From the Other Side of the South

== FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SOUTH ==
=== by Wilbur Daniel Steele ===
From The Best Stories of Wilbur Daniel Steele 1946 
Jlhe day had been dead hot. Under the weight of the
afternoon one would have thought it could never be cool again in the Mzab. But
immediately the sun had dipped behind the cliff that guards the western rim of
the oasis the thin air emptied itself, and the night chill, penetrating and
treach- erous, flowed over the dry bottom of the oued. 
The town stirred. Under my gallery there came and went
a word fight between Berber muleteers from the north. After that I heard the
evening call of muezzin dropping down from the mosque tower on the crowded
hill, arid, sinuous, like the note of another wooden well wheel shrilling above
the desert floor. Then somewhere under a house arose the hollow voice of a
tambour struck with a thumb, and a man sang. In a rift of silence a wandering
breeze threshed all the date fronds in the oued bottom with a fahtom of distant
ap- plause. Nearer at hand a foot scuffled in the dusk. A choked laugh. And all
around in the heavy shadows of that quarter the subdued giggling, the rustling,
and jewel clanking of the women of dark delight. 
"What's wrong with the Ouled Nail girls
tonight?" I asked along the gallery. Abd, son of Abdallah the Mozabite,
rose to his feet on the tiles near the stair, a white wraith. 
"Kain kairouan ja, sidi [There is a caravan
come]." 
Drums banged; women scurried. The momentous night was
es- tablished and stars sprinkled the sky, large and restless stars, always
flickering a little to the eye in that air without body. 
I sat at an island crossroads of the western Sahara,
where the pale, blurred sand courses, like the wakes of ships, come up the bald
skin of the globe from the green mysteries that lie months away on the other
side of the south. 
"Abd!" I called. "Where does the
caravan come from, east or west?" 
Abd was gone. On the tiles I heard the fall of a
Christian boot. Borak, the Englishman, came toward me in the shadows. 
"I wonder you're not out," he said.
"The caravan comes from the south." 
"Not — " 
"Rather! This is a real one— like the old days
again. Right away up from under. You'd better have a look at the beggars;
you're romantic, you know. Might not have another chance in a year." 
I put on my coat and went with him. Borak has been too
long in Africa, one part and another. He has forgotten that it is the Dark
Continent. As we walked he went on in his habitual vein of banter. 
"It's a tidy lot of heroes for you. You may
imagine. Seven 'moon- lights' on the trek, and I lay a pound sterling not a man
in the crowd has washed in the thirty weeks." 
"Thirty weeks!" I couldn't help echoing it.
"Lord!" 
"There ought to be a story there, eh? As a matter
of fact there isn't. I insist again that there's more story, more poetry and
romance in the life of a Whitechapel coster than you'll hear in a year
listening to these people. They lack imagination. They want the mental whip of
civilization; that's it in a nutshell." 
I felt like saying "Bosh!" Borak is too
dogmatic. 
We were passing into the thick of the "low
town," and on our right loomed the ugly oblong of the douane, the French
customhouse that stands at the converging of the deep-Sahara routes. Borak
looked at it and chuckled. 
"Old Arnauld" (the customs official)
"is in a fair pother. There's a frightful mixture in the trek, blacks and
browns from a dozen different basins down below, and you may imagine there's a
lack of passports. So that's Arnauld's job; to divine. Or rather it's Bou Dik's
job, for the orderly has all the work. When I passed the market coming to you,
Bou Dik was tackling an old chap who claims to be Senegal but looks away east
of that, a potbellied old swine, black as a chimney pot, solemn as an
archbishop, and blind as a bat. I gather all he wants is to be let pass quietly
on his way to Holy Mecca, where he hopes to die. Bou Dik, though, is full of
wild and horrid notions. He has crossed the trail lately of a dervish man who
has the word that Moulay Saa 1 is now booked to descend in the guise of a
blackamoor, and naturally, having a fat berth with the Infidel, Bou Dik isn't
going to let the Deliverer into his department— not if he can help it. So just
now Bou Dik is death and leprosy on niggers. I wish you could have heard the
row." 
