1972 - A Story Like the Wind (15 page)

Despite his paradoxical name, The Right Honourable Sun-is-Hot had already helped !#grave;Bamuthi’s people, it was firmly believed, by making rain for them on much needed occasions as well as in the interpretations of strange omens, so that they could correct destructive trends in the pattern of their private and communal life. François had never seen him, but all he had heard filled him with awe. So, like his black companions, he waited in a state of almost unbearable suspense for the return of !#grave;Bamuthi’s messenger.

The messenger was not back an hour before it was made clear that uLangalibalela had not interpreted the event in a way which was going to help François’s friends. It was true that as far as the goat was concerned, uLangalibalela supported their plea. He judged that it was obviously the work of some wandering Bakwena whom he divined had been in the vicinity of Hunter’s Drift on the fatal afternoon. One of their number, he declared, had assumed the shape of a crocodile to snatch a fat goat for food; a disguise to be expected from them since, as their name denotes, Bakwena meant Men of the Crocodile, because the crocodile was their protector and totem. This pronouncement established uLangalibalela’s credentials as nothing else could have done, because everyone in !#grave;Bamuthi’s kraal knew that a party of Bakwena on their way to work on the copper mines in the north had camped at the outspan by the ford on the day of the disaster.

But the lion was quite another matter. The lion, uLangalibalela judged, had acted entirely on his own behalf. The boys, he ruled, had reacted to his presence in the bush most irresponsibly (the word sent a shiver of apprehension through François) for they should have known, as every child should know, that the lion possessed powerful magic of its own. Ever since there had been Bantu men, they had had to beware of the ever-present danger, namely, that all the animals they hunted protected themselves by creating either a desire to sleep, or a decline in the watchfulness of the hunter. The greater and the more dangerous the animal, the greater its power to destroy the concentration of the men pursuing it. In the case of children and little boys this effect could be overwhelming unless, of course, they had been forewarned and equipped with powerful charms—especially, naturally, charms obtained from uLangalibalela.

Either, uLangalibalela continued, !#grave;Bamuthi and the older people in the kraal were to be blamed for not having warned their children sufficiently, or the boys were delinquent in not recognizing instantly, when so great an excitement arose in the dead hour of the afternoon, that it was not a natural emotion at that time. It must, therefore, be the result of a powerful spell which one would expect from an animal so powerful as a lion. Since !#grave;Bamuthi and his fellow-tribesmen had continuously impressed this aspect of concentration in their duty on their boys, and even exhorted François to be aware of it, François, sick at heart, feared the worst for his friends.

The goat, he knew would be forgiven them. But the cow was a far more serious matter. Not only were cows bigger and more valuable but they were also a revered link between the living Matabele and their dead ancestors. François had been taught, at an early age, that the spirit of the ancestors invested the cattle and spoke to their descendants particularly clearly through the sounds that they made in their kraals at night. He had even seen funerals in the bush where the dead owner’s favourite black and white ‘stippled heifer had been brought to stand at the foot of the grave and look on her dead master’s face for the last time so that she could receive his spirit for safe keeping and transmission before the body was finally covered. Therefore he knew that the death of the cow would not be regarded merely as a materialistic loss but as a sacrilege.

It says a great deal, however, for !#grave;Bamuthi’s and indeed for the whole kraal’s instinctive sense of justice, that uLangalibalela’s judgement was not instantly accepted as the final word and the investigation continued by summoning all the boys to an
Indaba
with the
Indunas
. There, !#grave;Bamuthi exhorted them to full and frank confession with the traditional injunction: ‘Let the receptacle of the ear be filled,’ after which everybody was closely examined and patiently heard. Even François was given an opportunity to speak up for his friends which he did badly, so over-awed was he by the solemnity and the importance of the occasion, although all these beautiful old faces, and imposing and experienced grey heads, listened respectfully to his quavering young voice.

