Lord of Darkness by Robert Silverberg
I learned whatever I did about the faith of these people from a certain man-witch of Mofarigosat’s tribe, whose name was Mboma. In the language of these parts mboma is the black python serpent, and boma is the word that means “fear,” so this man-witch Mboma was of great power, and his name meant something like Lord of Fear. But he was not at all black: rather was he of the ndundu kind, what the Portugals call albino, with skin so fair it was fairer than an English maid’s, skin more the color of paper than the color of skin, and hair of a fair kind also, though not anything like mine, being more white than golden, and eyes that were pink where a Negro’s would be brown and mine are blue. This witch Mboma was a small man, very frail, who carried a sun-shade made of palm-fiber to protect himself against the scorching of the sun. And the people did seem frightened of him, and kept their distance. I recalled when I was at Loango in the beginning of my African life I did see one of these ndundus who seemed most fearsome, a veritable Hell-demon, and I was much disconcerted by his glares and threats; but this Mboma, for all his awesome name, did not frighten me at all. He came to me and touched me on the arm and along the beard and beckoned to me to stoop to let him touch my hair, which was beyond his reach. And he said to me, “Mokisso, mokisso,” which I think was his way of telling me, “You are protected by the gods,” or maybe, “You are a holy man,” I am not sure which.
I went about the city with this man and he did show me the shrines of the mokissos and let me observe their ceremonies, and told me some few things of the meaning of what I was seeing. He treated me thus out of respect for my white skin and my golden hair, which had throughout my time in Africa unfailingly brought me such special attentions.
This ndundu, who was a nganga or priest or man-witch as I say, came to me each day and tugged at my arm and took me about to some new festival. One such was the circumcision rite; for all these blackamoors do practice circumcision except the Christian ones of the coastal territories, that have forsworn it. They do this thing not for holy reasons, I think, as it is done among the Jews and Mussulmen, but to show virility: a woman would not regard as fit for marriage any man who had his foreskin. Indeed foreskins are most strange to them, and often in my coupling with native women of the pagan tribes they would play with mine, rolling it back and forth like a toy, until I had perforce to remind them what business we were supposed to be performing with one another.
I did not take much joy in witnessing circumcisions. This was done upon boys of twelve years of age, who were smeared with white earth and did dance together a long while, looking most joyous and exalted, though I would think they should rather have looked frightened. Then they went into a dark house where they remained certain days with very hard diet; and when they came forth they were rubbed with a red earth, and animals were sacrificed, and the boys did dance about some more. The ndundu then spoke prayers, and the circumciser came forth, who was the blacksmith of the village, holding an iron sickle. The boys sat with their legs apart, and assistant circumcisers came up behind them and held them, and one by one the circumciser came to the novices, holding in his right hand the sickle, which was heated red-hot. With his left hand he did take each boy’s yard and pull at the foreskin and quite suddenly cut it off, which made me turn my head away each time it was done. And each time I also felt a fiery impact on my own member, that made me flinch, as if by sympathy with the initiated boy.
God’s wounds, what things we do to ourselves in the name of sanctity and piety!
The bleeding boys were given some potion to drink, and then older boys led them away to wash their wound, and there were other rites that I was not permitted to witness, which peradventure was no serious deprivation for me. The foreskins lastly were heaped up and taken off to the burial ground of the city and given interment with a high solemn rite. For my witch-friend did tell me that unless they were properly disposed of, they might become zumbis, that is, walking spirits, and return to bedevil the village.
I confess that I looked aside and did smother a laugh at those words, to think of ghosts in the form of foreskins. But later I thought it was not so foolish, to think a spirit might reconstruct itself out of a small part of a body, especially one that is removed with such a show of holy pomp. For if there are spirits at all, of which I am far from sure, why not have them emerge out of any merest scrap of humanity, and march zumbi thenceforth through all eternity?
The ndundu Mbomba did tell me something else on this subject of circumcision, that woke deep horror in me.
He said, “We cut only the boys. But I know that in the eastern lands, they do cut the girls as well.”
I thought I did mishear him, and asked him to repeat, but he said it all again carefully in the same words.
To which I replied, “God’s eyes, but what is there to cut on a girl?”
The white-skinned witch, by way of answer, did beckon to a girl of twelve or fourteen years who was passing by, and made her come to us, which she did in terrible palsy of terror at being summoned by such men as we. He took from her the little girdle of cloth that she wore, and bared her loins and parted her legs and the nether lips, only just mantled by the new hair, and showed me the pink hidden bud that is a woman’s most secret place of pleasure.
“This is what they cut,” he said.
“God’s death! God’s eyes! God’s wounds!”
“It is not done in this land. But there are tribes that say it is unclean for women to have such things on them, or that it is the site of sorcery, or that it makes a woman unchaste if it is not cut off. They do use a kind of stinging nettle to make the organ swell so that it is large enough to be cut, except those tribes that use the cautery, where—”
“Enough,” I said, and shuddered. “I will not hear more.”
