Drum (13 page)

"He, he!" She shrieked louder than she had over M'dong. "A Mandingo! I can tell it to look at you. Ay de mi! We are blessed this night. You Mandingo boys sure are scarce."

"Yes, I am a Mandingo," Omo answered proudly.

"Whee, makes me wish I was young again." Mama Baba gave Omo a nudge with her elbow which nearly threw him off balance. "I guess I'm not too old to enjoy it, but I've got something you'd like better than fat old Mama Baba. Graciella, come here, you lucky girl, and see what don Cesar bought for you. Mandingos are scarce—we have only eight on the whole finca and now you have one for your own. How the other girls will envy you. Mandingos are muy hombre — muy, muy hombre."

A smaller girl, well rounded, with a saucy grin which showed the white crescent of her teeth, stepped out. She did not wait for Mama Baba to put her hand in that of Omo's. She flung her arms around his neck and touched his lips to hers. He did not respond, for it was something new to him. -

"Besame!" she cried out in Spanish. "Ay, Mama, he does not kiss me back."

"Of course not. Well-brought-up African boys do not know

how to kiss—only the riffraff have learned it at the white settlements. But you can teach him, Graciella."

Tamboura was left alone as Omo and his girl joined M'dong and Maria Luz.

Mama Baba drew him over into the light.

"You are not Mandingo, boy, but you are even finer than Mandingo. Por Diosf You are Royal Hausa. Ay de mi! What a pretty boy you are. And young! Now I am glad I saved Pia for you." She left him standing in the light and went to the bench and took the hand of the last giri. "Pia, come, see what don Cesar bought for you. Look!"

She led the giri into the light coming through the open door, and as Tamboura looked at her he was filled with desire. She was small, light-boned and slender, brown instead of black, and her hair, instead of being a close skullcap of wool, was a finger-length long and tied all over her head with varicolored threads. Her breasts under the shapeless gown were well rounded and their nipples strained against the thin fabric. Her lips were delicate, her teeth small and white, and when she looked up at him her eyes were like two dark pools of mystery.

"What is your name?" she asked in Spanish.

Mama Baba interpreted for her. "She speaks only Spanish, this little one, but you will learn it quickly."

"I am Tamboura." His throat was dry but he found the words to answer.

•Tamboura?" she repeated. "Tamboura? Ay, entiendo. Tamhor! Me llamo Pia y ahora voy a Wear el tambor."

"She say your name is the Spanish name for drum. She say that tonight she is going to play on the drum."

"Si, Tambor," she nodded, still smiling, and came closer, pressing her body tight against his, while his hands came to rest on the firm curves of her hips. He smelled a strange delicious odor, for she had rubbed her skin with the leaves of the lemon verbena—the reina luisa. It was an intoxicating scent and it combined with her nearness to arouse him. When she stepped back. Mama Baba took one look at Tamboura and threw her hands high over her head with a shriek of delight.

"Put on your breeches, boy, or every hot-blooded bitch on the iinca will be fighting over you." She let her arms fall and turned to enter the hut, her monstrous body still heaving with laughter. "Inside all of you. I've kept the pot

steaming since this afternoon, for don Gregorio said he would return with three boys for my girls. Come in."

The hut was larger inside that Tamboura had anticipated, but there was none of the clean-swept simplicity that had marked the huts of his village. Here all was disorder, chaos and dirt. Long festoons of cobwebs hung from the smoke-blackened ragged thatch of the roof. The uneven floor of hard-packed dirt was littered with scraps of decaying food, crumbles of dried palm from the roof and the discards of daily living which remained where they had fallen. One corner held a low shelf of hard-baked mud with a sunken hole, reddened by dying embers, on which an iron pot simmered. Along one wall the floor was strewn with matted grass and rags. The open door and two small windows did little to dispel the odor of human bodies which had accumulated from the countless couples who had met, twisted, slavered and copulated on these makeshift beds. Yet the strong musk which permeated the hut, although at first offensive to nostrils which had been accustomed to the perfumed freshness of the tropic night, was strangely stimulating. It carried a scent of women that was strongly aphrodisiac to the three men.

