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Thus—^Tambour a!

And Omo and M'dong and the other young slaves don Cesar and don Gregorio had so carefully hand-picked and purchased.

Thus—Pial

And Maria Luz and Graciella and the fine-blooded Negro wenches don Cesar had been guarding as closely as convent blossoms for his young studs.

Thus—Mania Baba and her close watchfulness over the six in her bohio to see that the right seed was planted in the right ground. And then, multiply Mama Baba's establishment by four, right on don Cesar's plantation. In each of

the three other bohios don C6sar had established a wise old woman who knew how to cook stews properly spiced with aphrodisiacs (as if the young studs needed them), and to surround her charges with a suflBciently erotic atmosphere, designed to stimulate those desires which needed so very little stimulation. Wise Mama Baba! She knew that back in Africa a man's desire was heightened by what he heard and saw imder the next bush. She was quite aware that while one couple would perform their functions admirably, they would perform even better when stimulated by another couple beside them and that both couples would be spurred on to even greater efforts by the presence of a third. Privacy was for white lovers who wished to indulge in the nuances of passion. But Mama B aba's charges were not white lovers who quoted poetry, indulged in sentimental serenades or swooned over roses in the moonlight. Mama Baba's charges wasted no time in fanciful preliminaries—^they had a job to do and they did it and, por consiguiente, they enjoyed it.

During their residence with Mama Baba, Tamboura, Omo and M'dong picked up some Spanish. As the girls did not speak Hausa, the Spanish words were necessary to converse with them. In the cane fields they picked up other words, so the language was no longer as strange-sounding and as unintelligible as before. They learned the language of work in the fields and the language of love at night. What more was there for them to know?

The work in the fields was back-breaking and difficult. They swung their sharp machetes at the tall cane and watched it f^ in giant windrows. They gathered it up in their strong arms and piled it in the high-wheeled oxcarts. They drove it to the central, slowly plodding along the palm-shaded roads. They unloaded it to be crushed and went back for more. It was hard work but it strengthened their muscles and toughened them. It added extra pounds to Tamboura and changed his figure from an adolescent youth's to a man's. Although the three didn't know it, they were picked men and they were given, by order of don Cesar, some of the less strenuous work to do, but even that was difficult enough.

Like the other slaves, they were up at dawn with a hasty but abimdant breakfast—food was always plentiful at Mama Baba's, even milk and eggs and meat. Then out into the fields in the cool of the morning and hard at work by the time the sun began to shed its heat. They worked steadily until noon, when the big bell atop the central started tolling. It

was their signal to return to the slave quarters—a signal which all obeyed except those who were working in the central where the boiling vats must be under constant supervision. Then there was a three-hour respite from work in the cool shade of the bohio where they stripped off their sweaty breeches and lay naked on the pile of grass and rags, letting the breeze which came in the windows fan their bodies. The girls were apt to pester them at this time, lying beside them and starting little electric shocks in their bodies by the gentle movement of JSngertips. But Mama Baba was adamant. There was a time for everything and this was a time for rest. If the wenches didn't get enough at night, they would just have to do without it in the daytime. She wasn't going to have any old busybody like Tia Chencha dropping into her bohio and seeing such goings-on—not on her floor in broad daylight. No, senores! And so they rested and the girls pouted alongside of them, hoping that Mama Baba would doze off, as she invariably did. Then the electric touch of the fingers quickly led to other things while Mama Baba snored.

They were back in the fields by mid-aftemoon when the fury of the sun had lost its bite, and they worked steadily until after sundown. At night, don Cesar imitated the custom of the curfew gim in Havana. Either he or don Gregorio applied a taper to the touchhole of a small brass cannon which, polished to look like gold, stood before the front steps at the entrance of the big house. Its welcome boom marked the end of their workday and they were free for a plunge in the river to clean themselves of the sweat and grime that had accumulated on their bodies, then to make their way slowly but contentedly to the welcome of Mama Baba's hut, her steaming stew, and the hovu: of sitting in peace and contentment outside her bohio when she lit the tallow dip inside and opened the door for the yellow light to shine out.

