Minor Memories
I AM visiting Sorrow of Evening. The walls of her little bark hut are hung with a gray film of nets; for she lives by the sea, and her husband is a fisherman. With a seine of checkered cloth she has been fishing in a backwater, and now she heaps her catch upon a mat of green leaf that she has spread on the clay of her floor. All her fish are little, very little; all are bright. None is longer than an almond. Some are like moonstones and some like opals; some are freckled with gilt, some with vermilion. Some littlie bold ones are striped like tigers, and burn there on the green of the banana leaf —there they all burn and glimmer and glitter for a moment, and I remember them forever.
It is an early morning, and I am by the sea. The sky is very high, the water is pale under a multitudinous bright spangle. And at the edge of the incessant ripple I see a pattern of footprints — the little tender markings of the feet of children. There they are in the sand, little prints so delicate, so flawless, going north and south upon little errands so ephemeral, and washed away by a tide of long ago. But still they are remembered — I remember them.
Or it is a dateless night, thick with bright stars and the smothered ember of a moon going down into the sea before my door. Some Senegalese soldiers pass among the trees at the forest’s edge; they sound a call on the bugle, very true and sweet — it is the voice of that lovely, lovely night. I walk out, and the night beats upon me in a light fail of starlight, and the damp of the dew and the soft insistence of the waves and the sharp insistence of the thousand thousands in the grass and the sudden sweetness of the bugle melt my heart that is hard with the monotony of the day’s work — and set their record forever in the wax of it.
Or it is four o’clock of an afternoon. The sound of the surf comes from the sea and the sharp rustle of palm trees from the land. Under the immense sky our clearing is suddenly seen to be a space full of significant and noble lighting, which compensates the arrested spirit for the heat and burden of the day. At that hour there is a supernatural signal to the creature in us that is not at home in the world—some secret, of liberat ion is felt at four of the clock on a day long forgotten.
Or it is early morning in a forest village, and we are going to salute the old headman of Nkilezok. The little brown huts of his village crouch under the burden of the sunlight, but in his palaver house there is a permanent dusk. You can hardly see him in that dusk, as you come in from the day; but he sees your white outline against the door, and he cries out that he has seen a magic! The magic draws near the old man. They speak together. Tapping the clay of his floor with the staff he holds between his knees he says: ‘I and the earth — we are old!’ What has Magic to say to that? You are impressed and he sees it, looking at you with his old eyes that observe you. It is then he tells you that he is God. ‘Why should I honor God?’ he asks you. ‘I am God. You see all these people about here? I made them.’ And still he murmurs, looking at you always, ‘A magic—I have seen a magic!' Afterward you are told of the magic named by him, that it is a bright enchantment and that those who see it must soon die, or one of their household. And always you remember that old god sitting in the dusk of his palaver house and visited by the ultimate magic.
Of the people of Ebamina I remember only the headman’s guard. I am speaking to the people of that village about the things of God; and the guard is there, dressed in ragged khaki and ostentatiously taking notes. He writes and writes — a grotesque figure in his ragged trousers; but there are so many women in Ebamina, who ask so many quest ions about the things of God, that I cannot ask him,— as he hopes that I will do, — ‘Who are you that write so superbly in the backwoods of the forest?' And he goes away.
But that night, when the last guest has gone and the moon is white in the one street of Ebamina, there comes to see me a young buck breeched in barkcloth, belted with beads, banded with beads below the knee, long knives slung at his side and the inevitable spear in hand. He and his spear, in the light of my lantern, are very tall. He is wishing, he tells me, that I could help an old woman who has just gone mad. Could I not give her a ‘mouth-medicine’ to quiet her?
He speaks with the civil gentleness that is the politeness of the forest people; but his aspect, brilliant and wild, is like the brilliant wildness of striped and stealthy creatures. He waits in the glamour of moonlight and the glamour of lantern-light to hear me say that I have no mouth-medicine for his poor mad woman, and then he goes away. With the curious deliberate softness of violent people, he goes away, and his black shadow with him. Suddenly I know that he is my ragged scribe. I remember him forever, because he is beautiful, and because I am surprised.
It is another night and the same lantern. I am going to see my little herd of schoolgirls, who should now be abed under the long thatch of their dormitory. It is to say good-bye that I am going—I shall be leaving with the dawn, on some forgotten journey. Before I open the door, I hear them say, ‘The lamp has come!’ I suppose that they have seen the light of it through the slits in the bark of their wall. And when I enter, all the little heads, some tousled and some so neatly dressed, come up from the wooden pillows; all the little faces assume a mournful expression, looking as they would wish to look when I must go away.
I put the lantern on the floor, and I make a few of my customary improving remarks. They are well received; my little girls admire me with their brilliant and attentive eyes. Until I say that they have been very good of late, and that, while I have sometimes punished one and sometimes another — when I am interrupted. My little girls think that I am struck with compunction, — that I am going away torn with remorse,— and they cannot bear it!
