Blonde Roots (15 page)
First one head appeared nervously around a tree, then another and another until dozens of the wretches began creeping out with all the stealth of burglars who will rob your property with one hand and slit your neck with the other.
These creatures brandished a farcical yet nonetheless disturbing assortment of weapons: saucepans, wooden spoons, hammers, pitchforks, spades, penknives, rocks, hoes, truncheons, spears, screwdrivers, swords, fishing rods, spanners, saws and whatever other implements they could lay their measly hands on.
As they crept in a cowardly way toward us, I heard them whispering rapidly in their nonsensical “language.” This too was farcical. A language without the clicks, clucks, clacks and !tsks of normal speech sounded dreary beyond belief, more akin to the low monotonous moan of cattle than the exuberant sounds of human communication.
Did they come bearing gifts as a gesture of hospitality? Were they greeting us with smiles to welcome the newcomers onto their soil? Not a bit of it.
I asked the question: What crime had we seamen committed to elicit such unprovoked hostility? What had we done except to pull up on a beach and wander about while we awaited our business partner?
As they drew closer, I registered contempt on the faces of each and every one of them; although, in fairness, to suggest that I could distinguish one from the other is somewhat an exaggeration as it was quite evident that their ghostlike pallor rendered them all looking, quite frankly, the same.
I suspected they might be males of the genus, but I could not be sure.
We barely exhaled, my men and I, shivering as we were faced with two evils: the cold weather that pricked my naked skin (but for my loincloth) like needles, and the threatening approach of the savages.
I purposefully hesitated as I surveyed their shifty progress.
What, precisely, was a young man with no military experience to do?
In those moments of indecision, I wondered if I should try and reason with the enemy, persuade them to lay down their arms. Would they understand or rather, like their four-legged compatriots in the animal kingdom, would they charge in ruthlessly—teeth gnashing, claws ripping, spears shaking—for the kill?
Paralyzed, I watched.
Naturally the savages were overdressed, as I had been told they would be. They wore grimy layers of cloths and matted wools that were colored in browns and greens so dingy they could blend into the filth of the earth without need of camouflage.
Their cloths were cut, quite comically, into the shapes of the human body. It was as if without arm sections and neck sections and leg sections these simpletons would not know how to dress themselves.
Upon their heads they wore strange objects that I was later to learn were called hats.
Their feet were clad too, in objects called boots that were made of animal hide. They rode tightly up the leg to the knee, for some unfathomable reason.
Some, though, wore the foot objects called shoes, made of either animal hide or even stranger—wood. What crazed mind conjured up that idea?
Would you believe that these beings were also hirsute beyond decency?
Wherever flesh showed it was covered in hideous hair like that of a monkey or gorilla, especially upon their heads and sprouting from their chins, like dirty woolen thread.
THE ENEMY BEGAN to gather speed, emboldened by our apparent inaction, which they stupidly mistook for defenselessness.
I came to my senses, resolute that there was no way I was going to die there—not then, not like that.
“Stop! Come no farther, my friends!” I called out, raising a flat palm to them with as much authority as I could muster.
“Stop! At once!” I repeated.
They were now so near we could almost smell them, and I could see their alien eyes, which were of the colors that should never be seen on a human face. It was quite creepy to look into them and see a gray sky staring back. Or to catch the stare of another and be plunged into a bottomless aquamarine ocean.
I issued another warning, ordering them to drop their weapons.
But then a saucepan seemed to shake in the air.
A wooden spoon was raised like a dagger about to plunge. A fishing rod became a javelin in the wrong hands.
A rock was thrown very aggressively out to sea.
I finally allowed my temper to rise to the surface and called my men to arms.
And make sure you don’t miss!
Muskets were hoisted atop shoulders, and fired.
I admit that I may have been a tad rash in this respect, but I had to act decisively, did I not?
Approximately ten were felled in the first volley, twice that number in the second. The others fled back into the jungle, caterwauling, and those who remained squirming on the beach were finished off.
When they were all gone, an eerie quiet once more descended upon that pitiful shoreline.
The soundless air was chilly as the heart of a poisoner.
The sea sucked up the shore with a viper’s hiss.
The trees were malevolent assassins spying on us.
Before us lay the bloody carnage of warfare.
As I surveyed the gut-wrenching vision, a terrible swelling rose in my stomach. I struggled to subdue it, but, alas, I could not.
Captain Katamba, Leader of Men, rushed into the sea, and well, yes, he threw up.
Oh, I could have flung myself onto the water and drowned in it. Yes, I could!
However, just as swiftly I was rescued from the abyss of self-destruction by Shangira, God of War, who had a word in my ear.
Firstly, I was victorious, which was to be celebrated; and secondly, it was not I who was a murderer, after all. I, who was possessed of the most benevolent of intentions, had never personally killed a man (we can include “living soul” here) in my life, and my record remained intact.
I had not fired a single shot—my men, or rather the crew, had.
As I WADED THROUGH the sea back to the beach, having thrown up all that was inside my stomach, I saw an Aphrikan chap marching across the pebbles, followed by a veritable legion of savages, all armed, this time with muskets.
It was Byakatonda, of course, accompanied by what appeared to be his own personal guard.
Tall, thin and, in concordance with rumor, he had gone quite native: a hat upon his head, wooden shoes, woolens with arm sections draped over his upper half, and sackcloth material with leg sections on his lower half.
All shit-colored.
It was unwise to remonstrate with him for his tardiness, however, considering we had business to undertake and his men outnumbered ours. Yet I wanted to inform him that he was to blame for this fiasco. It was he who had left us unprotected and at the mercy of savages in the wild.
He beat me to it.
“Captain Katamba!” he called out angrily. “What the blazes has been going on here?”
