the great fires. Never before had her people seen her more lively, more active and vivacious. She was the very fount of song and hilarity, and she danced like an uninhibited tempest ravaging a country.
But Kahawa was not deceived by his mother’s cheerfulness. He saw through it clearly as through a crystal-clear drop of water. He had seen the tall Masai enter his mother’s hut and he guessed the decision she had made even before she announced it to the cheering people.
Marimba had decided to marry again after more than ten years – and she was going to suffer the agony of bereavement once again. All her cheerfulness, all her vivacity, was an attempt at shutting out of her mind this unpleasant fact.
It was a year-and-a-half later and the beautiful queen of the Wakambi was alone in the dark forest. She sat on the bank of the same river which, so many years ago, had seen her second husband attacked and devoured by an old lion. That same river had seen the death of Koma-Tembo, the valiant Masai, whom she had loved as she had never loved any other man before.
Koma-Tembo had gone out with about fifty hunters and snare diggers to trap a rhinoceros that had taken up residence near the river and had developed the habit of charging groups of women who came from the village to fetch water. As usual, Koma-Tembo had volunteered to take the most risky duty of all; this time he had chosen to be the decoy man. In this capacity he had to lure the beast towards the circle of great pits cleverly covered with poles and grass. Once inside the circle, the animal was provoked to blind fury by a shower of stones and sticks hurled by the other hunters who were hiding in the undergrowth. As decoy, Koma-Tembo had to expose himself at this stage and invite the beast to charge him. He would then lead the beast to one of the pits whose cover was strong enough to carry the weight of a human being, but not that of a heavy beast.
Koma-Tembo had successfully decoyed the furious rhinoceros right into one of the great snare-pits, but he had tripped and fallen into it himself. The Masai and the rhinoceros had met the same fate at the points of the deadly stakes planted in the bottom of the pit.
Marimba was disconsolate. She had taken to the habit of going alone into the forest merely to sit in a secluded spot and meditate – with her songs as her only company. But the people she ruled noticed that the more their queen suffered at the hands of the gods the more beautiful became the songs she composed and sang, and the more fantastic the musical instruments she invented.
She invented six different kinds of reed flutes, and pipes.
She was sitting alone near the river when Kahawa, now known as ‘The Left-handed’, came along the river bank at a run and in obvious excitement – a rare thing with him indeed!
‘I am here, Oh Kahawa. I am over here.’
Kahawa came striding through the undergrowth. He was fully armed and he wore the usual hard expression on his face. But his brow was, in addition, clouded by a great puzzlement which surprised Marimba very much.
‘What is the matter, Oh Kahawa?’ she asked as she rose to her feet. ‘What has happened, my child?’
‘Come with me, Oh mother,’ said Kahawa with barely concealed excitement. ‘Come with me, for I have to show you yet the strangest sight of your life.’
Marimba followed her son through the dark scowling forest. She followed him through glades where the breeze whispered in the tall grass and through swamps where otters played amongst the reeds, and swamp birds nested in the tall lubaqa.
They went eastward towards the distant mountains and soon Marimba found herself paving a way up the boulder-strewn slopes while the ground fell gradually behind her. A cruel shrub armed with vicious dry thorns scratched her smooth immortal thigh, drawing blood of heavenly purity. She let out a small cry of pain and Kahawa whirled, his stone-headed mace gripped tightly and at the ready. Then he saw the scratch and the blood and a strange intense feeling he could not identify swept through the valleys of his soul.
‘Maie agwe!’ he cried; ‘you are hurt, mother!’
‘It is nothing, Oh my son. It is nothing but a scratch from a thorn-bush.’
‘Sit down and rest, mother.’
‘I am not tired, my child; we can still go on.’
‘Mother, sit down,’ commanded Kahawa fiercely.
‘You are a true son of your father,’ said the surprised woman with a weak smile as she sat down on a boulder. ‘But you must not use force all the time, son; force destroys him who uses it.’
‘Mother, force is good when used to defend or protect things that one holds dear, and to defend you I am prepared to use all the force in the world.’
‘My son, you must never concentrate all your love on one thing or one person. You must learn to extend your love to the world in general, because you are part of it and the world is part of you.’
‘I hear you, Oh mother,’ said Kahawa softly.
‘And above all, you must try and be a good husband to the two girls I gave you for wives, my son. They are always complaining that you come home with a terrible temper – you refuse to touch them and criticise the food they cook for you.’
‘But mother,’ protested Kahawa, ‘I did not want to get married in the first place. I have no time for women. Besides, those two you gave me are the worst you could find. The first one, Lozana, is a frightened bore who chatters like a jungle monkey from dawn to dusk without pause, and the second, Lukiko, is a fat stupid idiot who not only reminds one of a lost buffalo stuck in the mud, but smells like one too, and has the brains of one . . .’
‘My son!’ cried the mother. ‘What words are these? What horrible things are these that you are talking? It is your duty to beget children to carry your father’s name on to generations to come and your personal feelings must never interfere with that duty. Whether you love your wives or not is beside the point. Now, Kahawa, I want to see either or both your wives pregnant in two months’ time . . . and I shall tolerate no further back-talk from you!’
‘Oh mother, I have far better things to do in life than begetting noisy bawling babies.’
Marimba was about to make a heated reply when she was interrupted by the sudden appearance from behind a boulder of Kahawa’s friend, Mpushu the Cunning. Mpushu was sweating profusely from his hard climb up the hill. He threw himself on his knees and crossed his arms in front of his fat face in salutation to Marimba. Then he lifted his fish-like face and said to Kahawa: ‘I have been down to the strange beasts, Oh Eagle of Marimba, and I have found out something that is a great surprise. The beasts are not only harmless but they are so docile that you can actually pull the ears of some of the females and they will follow you.’
‘What strange beasts are you talking about, Oh Mpushu?’ asked the puzzled Marimba.
‘Come with me, Oh Mother; come and see,’ Kahawa urged.
Puzzled, Marimba followed her son and his friend farther into the rocky hills of the north-east. They climbed over a hill and halfway down the other side they stopped. ‘Look, mother, look down there in the valley.’
Marimba followed her son’s pointing arm and her eyes met the strangest sight she had ever seen. The valley