I was to hear it presently. We had arrived at a chain
swung across the black street and, ducking under it, we came into the open mar-
ket square. I had seen the place a hundred times, by sun and moon and stars,
and still familiarity had not quite worn off my first sense of it as a haven
between the winds, the anchorage of a remote white port of call lost in the
ocean of stone. Tonight that illusion was deepened a dozenfold. There is no
other metaphor in speech so true as "ships of the desert." They were
here. Tonight I knew that I had known before only the small fry of that dry-sea
world, only the shore huggers, the humble brotherhood of the coastwise trade.
Here tonight was the creature of the main, the deep-sea squadron, the tall
fleet. 
From where we stood, clear to the further shore of dim
arcades, the ground was hidden under the mass of kneeling beasts and heaped bales,
a tumbled thing, monstrous in sleep. We picked our way through the ruck,
lighting matches from time to time when we found ourselves trapped in blind
alleys between bales and humps, or felt our way barred by the hairy neck of a
camel curving waist-high across the night. Mountains whisked fat tails at us;
sleeping legs sprawled from beneath hills of cargo like dead men pinned under
wreckage. Borak took hold of my elbow. 
"This way," he said. "I hear the voice
of Bou Dik." 
I heard it too, impassive, obstinate. There was a
small fire of brush roots throwing a glow around a ring of specters in the
center of the field of ruin. The burnooses, all the same color of desert dust,
might indeed have been winding sheets; the hooded faces, gaunt, bone- built,
played upon by the weak and tricky illumination from beneath, might have been
skulls. And in the midst of the communing dead, Bou Dik, enveloped in his red
robe of authority, was the devil him- self presiding. 
His voice had ceased. As we settled behind him a man
got to his feet on the side beyond the fire. With a gesture which had in it
something of the trained orator he put back the hood of his burnoose, baring
his strong neck and his round, blue-black, kinky-polled Negroid head. 
"Thou hast demanded, sidi, who is this man who is
the father of my father. Thou hast demanded whence he comes, whither he goes,
what he desires. Now I will tell thee all these things, I, Belkano, who am not
without power in the country which is under Kalgou." 
He spoke a quaint Arabic in which all the throat
sounds were brought forward and softened— such a tongue, Borak told me, as
black boys pick up in the Mohammedan zaouias at Sikasso and Tim- buktu—quaint,
and yet more easily understood in the Mzab than dialects not so far away, in Tunis,
say, or the Moroccan uplands. 
"The father of my father," he said, "is
a very great and holy man." 
In the pause that followed all the eyes turned upon
the object deposited at the speaker's feet. It was discerned to be human. 
"Black as a chimney pot, solemn as an archbishop,
blind as a bat." Like many of Borak's observations, that one had
everything in it but the essential. The essential thing was the man's enormous
separation. Whether it was the infirmity of his great age or whether it was his
"holiness" (which may account for many things), he was removed to a
distance which could not be measured. He lived on another planet. He lived
within another sky, the sky of his own skin. 
There was something majestic in the completeness of
his im- mobility. Save for a faint, slow, rhythmical pulse of his swollen lower
lip there was nothing visibly alive in him. Not once did the dead eyeballs,
sustained in little cups of rheum, shift from the line of dead ahead. From the
first to the last of that audience he remained in the attitude in which I
imagine he must have been deposited, a sphinx thing in ebony, content with
memories. Memories gorgeous or in- fernal. His lip fascinated me. I could not
get my eyes away from that pendulous and extraordinary tissue, throbbing with
faint, or- dered convulsions in the orange light. It was as if the creature's
heart, appalled by something under the black sky of skin, had broken prison and
escaped so far, only to be caught on the threshold and hang there eternally,
beating. 
I had to shake myself. In a whisper, to Borak:
"What's that he was saying? The tall one." 
"He says that his grandfather is bound on the
pilgrimage to Mecca because he is tremendously holy, and he is tremendously
holy be- cause he has a huge sin on his soul. Not bad, eh? It has happened
before." 
Bou Dik's voice was heard. "What then is that
sin?" 
The dark orator looked around the circle beneath him. 
"It is known in Andiorou and Adar. It is known in
Damagarin country and even in Manga country in the east." He looked at Bou
Dik. "Now I will recount thee that history, sidi" 
His gaze returned to the fire. I shall not soon forget
him as he stood there against the stars of the desert night, tall, glossy,
vibrant, speaking out in a strong voice the story of the moribund flesh beside
him. 
