Читать книгу Indaba, My Children: African Tribal History, Legends, Customs And Religious Beliefs - Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa - Страница 19

BETWEEN GOROGO AND ODU

The mighty fish had nosed up

The mouth of a mighty river,

Which future generations were to call

The river of the Bu-Kongo.

It paused long enough to permit the weary wanderers

To alight on its grassy banks with a splash.

Now it was evening of the second day

Since they had stood on solid ground

And Amarava was lying in the cool interior

Of a hut which Odu had built.

This hut stood on tall strong poles,

Sunk into the mud of the river,

And she had a magnificent view

Of the dull silver streak with approaching dusk.

She could see across the vast stretch of water

The frowning forests on the opposite bank,

And a canoe, with Odu returning home from a hunt.

The forest was alive with all kinds of sound

From that of water birds among the reeds

To the distant roaring of lions—

Boldly challenging the approaching night.

The fact that she was in a part of the world

Which miraculously had survived destruction—

Ruled by beasts and undefiled by man,

Did not interest Amarava at all.

She was still dazed and could not care less

Whether the sun rose in the West

And set in the North, as the Wise Ones often say.

She was fighting a fierce battle with herself

And her soul was a reeking cauldron of emotions;

Her greatest problem was whether she should

Yield her beautiful self to the monstrous Odu.

Great was her hatred of this sub-human ape,

But equally great was her fear of incurring

The Goddess’s displeasure on breaking her oath

On which future humanity depended.

But human instincts are often much stronger

Than a thousand commands from heaven;

And not for the sake of a thousand worlds

Could she submit to sharing a love-mat with Odu.

Then suddenly a bright idea struck her

Which made new strength course like fire through her veins:

What if . . . supposing . . . Odu should fall a victim . . .

A fatal accident while out on a hunt!

The Goddess could never blame her—

Amarava – for the accidental death

Of her uncomely and revolting mate!

Supposing a hole were drilled in the side of Odu’s canoe

And temporarily sealed with a soluble gum . . .

Her eyes were lit up by the strangest fire

When she recalled that Odu was unable to swim.

But then another, much better idea

Struck the already excited girl—

An idea so patently simple

It took her breath completely away . . .

Odu came crawling into the hut

With an impala slung over his back;

This he humbly presented his mistress

Whom he could not regard as a mate as yet.

Amarava sang with delight as she skinned

And cut up the meat for supper—

Her hands were trembling so slightly

With barely suppressed excitement.

Soon, soon she would be free, she thought,

Well rid of this clumsy and ugly monster

Who was completely unaware of the fact

That he was a living creature.

When at last they had eaten enough

She curtly commanded Odu to sleep

And this he promptly did, being completely unable

To do anything unless instructed.

For a time she sat with her knees drawn up,

Staring fixedly into the fire

Which was burning on a slab in the centre of the hut—

Then she rose to add some more wood

And did not care much about slipping a piece

From the stone slab on to the floor.

As the grass floor took fire and quickly spread,

She leapt to her feet and dived through the door;

Once on dry ground she dashed like a pursued impala

Through the forest with a pounding heart.

Once she paused and looked behind her

At the blazing red glare in the night sky—

‘He is dead . . . most assuredly he’s dead by now,’

She breathed, ‘that revolting brute – I’m free!’

Through the forest she sped as fast as she could go—

Rapidly increasing the distance between herself and her crime;

Soon she burst into a treeless clearing,

Face to face with dozens of luminous eyes.

In the moonlight she recognised lions

Twice the size of their recent descendants—

Paralysed she stood and could only watch

As the biggest maned lion came crouching towards her.

It sniffed her belly and licked her buttocks

And for a few terrifying moments both woman and beast

Stared deep into each other’s eyes.

With a low growl of deep puzzlement it slowly turned tail

And made off promptly with the rest of the pride!

It dawned upon Amarava after some considerable time,

That these lions had not been molested by humans before

And that the old one’s behaviour was prompted by curiosity alone.

After this rather interesting experience

Amarava spent the night up a mopani tree;

She did not relish another encounter

With four-footed tribes such as these.