This was the social hour of the day, when the slaves strolled up and down the dusty street between the palm-thatched huts. It was a time for regaling each other with the latest gossip: the news of the big house, culled from that haughty and superior aristocracy of slaves, the house servants; and all the other little scandals and morsels of news in the slave community—^who was flogged today, who was sold and why and where, who had been bought and who was sleeping with whom. Then, when the last straggler had sought his own bohio or the dormitorio, Mama Baba

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shepherded them all into the huts, the candle was snuflfed, breeches and dresses were shucked onto the floor and the night began, a night of splendor and falling stars and crashing planets for Tamboura.

This was their life six days a week. On the seventh, domingo, they rested.

Came then the fateful day when Mama Baba announced to Tamboura that his little Pia was embarazada from his seed and that she was being taken from the bohio to a large building somewhat removed from the slave quarters and presided over by the plantation's mid-wife. Didn't Tamboura know that Pia was embarazada? Hadn't he noticed how her belly was swelling? Ay de mi! Tamboura had done his work well. M'dong and that lazy Mandingo, Omo, had not accomplished their task as yet. By rights, she should send Tamboura down to the men's dormitorio but she would keep him a little longer and if neither Omo nor M'dong produced any results, she would let Tamboura demonstrate his ability with Maria Luz and Graciella (as if he already hadn't). So, Tamboura remained in Mama Baba's bohio sleeping alongside the two couples and eating his heart out for Pia except when Omo or M'dong took pity on him and relinquished Maria Luz or Graciella to him temporarily. Within another month, Mama Baba proudly announced that both Maria Luz and Graciella were in the same condition as Pia and, much as she hated to have her big strong boys leave, they might just as well go down to the dormitorio and give her a much-needed rest from cooking.

"But," Mama Baba advised them with a waggling admonitory forefinger, "just as soon as don Cesar find himself three more pretty girls, you come back to Mama Baba. You all three good boys and made no trouble for Mama Baba. You know your work and you do it fine. And," she added, shaking her head and drawing down the comers of her big mouth, "I sure hope don Gregorio don't send you to that old slattern, Tia Chencha. She don't know how to cook and her bohiol Whew! It stinks!" She was quite inunime to the odor of her own hut.

They were far more homesick in the dormitorio for Mama Baba's bohio than they were for their homes in Africa. Nightly they paid her a visit, and she always had some choice tidbit saved for them, but it was almost more lonely to sit before her hut without the three girls than it was to remain sitting on the long wooden bench with the other men, out-

side the dormitorio. However, they were in the dormitorio less than a month before don Gregorio appeared with the welcome news that they were to return to Mama and when, that night after work, they ran up the street to her hut, they found not only the giggling old lady to welcome them but three new girls—a big Eboe for Omo, who spoke neither Spanish nor Hausa; a little bronze-skinned mestizo for M'dong, who bore a marked resemblance to the owner of the iinca from whom don C6sar had just purchased her, and a child of about fourteen for Tamboura. There was no doubt she Was a virgin for she cried with pain the first night. But she soon forgot all about pain and became even more intoxicated with Tamboura than Pia had been.

And so they came to adjust their lives to the loneliness of nights spent on the dirt floor of the dormitorio or the erotic excitement of nights on the pile of grass and rags in Mama Baba's hut. Once, when Mama Baba was playing hostess to four other slaves and their companions, Tamboura, Omo and M'dong were billeted at Tia Chencha's, where they didn't enjoy themselves as much. She was a sour-faced old crone and, as Mama Baba had said, a miserable cook. Usually the three of them were together, although once Tamboura was sent with two slaves whom he had never been with before and, even if his bedmate left nothing to be desired, he missed the companionship of M'dong and Omo. However, they were seldom separated and don Gregorio came to regard them as a unit— los trillizos mios he called them—his triplets, and he was in the habit of thinking of them together. Maria Luz, Graciella and Pia came to their time and presented don Cesar with a daughter and sons respectively, although the fathers were never able to pick out their own offspring from the litter of black babies that filled the nursery. Not long thereafter, the three girls returned to Mama Baba's and M'dong, Omo and Tamboura were off for a second roimd with them.