‘Don’t speak of it!' they cry.
‘Not one has a grudge against you!’
‘Why would you not punish us? Does not a mother punish her children?’
And all those young faces look at me so sweetly in the light that strikes up from the lantern on the ground — forgiving me so ardently with their faces, that I remember it forever. Forever I remember that sweet and expressive and unanimous absolution.
Too many little girls I remember — bush and beach. Ntet I remember, going before me in our path that lay in the bed of a clear and rocky stream, — holding up her little flowered cloth that was so bright in that place of shade, — a little Persephone in a kind of forest Hades. And Soya, too much the child of her white father — she is remembered , and the pallor and bloom of her oval little face, where there is no touch of yellow, but all a tender brown like the brown of faded roses; and the delicate modeling under the coils of her shadowy hair; and her presence, which is as fragrant of youth as the jasmine is sweet; and her smile when she watched us bathe the white baby by the light of a lamp lit long ago. Her pink dress is faded; it does not cover her neck or her little round arms. On one of her wrists there is a silver band, and a copper band on the other; there is a black ribbon hanging from her neck, and above her temple she has thrust a grass ornament as green as jade. And she smiles, when we bathe the white baby, the mysterious smile of women who look at babies. And little wild girls I remember, dancing about the evening fires to their own little drumming and singing, swinging their grass bustles with a rhythmic acquired skill, or playing out under the stars. The memory of them beats softly against my heart, like the wings of the little night-moths that they were.
I remember a day of wrestling. The things of that day are preserved in an amber of sunlight. Summoned by drums, the neighbors are abroad upon the trail. They are going to the wrestling, and I am going. Metingie, by permission, is going to the wrestling. He is our steward, and he is of a cannibal tribe — a Yebekolo. Yet it is confidently asserted of Metingie that he has never eaten man — a fact that has sometimes come to mind when Metingie, with noble gestures, served at table. There he is in the amber of that sunlight, upon the open clearing in the town of Mbita, and there am I. And there I see the men of Mbita’s town out upon the path, with their bow-guns; with their arrows they harry a snake that is coiled too, too bright in the high crest of a palm tree. The snake draws in its golden loop; it was there and now it is not there; somewhere it is in the forest shadow — not to-night will it be eaten from the kettles of the town of Mbita. And that is the snake I am always to remember. Long after, and often, when I am asked if ever in Africa I saw snakes, memory is to select out of an abundant treasure this golden snake of the town of Mbita.
I sec before a potter’s hut his little new family of clay pots — gray in their nests of green leaves; big and little, they dry in the sun. I meet a group of twenty Bene men, very bold and bad, each with two spears and rejoicing to be off on one of their wicked errands. In the town of Ndib Ela a saucy old woman, sitting under the eaves on the west side of her hut, accosts me. She demands news of my husband; and when, as ever, I disown him, she asks: ‘Ye o ne flee?’ And thinks that she has used the word so new in the forest: Are you free?
Am I free? I wonder. Because I am going to the wrestling, who should be about my proper business, I think that I am ‘flee’; but, oh, if that old woman were to beg me, ‘Tell me three words of the Word of God!’ — then I am not flee. She does not ask me — still I am flee. No one asks me; the women are in their gardens or at the wrestling. The challenge of the drums is not abated; the crystal quiet of the morning is in bright fragments all about me; and presently I am the most distinguished person at the wrestling, bar none.
Ango the headman is sitting under the eaves of his house on a chair, and I sit on a chair beside him. No others sit on chairs; we are isolated by this and by our quality of personal distinction. We are polite, like Theseus and Hippolyta at the play. Resplendent young bucks are called up for our inspection, the pick of Lhe wrestlers of the clan Mvok Amuku; they are breeched with orange, orange and black, crimson, crimson and bull. White socks are painted on their legs, their bodies are oiled. Each has his spear, which will be thrust into the ground when the play begins. On my sideof the grand stand, under the eaves, sit the women, their dressed hair painted green or yellow or red. Ango is flanked by men — the non-combatants. The drummers in the shade of a little tree incessantly beat their challenge — Mvok Amuku challenges the clan Esse and the clan Otolo. The empty ring of ground, ploughed for the wrestling, bakes in the morning sun. And there sits quite visibly upon the inhabitants of this little forest village that malaise with which we wait, all dressed up, for the guests to come to our parties.
Will the Otolo come? I gather that, if the Otolo come, the wrestling is made.
They come. Suddenly from the wing to left of stage, where the trail enters the clearing, there debouches a lightfoot troop; with incredible swiftness they come to centre; they dance beautiful obvious dances of pride and derision. They retire to the shade of a tree, and all those young limbs relax, those young bodies lean on their spears or lie upon the ground. Now another light-foot troop runs out from the right wing; the clan Esse comes to centre, they display their quality, and retire to a chosen base. For each group there is a man with an iron bell, a man with a wand, wise men to sit in the shade shouting counsel, and drummers, to fill the clearing with a multiple clamor.