It was the only time, in my gathering of the lore of these foreign peoples amongst whom I was thrown, that ever I did order a halt to a narrative. I suppose I should have had the information from him, which perhaps no other man of Europe has ever heard; but I wanted it not. For all I could think of was the poor mutilated women, deprived of their pleasure-zone, and I gave thanks to my own God that He had not inflicted upon us any such custom, that seems to me far more barbarous than cannibalism itself. The life of a woman is sufficiently hard as it is, I think, without her having to give up that thing, too.
But the people of Mofarigosat were licentious by nature and did not practice such damage upon their women. For which I was grateful on those nights when I consoled myself for my fear and loneliness by taking those women to my couch. Their lovemaking was done in the style I was already familiar with, entailing much tickling and no kissing on the mouth or private parts, and in positions other than the familiar one of England. They greased their bodies with a grease not much to my joy, but it was not intolerable, and I took my will of them often enough, thinking a time might be drawing near when the vengeance of Mofarigosat might send me from this world, and wanting such comfort as I might have before then.
I learned some of the strange ways these women have of keeping from being taken with child. They believe that if they open three cuts in their thighs, and rub into them some of the blood of their monthly bleeding, they will be rendered sterile; but all they need do, to have their fertility again, is reopen the cuts and wash them in running water. Some also think that if semen be used in the place of the monthly blood, that will have the same effect. Others tie knots in a piece of string to guard against pregnancy, or put hen’s eggs in their cunts after coupling, or catch a certain type of large white ant and insinuate it into the same place. As for arousing male desire, should that be necessary, they have a witchcraft of which I was told, that uses a he-goat’s yard, the ballocks of a cock, and a root called ngname, that has the shape of the male member. Also do they make potions of salamanders and roaches, the hair of the genital zone, leaves dipped in semen, and the like things.
Another way I occupied myself during my captivity in the city of Mofarigosat was to observe their system of justice, which makes
The way this is done is that when any man is suspected of any offense he is carried before Mofarigosat, or one of his ministers, who questions him on his guilt. And if it be upon matters that he denies, and cannot be proved but by oath, then the suspected person is given over to the nganga-priest whose special skill it is to administer the ordeal by poison. One of the ways this is carried out is with a root which they call imbunda, about the bigness of one’s thumb, half a foot long, like a white carrot. This root is very strong and as bitter as gall, by my own knowledge from tasting it, and one root will serve to try one hundred.
The virtue of this root is, that if they put too much of it into water, the person that drinks it cannot void urine, and so it strikes up into the brain as though he were drunk, and he falls down, as though he were dead. Whereupon the people all cry out, “Ndoki, ndoki,” that is, “Sorcerer, sorcerer,” and they knock him on the head and drag him away to hurl him over a cliff. But those who can make urine are found not guilty and set free.
In the like way they have another drug, nkasa, which comes from a certain red tree that is so noxious that the birds cannot endure even its shadow. When it is given to those who must take it, the nganga says, “If you are guilty of disturbing the peace or are a traitor, if you have committed such and such a crime, if you have stolen such and such a thing, if you have robbed and killed such and such a man, or if you have cast some spell or other, die from this nkasa. If you are innocent, vomit it forth and be free of all evil.” The guilty man will discharge red urine profusely and run a few paces and fall down and die, and his body is denied holy burial. But those who are innocent puke up the drug, and their urine is unaffected, and they live.
I learned in my later life in Africa many other forms of trial by ordeal, such as the trial by hot iron and the trial by boiling water and the trial by snail-shells, or sea-shells. But I will tell of all these in their proper place.
I observed much else in my weeks in the city of Mofarigosat. One thing I witnessed was the making of the raised scars that are thought to be such a thing of beauty, by cutting the skin and inserting cinders underneath to inflame it, or by pressing certain plants into the incisions. They told me that certain scars had special meaning upon women, such as those along the thighs that are taken to say, “Squeeze me,” and a circular scar on the buttock that has the meaning, “This is where a man holds me.” But I learned only a little of these mysteries.
And also I saw the shame that comes upon the women when it is their bleeding time of the month, for they are thought unholy and dangerous then. Men have a deep fear of that blood and will on no account go anywhere near it, nor are the cattle of the tribe permitted to approach a woman who is in her menstruous time. They have a special house where those women go on the first two days, and there are no wells near it, nor plantations, nor pastures. Yet the blood of them is a powerful magic that they use in various rites, of which I know nothing.
Since I had naught to do but watch these things, I watched and absorbed a great deal. And I marveled much that each nation of Africa has its whole host of special customs, its myriad of tribal witchcrafts and spells and mokissos and philosophies, so many that it would take a thousand chroniclers a thousand lifetimes to record it all, and I think it be of high interest. Yet what will happen, if the Portugals have their way and turn all this land into Christian territory? And make everyone here wear Portugal clothes and talk the Portugal tongue and go to the Mass and forswear all their native habit? You might reply that this would be only for the good, to abolish the foul pagan way, and to some degree I would agree with that, since I see no merit in the trial by poison or the cutting of women’s parts or the like. Yet when such things have disappeared wholly from the face of the earth, and everything is but the same everywhere, whether we be in London or Muscovy or Turkey or Angola, have we not lost a great deal of richness out of the world?