Mama Baba pointed to the pile of grass and rags, "This for you lovers. I sleep over here." She pointed to a low wooden framework in the other corner. "These girls are ignorant, they speak only Spanish and you will learn it quickly but tonight you will have no need for words. Come eat, for you will need your strength and I know you are anxious that I put out the candle. Ay de mi! I know what the weeks on shipboard are like for many years ago I traveled the Middle Passage myself. And I know what it's like in old don Solano's slave barracoons; that's where don Cesar's papa bought me. But now you can forget all that for you are here with Mama Baba and your pretty girls. This is your home and tonight you will be happy— muy contento." She ladled the stew into wooden bowls and passed them to the men. "Tonight you will have no need of sleep for sleep is only for the old like me. Tomorrow at dawn when they lead you out to the cane fields, you will work willingly for you know you have your girls and Mama Baba to come home to."

It was a night of glory and wonder for Tamboura, and his blood boiled through his veins like liquid fire. It was a night of violent movement and quick spasms, of searching

lips and seeking hands. It was all he had hoped for and dreamed about. It was the greatest night of his life and its bliss did not diminish until the first fingers of the sun strayed through the windows to touch the six bodies on the tumbled pile of grass and rags.

chapter x

All Cuba was in a turmoil and many Cubanos were worried. Although a state of turmoil was quite acceptable and even enjoyed there, worry was not a natural state for Cubanos. They much preferred to live gaily and happily with no great concern for mafiana, which, after all, never really comes. But now there were prospects of a most unpleasant and unprofitable mafiana which would surely engulf them all in absolute ruin. Madre de Dios! Que catdstrofe!

A little black cloud had appeared in the sky over England (may God condemn the stiff-necked heretics to eternal damnation!) and it had spread over the sea until it had reached the northern part of the yanqui United States (another country of heretics!). Like the little black cloud that presaged a hurricane, it could mean the end of everything in Cuba. It was all contained in one simple word—abolition! An end to slavery! As if the stupid money-pinching heretics cared about slavery—putting their own pale-as-milk children to work in their mills and factories and then condemning the God-ordained use of blacks on plantations. Why concern themselves about the malditos negros? Dios sabe, they were not human—not half as human as the poor little white children who toiled away to make money for those same English who now wept, wailed and wrung their thin white hands over the conditions of the slaves. Everyone admitted that the Negroes were much better off cutting cane in Cuba than cutting off the heads of their brethren in Africa and gobbling them up for dinner.

Caramba! The very economy of Cuba was based on slaves. Take them away and where would Cuba be? Who would raise sugar cane on the big fincas? Who would raise cattle on the big estancias? What would the rest of the world do for tobacco? For rum? Stop the traffic in slaves and all Cuba would be overgrown with weeds in one generation. Ay! That was the worry! That was the cause of the turmoil. Stop the

traffic in slaves? Where then would be their stately palaces in Havana; the sumptuous jewels for their mistresses and the less sumptuous ones for their wives; the gUttering volantes to ride in; the lavish balls and entertainments; the life of ease and comfort on the far-stretching plantations? What a prospectl Ay, por Dios! What would happen to them all without slaves?

But surely the rich slave traders in Bristol and Liverpool would put a stop to this nonsense. And surely the rich plantation owners in los Estados Unidos who needed slaves for their cotton would outweigh the opinions of their pinched northern brethren. Ay! The world was going crazy— absolutamente loco. Abolicion? Pah! It would never come. Light another cigar and forget about it.

But the rich fumes of Havana tobacco did not solve the problem. It just might happen. Claro que si! The movement was gaining ground all over the world. Altogether too many people in too many places were talking about it, not only in England and the United States but in France, in Holland, in Denmark, and like the little black cloud in the sky to which nobody pays any attention, the hiuricane might be on its way. There was so much talk, so much pounding of fists on polished mahogany dining tables and buttonholing of men in the streets, so many quickly spoken Spanish words being spilled, and yet nobody was doing anything about it. In the meantime the price of slaves was going up with every ^p-ment from Africa. The prices the planters were paying at don Solano's were fantastic. And nothing was being done about it. Not a thing.