It was a happy homecoming for all six of them and Mama Baba made a little celebration out of it, decorating the inside of the hut with tuberoses which added their heavy scent to the already heavy odor. They stayed up late that night, for the next day was Sunday, the blessed domingo, which everyone on the plantation anticipated as a day of rest. In the morning they all donned the special clothing which was used only on Sundays—long white pantaloons, a white shirt and leather sandals for the men, and brightly colored

frocks for the girls. This was the day they all went to Mass; they had not the slightest idea of what the gaudily dressed man in lace and brocade was doing before the flower-decorated altar in the plantation chapel, but they all enjoyed the color and the pageantry of the performance. It was enough just to sit still and look at the chapel, for it was the most beautiful thing that any of them had ever seen, with its gilded scrolls and white paint. It contained an almost life-size statue of a white woman with a pale blue robe whom Tamboura adored with a blind devotion. He was sure that nobody on this earth could ever be as beautiful, and throughout the mass he never took his eyes from the blue-painted plaster eyes. There was also a man, spread out on two pieces of wood with nails through his hands and feet and blood dripping from his woimds, but Tamboura never liked to look at him. He didn't want to be reminded of suffering. Every few days he saw a man strung up and whipped, and each time the whip cut into the man's back it reminded Tamboura of the streaks of fire that had crossed his own back on boaj-d the ship. Don Cesar was neither unjust nor sadistically cruel, but discipline must be maintained and the whip was the most effective method.

No attempt was made to teach the slaves anything about the rehgion they witnessed, although some of the house slaves proudly mumbled their rosaries. Attendance at mass was compulsory once the priest had sprinkled a few drops of water on them. Going regularly was the extent of their religious duties, although, in truth, they did not connect their attendance there in any way with worship. Tamboura's own primitive reUgion lived in the Uttle packet of African earth which he still wore and from which he refused to be separated. His sweat had rotted the plaited palm, and Mama Baba, who recognized that the amulet had some special significance for him, had coaxed it from his neck one night, to enclose it in a scrap of bright cloth which she had scrounged from one of the house servants. A year later, when that had become sodden and colorless, she added another layer of cloth and again, a year later, still another, but inside the windings of the cocoon, Tamboura knew that his spirit still dwelt. He regretted that there were no lions to slay in Cuba, for he remembered the feUow back in his village in Africa with the mat of black hair on his chest which had sprouted after he killed the lion. He would have liked the same adornment, but he was comforted by Mama

Baba's assertion that it would undoubtedly frighten the girls and that he was far handsomer without it.

Tamboura was happy. The work in the fields was hard and it seemed an eternity from dawn to dusk, but he was young, strong and healthy and there were compensations for his work. He enjoyed his clothes, particularly the white ones he wore on Sunday, for they seemed to link him to this new life; he enjoyed the time he spent in Mama Baba's bohio and the companionship of Omo and M'dong.

There was one other thing Tamboura enjoyed, on the rare occasions when it happened. Those were the times when he saw don C6sar. His hatred of all white men strangely enough did not extend to don Cesar. Don Gregorio he saw often and he had a certain amount of respect for the yoimg man. But for some reason which he could not explain to himself, he loved the older man, despite his vow to hate all whites. Perhaps it was because don Cesar was the only white man who had never fingered him as all other white men had done. Whenever he chanced to meet don C6sar the amo always remembered him and spoke to him, calling him by name. At first Tamboura could not answer him because don C^sar always spoke to him in Spanish, but now after hearing more Spanish than Hausa he was able to respond to the master's greetings with words, instead of merely standing stUl and digging his toes into the dirt in his embarrassment.

One morning, while working in the fields, the wooden handle became separated from the blade of his machete, and the foreman sent him back to the storeroom with instructions to the storekeeper to issue him a new one. He strode confidently along the dusty road, scuffing his sandals through the dust and avoiding the deep ruts made by the ox carts.