Into the sunlight and that clamor Ango the headman steps out. He lifts a hand; the drummers pause and the host declaims in the grand manner. There is to be no foul play and no anger.
Palm leaves like plumes are distributed for tallies. The drummers rage, and from the groups in the shade individual wrestlers run out with conventional challenging gestures. It is the part of the challenger to plead like a lover; he droops altogether to his opponent, but the two or three young men who run in his company ‘ruffle up the crest of youth’; they spurn the ground in a smooth and equal rhythm. The wrestler does not speak, nor his seconds; but the man with the iron bell gives tongue.
A young man glides to centre; he falls upon a knee, his arms crooked like a drawing of youth on an Egyptian wall; he rises too swiftly, that beautiful image of supplication is too soon dissolved— he has come to grips with his opponent. And there is now another and another team at play in the hot dust of the ring.
There is a constant effort to keep the matches even. The headman’s son returns again and again to a heavyweight, who rejects him and who draws him at last under his armpit with an adult impatience — as a sort of scornful measure. But the headman, when he sees it, commends the challenge; and when the lad is thrown, his father calls to him: ‘Don’t make a sullen face — make another kind of face!’ For the manner is the thing, almost as much, you would say, as the play.
Both shoulders must touch the ground, to score, and umpires separate those who struggle too long in an equal effort. There is a pause after an unsuccessful throw — an interlude of conventional gesture, a play of exhaustion and touching posture, which is suddenly cast aside for the return attack. Little boys, who have had their little triumphs under the feet of their elders, are carried off the field, exactly as premières danseuses are carried away by their partners — with posed arms and legs. Men when they score are acclaimed; the women of their clan spring to their feet with a rustling of leaf-aprons and bustles; the man who keeps the tally puls a leaf upon the ground, with a little dance. And for all the fair words of Ango, there are quarrels.
Under the eaves in the noise and dust it is too hot.
There is a young man of our party, very fine, whose challenges are evaded. Many times he runs into the ring — so many times that there is a permanent image of him in the mind. He wears a purple breech-cloth, he is very black and has many strands of beads about his middle. It flatters him that he should be feared, and his mien of nonchalance is melted in a burning pride — he is wrapped in a flame of fierce pride. He comes to smile continually, with an intense irrepressible gratification. When I go away in the late afternoon, I leave that arrogant figure still challenging in the haze of the dusty ring, and still the champion of the Mvok Amuku.
Metingie — he of the Yebekolo tribe, he who has never eaten man — goes with me. The Yebekolo, he tells me, are not permitted to wrestle; neither the government nor their headmen permit it, because they are too quarrelsome. They could not wrestle without bloodshed, Metingie tells me complacently. And he tells me of a young man who was to-day challenged by his brother-in-law, and refused the challenge. ‘In that he did well,’ says the sage Metingie; and then is still. When he is still and I am still, there is only the sound of the drums to be heard; and when these are presently still, how still it is on the trail in that forest! All the innumerable music of the ground is still and waits on the dusk. And the dancedrums that will trouble the night are still — the very swamps through which we pass are still. And in that stillness it is cool. Somewhere beyond our range the sun is going down the path to the sea, the twelve-hour tyranny is at its ebb. Metingie carries my helmet. That young man who has never eaten man is kind to me; he does not murder the heavenly stillness. I am ‘flee.’
In the village of Mbita we meet our twenty men with their forty spears; they are singing and dancing; all their spears are level. A woman cries out from the centre of this group. They are all terribly happy, but not the woman. They tell me how she ran away with a Bulu, and that her Bene husband, going after her to the Bulu bush, was there imprisoned, but has been this very day rescued by the powerful Bene. And the powerful Bene rush away down the road, joyous after an ancient fashion.
Metingie and I drift out of the pool of Mbita’s clearing into t he stream of the trail. We are again still.
I remember that stillness. Many a time, when I am in the subway, I remember the ineffable stillness of the forest. I wonder to find myself where I am — so savagely circumstanced — so pressed upon by alien bodies — so smitten by noise. Traveling like this, in white man’s fashion, you are certainly safe from the snakes and the leopards and the cannibal tribes of that other world where you traveled in other fashions. Now that you are shut up so safely in the guts of Manhattan, your friends feel at case about you — surely the sun shall not smite you by day nor the moon by night.
And yet, perversely, in this perfection of safety, you are intimidated. Suddenly passive after your desperate adventures with traffic, you feel the hidden things of memory rise and flood your heart; you dream. You remember other times of day than the manufactured night of the subway, and other ways of travel. And suddenly, in the indestructible silence that is the core of that incessant clamor, you hear a bugle calling in a forest-clearing that, is halfway round the world.