Part 27

“On another night that man called Moz came in secret and said to Djeba, ‘Hark thou well in the night, and before another moon has gone thou wilt hear the drums of the tribesmen of the north.’ And when he saw Djeba take up his reaping-tool he said, ‘Rather shouldst thou sing for joy. For these men here who are ignorant _niggahs_ have told thee things apart from the truth. Thou hast spoken to me of they milk-brother who is called Moa, who was sold into the planting of Maas Djoj Blaak. It has come to my knowledge that Moa has fled from that planting, and with others from other plantings has gone to fight in the war-parties of the Yankis, where they are received with honors. Is it probable that such men eat babes? No, Djim, I repeat to thee, these here are child-headed _niggahs_, who know not that the Yankis come to set them free out of labor in the plantings. No, Djim, rather shouldst thou sing for joy, for when thou see’st the Yankis thou wilt see thy milk-brother in their train.’

“Then Djeba’s heart sang for joy.

“‘Again, again I shall see my brother!’ he cried. ‘Again our eyes shall behold one thing and our breaths shall be one!’ And he said to Moz, ‘Now I too will run away from the stockade and I will go to meet Moa.’

“And Moz said, ‘But the driver will prevent thee.’

“And Djeba said, ‘No, for I will kill the driver before I go.’

“And Djeba waited, feeding his heart on the thought of Moa and on the promise of the death of that white man who had laughed.

“There came an evening when he watched and saw the driver going out of the stockade into the edge of the bush. So Djeba took up his sharp reaping-tool and followed, creeping near the ground. He came near to the driver. He saw him very clearly. The driver was dressed in finery, with a hat like a deep drum fashioned of fur, and a tunic of blue cloth with buttons of silver. Djeba saw him against the light of dusk in the sky. But the driver was not alone. Mis’us was there, where she had stolen for solitude. It was she that the driver had followed, as the desert hyena slinks slavering after the lone gazelle. The fear was in Djeba that if he struck the man, then the woman would give the alarm and he would be taken again. He might have struck both. But his heart was softened by the compassion of the woman, and what was written in the book of the future he was not given yet to read. Had he known! Had he but known to strike--the driver afterward, perhaps--but the woman first.

“But while he hesitated, already it was too late. He saw the driver step forward and grasp the woman’s arm, uttering words he could not understand. He saw the woman, standing quietly, turn her head and spit once and spit twice in the driver’s face.

“She continued to stand quietly, like stone. But the driver flung off toward the stockade, laughing terribly in his deep chest.

“Then Djeba would have returned and waited another chance at the man. But the thought of Moa was strong on him, and the bush was at his back. So he said to himself, ‘I will return with Moa,’ and he crept away.

“All that night he walked swiftly. He hid himself and slept in the day and advanced by night again. He did not know where he went, but the image and affection of his milk-brother were so powerful in Djeba that it seemed he would come truly to Moa. Because of that he remained strong. His stomach was empty but his heart was fed, and he penetrated the bush with the swiftness of a panther. He would have wished to speak with others and know his way, but if he saw slaves in the fields then he saw with them a white driver, and he was afraid.

“There came a time when he saw a Senegal man working at the edge of a maize-planting, and no driver was in sight. So he showed himself, and he asked, ‘Where then are the Yankis?’ And the man answered him, ‘Go thou to Tlaanta. I know nothing, but at Tlaanta all things are known.’

“‘Where then is Tlaanta?’ Djeba demanded. And the man said, ‘If thou knowest not Tlaanta then indeed thou art an ignorant _niggah_. Turn thy face to the north, and at nightfall thou wilt behold a great _ksar_ which is Tlaanta, which is the chief place of Djoja, where all things are known--”

(“Tlaanta.” Something queer was happening down in the subconscious regions of my brain. “Tlaanta, the chief place of Djoja.” The reader may laugh, but so firmly was my attention fixed in the picture of some fabulous tropical mid-African scene that the familiar syllables, blurred in the Arab utterance, touched still too lightly to make a breach. “Tlaanta Djoja--” I glanced uneasily at Borak, as though he could help. He returned my stare with a supercilious grin, as much as to say, “My word! you’re not letting yourself be taken in by this fantastic claptrap!” “_Tlaanta_, the chief place of _Djoja_”--“_Maas Djo_”--“_Yankis_”--“_Moz_”--“_Djim_”--The equatorial forest-walls were trying their hardest to topple over in my dull brain. But there was no time. I had to get back to the saga unfolding in the strong voice of the orator in that ember-lit Sahara night.)

“--And when the night fell Djeba saw before him in the sky a pillar of light. And he came on a hill and saw a great settlement in flames. And then all about him came people fleeing in confusion through the dark bush, carrying on their heads their mills and cooking-pots and crying, ‘The Yankis! The Yankis are come!’

