Читать книгу Indaba, My Children: African Tribal History, Legends, Customs And Religious Beliefs - Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa - Страница 14

THE RACE THAT DIED

The Holy Ones of Kariba Gorge tell us

That the first men to walk the earth

Were all of a similar kind.

They looked exactly alike, and were all of similar height,

And their colour was red like Africa’s plains.

In those days there were no black-skinned or dark-brown men;

No Pygmies and Bushmen, nor Hottentots either.

The Wise Ones of the Ba-Kongo agree

With the Holy Ones of Kariba Gorge,

And they even go as far as to say

That the First People had no hair on their bodies at all;

All had the golden eyes of Ma—

The Goddess who launched them on earth with such pain.

All the Wise Ones and Holy Ones of this Dark Continent

Agree that the splitting of all Humanity into races;

The tall Wa-Tu-Tutsi, the Pygmies, or the Ba-Twa,

The short yellow Bushmen of Ka-Lahari,

Even those long-bearded A-Rabi

Who raided our villages mercilessly for slaves—

Resulted from one great accident which occurred

Through the sinfulness of these First Men.

Inspire me, oh Spirit of my Fathers!

Give me courage to proceed and tell the world

What say the Holy Ones of these First Men!

Let me break, oh Demon of Disobedience—

Let me break the stout stockade but once

Of Tribal Secrecy.

Let me relate to the world outside

The Forbidden Story that all Wise Ones—

All witchdoctors know but keep firmly shut

In the darkest tunnels of their souls!

What is this Forbidden Legend about these First Men—

Tales of the Nguni, the Mambo, the Lunda and the Ba-Kongo?

When the muted beat

Of the Drum of Sworn Secrecy has sounded

And the Holy Ones gather to re-tell once again

The most secret tales to the young generation;

‘Tales-that-must-never-be-told-to-strangers-

And-to-the-low-born-peasant-dogs’

What say the Holy Ones of this First Nation?

Lo! I shall open my mouth

The mouth of a traitor most foul

Who, for what he believes to be good for his people,

Here betrays the secrets of his land—

I shall open my mouth and tell you,

So gather around me – ‘Indaba, my children . . .’

It is said that more than a thousand times ten years went by

In which there was peace on this virgin earth;

Peace in the sky—

Peace on the forest-veiled plains—

On the scented valleys and timeless hills.

Only certain beasts were permitted to kill,

By the Laws of the Great Spirit,

In accordance with their victual needs.

There was none of this savage

And wanton destruction of Life

Such as men today indulge in

To gratify their warped and evil souls.

Man against man forged no evil spear

With secret and murd’rous intent.

There were no such things as anger and hate

And nothing of ‘this is mine and that is yours’,

No contention and rivalry.

Man breathed peace on the cheek of his brother men.

Man walked in peace without fear of wild beasts

Which in turn had no reason to fear him.

Men in those days did not suffer

From our emotional curses.

They knew no worry like our sin-laden selves.

Death they welcomed with open arms

And a smile on the face, because,

Unlike our degenerate selves,

They knew Death for what it was—

Life’s ultimate Friend!

But the evil star of self-righteousness,

Was emerging from yonder horizon

And man’s undoing was nigh.

Once in a shady recess of a vine-screened cave

A beautiful woman whom some call Nelesi,

But whom many more call Kei-Lei-Si,

Gave birth to the first deformed child;

Deformed not in flesh alone, but also in his soul.

His shrunken body supported a big flat head

Containing one short-sighted cyclopian eye.

His arms and his legs were shrunken stiff

And were twisted like a sun-dried impala,

While his mouth was completely displaced to one side

In a perpetual obscene leer.

His scrawny neck was wrinkled,

Like a starved old vulture two days dead,

And his round little paunch protruded ’neath his chest

In a most revolting way.

Strings of crystallised saliva drooled

Continuously from his sagging lips;

He breathed through only one nostril

With a sickening hissing sound.

The name of this very unpleasant monstrosity—

Tribal Narrators tell today—

Was Zaralleli or Zah-Ha-Rrellel, The Wicked!

This was the man – no, rather the Thing

That introduced all evil to this earth.

Whenever a child was born to these First Men

The mother would take it straight for a blessing

To the two-headed talking Kaa-U-La birds,

And also to ask them to give it a name.

