with this beautiful zombie always by your side – an immortal monument to the evil-heartedness and ingratitude of the creatures known as Man – wanton creatures who destroy ruthlessly those things they should love and revere; unnatural beasts that destroy the trees whose shelter they seek, and defile with excrement the cool streams from which they heal their thirst.
‘She imparted happiness to the spawn of Man; she gave the race of Man music, but what reward has Man given her? Take her, Nangai, and carry her back to the village of the Wakambi. Love and cherish her, soulless though she be, because physically she will yet bear you a hundred sons and fifty daughters and these shall be the rulers of the Wakambi and many other future tribes. Rule with wisdom and strength for a hundred summers, and after that you can retire with your beloved Marimba to a golden sanctuary I shall prepare for you at the bottom of Lake Nyanza.
‘And as for these evil mortals here who sought fame in delivering out a friend of theirs, I now deliver them out to the mercy of the Viper Maidens.’
With these words the goddess slowly vanished, while a host of Viper Maidens appeared on the scene. Dreadful were the shrieks of the wizard-lord when one Viper Maiden sank her fangs into the scruff of his neck and terrible were his struggles and contortions as her venom coursed through his scrawny body. Lozana, the treacherous wife of Kahawa, died shrieking for her husband while the fangs of another Viper Maiden were still buried in one of her ripe buttocks.
Dreadful was the hissing of the happy Viper Maidens as they feasted under the silent moon.
In the dark cave of Nangai the re-born god turned his eyes upon the woman he desired with every vein in his body. She was still kneeling where he had left her, like a soulless toy a child had forgotten. He came towards her and she raised her head and looked up at him with great empty eyes. Tears sprang to the eyes of Nangai and he stooped and raised the beautiful thing that once was Marimba to its feet – drew it close to him and wept his heart out. Then he laid it gently on his cloudy couch.
‘Tomorrow we are going home, my beloved. You shall see Kahawa and Rarati and the rest of your people again. Kahawa has come back after finding that the story of the lion was false. Already he and Mpushu and Rarati have rallied all the people and they are searching for you. Do you hear?’
He might as well have spoken to a carved idol. She merely stared at him, her lips parted . . .
Nangai took his unresisting wife into his arms and kissed her lips for the first time. Her body trembled with a feeling she no longer recognised and her eyes closed in sudden fear and shyness. Outside the cavern the moon seemed brighter and a pleased smile seemed to linger on its round face.
* An old Wakambi word which has no exact equivalent in English. In that language it would have a very vulgar meaning, but not in its Bantu sense. Literally, it combines the two words ‘itch’ and ‘hips’. It is used to describe a woman who has an insatiable thirst for a man.
Book Two
Stand Forever, Oh Zima-Mbje
(Compiled from numerous old Mashona, Venda, Bechuana and Varozwi songs and stories)
This is the story of the Lost Phoenician empire in Southern Africa, a story which is still sung and told around village fires in South and Central Africa today, a true story – it has thousands of relics in the hands of witchdoctors to support it.
Badly rusted and crumbling swords of ancient Greek manufacture, old gold coins and parts of bronze shields and helmets, bronze spears and Egyptian battle axes, all of which are in the secret possession of witchdoctors throughout Southern Africa, confirm the truth of the story of Zima-Mbje.
THE COMING OF THE STRANGE ONES
Lumbedu, the witchdoctor, had not slept well at all the previous night; in fact, for him the night had been one long hideous, screaming nightmare in which he had been alternately chased, strangled, mauled and torn apart by no fewer than ten different kinds of monsters, from giant crocodiles to bright red monkeys with ten eyes apiece.
The cause of all these unpleasant nocturnal visitations from the Demon World was not far to seek at all: it was nothing more than the fact that the rather overweight Lumbedu had stuffed his capacious belly well-nigh to bursting during the feast held in his honour on the previous day. This feast had been held by one of his patients he had cured of a bad fever by forcing down claypots-full, one after the other, of a strong purgative into the luckless man’s stomach, with the result that although the poor fellow had been quickly cured of his fever, his stomach and intestines had been almost purged out of existence.
During the feast Lumbedu had brought forth loud shouts of amazement and admiration from the rest of the guests by excelling himself in his elephantine appetite. He had eaten the large half of a goat – haunch, ribs, shoulder, neck and head – pushing the smaller portion across to a starveling who had been staring at him with bright astonished eyes and a wet, drooling mouth. Then he had attacked a great bowl of boiled ox intestines and a pile of hot corn cakes, flavoured with kaffirbeer, with the ferocity of an invading conquerer. He had concluded this most royal repast with an almighty draught of two full claypots of bubbling cornbeer.
The midsummer sun was going down and the distant forests were now veiled by a smoky, mistlike haze, which made them look farther away than they really were. Wisps of smoke rose into the windless pale blue sky from great kraals and villages, while loud in the ears were the lowing of cows and the hollow bellowing of bulls as large herds of cattle were driven homewards from the forest-fringed pastures.
The rays of the slowly departing God of Light shone on the sweat-drenched face of the panting boy who was running through the forest as if Watamaraka, the Queen of Evil herself, was after his blood. He was a very frightened boy indeed – anyone could tell from his eyes. What had he seen?
Follow the boy, my children – dark-brown, thin, naked, swift as a wild eagle of the hills. Follow the boy to whom the breath of fear has given the strength of a thousand men and the endurance of a wild buffalo. His toes and feet are bleeding – his left thigh is red with blood where a cruel thorn from a meva bush is deeply buried in his flesh. But he runs on heedless of pain and tiredness.
What has he seen? Guess, my children, guess!
Lo, he bursts through the forest and before him rears the stockade of a big kraal, a kraal consisting of sixteen huts surrounded by a stockade of pointed poles interwoven with thorny creepers. It is the kraal of his father, Lumbedu the witchdoctor, and the boy runs into the kraal as if he were the Seventh Wind itself.
‘Father, father,’ he cries shrilly.
Ojoyo, his mother, sees him and comes waddling fatly to investigate the reason for her son’s fright.
‘My son, what is the matter?’ Her fat greasy arms encircle the frightened boy and he collapses. She carries him away like a baby to her hut and there, after removing the thorn from his thigh and washing his many wounds, she makes him drink a bowl of sleep-causing luika water, and he falls fast asleep.
‘I think he must have seen an animal in the forest,’ says Vunakwe, the third wife, to Ojoyo later.
‘My son is no coward,’ snaps Ojoyo. ‘I still insist he must have been frightened by an evil spirit in the forest, Oh Vunakwe; he saw one of the demons which
