beautiful pictures why the Strange Ones left their country and came to the Country of the Black Men.
First he showed a savage battle between the Strange Ones and another race with long flowing beards and hair. Then he showed the Strange Ones being routed in a charge by foot soldiers and warriors riding on fantastic vehicles drawn by strange beasts with long flowing tails and manes, like zebras without stripes. After this he showed a number of canoes with long poles in the middle and he drew figures representing the Strange Ones fleeing towards these canoes in wild panic.
He showed the males of the Strange Ones fighting a brave rearguard battle while figures, obviously female and young, clambered aboard the canoes. The canoes were then represented in full sail over what was obviously water with fish and crabs swimming below the surface. He drew a circle representing the sun and made a hundred strokes under it.
‘A hundred days,’ breathed Lulinda.
Silently, ignoring the interruption, the odd man showed battles between Strange Ones and wild beasts, lions and elephants and leopards, battles that the Strange Ones, with their superior metal weapons always won. He dropped the now full calfskin and took out a second one.
Lulinda screamed when the odd man finished the first picture on the second sheet. The picture showed two black figures, male and female, embracing under a full moon near an old and dilapidated cluster of huts, and those two figures represented Chikongo and herself.
Unknowingly, unwittingly, the odd man was betraying Lulinda to Lumbedu, her husband. And soon, on the silent sheet of calfskin, the whole nocturnal adventure was exposed, up to the time when Chikongo kissed Lulinda for the last time and fled into the forest. There, on the silent parchment, the trembling Lumbedu not only read the story of the Strange Ones, but also that of Lulinda and her secret partner. All was set out in clear lines and many colours as plain as daylight. The adulterous love affair of his youngest and favourite wife stood out for all to see.
The odd man then started to explain in pictures that the Strange Ones were more than willing to trade some of their weapons for any foodstuffs, except meat. Then, after that, the red-bearded leader and the younger brown-haired man dropped Lumbedu contemptuously on the ground and started, together with the other Strange Ones, carrying off some of Lumbedu’s full corn baskets. But for every basket they took they left a spear, an axe, or a knife behind – all superb weapons of gleaming steel or bronze.
While this was going on, Lulinda saw the odd man with the green striped loincloth leap over Lumbedu’s kraal stockade with two stolen swords in his hand and vanish into the forest.
The Strange Ones left after drinking every drop of milk in the kraal and after the ever-smiling young man with the brown hair had stood over the prostrate and still badly scared Lumbedu taunting him cruelly in sign language for his great cowardice. It became plain to Lulinda that the Strange Ones had not yet noticed the odd man’s escape.
Ojoyo and the rest of Lumbedu’s wives and children did not return to the kraal until well after sunset. They found Lumbedu staring in blank fascination at the pile of weapons the Strange Ones had left in exchange for the corn. The first thing Ojoyo did on coming into the kraal was to root out Lulinda and call her an adultress to her face, describing in vivid language how she had seen her being kissed by Chikongo in the forest.
Lumbedu was still suffering from the after-effects of his great fright and could not think or talk straight, so his wives took the law into their own hands and bound Lulinda securely hand and foot in preparation for her ceremonial execution on the day to follow. They beat the helpless woman with their skin skirts, burned her thighs with hot stones, spat on her and blew their noses at her. They seized her breasts and pulled them until she shrieked with pain and, before they left her, they forced her to drink the entire contents from Lumbedu’s clay urinal.
They were not being cruel; they were only doing exactly what the law and the customs of the tribes of the Dark Land say should be done to adultresses before they are executed. Then on the following morning, Ojoyo sent her eldest son Gumbu to the kraal of the Tribal Avengers with the request for the arrest of Chikongo as an adulterer.
Now, the Tribal Avengers were a group of men over whom no chief had any power and who had no tribal loyalty. They were men dedicated to the destruction of all those who broke tribal customs and, being members of no particular tribe, their assistance could be enlisted by anybody from any tribe. Even the chiefs lived in fear of the fanatically dedicated Avengers and many, in our land’s strange history, are the chiefs who fell victims to the spears of this secret group of men who had chosen to be shorn of their powers of fatherhood and who could kill a woman with the same pitilessness with which they killed a man.
They led loveless, joyless lives, these strange men, living only for the enforcement of the centuries-old customs of the Black Race. Very often nobody knew just who they were because they always wore heavy woven bark masks whenever they emerged from their isolated kraal during daytime.
Thus it was that by midday on that cloudy day, a strange figure was seen coming up the hill on which Mburu’s tiny kraal was perched like a lost bird on a rock. Mburu was the father of Chikongo, who was an only son amongst many daughters.
‘Look, what is that coming up the path?’ said one of the girls to Manjanja, the First Wife.
Manjanja’s eyes were fast losing their sight although she was only four-and-forty years old, and they groped blindly in an effort to see what the girl was pointing at. ‘I see nothing, child,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you see.’
‘It is a man, but he is wearing a chinyau mask on his head and he is clothed from ankle to neck in leopard skin. He is carrying in one hand a big club shaped like a man, a carved club with a big head and ugly face. He has an axe that looks terrible.’
The half-blind woman leapt to her feet with a choking cry; she knew very well who and what the masked man was. She called urgently for her husband and to Chwenyana, the Second Wife.
‘Oh my fathers,’ cried Mburu, ‘an Avenger!’ The Tribal Avenger paused outside Mburu’s kraal and called out harshly: ‘You in there . . . you, Mburu, the son of Timburu, the son of Chumba, son of Kondo . . . come out and stand outside the gate of your kraal, which I will not defile my feet by entering. Come on out and hear what I have to say.’
Mburu came out, a proud, brave man who had once been a leopard hunter until a leopard mauled his right arm, paralysing it forever. He stood facing the dreaded Avenger without fear and without expression on his strong, bearded face.
‘Speak, Avenger, I listen.’
‘Your miserable son, whom I shall not defile my mouth by mentioning by name,’ said the Avenger, ‘has slept more than once with one Lulinda, who is the youngest of the females of one Lumbedu who pretends to be a witchdoctor. Your wretched son knew very well what he was doing and he knew that stealing another man’s love-mat from under him is a breach of custom, punishable by any kind of slow death that the insulted man may choose for the offender. And since Lumbedu has sent a complaint to us, we are positive that your son is guilty and we have already sentenced him to death. So your son is now bound by law to go to Lumbedu’s kraal and receive the death he so richly deserves. Do you have any questions to ask?’
‘No, Avenger, we have none,’ Mburu replied, choking back a sob. ‘If you say my son is guilty then he is guilty.’
‘Now
