Читать книгу Indaba, My Children: African Tribal History, Legends, Customs And Religious Beliefs - Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa - Страница 15

THY DOOM, OH AMARIRE!

After his victory over the Kaa-U-La birds,

The deformed offspring of Kei-Lei-Si,

Descended with his victorious hordes of insects

And promised the millions of hiding First People

A new life of plenty of luxury and peace

And pleasure in limitless measure.

At first he told them he was sent by a god

To vanquish the evil Kaa-U-La birds

Which had thus far been keeping all mankind

In savagery and ignorance;

That in fact the Great Spirit had sent him

To deliver them all from poverty and disease;

That if they followed him humbly

They need dwell in shelters and caves no more.

They must render the world safe for mankind

By exterminating all dangerous beasts;

And till the land no longer, nor harvest,

While metal slaves could serve their human masters.

He promised them all these

And a life of luxury and ease,

Which the gullible First People believed

And they blindly followed the advice they received.

Two generations later and now Za-Ha-Rrellel,

Who had meantime discovered the Immortal Secret,

Was ruling supreme at the head of an empire—

The most fantastic the world has ever seen.

This was the empire which legends tell—

The Empire of Amarire, or Murire—

In which men lived in shining golden huts

With a life and a conscience of their own.

They could move from place to place

In accordance with their occupants’ wish;

While metal Tokoloshes served in every way

From tilling the land to storing grain.

There was no need for lighting a fire

When all one had to do was fill the pot

With whatever one wished to eat,

And then command the pot to boil.

No longer was it necess’ry to walk long distances,

When all they had to do

Was stand outside their huts

And wish themselves to wherever they wanted to go.

No bother to use one’s hands to lift

A drinking pot to one’s lips,

When all one did was to command the pot

To pour its contents down one’s throat.

But as time went on a decay descended

Upon these very lazy men

And they began to think that the simplest things

Like chewing food was far too strenuous indeed!

The High Chief Za-Ha-Rrellel then gave them powers

To wish their food right into their stomachs—

No straining the jaws with mastication

Or bruising the gullet with swallowing too hard!

The result of all this was that men lost the use

Of their arms and their legs and their gullets and jaws,

And on top of all this both women and men

Felt that begetting was too much of a strain!

Thus all men and all women began to lose

Their powers of reproduction;

Sterile they all turned, except the Singer

The beautiful Amarava – about whom, anon.

There was little more that the wicked tyrant

Could do to exploit his powers—

So he turned to knowledge and Forbidden Things

Which the Great Spirit asked us never to seek.

First he passed to his subjects the secret

Of Immortality and Eternal Youth,

To save his Empire – now completely sterile

Save Amarava who remained fertile.

He secondly sent out his metal beasts

To capture wild beasts and then crush them to pulp,

And from this pulp he created new creatures

Resembling the human being.

These queer creatures he earmarked as slaves;

Entertainers and workers in his expanding empire—

These creatures, produced like kaffircorn cakes,

Were Bjaauni, the Lowest of the Low.

Legends tell us that these Bjaauni

Looked something like giant gorillas;

Completely hairless and of dead flesh and blood—

They constantly had a putrid odour.

They were greenish-darkbrown in colour

Like rotten animal flesh,

And also unlike their red-skinned masters,

Could reproduce their kind.

Za-Ha-Rrellel’s mis’rable products,

Unlike the Great Mother’s creations,

Had no power of speech

And could not think for themselves.

They dumbly and blindly obeyed their masters

However mad the instruction;

If asked to drink a river dry

They would drink till they burst and died.

While these Amarire were indulging in all this fun

The Tree of Life said to the First Goddess Ma;

‘What kind of beings did we bring forth?

Look, they’re depriving all Life of its purpose!

They live selfish and useless lives

And no longer beget their kind;

We must now destroy our first effort

And begin all over again.’

‘No, let us send them a warning first

In the hope that they’ll mend their ways;

It is only that evil tyrant

Who has gone and led them astray.’

‘Yes, that most foul being dared to create

Creatures of metal and flesh—

Now he thinks he’s a god – a creator

But I shall teach him a lesson or two.’

And with this the Tree of Life ordered clouds

To gather and cover the earth,

Obstruct the sun, and ravage all

With lightning and torrents and hailstones.

In no time the empire’s lands were covered

In waters many feet deep

And half the Amarire nation drowned

In their mighty glittering towns.

But this did by no means deter the tyrant—

It fired his warped and inventive spirit;

With all his metal and subhuman slaves

They built many vast and oblong rafts.

Each was a hundred miles long – with a breadth about half—

And on these rafts he had them build new cities of solid gold;

And artificial sun was made to float below the clouds

Which shone with a brilliance that put the real one to shame!

And then one day in the glittering splendour

Of his own domestic retreat,

Za-Ha-Rrellel played his final trump—

A last, most terrible decision!