Thus it came about that when Nelesi

(Let us rather abide by Kei-Lei-Si, for this is

Her proper and uncorrupted name)

Took her terrible offspring to the big old Kaa-U-La bird,

Which nested not far from her cave,

It gave one glance at her

And shuddered at what she carried!

In the half-dead deformed thing that the girl held aloft

The Kaa-U-La bird could see Evil so great

And so utterly monstrous that if unchecked

There and then it would def’nitely overrun

The Universe outright with its bad influence.

And what it saw beyond the veil of tomorrow

Made it screech with unrestrained horror and pain:

‘Kaaaaaauk! Oh woman, what have you there!

Destroy it, kill it, without delay!’

‘What, but this is my baby, my child!’

Cried the mother in utter despair.

But the bird’s voice rang like metal

And echoed o’er valleys and mountains;

‘Female of the human race – I appeal to thee,

Destroy thy offspring before it’s too late!’

‘But where have you ever seen mothers kill babies?’

The poor mother pleaded, now on her knees.

‘For the sake of Mankind, and that of the stars,

And for all those as yet unborn,

I command thee oh female of thy race,

Destroy that thing in your arms!

No baby is that which you’re holding there,

But Naked Evil, devouring and pure—

A Bloody Future it spells for the Human Race!’

‘My baby evil? He is the dearest baby on earth!

My loveliest baby – destroy it? Not on your life!’

‘I command thee . . .’ But Kei-Lei-Si screamed;

She turned and ran like a buck through the bush

Her baby clutching her heaving breasts.

The Kaa-U-La immediately took off in pursuit

By telepathy calling all others to join

In the hunt for the fugitive girl.

Only once she paused for a gasp of breath

On the grassy slope of a hill,

And on looking around she saw a black flock—

Hordes of the two-headed, six-winged rainbow birds.

It struck her that these birds rarely flew,

And did so only when the need was great.

‘Aieeee! My baby, they seek you—

But they will not get you as long as I live!’

And with this she turned and sped up the hill;

But as she descended the other side

The great birds were on her and diving at her

Ripping with talons deep furrows on her back.

She reached the dark depths of the forest anon

And the birds in their tireless pursuit

Uprooted trees and moved the rocks

And dived with a roar of air.

Again and again they appealed to her

To surrender her child for Humanity’s sake.

‘No, a thousand times no!’ she panted and onwards fled,

Tripping and falling and bruising her legs,

Only to rise and speed forth faster than e’er.

At long, long last she found a deep hole

In which she sprang with no second thought.

They fell for what seemed like a thousand years

And struck the floor with a bone-jarring thud.

For a long time they lay there completely stunned

On the bank of an underground stream—

A river which roared and crashed with great noise

Through miles of underground caverns.

The evil spawn of the foolish girl

Did not die, as he fell on his mother,

And was thus due to rise soon to menace the world

With the fumes of his evil soul.

Soon the stars would weep in shame

While cursing the woman Kei-Lei-Si

And the wicked Za-Ha-Rrellel.

The otherwise beautiful woman and her monstrous son,

Lived for years in the bowls of the earth.

Fish, and crabs from the muddy banks,

Were abundant enough to keep them alive,

While above ground the Kaa-U-La birds were searching

The forests and plains in vain.

On returning from a crab-hunt one day

Kei-Lei-Si saw her son sitting near the fire

Humming a happy tune to himself.

This greatly surprised her, for never before

Had he spoken a word – leave humming a tune!

‘My son!’ she breathed, her soul overflowing with joy,

‘You can talk . . . you are singing . . .’

‘Shhhhhh . . .’ he said, and Kei-Lei-Si saw

Him fixedly stare at some iron ore,

The very piece she had brought to the cave herself,

Which she used on the flints in the cavern walls

When she wished to kindle a fire.

A cold terror struck the poor woman

As her gaze came to rest on the ore;

Her whole body froze with horror and fear

As the penetrating stare of her son

Caused the ore to grow in size!

Still hypnotised she watched and saw

The ore turn soft and starting to flow.

A few heartbeats later two bright stalks grew

At the tips of which glowed small bloodred eyes,

And a hungry-looking mouth took shape

Snarling viciously at Kei-Lei-Si

With a display of razor-sharp teeth!