Dawn found her wide awake, but exhausted

And only sheer hunger could force her

To descend and start searching for food.

It was as she was eating some wild figs,

That sudden pains like scorpion stings

Erupted on her nipples, right hand and stomach.

She squirmed in agony on the ground,

But the pain mounted to intolerable intensity

With every passing moment.

Through the purple haze of hideous aching

The words of the Great Mother came to her

And she remembered . . . she remembered!

She also realised quite plainly now

That her deed of the night before was no accident,

But plain and straightforward murder!

Maddened by pain she now dashed through the forest,

Hoping to reach the burnt-out hut again,

But having lost all sense of direction

She lost herself in the primaeval wilderness.

Eventually she begged the Goddess for mercy,

But the blue skies kept a stony silence;

Forward she dashed again in blind agony

Until she reached a lake which she mistook

For the river where the hut had stood.

Repeatedly she called out Odu’s name

And with another forward lunge she leapt

The vertical face of a precipice.

At the bottom of the cliff she struck a tree

And that was all she could remember . . .

There were three of them . . .

And the one was more hideous than the other;

Like nightmares torturing a fevered man . . .

They stood on their hind legs with front legs crossed

Over pale-green protruding bellies.

They were taller than a man

And their girth was incredible;

For all the world they looked like

Crosses between frogs and crocodiles,

And they were watching the woman Amarava

Slowly recovering her consciousness.

She cried out weakly in terror when she saw herself surrounded

By such gigantic monsters

Inside a humid smelly cave;

She tried to rise but was gently pushed back

On her bed of damp rotting reeds

By one of her three weird captors.

The biggest opened his terrible mouth

And uttered sounds unbelievably ugly,

To which the second one asked an obvious question

And the first answered ‘Gwarr Gorogo!’

Upon which he left the cave,

Leaving two to guard the female.

On returning he introduced to his friends

A fourth one double their size;

He wore a belt of threaded reeds

And a headdress of crocodile skin.

‘Their Chief’, thought Amarava,

‘Quite an intelligent race of frogs—

They even have a Chief!’

High Chief Gorogo of a dying race

Of gigantic intelligent frog-men,

Looked down upon their very strange foundling

And wondered just what to do.

They classed her as animal, and obviously female,

But Gorogo could not understand

Why the Great Mother had saved her

While the rest of her kind were destroyed.

It slowly entered his mind

That perhaps the Great Mother had sent her

To save a dying race;

That through her the world could be repopulated

With a kind that could rule again.

Then fear filled Gorogo’s soul

As he caught a glimpse of the future

Through the misty veil of time.

He saw this species before him

Ruling the world supreme,

Exterminating all animal life

From the jungles and seas—

He saw this species contaminate the very stars . . .

And turn upon each other,

Killing their own kind like ravaging beasts

Across the astonished face of the earth.

With a hoarse croak the Chief quickly summoned his Elders

And they went into council till deep in the night,

Discussing what exactly they should do

With the female of this queer species.

Many suggestions were made,

All aiming at her outright destruction,

But in the end it dawned on them

That through her they might save their own race!

Their own females had recently gone sterile

And their Chief should have the honour . . .

The vote in favour was unanimous

With Gorogo’s vote in the lead!

But under the earnest discussion,

Amarava made good her escape

And by the time they took their decision

She had put a great distance between them and herself.

But her freedom was actually of short duration;

Towards sunset they recaptured her

And frogmarched her back to Gorogo’s cave

Where a rather forcible marriage took place.

Indaba, my children, now you know

What we mean by ‘a Frog’s Bride’—

Throughout this Dark Land

From the Xhoza to the land of the Baganda

‘A Frog’s Bride’ means a forced marriage—

A girl thrashed into marrying

A man she does not love.

The Holy Legends tell us that Amarava

Became the Queen of the Frogmen

And in due course fulfilled her purpose

By laying numerous eggs.

From these eggs there soon hatched

A yellow frog-like people

Cunning little rascals these—

The Bushmen and the Pygmies.

In the third year the Frogmen were struck by disaster;

In those days all men reached maturity

In only a year or three,

And Amarava’s offspring was adult and fighting fit.