"Know thou then that it was in the years before
the missionaries of God (to whom be the prayer) and of his Prophet (be his
bliss eternal by the streams that never cease!) had brought to my tribe the
Word and the Flame of Islam. Glory to the One God!" 
"Glory to the One God!" the echo rustled
around the ring. 
"In those days then the men of my people lived in
darkness. They performed no ablutions. Their prayers were to images made with
their hands. The strongest and bravest of the young men of that tribe was
Djeba, who was later called Djim, as I will recount to thee, sidi, and who was
to become the father of my father, and who is this man. The young man who was
next to Djeba in strength and courage was Moa. These two were brothers of the
milk. Of these two, each was the other's breath. When these two went into the
bush to hunt, the animals said to one another, 'Strike if thou wilt among seven
men, but avoid the Brothers of the Milk!' So lived Djeba and Moa in those days.
Djeba was the spear of Moa; Moa was Djeba's shield. 
"In those days then came a war party from the
south, from the country of Gando under Sokoto, the country of braggarts and
thieves. They came out of the bush in the morning and moved toward the village,
casting their spears aloft and beating on drums. The warriors of my people did
not fail to answer them. They ad- vanced out of the stockade. Nikato, the
Headman, was in the fore- front, and at his two shoulders went Djeba and Moa.
That sunrise Djeba slew five of the sons of Gandoland. Moa slew five. Neither
cut nor bruise was on their bodies. Sing the valor of the Brothers of the
Milk!" 
The apostrophe rang out, absorbed, deep-throated,
across the sleeping caravan. My eyes went to the flesh on the ground. Into that
dark house had those words been able to penetrate? Had their ringing set some
hidden echo ringing? How could one say? The lip that was like the man's drawn
heart pulsed in the same laggard imperturbable count; the dead eyeballs did not
shift. But perhaps they were dead only that they might see the better the
sunlight of that vanished and heroic myth. 
"Sing the valor and the victory of the Brothers
of the Milk! 
"That war party was beaten; its dead soiled the
ground; its living fled into the bush. That day the drums were beaten in the
village and muttons were killed; that night a feast was made. The young men
danced and the old men made sacrifice to their images. 
"But the images of those days were idolatrous and
had no power over good and ill. La illah il allah!  Accordingly then it was written that the
survivors of that war party, gathering again in the bush and being drunk with the
desire of revenge, fell once more upon the village in the hour when the young
men were full-fed and their weapons away. So in that night many of my tribe
were slain. The stockades were thrown down; the houses were given to the flame.
In the light of that flame many virgins were desecrated, many old men
disemboweled, many children spun on spears. But those of good growth and being
were taken away. Djeba and Moa were taken away. 
"How can I recount to thee, sidi, the days of
that march? Am I then another Errendi, that the words of my lamentation should
fall like burning oil on a new wound? But the history is well known in all the
country above the River, for my father's brother, Ahmed ben Djeba, he who had
it out of the mouth of Djeba, has made it a chant at a hundred feasts and sung
it under a hundred council trees. He has sung the days of that going, the
weeks, each week after the other through the hotness of that bush trail. He has
told the tale of the moons. In the roof of his mouth he has recalled the song
of the lash that fell on those men's shoulders and made of their flesh the
flesh of goats that is hung on the stockade to cure. He has stirred the dung
heaps to bring in memory the meat that was given them at evening before they
fell down to sleep. With his tongue he has made the clank of the chain that
bound them to- gether, the heavy chain of iron that bound together even
those  two who were bound by the strong
bond of the breast that gave them suck! 
"Many among them died. When they died their bodies
were cut from the chain with swords. Djeba and Moa grew thin. When Djeba looked
at Moa he saw a skeleton that he did not know. When Moa looked at Djeba he saw
a thing which filled him with terror. At night each bade the other farewell,
saying, 'In the morning I shall be dead.' But they were strong and they did not
die. Only their minds became empty. 
"Then they came at last to the banks of a great
lake. This lake was so great that when they had been sold to a white boatman
and when they had come out in the boat so far that they could no longer see the
bank behind them, then they could yet see no bank before, and the water was all
about them to the sky like the sand in the desert of Djouf. To my father's
brother Djeba has recounted that they were more than the length of a moon in
that going, but it must be recalled that his mind was empty, since no lake to
be com- pared with that is in our knowledge. A wind arose on that lake and
water came into the boat. They were athirst, but when they drank of that water it
was sour and their thirst consumed them tenfold after. What man is there master
of words sufficiently bitter to recount that going upon the lake of those men
who were captive? 