Everyone looked to don Cesar Montalvo to do something, and he finally did by inviting all the biggest planters on the island to a banquet extraordinario at the Finca Montalvo. Everyone came, for everyone in Cuba paid attention when don Cesar Montalvo spoke. From the cattle estancias of Camaguey to the sugar fincas of Santa Clara to the tobacco fields of Pinar del Rio, there was no more respected name in all Cuba. He was the richest of all the Cuban planters, a Creole of distinguished ancestry who was even accepted by the Spanish. Let the abolicionistas do their damnedest, don Cesar would have a solution.

It certainly wasn't a matter of buying up more slaves than they needed and raising the prices sky-high by bidding against each other. Oh no! Don Cesar pointed out the fallacy of that. Slaves couldn't be packed away on a shelf and held in

reserve. They grew old just like human beings. You couldn't store them like so many bottles of wine and know that they would improve with age. Don Cesar was most astute and he gave them an entirely new notion of what they might do. Although his explanation had a certain amoimt of Andalusian circumlocution, it was sound and logical.

When Cuba was first settled by the Spaniards, there were neither horses nor cattle on the island. Verdad? And so all the horses and cattle, all the hogs and mules, all the donkeys and dogs and cats and doves and pigeons and hens and every other living thing that a man needed must be brought from Spain. Verdad? But now, if a man wanted a horse, did he have to send all the way to Spain for it? If he wished a cow or a mule, did it have to come to him across the ocean in a ship? No, no, no! Of course not. He either raised it himself or bought it from someone else who had raised it right here in Cuba. Today even the cattle were Creoles —^bom and raised in Cuba. Claro que si?

Don Cesar calmly lighted his cigar and let this bit of wisdom sink in. When he felt it had, he asked another question.

Were slaves different from other cattle? For Dios, nol

If they could raise horses on their own fincas, then they could raise slaves. So let them start in right now and in twenty years, if the malditos ingleses should decide that the malditos negros were not cattle any more but human beings made in the image and likeness of God (may the good God pardon him for such impiety—a black man in the image of God Almighty?), let them and to hell with them. Cuba would have all the slaves it wanted or needed, bred and raised on Cuban soil. And—don Cesar looked around at his distinguished guests and winked slowly and ominously—if any Cuban planter couldn't get enough slaves to do his breeding for him, por Dios, what was the matter with the planter himself and his sons? Although don Cesar himself had never had a slave mistress for the simple reason that he could not stand the black stink of them, he knew that several bright-skinned children on his own finca were from the loins of his own son and some fincas had as many mestizos, all with a close family resemblance to the owner, as there were pure blacks.

So, let the Cuban planters get busy and either sire this next generation of slaves themselves or buy some upstanding young bucks and some young wenches to do it for them. Then, by merely placing one on top of the other in the man-

ner in which nature had intended, por consiguiente, the island would be overrun with little black bastards. Because —and here don Cesar winked again—if there was one thing these black fellows knew how to do without being told is was to chingar. No white man had ever had to tell them how to fornicate. This, then, was the way they could damn the stiff-necked English to the same hellfire to which they were now condemning the planters.

It was good advice and easy to follow. Heads nodded solemnly in agreement. Heretofore the slave population of the fincas had been ninety per cent masculine, for it v/as the men who worked and produced. Girl babies had often been thrown out on the dung heap to perish. Well, all that could be changed. Women could work too, and when they were not working they could be breeding children.

Then don Cesar had a final word of caution.

"Breed your slaves as you would breed your horses. Choose only the best stock. Breed the strong, the handsome and the intelligent. Don't let the weak, the simple, the malformed or the stupid father the next generation. As you would not mate an Arabian stallion to a broken-down nag or a blooded mare to a common work horse, so guard your nigger studs and keep them from spurting their seed into some half-witted slut. Guard your fine nigger wenches as carefully as your own daughters so that no slant-faced, rubber-lipped African ape will perpetuate his likeness in them. Pick your breeders from the best tribes of Africa—^the Dahomeys, the Nagos, the Hausas, the Mandingos, the Congos, the Aradas, the Fantis, the Fullahs and the Eboes. And then, por Dios, Senores, in twenty years or even less, Cuba can rub nigger shit in the Uly-white faces of those psalm-singing abolicion-istas!"