The final judgement, however, was never seriously in doubt. One morning after the milking, just before the flocks had to be taken out to graze, all the boys concerned were gathered in !#grave;Bamuthi’s kraal and made to lie naked on their stomachs with their arms stretched out in front of them. The women and girls had been rigidly excluded, and only the men, boys and male children, whimpering with presentiment, remained. !#grave;Bamuthi himself had then produced a whip of fine impala leather and given each of the boys a dozen of the hardest lashes of which he was capable. François was certain that he could not possibly have endured a whipping without a moan or whimper of some sort. Yet to his amazement, as stroke after stroke fell, neither a sound nor a tremor came from the little black boys stretched out so helplessly on the ground. The moment a boy was thrashed he leapt to his feet and stood there, to François’s amazement, upright, without a quiver and dry-eyed, looking straight ahead until all the whipping had been done and there was a line of some twenty little boys and still not a whimper or a tear from one of them.

François thought it one of the most impressive experiences of his life. He was aflame with pride for his companions. He was prouder still when he noticed that there was no sign of bitterness in the expression on their faces but only one of intense relief, if not actual achievement. They stood while !#grave;Bamuthi and the other
Indunas
walked down their line, closely inspecting their eyes and faces and, at the end of the line, putting their heads briefly together to exchange words with one another before sending !#grave;Bamuthi forward to announce loudly, with great satisfaction to all, ‘Not a wet eye among them. A fierce lot of men are they.’

This, François knew then, was the test the boys must have feared even more than the punishment. It was astonishing how their faces shone when they heard the word ‘men’ conferred upon them because they knew as François did that the terrible matter was transcended and done with for ever. Indeed, the women and girls outside must have been waiting for just such a sign because hardly had this final verdict been pronounced than there went up one of the most exciting sounds in François’s experience of life in the bush—the sound of glittering feminine Matabele voices making the quick vibrating sound of praise and welcome at the back of their palates which Europeans inadequately call ululating, but which is as near to the ringing of silver bells as the human voice can get.

It was the final sign that the boys had been restored fully to the grace and love of the clan. It was all very impressive and moving, and left François feeling curiously the odd person out as well as strangely inadequate. When he was older, thinking about it all as he often did, he was not at all certain that he could have carried such heavy responsibility as these friends of his, nor survived in so manly a fashion the feeling of guilt, the ordeal of trial, condemnation, and severe physical punishment by their elders.

François could not but feel glad that he himself had never been tested likewise. He remembered how close to one another this had brought all the kraals, how everyone in them, from the smallest baby to oldest grandmother and
Induna
, presented a great transcendent unity thereafter and how completely punishment had redeemed error. He remembered above all, how on the evening of the same day he had seen the boys comparing their scars as if they were war ribbons and a couple of the older lads nearly coming to blows because one claimed his scars were more pronounced and worthier than those of the other, and, as a result he was not certain that unwittingly the sum of the experience for him had not been the planting of a tiny, secret seed of envy deep within him. It was as if he would have liked not only himself but Lammie and Ouwa to be not the little outpost of estranged lives they appeared to be, but also incorporated into some such firm, definite and passionate a design of living.

The evening of atonement, as François came to think of the end of this day later on, was also memorable in another way. He was asked by !#grave;Bamuthi to take the evening meal with him and his kraal in his principal hut. François did that often. His parents not only had no objection but encouraged it. François loved the occasions for the rewarding and exciting company and wonderful conversation. Besides, there was the food. There were two things !#grave;Bamuthi’s wife and daughters seemed to cook even better than Ousie-Johanna, though he would never have told the old lady so for fear of hurting her sensitive feelings.

They cooked a porridge of maize, or mealie meal, as they called it, far better than anything he got at home. They cooked it until the water was boiled away and it was a firm substance which one could take between one’s fingers, roll expertly into a round ball and swallow with a wooden spoonful of curds and whey, and at some rare moments of perfection also with a lump of fierce black wild honey. At his age, eating with his fingers seemed a far more exciting business than with awkward utensils like knives, forks and spoons that continually tended to slop over and got one into trouble with fastidious spirits like Ousie-Johanna and Koba.

But the greatest of all foods to him was the porridge which he only got at !#grave;Bamuthi’s. It was made out of the millet, the grain the Matabele had brought down with them on their centuries’ long march from the north of Africa, and which their own girls and wives pounded fresh daily in their tall wooden mortars as long as the year’s store of grain lasted. They called it mabela and François was to remember nostalgically that it had an ancient flavour as if it were one of the first foods ever grown by man. This evening there was not only mabela, but tender wood-grilled goat’s meat and some beer made from the same millet as the mabela.