“Then Djeba was glad. He went down toward burning Tlaanta. The flame was in his face and his heart was hot, and he stood and called aloud the name of his brother of the milk. But he saw no man. A lad ran out of a shelter that took fire. Djeba caught that lad by the arm and cried, ‘Where are the Yankis?’ And the lad screamed, ‘Gone! Gone!’ and he fell down with his eyes wide open, and Djeba saw that he was dead.

“And Djeba said to himself, ‘If the Yankis are gone and Moa with them, then it will be his thought to lead them to that planting where I was a slave, to kill that driver and set me free.’ So he turned his back on the burning _ksar_. He ran all through that night. Others ran with him; other slaves freed by the war-party’s passage. They turned this way and that in the darkness, chanting the war-chants of the Yankis, and their paths through the bush were ruin. In the night they pillaged and burned stockades, in the morning they marched in bands, in the afternoon they slept along the trails. But by day and by night their minds were turned with freedom, and when Djeba ran amongst them demanding word of Moa their answers were without sense.

“There was a night when Djeba came upon a clearing. He saw a stockade in flames. The light of those flames showed him the fields, and then he recognized that planting and his spirit leaped with joy. He said, ‘Now Moa has come here seeking me, and his revenge is before my eyes!’

“And Djeba ran bounding across the fields and came into the flame of the stockade, and he called Moa’s name. He shouted the war-call of their tribe. He shouted the hunting-call that had been fixed between the milk-brothers in the old days in the bush.

“Then it seemed to Djeba that he heard the answer to the hunting-call, but in the crackling of the flames he could not say whence it came. Then he bounded on in the stockade. In that circle of fire he saw a man standing. It was a white man he had never seen. His breast was black with blood, his head hung down, and he wept. Djeba went toward him boldly.

“‘Tell me, then, where is Moa?’

“The man looked at him with dull, heavy eyes from which the tears ran down, and for answer he said, ‘Where is my wife, boy? Where are my servants? I am Maas Djo. I have come home.’

“Then Djeba perceived that the man was possessed, so he did not harm him, but ran on. He leaped like a panther through all the stockade. He bounded through the wall and stood in the lighted field, and there was nothing there but his shadow. Then he ran toward the bush, and there he saw a figure. He pursued, and the figure ran into the bush, but Djeba was too swift, and overtook it, and he saw it was that woman, who crouched like a terrified gazelle and watched his coming with large eyes.

“And he said, ‘It is I.’

“When the woman heard that she trembled with relief and took hold of his arm and whispered, ‘It is thou, Djim! I thought it was _he_. I thought thou wert that drunken monster pursuing me still!’

“When he heard that, there came into Djeba’s mind the memory and the hate of that driver. And he said, ‘Where is he now?’ And the woman, grasping his arm more tightly at that instant, whispered, ‘Hush, thou, and hark! He comes!’

“Then near them Djeba heard the fall of feet and he saw the man advancing through the bush. He saw his shape plain and black against the glow beyond the leaves; the shape of that fur hat he remembered, in the form of a deep drum, tilted wildly; the shoulders thrust out with that tunic of silver buttons, the elbows swaggering. And he saw that the figure was drunk and lustful and that he came in cunning silence amongst the leaves, and he knew that the time of his revenge was at hand.

“So Djeba sprang through the leaves and caught the man’s neck in his fingers. They fell down in the dark on the ground, and there they fought. But Djeba’s powerful hands were about the man’s throat, and the man lay quiet and breathed no more. Then Djeba went back, but the terrified woman was gone.

“Then Djeba returned across the field toward the stockade, calling Moa’s name again, and in the field near the stockade he saw lying the body of a man. The man was despoiled of his clothes and naked, and his head cut three-quarters from his trunk. And Djeba looked and saw that it was that driver.

“Then Djeba said to himself, ‘The night is full of infernal creatures, witches and _djinoun_. I have slain the driver in his finery in the bush, and here he lies an hour dead and naked in the field. The night is red with devil-work.’ A fear came on him and his teeth knocked together. Nevertheless he went back to the bush, laid hold of that other man’s feet, and pulled him through the bush to the field, and there he looked at the face of the man he had slain.

“_He looked at the face of the man he had slain!_”

The syllables of the loud repetition went away across the sleeping floor of the square and played among the invisible arcades, echoes deep-toned, momentous, tragic. And in the glow of the embers I saw the lip of that oblivious clay pulsing, pulsing, with the same laggard and monotonous beat. I continued to stare at it. You may be certain now that I stared. The short hairs at the back of my skull stood up and pricked the skin. For the wonder of it. Even to that Senegal orator himself the saga he repeated remained fabulous, an epic of equatorial rivers. Chanted first by son and then by grandson at a hundred feasts and under a hundred village council-trees and grown into the body of mid-African legendry, not till this night had it come to ears that heard; to eyes that saw with the eyes of that ancient, moribund, blind, black wanderer. For now I knew that I had heard the tale of that incendiary night on a “Djoja planting” before, not once, but many, many times; not in the glow of a Sahara camp-fire, but in the ember light of a Hancock County chimney-nook, where my own grandmother Peyton used to sit before bedtime thirty years agone, reciting a saga of her own.

