Читать книгу Indaba, My Children: African Tribal History, Legends, Customs And Religious Beliefs - Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa - Страница 16

THE LAST SIN OF ZA-HA-RRELLEL

The inside of his golden sanctuary

Was a blaze of dazzling light

From millions of precious stones reflecting,

Which encrusted the golden walls.

On a gold and ivory couch on the far side

Reclined the misconstrued form of the hideous tyrant—

Draped with a golden kaross,

Studded with sunstones and sea beads.

A great golden bowl of beer floated in

On the wings of the air at arm’s length away—

Stopped short of the bald cyclopian head of the ruler

And emptied itself in the twisted, leering mouth.

(Legends say that this queer bowl

Needed no refilling—

No sooner was it drained

Than it created new beer again).

Hundreds of nobles sat in a semi-circle

Facing the Immortal Emperor,

All resplendent in golden necklaces and ear-rings

And loin cloths of woven silver.

On a living grass mat that floated above ground

They sat in the order of their rank.

In the centre a great cage of silver

Was enclosing a dozen of Bjaauni slaves

And these were beheading and disembowling each other

To amuse their Amarire creators!

This had been going on for some time

And now only one Bjaauni was left.

This hulking great brute named Odu now stepped to the bars

And stood waiting for the next command.

‘Sleep!’ snapped the Emperor and Odu dropped

Like a log on the bodies of his slain comrades;

‘He is my favourite,’ chuckled the tyrant—

‘The strongest I’ve ever created.’

‘Too true, oh Giver of Eternal Youth,’

Laughed one noble as the cage slowly sank through the floor—

‘A splendid fighter and a pity to waste him.’

‘Would you like to have him, Zarabaza?—

I shall gladly make you a present of him.’

‘O Highest Emperor, be ever powerful—

I thank you so much indeed!’

Za-Ha-Rrellel then wickedly smiled as he noticed

His nobles’ looks of jealousy and envy;

He always kept the spirit of rivalry burning,

For he believed in the principle: ‘divide and rule.’

(Other tyrants were to follow this example

In many an empire in later years—

Wise Men say that tyrannies flourish best

When subjects are disunited).

Bjaauni females were then ordered in

And they danced and danced until all but one

Fell to the floor in fatal exhaustion.

The survivor he presented to another noble

And called upon silence as the hour was late:

‘My people, I summoned you here because

I made a discovery fantastic’ly great—

One that might lead me to become the Master—

Not of the Universe, but Eternity itself.

I have discovered that all of us were—

Or rather – I should say – our ancestors were—

Brought into this world by a great Female

Whom legends call the First Mother Ma.

I’m intent upon sending an army most vast

To beyond the River Time itself

To capture this Female, or First Goddess,

Consid’ring that legends are speaking the truth.

He paused while a shuddering gasp of astonishment

Rose from every throat in the circle—

‘Come, I will show you . . .’ and with these very words

A huge silver bowl filled with magic fluid

Emerged as from nowhere and hovered near him.

‘Come around . . . come closer, all of you . . .’

At which command they gathered closer

While the Emperor instructed the bowl to rotate

And to stir up the magic fluid.

After the fluid had settled again

All of them saw a fantastic scene,

A scene of a mighty, most terrible tree

Embracing a frightfully beautiful girl.

The woman had eyes of gold,

A silvery form and a chest

Laden with four heavy breasts,

Each with an emerald nipple.

‘Lo and behold . . .’ cried the Great Emperor,

‘By force of Arms I shall wrest her from that Tree

And become the Master of All Creation!’

And thus, not many days later,

The dwellers in the great floating city,

Called Amak-Habaret, the Empire’s capital,

Saw a most incredible scene:

Vast armies of giant insects of metal,

Each bristling with savage stings,

Serrated mandibles and razor-sharp claws,

Poured from the ‘Palace of Creation’.

They first assembled in the great Royal Square,

Received one sharp order, then completely vanished

Vanished to emerge in the Spirit World—

A sacrilegious war had begun!

By gazing into the magic bowl’s fluid,

They saw the vast hordes converge

Upon the Tree of Life

On the plains of the Spirit World.

They saw ravening bolts of sheet lightning

Lash from the eyes of the Tree,

Obliterating thousands and thousands

Of the metal monstrosities.

But they came in their metal hordes

To be slashed by the branches of the Tree.

It vanquished more than half its attackers

And that was as much as the Tree could achieve.

On they came in their countless numbers

And completely overpowered the Tree—

Eternity wept in shame!

Za-Ha-Rrellel shrieked with abandoned delight

As four of his metal slaves

Tore the Goddess from the Great Tree’s hold

And bore her away in triumph.

The rest of the metal monstrosities—

Having achieved their atrocious objective—

Momentarily had their attention diverted

And were entirely annihilated

By the wounded though undaunted Tree.