"Then they came at last to the other bank of that
lake, and they were taken up swiftly into the bush of the country beyond, for
there were war boats of other white men on the water. And on another day they
came to a great ksar of a hundred shelters, and in the market place of that
ksar they were exposed for sale. They were nine. Nine men left out of
sevenscore strong men! What battle in the memory of the tribes so disastrous as
that going! What ambush so bloody as that march of the companions of the
Brothers of the Milk!" 
For a moment after the outcry the orator's lips closed
over the firelit sheen of his white teeth. I suppose that he (like his paternal
uncle) had recited this tropic saga a hundred times in the villages of the
black south. I doubt not that at this point he had been ac- customed to pause,
to receive for a moment the sweet applause of a groan. 
"And so," he resumed, "they were sold
that day into labor. And of the Brothers of the Milk, those whose eyes saw a
single thing and whose lips spoke the same, Moa was taken one way and Djeba
another, and their hearts died. Djeba, the blood child of chieftains, was
driven like a bullock up into the bush by a white driver, and when his weakness
grew on him and he stumbled that driver struck him with a thong. 
"That country beyond the great lake is a fat
country, full of planting of maize and cotton in the uplands where the bush is
cleared. It is known by the name of Djoja, and in extent it lies from the banks
of the lake into the interior many marches away. Djeba was taken to a certain
planting and thrown into a dar in a stock- ade as great as a small ksar. There
he had the company of other captives from the River, from the Cameroun, and
from the River Greater than the River in the south. Some there were who had
been there so great a time that they had forgotten their own tongues and knew
only the Djoja speech, and some had been born in that stock- ade. 
"Then they were driven into the fields to labor.
In his weakness the sun beat upon the head of Djeba and made him forget. Then
he was driven back to the stockade, and the rain came through the thatch of the
dar and wet his body and fever consumed his heart. But already his heart was
dead; only when he slept and saw Moa in a dream did he live. 
"And that driver said to him, 'How art thou
called?' And he said, 'Djeba.' And the driver laughed and cried, 'That is no
name for a black boy; I christen thee Djim; and Djim thou art!' And he went
away, still laughing as if he had turned a word of wit. So a hate of him came
into Djeba, and Djeba would have killed him, only that he was a tall, great-bodied
man, and Djeba, who had been worth five warriors in his strength, was like a
child in weakness now. 
"That fever burned his heart and his bowels. He
was given to eat of a couscous made of sour maize and swine flesh. Then his
stomach turned over. He vomited. He said, 'Now at l#st I am to die.' 
"But then a woman came in that dar. She laid a
hand on his head and called him Djim, but the hand was cool, and the anger went
from his heart. She gave him milk to drink and his pain ceased. His sickness
passed. In the darkness of that shelter that woman was like the healing
benignity of the moon when it has come an hour high in the east. She spoke in
tones of compassion, and he was made whole. 
" Who then is that woman?' he asked of the men,
'and how is she called?' 
" She is Mis'us, and she lives in the dar kebir
[the Big House].' 
" Is she then the woman of that driver?' he
asked. 
"His companions laughed. 'Nay, she is the woman
of Maas Djo.' 
'"Who then is Maas Djo?' 
" 'Maas Djo is the Maasa, the Headman. It is his
silver with which thou wert got.' 
" 'Why then have I not seen this Headman?' 
" 'For the reason that since thou hast come he
has been gone with a war party to fight the Yankis to the north.' 
" 'He has gone then to take other captives? ' 
" 'Nay, he has gone to save those he has got.'
And then they recounted to Djeba: 'The war parties of the Yankis who come from
behind the rivers of the north choke the trails. The bush never sleeps for the
sound of their drums. Their torches are among the settlements. The long peace
of the white men is broken; new con- federations are formed; terror is loosed
abroad. The lust of booty and of blood is aflame in the Yankis. It is said that
they devour babes; it is known that when they make prayer in their holy places
their ablutions are performed in the blood of a lamb. Such are they!' 
"Then they recounted to Djeba how Maas Djo and
the other Headmen, the holders of plantings, all the young men, how they had
gathered to the war drums in the trails, how they had chosen chiefs and gone
away into the bush, and how the sky above them was that day the color of gore. 