The narrator’s voice was heard again, rushing, staccato.

“Then Djeba ran through the bush to find that woman, his one thought that he might now slay her too. For he perceived now that she must be a witch-doctress, thus by compassion to have blinded his eyes. He ran with all his power. How long he ran, what man can say? Sometimes he seemed to see that woman as a shadow in the bush before him and sometimes as a bird flying before him through the trees. In him there was no hunger save the hunger for her killing, no thirst save the thirst for her blood, no weariness save the weariness of the damned soul.

“And then there was a time when it seemed to Djeba that he was in the midst of many men. He saw that they were white men and that they moved in a thousand ranks. Ruin lay behind them and thunder ran around. And he remembered the words of Moz: ‘The Yankis are like the leaves of the pepper-tree; they are small, but their number is beyond count.’ And when the nights came Djeba saw their camp-fires, and even their fires were beyond count.

“A forgetfulness came on Djeba. He ran from fire to fire, crying, ‘Where is Moa?’ And those men mocked him, saying, ‘Moa what?’ But Djeba screamed at them and ran on. Or sometimes they named him _Samboh_, saying, ‘Hold, _Samboh_. Sit down with us now and sing!’ Then Djeba thanked them, and sat down with them and sang, and the war-chant of the Yankis filled the sky.

“And after many days Djeba came with the war-party to the banks of that lake, and there he beheld a bearded chieftain sitting on a horse, and he fell down on his face and wept. And he implored, ‘That I come again to my own country beyond this water, where Moa, my brother, has returned, and where he awaits me in the village of my tribe!’ And that chieftain heard.

“In after-days then was Djeba placed in a boat, together with many of the River and the Cameroun, and he returned across that lake where the waters lay to the sky like the sands in the desert of Djouf. Then they made a village on the shore. But Djeba left them. He penetrated the bush through which he had marched many years before, bound to that chain. He penetrated the country of enemies and he passed through. Then Djeba came to his own village again. There were old men there who knew him when he spoke his name. They rejoiced and made a feast. All night they feasted. And one of the old men said to Djeba, ‘Moa, thy brother of the milk was taken with thee. Where then is Moa?’

“And Djeba said, ‘I do not know.’ And he took none of the feast.

“And in the years afterward, when Djeba had taken wives and got sons, there came into our country the missionaries of God (to whom be the prayer) and of his Prophet (may his bliss never decrease)----

“_La illah il allah!_

“And they spoke the word of the Koran to Djeba, and Djeba’s heart turned in his breast. And he said then, ‘My heart can no longer contain a lie. Hark all to the truth. Moa, my brother of the milk--which bond is sacred--Moa, my brother, him I slew with my own hands in that land which is beyond the great water. I slew him, being tricked by a witch-woman. And that witch-woman I was not able to slay! That then is my sin!’

“That then is the sin of Djeba. I have spoken, I, Belkano, who am the son of his son!”

In the hush that followed that deep-toned verbal signature my breath whistled small in my throat.

“Lord! Lord! Oh, my Lord!”

Borak eyed me with a smirk and a grunt. The black fellow showed his shining teeth again. He took another breath into his lungs.

“For the length of thirty Ramadans the father of my father has not opened his mouth to any man in speech. Because of that sin, because he would not look at any man, his eyes have become blind. He would not hear, and his ears are deaf. Thus men know that he is holy. So they come for many marches to touch his hand. Sometimes then his lips are opened, and for their ears he will sing again that war-chant of the Yankis. And then those men will give him offerings against his pilgrimage, that he may see Holy Mekka and ease him of that sin and die----”

The voice was rising.

“They give him offerings of broad copper! They throw down pieces of silver before him! _They throw down gold!_”

I heard the wind going out of Borak’s chest at that; an obscure thoracic collapse. A snort.

“At last! At last the plot unfolds. Now the old bird will render that popular ditty entitled, ‘The Unwritten War-song of the Wild Yankis of Yankisland,’ and the company will contribute. And strangely enough the ringmaster’s eye is fastened unerringly on _you_.”

“For God’s sake, man----”

“Yes, but you’ll see,” he persisted. “You’ll note that his toe even now is prodding the old one in the ribs.”

It was true. I saw the nudging and peremptory toe. I stared at that lip hanging in the ember-light. I beheld a disorder and quickening of that fleshy pulse. I heard an obedient sound issuing forth. It was a very small, shallow, creaking sound. It emerged from that emotionless mask of senility; it rose and fell in mechanical lengths of tone like a bent wire and went away and was lost in the night of the packed Sahara square. It was a queer chant.

