divine functions were inviolable. The
person of Kawa Kendi, heretofore merely one in whom was a potentiality,
became after the purification and “coronation” the very incarnation of the
god. Kawa Kendi had crossed from the comparative safe haven of the
potential into divine activity.
Also there were, as ever, political reasons for the hastening of the
offices of the god. Should the new King-God fail, as his father had done,
to accomplish the duties of the rainmaker, then, as no precedent had ever
been known for the failure of two kings in succession, an enemy might
accuse Bakahenzie of having committed some sacrilege which had displeased
the Unmentionable One. Politics and religion are often inseparable.
Therefore, as soon as Zalu Zako had witnessed the ascent of his father
into the dangerous zone of the gods, was he bidden as the victim apparent,
to produce the sacred rain-making paraphernalia. From the Keeper of the
Fire, Kingata Mata, Zalu Zako received one of the large gourds, which he
deposited at the feet of his father squatting before the sacred fire, and
retired to his allotted place among the other lay chiefs. Only Bakahenzie
and the four of the inner cult were permitted within the enclosure.
Fumbling within the pot Kawa Kendi produced a bundle of twigs tied with
banana fibre, which he unbound and cast into the fire. The herbs
smouldered and sent up a pungent smoke forming a heavy cloud like some
strange blue tree sheltering the form of the idol against the green sky.
Save for the faint wailing of the distant women there was silence, in
which an owl screeched harshly, a good omen. Little flames flickered. The
smoke grew denser, obliterating the figure of the King. The drums began to
mutter, Bakahenzie cried out in a loud voice:
“O great God, the Unmentionable One! let thy powers be made manifest!”
The Keeper of the Fires came forward upon his hands and thrust the other
sacred gourd in front of the King, a deep one containing water, and a wand
made from a sacred tree which had upon the end a crook. To the groaning of
the magicians, the King took from the one gourd two stones of quartz and
granite, the male and the female, and spat upon each one, thus placing
part of his royal body upon them; then did he put them on the ground, and
pouring water, chanted:
“Go forth, male spirit, with my ghost in thy hands!
Go forth, female soul, with my ghost in thy breast!
Make love together in the shade of great Tarum,
Of him whom fear of me hath frozen the breath!”
“Ough! Ough!”
grunted the priests and magicians.
“Go forth, male spirit, with my ghost in thy hand!
Go forth, female soul, with my ghost in thy breast!
Love one another that the crops of our land
May marry as well and be as fruitful as thee!”
“Ough! Ough!”
“Go forth, male spirit, with my ghost in thy hand!
Go forth, female soul, with my ghost in thy breast!
Rise high up to heaven and mount on the black back
Of the bird of the wet wind: poke your hands in his eyes!”
“Ough! Ough!”
Save for the distant wailing, there was the silence of those waiting for a
miracle. In the sky, at the back of the idol, was the paling of dawn.
Suddenly, as if exasperated by the non-obedience of the elements, Kawa
Kendi sprang to his feet, with the magic wand in his right hand, turned
and stared apparently into the face of the idol. For a full two minutes he
stood as if carven, while the doctors and the chiefs moaned dismally.
Around him like a pall still hovered the smoke of the magic fire. From the
village a cock’s challenge was answered from point to point. Then shooting
out his right hand, Kawa Kendi made gestures as if hooking something
invisible and began to scream furiously:
“Thus do I, the One-not-to-be-mentioned,
Drag forth from the belly of heaven
The disobedient One, the lazy One!
The insolent One who sinneth in sleep!
The black-snouted One whose udders are choked!
The womanly One whose nipples are dry!
The sluttish One who refuseth her milk!
The gorbellied One whose voice is a wind!
Come forth, lest I give thee sorrow and pain!
And make thee to weep the bitterest tears!
Come forth, lest I tear out thy black bosom!
Tear out thy guts for a feast unto Tarum!
Come forth, lest I throw off the yoke of the burden
Of the Earth and the Sky upon thy sweating black belly!”
In a slight puff of wind, the smoke, lace-edged with the dawn light,
swayed, seeming to twine about the figure of the King as he stood with the
wand outheld, as if firmly hooked in the guts of the recalcitrant
elements.
Against the rose of the dawn appeared a dark line which increased as the
magicians and chiefs moaned and groaned in sympathy with the furious
efforts of the rainmaker, who threatened and pulled with the magic crook,
so that everybody could see that he was indeed dragging the reluctant
clouds from over the end of the earth. As the dark mass swelled the more
he wrestled and screamed abuse at the dilatory spirit of the rain.
And behold, within half an hour, great black spirits sailed across the
scarlet sunrise and wept exceeding bitterly; while from the village went
up a great shout of praise to the triumphant King still prancing and
cursing to such good effect up on the hill.