"And Djeba asked them, 'Which then is the
stronger?' And they answered, 'The party of Maas Djo is the stronger. Mayhap
even now it has driven the Yankis back across their rivers. Mayhap to- morrow
he will return home!' 
"But one among them who had been born into labor
in that stockade in Djoja and who was now an old man said, 'Mayhap not.' That
same man, who was called by the name of Moz, came into the dar at night and
said in a low voice to Djeba, 'The Yankis are like the leaves of the pepper
tree; they are small, but their number is beyond count. Hark thou well when the
bush is sleep- ing and thou wilt hear their powder guns in the north.' 
"Then Djeba hearkened, but he heard no guns.
Nevertheless he sharpened his reaping tool. But he was not yet strong from his
sickness. 
"From time to time that woman from the dar kebir
came to bring him sweet milk and speak in tones of compassion. And it was
written that the heart of Djeba, the son of chieftains, should grow soft and
meek. But when that driver perceived Mis'us ministering to the captive's
weakness he jeered with mocking laughter, and the woman cowered before it as
though she had been afraid and fled away to the Big House. And Djeba's hatred
of that man grew like a pain. 
" When I am stronger I will kill him,' he said. 
"So he grew stronger. 
"On another night that man called Moz came in secret
and said to Djeba, 'Hark thou well in the night, and before another moon has
gone thou wilt hear the drums of the tribesmen of the north.' And when he saw
Djeba take up his reaping tool he said, 'Rather shouldst thou sing for joy. For
these men here who are ignorant niggahs have told thee things apart from the
truth. Thou hast spoken to me of thy milk brother who is called Moa, who was
sold into the planting of Maas Djoj Blaak. It has come to my knowledge that Moa
has fled from that planting, and with others from other plant- ings has gone to
fight in the war parties of the Yankis, where they are received with honors. Is
it probable that such men eat babes? No, Djim, I repeat to thee, these here are
child-headed niggahs, who know not that the Yankis come to set them free out of
labor in the plantings. No, Djim, rather shouldst thou sing for joy, for when
thou see'st the Yankis thou wilt see thy milk brother in their train.' 
"Then Djeba's heart sang for joy. 
" Again, again I shall see my brother!' he cried.
'Again our eyes shall behold one thing and our breaths shall be one!' And he
said to Moz, 'Now I too will run away from the stockade and I will go to meet
Moa.' 
"And Moz said, 'But the driver will prevent
thee.' 
"And Djeba said, 'No, for I will kill the driver
before I go.' 
"And Djeba waited, feeding his heart on the
thought of Moa and on the promise of the death of that white man who had
laughed. 
"There came an evening when he watched and saw
the driver going out of the stockade into the edge of the bush. So Djeba took
up his sharp reaping tool and followed, creeping near the ground. He came near
to the driver. He saw him very clearly. The driver was dressed in finery, with
a hat like a deep drum fashioned of fur, and a tunic of blue cloth with buttons
of silver. Djeba saw him against the light of dusk in the sky. But the driver
was not alone. Mis'us was there, where she had stolen for solitude. It was she
that the driver had followed, as the desert hyena slinks slavering after the
lone gazelle. The fear was in Djeba that if he struck the man, then the woman
would give the alarm and he would be taken again. He might have struck both.
But his heart was softened by the compassion of the woman, and what was written
in the book of the future he was not given yet to read. Had he known! Had he
but known to strike— the driver afterward, perhaps— but the woman first. 
"But while he hesitated, already it was too late.
He saw the driver step forward and grasp the woman's arm, uttering words he
could not understand. He saw the woman, standing quietly, turn her head and
spit once and spit twice in the driver's face. 
"She continued to stand quietly, like stone. But
the driver flung off toward the stockade, laughing terribly in his deep chest. 
"Then Djeba would have returned and awaited
another chance of the man. But the thought of Moa was strong on him, and the
bush was at his back. So he said to himself, 'I will return with Moa,' and he
crept away. 
"All that night he walked swiftly. He hid himself
and slept in the day and advanced by night again. He did not know where he
went, but the image and affection of his milk brother were so powerful in Djeba
that it seemed he would come truly to Moa. Because of that he remained strong.