With great expectation the Emperor watched through the bowl

The four and their prey cross the plains of the Spirit World,

Till they vanished and emerged with their silvery burden

In the square in front of his Royal Abode.

The dwellers of the floating city came in their thousands

To gaze at the Mother of Men

With her fantastic, most radiant beauty,

Lying on the shining, golden square.

They stared with the wide-eyed stares of the curious

But they had no reverence in their hearts,

For long since had they lost their appreciation

And reverence for Holy Things.

To them the silvery form on the ground

Was an animate object from another world—

Another Plane of Existence that only tickled

Their vulgar curiosity.

But even as they stared

They were dying,

And dying they were—

Utterly foully!

The radiant heat of the sacred Goddess

Was blistering the skins off their bodies.

One by one dropped, and those that could, stampeded

Leaving a trail of death in their wake.

The Goddess rose slowly and clasped her hands:

‘My children! My children – you whom I bore with such pain,

Doomed are you, my children . . .’ And with these words

A mighty earthquake shook the world . . .

The scowling clouds

Lashed the heaving earth

With rain and hail

And sheet lightning,

While underworld fires

Burst from cracks in the Earth—

Turning the flooding waters

Into boiling cauldrons

Of molten mud

And roaring steam.

Whole continents vanished under steaming waters

And new ones appeared from below;

Great plains tilted on their sides

And capsized like wooden boats,

Forever entombing countless millions

Of animals and men.

Howling hurricanes ravaged the steaming earth

From north to south, from east to west.

Great mountain ranges split asunder

And collapsed with nauseating sounds.

The shining cities of the Amarire

Were swamped with boiling water

And steam so superheated . . .

It melted metal and rock.

But most dreadful of all was the ultimate fate

Of the greatest city of Amak-Harabeti,

The Empire’s glittering capital.

When they witnessed their masters in flight

The Bjaauni felt the blissful kiss

Of the Spirit of Rebellion within their hearts!

They rose in their countless thousands,

Led by Odu the Killer;

They fell upon their panic-ridden overlords

And killed them with a great delight.

They sacked the city from end to end,

Disembowelling and cruelly beheading

Both masters and mistresses.

This display set a fine example

To all the robot insects

And they proceeded to slaughter outright

Both Bjaauni and Amarire.

All were now struggling for mastery

In a tortured world already half sacked,

When suddenly the man-made sun exploded

With a hideous and dazzling peal of thunder.

Za-Ha-Rrellel witnessed all this but remained unmoved,

Being insolently confident of his own ability

To remain immortal and rebuild from scratch

A new world with his creative power.

Thus from the safety of his indestructible shelter

He watched most unconcernedly as his subjects

Died in their thousands and millions.

The Great Goddess Ma stood ankle-deep in blood

Among the countless dead bodies,

Pleading for mercy on behalf of the human race,

But the Great Spirit was totally unmoved.

Suddenly a huge green giant with a bloody axe,

And a disembowelled woman across the shoulder,

Announced his presence to the Emperor himself;

Odu the Killer was the last Bjaauni alive.

‘I . . . kill!’ bellowed the giant,

Suddenly acquiring the gift of speech.

‘Die! Kill yourself!’ commanded the Emperor—

‘I am your god – your creator!’

No longer subservient, the subhuman roared—

Plucked out the Emperor’s windpipe with lungs and all.

Flung in a corner he had time to nurse

Second thoughts on his Immortality!

Za-Ha-Rrellel died, the miserable beast that he was—

After two hundred years he was dying at last—

A most miserable death it was that he died—

But in body alone . . . Yea! Not in spirit!

Somehow he knew that Mankind would survive

And flourish again in future years—

And future Humanity he intended to infest

With ambition and cruelty and love of bloodshed!

This evil spirit is still alive today

In the hearts of all mankind,

Where ambitiously it is working towards one goal—

Complete destruction of our present race!

With a last lungless gasp Za-Ha-Rrellel observed

His indestructable shelter crash

And over the towering ruin-like walls

Smiled the hideous mouth of the Tree of Life.

‘You failed to destroy me, Za-Ha-Rrellel!’

The Goddess threw herself into her beloved lord’s many arms;

‘Those two . . . those two must live . . .

Spare them as the parents of the Second People;

Mercy on all creatures still alive!’

‘The world, and what little is left on it,

Has my mercy, oh beloved one;

Calm down – earthquakes, fires and storms,

Trouble my earth no more!’

The great city tilted and sank

Forever below the seas;

The real sun broke through the dissolving clouds

And the sea turned a blazing copper-red.

Two figures, one male and one female,

Joyfully rode on the back of a fish;

They were riding towards the rising sun—

Blessed by our Goddess and the Tree of Life!