“Cock and bull!” grunted Borak.

“For God’s sake, man, hush!”

I stared and I listened. Yes, it was a very queer chant indeed. The short hairs were beginning to stand up again at the back of my skull.

On the ground, red with the firelight, a copper sou was tossed. I saw another fall, and another. I took out my wallet and found a hundred-franc note, and I let it flutter into the circle over the shoulder of Bou Dik.

Borak got hold of me.

“_Lord!_ I say, now! What’s _that_ for?”

“To help and ease him of that ‘sin.’”

“But my dear simple chap--all that rigmarole----”

“Of the greatest of all African wars----”

He tilted his head at me with the absurdest suspicion about my wits.

“Come away!” he said.

I got up and went with him out into the black ruck of the camels. He was groaning audibly over that squandered bank-note. “Man, man, and you were really taken in by that beggar’s claptrap. Why--look you--in that old chap’s day there weren’t enough white men in Central Africa all put together----”

“Borak!” I said. “_Will_ you listen to that song!”

In the hollow of the market, above the grunt and snore of the caravan, the thin war-chant of the “Yankis” wound on, repeating, repeating,

John B’own’s body lahs amoldin’ in the g’ave, John B’own’s body lahs amoldin’ in the g’ave, John B’own’s body lahs amoldin’ in the g’ave, But his soul goes mahchin’ on----

In that Sahara darkness where the pale courses come from beyond the South I saw Atlanta burning. Sherman was on the march.

[20] Copyright, 1922, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1923, by Wilbur Daniel Steele.

[21] The Napoleonic Messiah of Mohammedan prophecy.

[22] There is no god but God.

THE COFFIN[23]

By CLEMENT WOOD

(From _The Pagan_)

It stood in the middle of the sitting-room. It was all black, except for the silver shine of the handles. There were flowers on the floor beside it, vague blotches of dulled white and yellow. The burdened odor of honeysuckle, a ground-clinging, unhealthy sweetness, came to the man’s nostrils; there was a stiff, pungent scent, too, that he could not place. On the mantel, more flowers; the glimmer of the bracket lamp washed these feebly--its wick was so low that the flame seemed next door to dying at any moment. Flowers filled the stiff-backed chair beneath the lamp. There were two other chairs in the room, both empty.

Thomas Rice loitered at the open doorway, taking in the sparse furnishings. He had stood for ten minutes within the dining room, while Aunt Teby Riggs, Charley’s own aunt on his mother’s side, whispered harshly all he needed to know, and much that he did not.

“Won’t yer have just a bite, Mr. Rice?” she insisted stridently, unable to keep her eyes off the twisted half of his face.

“I et my supper already, thank yer.”

“Just a mite of this chicken? Or a cup of somethin’ warm, to stay by yer?”

“No ’m, Miss Riggs.” He fumbled uneasily with his sweaty felt hat, drooping from his right hand; his coat hung limp over his arm. It was a hot, stirless night; serving writs up the county tired feet and spirit; and the final walk from Belle Ellen to Dolomite was a good eight miles.

She indicated the crowded hat-rack. “Yer can find room.... Louella’s eatin’ her supper now.” The shrill syllables rasped his ear.

Her disquieting footfall followed him to the sitting-room. Her arm gestured past him. “They got it from undertaker Norton, in Bessemer,” she volunteered chattily under her breath.

“Yes.”

The dining-room door creaked to at last. He stood, rubbing the ball of his right thumb with his forefinger, as if to cleanse each of invisible irritating dust from the felt hat. The hat was gone; its absence was a momentary annoyance, a perceptible gap in things.

There were two chairs. Both were against the same wall, toward the front of the house. The mantel, the chair with flowers, the two empty chairs, and ... it.... His restless mind took an unconscious inventory. Instinctively he put off thinking about what lay within it.

He took the farther chair. They were almost a room’s length apart, and this one was slightly nearer what had been the man he had loved. She--the woman that he despised--could hardly think that his mere sitting there could poison the air for her.

His mind wandered on. Honeysuckles were great flowers for funerals. That sharp, stiff odor--it was like the look of dahlias, stiff, waxy. There were some in old man Lunsford’s side yard. Maybe these came from there. He could afford to give away, especially if it cost him nothing: flowers ... advice.... Butting into people’s business, with his skinny little face and weedy little beard, like his own weedy front yard.

The dining-room door creaked open. A firmer step thudded on the carpet. She came into the room, a thin hand shading her eyes, to make him out. Then she sat in the empty chair.

“Evenin’, Louella.” It was her house, now; decency demanded that much.

“Evenin’.” The word was spat out.