As usual she could not sleep

As a result of the pain she suffered;

The Frogmen had prescribed a special root powder,

But this was not fully effective.

She was lying in her cave overlooking the lake

And the half-submerged village of these queer people,

When loud yells, mingled with dying croaks, reached her ears

And she realised a battle was in progress.

Her offspring were now armed with bows and arrows,

Tipped with a deadly paralysing poison;

And in no time the Frogmen ceased to exist—

The last to fall was Gorogo, their Chief.

Thus died a near perfect race,

Nearly as perfect as the Kaa-U-La birds;

Imperfect man had made his return—

Foul, destructive, homicidal man.

My children, our tribal Wise Men solemnly curse

The day that Man set his foot upon this earth,

And they insist most seriously that the Universe

Shall never know peace as long as Man

Infests the earth like a vile leprosy.

Amarava had grown to like the intelligent non-human Frogmen

And her grief knew no bounds as she saw them wantonly murdered;

She raised her voice and called on the murderous bands,

Now skulking amongst the mud huts of their victims.

‘Come out of there, you creatures most foul!

Come and hear what I have to say.’

They came out and stood some distance away—

A wild and brazen-eyed naked rabble—

Far worse in appearance and general behaviour

Than a hunger-ravaged troop of thieving baboons.

Amarava felt hatred boiling within her—

Anger and grief deprived her of speech;

When she found her voice she harshly shouted

A blistering curse on her sons and daughters.

‘Be gone – hence you vile little bastards . . .

Henceforth you and your miserable descendants

Shall be nothing but vagabonds and thieves!

By thieving and cunning you shall live to the end of time,

And never progress or rise above

What you are today.’

They fled wildly into the forest

And Amarava left the valley of Frogmen—

Soon to sink in the haze of legend;

She did not know just where she was going

And could not care less, for her pains

Became more acute and she longed for death,

But a Greater Power always thwarted

Her attempts at suicide.

For days and months she wandered aimlessly,

Sucking at the magic pain-killing root powder;

Then one day as she stood on a point of vantage

A gigantic hand gripped her smooth round shoulder!

She spun around and stood face to face

With the creature she thought she had murdered;

Her surprise had no bounds, of course,

When she recognised Odu, the man-made man.

Odu explained that while out on his hunt

He encountered the Great Mother who gave him a warning;

Having read Amarava’s mind and fathomed her shrewd plan,

She advised that Odu should feign a deep slumber.

Even as they spoke Amarava felt a deep gratitude

To be back with a sincere friend she knew;

She felt her pains vanish in the Seven Winds

And suddenly felt young and free again.

Odu snatched her up like a baby

And took off through the forest with her—

A terrible smile was fixed on his hideous face,

But much less hideous than Gorogo’s, thought she.

He did not stop until they reached the stockade

He had built around his new kraal;

In the biggest hut he laid her down

On a pile of lion skins and fed her tenderly.

Afterwards they went through the forest

Past a huge Idol of the Great Mother,

Which Odu had carved from sandstone,

And finally reached his canoes on the bank of the river.

She saw some poles protruding from the water

And recognised the site of the hut she had burnt;

Odu dived in and swam to these poles

And from one of them recovered a mysterious article.

This was a delicately carved piece of ebony,

Shaped like a paddle for steering a canoe;

The patterns and figures intrigued her much

And she wished to know their meaning.

Odu gave her no explanation

As he knew she would soon find out—

Back at the Idol he suddenly did

What he had never done before!

He slipped his arm about her

And dragged her across the altar—

With the specially carved paddle

He gave her a healthy spanking.

The spanking was interrupted by the silvery voice of Ma,

Who suddenly appeared on the scene;

She suggested that Odu had given her enough

And should save some of her for the love-mat.

‘So you are back at long, long last, I see,

And I hope you have now thoroughly learnt, my child,

That no one should try to circumvent

The express commands of the gods;

And now I shall expect you to carry out

My instructions as already given;

And you, Odu, must never hesitate to use that handy object

When she starts with her tricks again.’

With this the Goddess slowly vanished

While the two of them stooped in prayer;

Together they returned through the forest

And two butterflies settled on the altar.