The woman shrieked with horror and undiluted fear

When she realised her son was in fact creating—

That the tune he was humming was an incantation—

Commanding the hitherto lifeless iron

To assume a shape and Life!

She watched spellbound as the living thing grew

And legs like those of a grasshopper took shape—

Then came pairs of dragonfly wings

And a rat-like shining metal tail, with a sting,

A crystal sting with dark green poison!

‘My son!’ cried she, ‘What . . . and how . . . and why . . .?’

‘This,’ he said, without emotion,

‘Is one of my weapons of conquest!’

‘Conquest? Conquest of what, my son?’

‘Of everything – the earth, the sun and the moon!’

Then turning to the fast-growing metal beast

And indicating his mother with a deformed limb

Snapped, ‘Seize her, and drink your fill!’

At which command the horror leapt

And pounced upon the startled woman,

Seizing her with his insect-like legs.

‘My son, my son, what have I done—

Why do you do this to me?

I am the woman who bore you, and brought you up!’

‘I know very well who and what you are—

But nobody asked you to bear me and rear me

And least of all did I.’

‘I saved you from the big birds my son;

They desperately wanted to kill you!’

‘All that I know,’ said Za-Ha-Rrellel calmly,

‘It was only the instinct of a female beast

And you were obeying a natural law.’

‘Have mercy, my son,’ cried Kei-Lei-Si.

‘What is this thing called mercy?

You are of no use to me any more.

I have now grown to full independence

And I no longer need your protection.

All I need now is nourishment for my new servant

To grow and reproduce its kind.’

From the mouth of the metallic Tokoloshe

Protruded a long needle structure

With which it pierced her chest and heart

And as it sucked it grew.

Through the mists of her last agony

The mother of the wicked Za-Ha-Rrellel

Saw her son’s outrageous future;

She saw his great evil swallow the earth

And the Universe itself.

Too late she appreciated her error—

That after all the birds were right,

But now she could not destroy her child

To save all mankind from its atrocious influence.

Through eyes that were slowly glazing in death

She saw the object withdraw its cruel probe.

She saw it lay some hundreds of silvery eggs

At her son’s express command;

And they all exploded into hundreds

Of fast-growing winged things like itself.

The last thing she saw was how a litter of four

Bore her son aloft in triumph.

‘Farewell, mother,’ he said as he glanced back at her,

With a last contemptuous look in his eyes.

They carried him forth from the lighted cave

Into the darker parts of the caverns

And slowly the glow from all the luminous eyes

Faded in darkness in the echoing distance;

While with a last soft sigh Kei-Lei-Si died

Alone and utterly forgotten for all time to come

In that maze of underground tunnels.

The fantastic reign of the First Chief on earth,

That of Za-Ha-Rrellel was about to begin.

Today known as Tsareleli or Sareleli

He was the deformed incarnation of naked evil

And was about to burst upon the world

Like a glittering poisonous flower.

Woe, oh woe, to all mankind—

Woe to all those, as yet unborn!

Za-Ha-Rrellel, the Wicked, emerged from the tunnels,

Borne aloft by a litter of four of these metal things,

While all the rest of the metal Tokoloshes

Came swarming behind in a vast and glittering cloud

Awaiting his word to enslave and to kill.

The first that this airborne metallic army engaged

In a battle of complete extermination,

Was the Holy two-headed Kaa-U-La birds.

From miles away came the sacred birds

In hundreds upon thousands to stem the tide

Of evil in a final most desp’rate endeavour.

A mighty aerial battle took place

That lasted more than a hundred days without pause,

Watched in amazement by all men and all beasts.

The birds inflicted a great deal of damage

Tearing and ripping with talons and beaks,

But the poisonous stings of these metal things

Caused havoc among the attackers.

In their hundreds they fell down to earth,

Followed to be sucked of their blood

And as fast as these metal things nourished themselves

They produced more and more of their metal kind.

For each one destroyed by the Holy Birds

A thousand took its place

And thus the birds were soon heavily defeated

And the remnant fled to the ends of the earth.

‘All is lost!’ cried one as it flew away in the sunset,

‘Woe to mankind – woe to the world.’

But the millions of red-skinned First People

Who heard this last agonising cry

Did not understand its meaning.

They did not interpret it this way

Till many centuries later

When together with Za-Ha-Rrellel, the Wicked,

They died in agony;

They who were later to be known

As the Race That Died.