Blonde Roots (19 page)

When I scanned the length of Bwana’s ship, I saw Ezinwene hovering on the quarterdeck. She had wrapped her arms around herself, her hair was undone, and she looked bedraggled. Did she have a black eye?

As soon as she spotted me, she ducked down behind the railing.

Hoisting my wrappa up, I let my legs propel me over mulch and twigs, over stones and moss, through ferns and bracken, over mud pools and rocky streams.

My feet quickly sored. They did not complain.

My legs scratched against thorns. They did not complain.

My hands bashed against the bark of trees. They did not complain.

I listened out for the barking of the dogs that would surely come.

THE CANOPY WAS an impenetrable ceiling that blocked out the light; the sun broke through only where a tree had fallen and now lay upon the forest floor being devoured by insects.

Birds of paradise flew high up in the leaves. Blue macaw parrots argued in the raucous voices of angry humans.

Chimpanzees swung from the aerial roots of plants that dangled from the canopy like snakes.

Mossy twigs could have been vipers.

Black leaves could have been scorpions.

Small rocks could have been porcupines.

I scuttled into the undergrowth where vines conspired to choke me.

Whenever I saw the sun, I followed it, hoping it would stop me running around in circles, hoping it would take me away from the river.

I came to an open space where trees had been burned down and which now sprouted a new carpet of soft grass so inviting it took all my willpower not to fling myself upon it.

To rest, just for a moment.

A black vulture with a glossy wingspan of ten feet was swooping down toward the carcass of a jackal.

Turning to my immediate right, I fled the wide-open space, reentering the shade and shadows of the forest.

I returned to its breathing—the crushed twigs and leaves underfoot, the insects, the birds, the falling fruit, the howler monkeys who were making such a din.

Passing the reddish-brown bark of a guava tree, I grabbed a bunch of its fruit, stuffing them down without even peeling their hairy skins.

I had sustenance. I could go on.

Oranges, mangoes, star fruit, berries—I could survive in the rain forest.

I LISTENED FOR BARKS but none came.

I listened all night while I scrambled through the undergrowth.

I listened in the morning when I was sure they would have found me.

I listened in the afternoon when I climbed into the cradle of a thick tree and slept, for a few minutes.

When I awoke it was dawn.

Huge black ants were biting my body raw.

I climbed down painfully from the tree and ran until I found a stream, splashed in and watched the ants drown.

Overnight my legs had swollen to twice their normal size. I wrapped my feet in leaves and hobbled along as best I could.

My soles were butchered.

My sores oozed pus.

My cuts were bleeding.

I HEARD CHILDREN SHOUTING.

Behind some mangrove trees, two thin Ambossan boys were beating two gaunt cows with sticks as they chased them around a paddy field churning up mud in preparation for rice planting.

I crouched and watched. If I approached, they might run off and tell their parents.

I decided to wait until they were finished and follow them home.

I struggled to keep up and out of sight as they larked about, their little voices echoing under the canopy, picking berries as they walked, climbing up a coconut tree, slicing open a coconut with a knife, sharing its milk, singing songs, prodding the cattle, cursing them.

I could smell pottery cooking.

Four older women were firing pots in a dell, adding layers of grasses, branches, leaves to the flames. The boys greeted them.

I must be nearing a settlement.

Impulsively, desperately, I walked into their midst.

Looking up, they stopped what they were doing.

One of the women approached. Her hair was a coxcomb of animal fat, the holes in her earlobes were so stretched I could’ve slipped my hand through them. A brass ring hung from the middle of her nose and she wore a brass torque. Her breasts were stringy and juiceless and a dirty beaded skirt showed off withered thighs.

Her face was inscrutable, but she took my hand, gave me water and fed me a piece of fried fish.

One of the boys poked me with a stick as if I was some strange, possibly dangerous, new animal he’d just discovered.

Slapping him on the leg, the woman then helped me up, and I was assisted into their nearby home—a kraal of stone and loam huts thatched with millet.

Everyone gathered to watch my arrival, but no one said a word.

I was offered a straw mat underneath the spacious branches of a guango tree.

My helper dabbed some ointment onto my wounds, ordered a bowl of rice to be brought to me.

I whispered my thanks, saying I hoped my strength would return soon, then I’d be on my way.

I prayed I would be safe there.

I heard the uncertain pounding of corn near the huts behind me and hens clacking. I heard mats being shaken out by confident, impatient adult hands. A crying baby was shushed. There was the squelch of a cow being milked and the brush of twigs sweeping the floor of the kraal.

No one spoke.

No one said a word.

I should have left but—I was exhausted.

The hot afternoon stretched out its long limbs and yawned itself into evening. I closed my eyes, just for a short while.

I awoke to see Bwana heave his bulk into the kraal.

His expensive wrappa trailed from his waist in a long, mud-drenched twist of cloth like a tail.

A forked rawhide whip dangled from his left hand.

I eased myself onto my feet in the vain hope of running but the helper woman pinned my arms from behind.

Flanking Bwana were two hunters whose naked bodies were painted with white geometric patterns.

One held a spear, the other a machete.

Up close he was a blur of exaggerated features swimming in a film of sweat. His breath was so revolting my eyes watered.

I could touch his fury.

“I will beat you until you can no longer beg for mercy. I will cut off one ear so that you will hear better with the other. I will chop off one foot so you can no longer run. I have been a kind master to you. Now I will be a stern one. Thus will you know the difference.”

He beckoned to the hunters, who ripped off my wrappa, spun me around and tied my hands to the tree with twine.

Warm liquid spurted down my left leg.

—from
The Flame

Dear Reader,

I am not a violent man but one who has, on occasion, to make sure that acts of deterrence and punishment are carried out.