Dear Reader,
Byakatonda had sojourned some nineteen seasons on the Cabbage Coast, and it showed. He had lost the loose-limbed lope of the men of the Aphrikas and walked as if a rod had been rammed up his fundament.
As I waded back through the shallows toward him, his nose streamed, yet he did not send it hygienically to the wind with his thumb but pulled out a dirty, viscous rag and blew into it, thus multiplying the germs and prolonging the disease!
He then proceeded to blast me in a grating, nasal voice about “a massacre on the shores of Europa!”
Apparently the enemy, who had surprised us, were actually close allies of Byakatonda himself. Good fellows, if you will. They were merely being curious and, by necessity, cautious.
What an impetuous fool I was, he ranted, spittle landing on my cheek. My rash behavior could ruin his hard-won rapport with the locals. Had I considered that?
I then exercised something I suspected he knew little of—self-discipline—and explained that we had been threatened by what we saw as bellicose savages intent on malfeasance, and that he should remember that I was on those shores to put a casketful of cowrie shells in his coffers.
At that he began to calm down until, without warning, he clasped one of my hands in his, and shook it!
I immediately withdrew said hand and raised the other to defend myself.
“My dear Captain, hand-shaking is the custom here,” he guffawed, revealing teeth as dark and uncoordinated as his attire. “It is a salutation of goodwill. One gets used to it, then one adopts it.”
That, I suspected, was his problem.
“Please, let us put this regrettable air behind us because, as you have justly remarked, you and I must do business.
“May I now extend a warm welcome to you and your men,” he declared, reaching out his arms in a gesture of ceremonious invitation, before adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “amidst such barbarism you would not imagine. Life is cheap in these parts, but easy on the trigger, eh, Captain?”
I had not pulled a trigger on anyone, but let him think me a hotheaded brawler. Let him be wary.
I was to spend the next twenty-four hours with Byakatonda who was, unfortunately, most prolix.
“Pardon me for mentioning it, Captain,” he shouted over his shoulder as he suddenly strode up the beach leaving me, his guest, to trot behind him like a donkey. “But you’ll freeze your bollocks running around in that loincloth of yours. Now come, come, into the forest we go!”
I followed him into the jungle, which was as evil as I had anticipated—sunless, soulless, colorless. It was seething with foreign insects, thick with rotting foliage and grave with an air of despair and devastation. Alien creepers threatened to block our path, the contorted arms of grotesque trees threatened to reach out and strangle me, the ground was matted with diseased leaves, and the damp climate chilled my bones. Shrill sounds shot out into the silence. Something hawhed up in the trees. From inside the undergrowth came sounds that were neither human nor animal.
Demons brushed their icy lips past mine.
I FELT
WATCHED.
It was like returning, Dear Reader, to the earliest days of the world when the trees and vegetation of the wilderness spread their tendrils and talons without the restraining hand of civilized man.
As we penetrated deeper into the dark heart of Europa, my host began to prove cordial enough, prattling on about an impoverished upbringing on a maize farm in the outback of Great Ambossa. (As if I should admire
him.)
He showed no interest in the country he had left behind.
The jungle had claimed him.
The jungle was his home now.
WE FINALLY APPROACHED a high wall in front of which ran a river. Our party hastened around it as Byakatonda told me it offered a circle of protection for the settlement inside.
“Against what?” I asked in my youthful innocence.
“The natives are a bloodthirsty lot, squire. Without these fortified walls, they’d be slaughtered in their sleep by marauding enemy tribes from up north. Those shipped overseas are the lucky ones. Surely even you knew that?”
What a know-it-all he was.
“My
dear
fellow, as an esteemed captain of the sea, I know many, many things, for example that we civilized nations are not without the urge to conquer and defeat ourselves, a minor fracas here and there, the occasional full-blown war. This is common knowledge to all
learned
men.”
Byakatonda stopped short and grabbed my arm, pulling me toward him.
“Listen to me,
sir,”
he hissed. “I’m talking about murder on a scale you would not imagine—one hundred million, and counting. Let us not forget the thousands of mini-wars since time immemorial. Sometimes they even go into battle and declare it is on behalf of their pagan idol—Xtia—the very one who commands
Thou shalt not kill.
“Now—look at this!”
We had come to a spot where a bridge crossed the river, and he pointed up at two rows of poles lined either side, upon which were stuck what appeared to be heads.
Surely not, I thought, before coming to the incontrovertible conclusion that it was indeed a parade of dismembered heads.
I promptly keeled over and regurgitated what little was left in my stomach.
“Be warned,” Byakatonda spat down my ear-hole as I was retching my life away.
(Ye gads! Give me a fucking break!)
“They are hung, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered, that is—the body chopped into four parts. It’s been common practice for over three centuries for those who commit crimes against their big Chief, the King. A powerful deterrent, don’t you think?”
I knew not what to reply. Massive iron gates in the wall opened to release a procession of black-clad natives in a trance-like state.
I struggled to my feet as we moved aside to let them pass.
The lead native wore a vivid purple robe and carried two wooden sticks in front of him, the shorter horizontal one crossing the longer vertical one.
Six of the taller males balanced a long wooden box on their shoulders.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when they started up a communal chant rendered in a babble of uncouth sounds which went something like this:
ourfatherwhoartinheav
… and so on and so forth &c.
A DEAD PERSON WAS in the box, Byakatonda informed me, as we watched them disappear into the thicket, who would shortly be buried in the ground, as was their custom. It was peculiar because they did not thrash and wail with woe at such times, nor use official mourners, but maintained what was called a “stiff upper lip.”
As we passed through the gates of the settlement, the bitter aftertaste of vomit made me so queasy I felt my legs almost give way.