On all this did I ponder, while I waited for Diogo Pinto Dourado and his men to return and redeem me from my being pawned to Mofarigosat. And the days went by, which I counted by making little marks on the wood of a soft tree outside my cottage, and the tally mounted to twenty and forty and fifty and then to sixty, which was the expiration of the agreed-upon period. I was not so innocent that I expected the Portugals to return to me, but yet I was not so soured upon mankind that I would deny out of hand the possibility that they would.
And so I went on hoping and tallying and hoping and tallying. Mofarigosat, too, was keeping a tally; and as we came to the end of the second month there was a discernible change in their treatment of me, for I had no more women and no more wine and far more humble food. And the time ran out.
I will give Mofarigosat credit for this much, that he did allow four additional days of grace. But at the sixty-fourth day that was all the grace I could have, and some of the chief men of his court came to me at my cottage, and one said, “Your people have not kept their promise, and now will we cut off your head.”
It seemed to me sure that I had misheard him. But I had not, for they took me straightaway to a place in the great plaza of the town where they punished their thieves and adulterers. Here there was a chopping-block, and to one side they did have the most grisly place that could be imagined, where many chopped-off hands and arms and legs were piled, and a goodly number of chopped-off heads, and old bones to be seen beneath this, and flies of a large size with gleaming green bodies buzzing around over everything. This charnel mound did speak to me of frequent and terrible punishments administered by the officers of Mofarigosat upon his people, and I understood the obedience of the citizens to him.
I looked toward that pile of human fragments and in my mind’s eye I did see the golden-haired head of Andy Battell sitting high above all that sundered and withering black flesh, with the sun coming down from straight overhead and striking against my hair and beard with a wondrous radiance. And it was a vision not very much to my liking.
Yet did it seem certain I would end my life in this place within this hour. For though it was only an early time of the morning, with the mists and fogs of night still settling about the ground, a great throng did come forth and take up a place around the edges of this plaza. And the high nobility of the town had the closest place, nigh the chopping-block. I had me in mind that it must look much this way in London, at the Tower, when some great person of the realm is being parted from his head, and he stands alone by the block, and the Lord Chief Justice is there, and the Bishop of this place and that, and the Duke of this and the Earl of that, all at close range, where they can hear the sound of the axe and see the blood go flying.
And then there did come forth to me a colossal blackamoor, who must have had an elephanto for his grandsire, for he was an immensity of flesh and bone and muscle, a wall of a man; and he carried in one hand, the way you might carry a pike or a pigsticker, a sword of most ferocious size, five feet long or even greater. This blackamoor was naked except for a necklace of small bones at his collar and a chain of long lion-teeth at his waist, and his skin was oiled to a very high gloss. This was the executioner and you could see that he did relish his work, for he was smiling and singing under his breath and swinging his vast sword back and forth through the air to test the strength of his right arm.
I looked about me and said, “Ah, you would not kill me on this the holy day of my faith!”
I was minded to invent for them a fable: that this was a day of days, upon which no man was to be given to death, for his soul would be deprived of heaven if he perished that day, unless he performed certain rites that only a priest could do for him. But all this clever imagining of my fevered and frighted mind was futile, in that they paid no attention to what I said, but laid hold on me and in a trice stripped from me all my clothes, and I stood naked before that multitude.
Now, it is an awful thing to die by the headman’s blade, but it is five times more awful to do it naked before hundreds of onlookers. Heigh-ho, and the onlookers themselves were just as naked, or the next thing to it; but they at least had their privities decently covered, and, besides, they were not the ones who were dying that day.
And there I stood with my yard and buttocks and everything exposed to the gaze of the curious, which robs a man of all dignity at the moment when he most needs his dignity, since he is about to lose all else. It is barbarism. King Henry, when he sent his queen Anne Boleyn to lose her head, did not also command that she be laid bare so that the gapers could behold her royal breasts and loins. Nor did he expose the equally royal belly and rump of Katherine Howard, his later queen, to the crowd when she went to the block. Or imagine Sir Thomas More naked on the scaffold, or Somerset, or Northumberland, or Norfolk! Nay, it is too much, to be revealed at the last before the mockers; but these savages took no account of it. I was sore afraid I would beshit myself in fear, or rouse their laughter with my urine, or, worse, have my yard stand tall at the last, as is said sometimes to happen to the dying, and there be no way to conceal any of these weaknesses of the flesh. I think I was more afraid of those shames than of dying itself.
Naked, then, and alone, and unshriven, did I march forward between two armed men to the chopping-place.
I looked about me.
“I beg you mercy,” I said, “for I am a stranger in this land, and I was but left here as a pawn by my enemies, who hoped to see me brought to this pass. But I have done you no injury, as you all do know.”