His stomach was empty but his heart was fed, and he penetrated the bush with
the swiftness of a panther. He would have wished to speak with others and know
his way, but if he saw slaves in the fields then he saw with them a white
driver, and he was afraid. 
"There came a time when he saw a Senegal man
working at the edge of a maize planting, and no driver was in sight. So he
showed himself, and he asked, 'Where then are the Yankis?' And the man answered
him, 'Go thou to Tlaanta. I know nothing, but at Tlaanta all things are known.'
"'Where then is Tlaanta?' Djeba demanded. And the
man said, 'If thou knowest not Tlaanta then indeed thou art an ignorant niggah.
Turn thy face to the north, and at nightfall thou wilt be- hold a great ksar
which is Tlaanta, which is the chief place of Djoja, where all things are known
. . .' 
("Tlaanta." Something queer was happening
down in the sub- conscious regions of my brain. "Tlaanta, the chief place
of Djoja." The equatorial forest walls were trying their hardest to topple
over in my dull brain. But there was no time. I had to get back to the saga
unfolding in the strong voice of the orator in that ember- lit Sahara night.) 
"... And when the night fell Djeba saw before him
in the sky a pillar of light. And he came on a hill and saw a great settlement
in flames. And then all about him came people fleeing in confusion through the
dark bush, carrying on their heads their mills and cook- ing pots and crying,
'The Yankis! The Yankis are come!' 
"Then Djeba was glad. He went down toward burning
Tlaanta. The flame was in his face and his heart was hot, and he stood and
called aloud the name of his brother of the milk. But he saw no man. A lad ran
out of a shelter that took fire. Djeba caught that lad by the arm and cried,
'Where are the Yankis? ' And the lad screamed, 'Gone! Gone!' and he fell down
with his eyes wide open, and Djeba saw that he was dead. 
"And Djeba said to himself, 'If the Yankis are
gone and Moa with them, then it will be his thought to lead them to that
planting where I was a slave, to kill that driver and set me free.' So he turned
his back on the burning ksar. He ran all through that night. Others ran with
him; other slaves freed by the war party's passage. They turned this way and
that in the darkness, chanting the war chants of the Yankis, and their paths
through the bush were ruin. In the night they pillaged and burned stockades, in
the morning they marched in bands, in the afternoon they slept along the
trails. But by day and by night their minds were turned with freedom, and when
Djeba ran among them demanding word of Moa their answers were without sense. 
"There was a night when Djeba came upon a
clearing. He saw a stockade in flames. The light of those flames showed him the
fields, and then he recognized that planting and his spirit leaped with joy. He
said, 'Now Moa has come here seeking me, and his revenge is before my eyes!' 
"And Djeba ran bounding across the fields and
came into the flame of the stockade, and he called Moa's name. He shouted the
war call of their tribe. He shouted the hunting call that had been fixed between
the milk brothers in the old day in the bush. 
"Then it seemed to Djeba that he heard the answer
to the hunting call, but in the crackling of the flames he could not say whence
it came. Then he bounded on in the stockade. In that circle of fire he saw a
man standing. It was a white man he had never seen. His breast was black with
blood, his head hung down, and he wept. Djeba went toward him boldly. 
" 'Tell me, then, where is Moa?' 
"The man looked at him with dull, heavy eyes from
which the tears ran down, and for answer he said, 'Where is my wife, boy? Where
are my servants? I am Maas Djo. I have come home.' 
"Then Djeba perceived that the man was possessed,
so he did not harm him, but ran on. He leaped like a panther through all the
stockade. He bounded through the wall and stood in the lighted field, and there
was nothing there but his shadow. Then he ran toward the bush, and there he saw
a figure. He pursued, and the figure ran into the bush, but Djeba was too
swift, and overtook it, and he saw it was that woman, who crouched like a
terrified gazelle and watched his coming with large eyes. 
"And he said, 'It is I.' 
"When the woman heard that she trembled with
relief and took hold of his arm and whispered, 'It is thou, Djim! I thought it
was he. I thought thou wert that drunken monster pursuing me still!' 
"When he heard that, there came into Djeba's mind
the memory and the hate of that driver. And he said, 'Where is he now?' And the
woman, grasping his arm more tightly at that instant, whispered, 'Hush, thou,
and hark! He comes!' 