Imagine how I felt when I strode into the compound in the forest two days later and found the wretch cowering with self-pity underneath a tree.

Something inside of me flipped.

Judge me not, Dear Reader, when I confess that I cared little, in that moment, whether the wretch lived or died.

The skin on her spindly back was pale, and when the first lash sliced it open, thick blood trickled down it in thin red rivulets.

What could I do but turn and walk back out of the gates of that compound as the sound of her blood-curdling cries tore through the evening skies?

Night had fallen by the time I returned to the compound to find her on the ground, not moving.

My men stood guard while the local women tended to her.

Something inside of me flipped again.

Tears of rage flooded down my cheeks. After such a good working relationship, it had come to this!

I was forced to admit the old adage—you can take the child out of the jungle, but you cannot take the jungle out of the child.

The humane thing to do would have been to finish her off, but I was not and will never be a murderer.

She was to be nursed back to good health and transported henceforth to Home Sweet Home.

There she would discover the nature of a hard day’s work.

Hereto a word of caution, Dear Reader:

The Stages of Evolution must be respected and the Laws of Nature adhered to.

Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I learned the hard way that one must never ever treat the Caucasoinid breed as we do our own.

Alas, until the next time.

T
he trackers took it in turn to deliver the two hundred and one lashes ordered by my master.

My back was gorged with the kind of deep gashes a finger could slide through.

The knuckles of my vertebrae were exposed underneath, like the parting of white flesh on fish to reveal its skeleton.

The rawhide splintered my delicate little ribs and lacerated the skin on my thighs and behind.

Bwana trusted the women of the forest to look after me until I was ready to be moved. They pressed herbal poultices onto my back, which kept getting reinfected, and the pain felt like my raw wounds were being doused with vinegar.

For the longest while I lay facedown on a mat in a darkened hut wishing I was dead.

That brought back memories.

BWANA HAD DECIDED to banish me to his plantation on New Ambossa, a journey conducted in some style, relatively speaking, aboard a schooner that ferried supplies and Ambossan personnel from the UK to the West Japanese Islands. I shared a cabin with three slave girls, each a personal waiting maid. Their mistresses were three sisters betrothed by their families to marry planters they’d not even met.

The three maids, who catered to the whims of their capricious mistresses, kindly took it in turns to check up on me while I indulged in a lot of sleep.

They were just kids, and so excited about what lay ahead. They had no idea.

I could go anywhere on board, of course, because there was nowhere to run to.

When we sailed up the coast to Mo Bassa Bay, the girls insisted I go up on deck to view the miles of shimmering beaches, the stunning colors of tropical plants and palm trees swaying in a warm breeze inviting me to lazy days of sunning, napping and convalescing.

ONCE WE ARRIVED AT THE BAY, I was put in chains and escorted to a man waiting to collect me and a consignment of rice. He was an old trusty called King Shaka, who lugged the sacks onto his cart and told me to climb in between. Then he hurtled off inland toward the Diablo Mountains, me bouncing about like a floppy rag doll, hair in two damp plaits, each jolt of the bumpy tracks threatening to tear open the fragile new tissues forming across my back.

Bwana’ s plantation was approached via a narrow mountain path with heart-stopping twists and turns; one wrong move would’ve sent us head-over-heels into the plantation valley that lay a dizzy five hundred feet below.

It was cool in the mountains, but as we descended Lucky Valley, the humid air draped itself languorously over the surface of my lungs so that I could barely breathe.

Sugarcane fields stretched for miles, surrounded by cloud-piercing mountains and trees bearing mouth-watering fruits: sour sop, star apple, sweet sop.

Midmorning the wooden wheels of the cart staggered through the plantation gates under a filigree sign cast into an iron arch: HOME SWEET HOME.

To think that I had been on the fast track to freedom.

A dormant rage began to race through me.

My heart leaped from my chest.

What had I done to deserve this?

I decided that as soon as I found a way, I would be gone.

Somewhere. Somehow. Someday. Soon.

This time I’d slit my throat before capture.

At that thought, I picked up my heart, cupped it between my hands and placed it back behind my ribs, where it belonged.

KING SHAKA TOOK a right turn up a pathway lined with logwood trees.

High up to the right was the Great House, Massa Nonso’s crib.

I had watched the boy grow up, seen him claw his way up from the lowly position of privilege, wealth, education and inheritance to become, de facto, master of all he surveyed.

Whereas Bwana and Madama Blessing had been devout disciples of his younger brother Bamwoze, Nonso, the overlooked heir, had issues.

I’d not seen Nonso for many years. Just what kind of young man had the child I’d once known become?

THE AIR WAS SO MUGGY that it was like a layer of grease had been slathered over everything.

The cart lurched from side to side as its wheels mounted deep ridges of solidified mud before coming down on one side or another with a thud.

We lumbered past sugarcane fields where walls of hard, militaristic stalks grew to over twelve feet high. A gang of slaves was advancing on the cane like a phalanx of soldiers, hacking at it with urgent repetitive movements. Male and female—they were all stripped to the waist. The familiar KKK brand was burned onto tanned skin, clothes and hair were bleached blonde and crisped hard by a sun from which there was no respite, and their muscles had ripped and fused into fists of knotted rope straining underneath translucent Europane skin.

I remembered from my time on Roaring River Estate how a strapping First Gang like this chopped up the cane, followed by a weaker Second Gang who cleaned up after them, and bringing up the rear were the youngsters and elders grouped into a Third Gang.

Little Miracle and I used to pass them in the fields when leaving the plantation by carriage.

They were strangers to me.

I remember wondering how they could work so hard, for such long hours, in such heat.

I remember feeling so removed from them—and thankful.

AS WE ROLLED PAST, everyone looked up and, for an instant, froze.