Moreover, François was seated beside !#grave;Bamuthi. !#grave;Bamuthi and the boys had entered the hut first to see the huge, cast-iron pot set on its tripod over a ruby red bed of wooden coals, with a head of fragrant steam standing above it in the blue smoke-filled atmosphere of the hut. Clean wooden spoons, with long handles, had been placed against the iron pot, the amber ladles projecting high above the rim together with the steam and smell emanating from it. They immediately picked up the yellow mats woven from the finest Amanzim-tetse reeds and piled beside the entrance, unrolled them, and sat down in their centre; it was considered rude to sit otherwise in well-bred company.

The moment they were seated the women had come in with earthenware bowls of water for them to wash their hands, and then had unrolled mats for themselves until the hut was so full with people that an outer circle of young eaters had to be formed. The conversation, the wit, the repartee, the jokes and the stories which accompanied the eating were among the most entrancing François had ever encountered. There were times when he was so interested that he forgot to help himself to food and once had to be brought back to the outer world by !#grave;Bamuthi exhorting him: ‘Remember, Little Feather, that you must not forget to eat for two; the one that you are now and the one that you are to be.’

François had complied with such a will that some whey got into his nose and he sneezed violently. He could have done nothing better. Sneezing in the young was a good omen, and immediately all the people in one clear shout of approval called out to him: ‘
Tutuka
, Little Feather!
Tutuka!
’ (Grow, Little Feather, grow!)

But for François the great event of the evening was a discourse of !#grave;Bamuthi’s at the end of the meal. He obviously had in mind the events of that morning but was careful to make no direct reference to them. Indeed, !#grave;Bamuthi was so anxious not to be suspected of reviving the immediate past that he instinctively adopted the device of pretending to be speaking only for François’s benefit. François, his lively imagination heightened to an extraordinary degree by recent events, took in every word. The gist of what !#grave;Bamuthi said that evening was to become for him the definition of a Matabele ‘gentleman’.

‘You see, Little Feather,’

!#grave;Bamuthi had started at his evocative best, ‘I remember when I was your age, sitting in the hut of my father at Osebeni on just such an occasion as this. The words he spoke to me then were the words that his father had spoken to him before; his grandfather before him; and so on back and back to the first man, who had them from Umkulunkulu. My old father warned me, as I say to you now, that a man-child cannot learn soon enough that life is not possible without a heart that knows no fear. Without a heart free of fear a man cannot protect either his cattle or his women and children and the life of the tribe, or that of the nation. He will not know how to speak the truth; how to protect the weak; and overcome beasts of prey and men with black hearts. Such men are fish-hearted and with their hearts of water are strangers from the truth. But, as you will have seen recently, some of the youngest of us are learning to find just such a heart.’

With a great effort of will !#grave;Bamuthi prevented himself from looking at the boys he had in mind but a deep vibration of pride was unmistakable in his authoritative voice. Although the light in the hut was dim and François’s own eyes were smarting with the blue smoke which now filled the atmosphere and hid the thatched roof of reeds above him, it seemed that the words started up such feelings of love in the boys concerned that suddenly their eyes shone like lamps in the shadows beyond him.

!#grave;Bamuthi had gone on from there at great length to expound how only after freedom from fear a man-child could start to learn how to defend himself against the physical dangers of his world, and learn how to endure pain and suffering without complaint. Above all a man-child had to learn to be patient because as Umkulunkulu himself said, ‘patience was an egg which hatched great birds’: even the sun which was bleeding into darkness outside was such an egg. For this reason the best that one Matabele could wish another was that life would allow him to ‘Hamba Gashle’; that is, to go slowly. In the bush all bad things in life came out of haste since haste, too, was a child of fear, and he who hastened would surely stumble and know neither peace nor happiness nor prosperity. He, !#grave;Bamuthi, knew that Europeans had many words for saying what he meant. But the Matabele had only one phrase, ‘Hamba Gashle’. And if one observed this commandment all possible manner of other good things followed inevitably.