"Then near them Djeba heard the fall of feet and
he saw the man advancing through the bush. He saw his shape plain and black
against the glow beyond the leaves; the shape of that fur hat he remembered, in
the form of a deep drum, tilted wildly; the shoul- ders thrust out with that
tunic of silver buttons, the elbows swag- gering. And he saw that the figure
was drunk and lustful and that he came in cunning silence among the leaves, and
he knew that the time of his revenge was at hand. 
"So Djeba sprang through the leaves and caught
the man's neck in his fingers. They fell down in the dark on the ground, and
there they fought. But Djeba's powerful hands were about the man's throat, and
the man lay quiet and breathed no more. Then Djeba went back, but the terrified
woman was gone. 
"Then Djeba returned across the field toward the
stockade, call- ing Moa's name again, and in the field near the stockade he saw
lying the body of a man. The man was despoiled of his clothes and naked, and
his head cut three-quarters from his trunk. And Djeba looked and saw that it
was that driver. 
"Then Djeba said to himself, 'The night is full
of infernal crea- tures, witches and djinoun. I have slain the driver in his
finery in the bush, and here he lies an hour dead and naked in the field. The
night is red with devil-work.' A fear came on him and his teeth knocked
together. Nevertheless he went back to the bush, laid hold of that other man's
feet, and pulled him through the bush to the field, and there he looked at the
face of the man he had slain. 
"He looked at the face of the man he had
slain!" 
The syllables of the loud repetition went away across
the sleep- ing floor of the square and played among the invisible arcades,
echoes deep-toned, momentous, tragic. And in the glow of the embers I saw the
lip of that oblivious clay pulsing, pulsing, with the same laggard and
monotonous beat. I continued to stare at it. You may be certain now that I
stared. The short hairs at the back of my skull stood up and pricked the skin.
For the wonder of it. Even to that Senegal orator himself the saga he repeated
remained fabu- lous, an epic of equatorial rivers. Chanted first by son and
then by grandson at a hundred feasts and under a hundred village council trees
and grown into the body of mid-African legendry, not till this night had it
come to ears that heard; to eyes that saw with the eyes of that ancient,
moribund, blind, black wanderer. For now I knew that I had heard the tale of
that incendiary night on a "Djoja planting" before, not once, but
many, many times; not in the glow of a Sahara campfire, but in the emberlight
of a Hancock County chimney nook, where my own grandmother Peyton used to sit
before bedtime thirty years agone, reciting a saga of her own. 
The narrator's voice was heard again, rushing
staccato. 
"Then Djeba ran through the bush to find that
woman, his one thought that he might now slay her too. For he perceived now
that she must be a witch doctress, thus by compassion to have blinded his eyes.
He ran with all his power. How long he ran, what man can say? Sometimes he
seemed to see that woman as a shadow in the bush before him and sometimes as a
bird flying before him through the trees. In him there was no hunger save the
hunger for her killing, no thirst save the thirst for her blood, no weariness
save the weariness of the damned soul. 
"And then there was a time when it seemed to
Djeba that he was in the midst of many men. He saw that they were white men and
that they moved in a thousand ranks. Ruin lay behind them and thunder ran
around. And he remembered the words of Moz: 'The Yankis are like the leaves of
the pepper tree; they are small, but their number is beyond count.' And when
the nights came Djeba saw their campflres, and even their fires were beyond
count. 
"A forgetfulness came on Djeba. He ran from fire
to fire, crying, 'Where is Moa?' And those men mocked him, saying, 'Moa what?'
But Djeba screamed at them and ran on. Or sometimes they named him Samboh,
saying, 'Hold, Samboh. Sit down with us now and sing!' Then Djeba thanked them,
and sat down with them and sang, and the war chant of the Yankis filled the
sky. 
"And after many days Djeba came with the war
party to the banks of that lake, and there he beheld a bearded chieftain sitting
on a horse, and he fell down on his face and wept. And he im- plored, 'That I
come again to my own country beyond this water, where Moa, my brother, has
returned, and where he awaits me in the village of my tribe!' And that
chieftain heard. 
"In after days then was Djeba placed in a boat,
together with many of the River and the Cameroun, and he returned across that
lake where the waters lay to the sky like the sands in the desert of Djouf.
