wish to argue with you Ojoyo,’ says the peace-loving Vunakwe. ‘It is best that we ask the child himself if he awakes . . .’
‘If he awakes?’ Ojoyo explodes. ‘If he awakes? Do you wish my son not to wake up then Vunakwe? Do you want him to die?’
‘No, no!’ cries Vunakwe, cringing from the advancing Ojoyo. ‘My tongue slipped; I meant to say when he awakes, believe me.’
‘You witch, you know very well that you meant what you said. I am going to . . .’
But she gets no further as her attention is claimed by another of the wives of Lumbedu.
The sun was high in the silver skies when the boy Mulumbi, who had come running into the kraal on the previous evening, crawled painfully into Lumbedu’s hut and knelt near the low entrance, facing his many parents who regarded him with bloodshot eyes and blank expressions on their haggard faces.
‘Father,’ said Mulumbi at last, ‘I have something to tell you and I only ask you, please, to believe me.’
‘What is it?’ snapped Lumbedu, who was as bad a parent as he was cowardly and selfish. ‘Speak up and then get out!’
‘Father,’ said the boy, ‘we were out hunting wild cats with the other boys from Songozo’s village yesterday afternoon; we went farther and farther into the forest until we reached the Zambezi and then started to follow the river eastwards. We did not find any wild cats but we did find a young buck which we speared and roasted and shared. We were still eating when Mbimba stood up and gave a loud shout of great fear. We all threw down our meat and grabbed our spears and bows thinking that some animal was about to attack us. “Look over there – what is it?” cried Mbimba. We all looked and saw something terrible coming up the Zambezi. Believe me, my parents, it was something terrible!’
‘What was it?’ chorused Lumbedu and Ojoyo together.
‘It was a canoe, a very big canoe, father. It looked like a terrible serpent of the waters. Along its side ran two rows of long paddles and a great sheet of what looked like a skin was stretched on a long stick that hung on many ropes across a tall pole that stood in the centre of the giant canoe. There were three great knives attached to the front end and a carving shaped like a man, with hair as shaggy as a lion’s mane. The other boys fled, my father, but I decided to hide in the grass to see what the canoe would do next. It came nearer and nearer . . .’
‘My brave little son,’ murmured Ojoyo. ‘Go on, what happened next?’
‘To my surprise, the canoe came closer and closer to the river bank and then it stopped. I saw men running on its top and the long rows of paddles being drawn up. Great metal vessels were lowered to scoop up water – lowered on ropes down the side of the great canoe. So near was it that I could see the many men on it quite clearly and they were the strangest looking men you ever saw. They had pink skins – they were pink all over; they had hair like the mane of lions – hair that fell to their shoulders. Some had hair as black and shiny as that of a panther, some red as fire. But one had hair the colour of corn in autumn. It was terrible – I was so afraid I just lay in the grass, all strength gone from me. I saw some of the men leap over the sides of the great canoe; they leapt naked and with their long hair flowing behind their heads. They leapt into the water and started swimming and splashing in the Zambezi like so many pink fish. Some were wrestling and laughing and some just swam about, leisurely, enjoying the cool water.
‘Then a group of them ran out of the water on to the bank and started coming to where I lay in the long grass, too terrified to move. I closed my eyes and lay quite still. I heard their footsteps coming nearer and their voices grew louder. Then I heard a shout as the foremost of them had seen me. I felt a wet hand seize me roughly by the wrist and haul me to my feet in one movement. I found myself looking deep into the green eyes of one of the strange ones, my parents . . .’
‘Iaia-eeee! – no human being can ever have green eyes,’ said Lumbedu. ‘No human being can ever have long hair like that of a lion, and a pink skin. This brat is lying!’
‘Be quiet Lumbedu,’ screamed Ojoyo. ‘I know my children more than anybody else does and I know when they tell lies and when they tell the truth. Mulumbi is not lying.’
By this time the boy Mulumbi was bathed in sweat, his hands shook like leaves in the wind and a look of wild fear distorted his young boyish features. It was Lulinda who first noticed this. Worry clouded her beautiful face and she whispered to Lumbedu: ‘Be careful, husband, please be careful; he has had a great shock; he is a very frightened child.’
‘I have never seen this boy like this,’ spoke Vunakwe. ‘He is not a child who is easy to frighten and I know he tells the truth.’
‘Continue son, tell us the rest, then you can go and lie down in your hut,’ said Taundi. ‘You are not looking well.’
‘The strange ones have strange eyes, Oh my parents,’ continued Mulumbi, very slowly and weakly now. ‘Some have blue eyes, some brown, and the one who was holding me had green eyes. But those eyes seem to see through and through you; they make you feel naked and unhuman. I cried and struggled in the strange one’s grasp, and he laughed and put me down. Then he gave me something small and shiny and round, something that was metal. But I must have dropped it as I turned and ran and ran with the alien laughter of the strange ones loud in my ears. I ran on and on without even looking behind me.’
Suddenly he fell heavily to one side and lay still. His audience leapt to their feet, but it was Lulinda who reached him first and threw her arms about him. ‘He . . . he is dead . . . dead,’ she choked.
A heavy silence fell inside the hut, a silence as heavy as the veil of time that conceals the future from our eyes. Then Ojoyo began to sob softly.
The story spread like wildfire through the land and within a few days nearly everybody knew about the strange pink human beings in a great canoe that had come splashing up the timeless Zambezi. The boys from Songozo’s village who had watched Mulumbi’s adventure with the Strange Ones from a distant hill, swore he had told the truth.
The barbed claws of the vulture of fear slowly closed their grip on the frightened land and soon people began to be so scared about what they had heard that they no longer ventured outside the stockades of their villages and kraals except in groups of tens and twenties.
Warriors armed with long bone-tipped war spears and stone axes escorted women whenever they went to the stream to get water or to the cornfields to reap corn. Drums beat out long warnings that were relayed to the farthest villages, telling people to look out for strangers with pink skins and long hair. Soon all the villages along the banks of the Zambezi were empty of life, having been evacuated by the inhabitants.
Everyone began to live in fear, everybody that is, except two people who were carrying on a secret and adulterous love affair.
Night had fallen upon the earth like a panther-skin kaross, powdered with silver shining stars, and an ugly brooding silence lay heavily upon the fear-haunted land. Deep shadows, black and forbidding, lay like crouching demons under the trees – shadows that concealed prowling night-hunting animals such as leopards, hyaenas