Then they made a village on the shore. But Djeba left them. He penetrated the
bush through which he had marched many years before, bound to that chain. He
penetrated the country of enemies and he passed through. Then Djeba came to his
own village again. There were old men there who knew him when he spoke his
name. They rejoiced and made a feast. All night they feasted. And one of the
old men said to Djeba, 'Moa, thy brother of the milk, was taken with thee.
Where then is Moa?' 
"And Djeba said, 'I do not know.' And he took
none of the feast. 
"And in the years afterward, when Djeba had taken
wives and got sons, there came into our country the missionaries of God (to
whom be the prayer) and of his Prophet (may his bliss never decrease). 
"La illah il allahl 
"And they spoke the word of the Koran to Djeba,
and Djeba's heart turned in his breast. And he said then, 'My heart can no
longer contain a lie. Hark all to the truth. Moa, my brother of the milk— which
bond is sacred— Moa, my brother, him I slew with my own hands in that land
which is beyond the great water. I slew him, being tricked by a witch woman.
And that witch woman I was not able to slay! That then is my sin!' 
"That then is the sin of Djeba. I have spoken, I,
Belkano, who am the son of his son!" 
In the hush that followed that deep-toned verbal
signature my breath whistled small in my throat. 
"Lord! Lord! Oh, my Lord!" 
Borak eyed me with a smirk and a grunt. The black
fellow showed his shining teeth again. He took another breath into his lungs.
"For the length of thirty Ramadans the father of
my father has not opened his mouth to any man in speech. Because of that sin,
because he would not look at any man, his eyes have become blind. He would not
hear, and his ears are deaf. Thus men know that he is holy. So they come for
many marches to touch his hand. Some- times then his lips are opened, and for
their ears he will sing again that war chant of the Yankis. And then those men
will give him offerings against his pilgrimage, that he may see Holy Mecca and
ease him of that sin and die." 
The voice was rising. 
"They give him offerings of broad copper! They
throw down pieces of silver before him! They throw down gold!" 
I heard the wind going out of Borak's chest at that;
an obscure thoracic collapse. A snort. 
"At last! At last the plot unfolds. Now the old
bird will render that popular ditty entitled 'The Unwritten War Song of the
Wild Yankis of Yankisland,' and the company will contribute. And strangely
enough the ringmaster's eye is fastened unerringly on you." 
"For God's sake, man — " 
"Yes, but you'll see," he persisted.
"You'll note that his toe even now is prodding the old one in the
ribs." 
It was true. I saw the nudging and peremptory toe. I
stared at that lip hanging in the ember light. I beheld a disorder and quicken-
ing of that fleshy pulse. I heard an obedient sound issuing forth. It was a
very small, shallow, creaking sound. It emerged from that emotionless mask of
senility; it rose and fell in mechanical lengths of tone like a bent wire and
went away and was lost in the night of the packed Sahara square. It was a queer
chant. 
"Cock and bull!" grunted Borak. 
"For God's sake, man, hush!" 
I stared and I listened. Yes, it was a very queer
chant indeed. The short hairs were beginning to stand up again at the back of
my skull. 
On the ground, red with the firelight, a copper sou
was tossed. I saw another fall, and another. I took out my wallet and found a
hundred-franc note, and I let it flutter into the circle over the shoul- der of
Bou Dik. 
Borak got hold of me. 
"Lord! I say, now! What's that for?" 
"To help and ease him of that 'sin.' " 
"But my dear simple chap— all that rigmarole
" 
"Of the greatest of all African wars " 
He tilted his head at me with the absurdest suspicion
about my wits. 
"Come away!" he said. 
I got up and went with him out into the black ruck of
the camels. He was groaning audibly over that squandered bank note. "Man,
man, and you were really taken in by that beggar's claptrap. Why- look you— in
that old chap's day there weren't enough white men in Central Africa all put
together — " 
"Borak!" I said. "Will you listen to
that song!" 
In the hollow of the market, above the grunt and snore
of the caravan, the thin war chant of the "Yankis" wound on,
repeating, repeating: 
"John B'oivji's body lahs amoldirt in the g'ave, 
John B'oivn's body lahs amoldin' in the g'ave, 
John Brown's body lahs amoldin' in the g'ave, 
But his soid goes mahchin' on . . ." 
In that Sahara darkness where the pale courses come
from be- yond the south I saw Atlanta burning. Sherman was on the march.
Category:Steele
Category:Published