Three Words

I

THE HOST

MBITA GAMBALA’S name of friendship is Mimfenda, and I am to call him that. Always, when I visit his women, I drop in to see Mbita; then I try to remember that I am to call him Mimfenda. This little ceremonial of friendship pleases the old man, who is friendly. And because he is friendly, he remembers and I remember one of those embarrassing moments when the things of religion conflicted with the things of friendship.

There was Mbita sitting at a door of his palaver house; and there beside him, on a grass mat, is a recumbent wife; and there, between the two of them, a great pot of boiled plantains still steaming, golden in the pot. I come in out of the middle of the day, so excessive in the clearing that is Mbita’s village. I sit down in the shade of the thatch, and am politely silent for an interval, after which I politely address Mimfenda. I tell him the news of my village. I am impeccable and he is impeccable. And I say I am hungry.

Many a Bene friend of mine has been pleased to hear this admission — looking at me quizzically and taking account of human frailties that reduce the white woman to be eating out of the clay pot, like another. ’The wind that, shakes one little leaf of the tree troubles all the leaves of the forest.’ I beg Mbita for a plantain out of his pot, being truly hungry, and thinking to please him. And suddenly all the elements in that palaver house are violently displaced. Like the pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope, they suddenly and violently fall into a new combination. I feel the agitations of that process of displacement all about me, and am confused. In that confusion I hear the voice of Mbita’s wife, and she is begging me to desist — she has risen and is making gestures. Poor old Mbita, whose name of friendship is Mimfenda, is begging the white woman not to eat out of his kettle. He looks quite stricken. And I do assure you that we all shudder — the wind that blows on one blows on all.

Mbita, it seems, was tied by his mother never to eat with a woman. Needless to say, he has never broken this taboo. And needless to say, there has never been a woman to menace him after the fashion that I have so recklessly devised. With alacrity I withdraw. This is a faux pas of a most serious sort — the white woman leaping off into the dark and dragging the poor old headman of the village with her. These are the perils, the truly dreadful perils, of indiscriminate contacts. Mbita’s wife, long after she is satisfied that we are safe, continues to breathe quickly, looking at me with a wary and scornful eye. But Mbita himself, whose manners are instinctive, patches up, with his presence of a stricken dignity, the shattered peace of his palaver house. The tide of darkness ebbs away. Only there remains the embarrassment of the negation of hospitality. And while I am explaining to Mbita that there will be a pot on every fire in the hut of every woman of his village, and that I may have a boiled plantain out of every one of these and so grow fat on the hospitality of his village, without breaking any of his personal taboos, there comes an inspiration to Mbita.

There is a carrier walking with his shadow down the clearing of the village. We see the load on his back and the legs of him beneath the load. He walks in the centre of the clearing, having no friends in any of the little huts, and not calling out any salutations by the way.

Mbita suddenly shouts to him. ‘Ah mo!’ he cries out, and we see the carrier pause. He waits there in the sunlight, not turning himself about; asking himself, I suppose, Now what are they going to put upon me, and what accusation of stealing or other misdemeanor have they devised against me in this village of Bene strangers! And he stands still at the voice from the palaver house. ‘Ah mo! Ah, friend!’ cries Mbita. ‘Are n’t you hungry?’

The carrier is still there. What a silly question — is n’t he hungry! And why would n’t he be hungry? What would he be eating in this country of strangers? And Mbita says to him, —

‘Come eat my food that is here in my palaver house, you who are a guest in my village!’

I see the carrier turn about; there is front view of him plastered up against the load on his back. He is making good time up the hill now, the two legs of him speeding to the feast. He is a most surprised carrier. And I go away from a placated Mimfenda, who has demonstrated to the dullest of white people that he is a truly hospitable person, once you have made place for his religious convictions.

II

THE AUTHOR

Ela, I tell myself, is no longer a lad. I suppose, I tell myself, he is a considerable person in his own town. I reiterate these things because I cannot quite believe them, having known Ela since he was ‘no bigger than an eyelash,’ when he was an unimportant member of my household. Often since then he has visited me, but this is my first visit to his village, which is on a bypath.

He meets me at the crossroads. He is as high-strung as ever; the same tooth is missing, the same dimple flickers, the same agitations of friendly solicitude beat upon me. He is as ever a gossip, ironic, and overbearing in his manner. And he has at last a little inadequate beard.

Nothing in his town is too good for me, be sure of that. As a matter of fact, it is a shabby town, corrupted by Ela’s lack of order; but such as it is, it is mine. He clamors for small boys, who rush to serve us. The fire-logs are carried smoking from Ela’s hut; there is a great worrying of dust in that dim interior. My cot is disposed according to his order, with loud agitations — he remembers exactly how it must be done, and tells me so. He recognizes happily whatever is old of my belongings. If I try to tell him any wish of mine, he is impatient, and will not be instructed because he remembers — he remembers forever and never will forget — exactly my custom and my every wish. He hangs his little perverted mirror low on the wall near where I am to sit — and I am to sit. where he has imagined me to be sitting. He wants to cut a hole in the bark of his wall, so that, when I sit there, I may look out at his grass-grown street. I am to eat at his crooked table. And I am halfway through with my supper when he discovers his cap on the table. ’This is a horror!’ cries Ela, and flings it into a limbo in a corner.

His townspeople, harried by his anxious hospitality, have cooked my food, and he serves it in fine dishes — some of them borrowed, I know. Ela is terribly impecunious, that is evident. He wants to cook me a chicken, but has none of his own, and his neighbors will not trust him. I know this when little panting runners come from here and there to say, —

‘He won’t!’

‘He does not want to!’

’He says no!'

A man calls him from the street , on I don’t know what business. And Ela says, ‘Put your head in the door!’

The man looks in, is stunned by the vision of me — struck dumb.

‘Is this a time?’ asks Ela, ‘What will you be saying now?’

‘Ah, no!’ says the man, all cowed.

The supper served in grand dishes, the meeting by lantern-light in the shabby palaver house — neither of these is the core of my visit to Ela’s town. Ela’s book is that.

He has written a book for me: it is a history of the Bulu people. And he will read it to me, now that, every one else — encouraged by himself to do so — has gone to bed. At last we are to get down to business. He tips the lantern and shakes it about to ensure its lasting for hours. I observe these precautions with the greatest interest, and exactly the feeling you have had yourself when your own author settled down for a night.

He begins to read, and I understand at once that I am not to be passive, nothing like that. His subject is subdivided and he drills me in the subdivisions. He says, —

‘We will remember the things of men and the things of women, and we will remember them separately. First as to men: the child is born; he has arrived; you see him, but what has he done? Up to this time he has done nothing! Watch his first doing!’

After which introduction he proceeds with the history of the Bulu people. His manner is momentous and severe. Laughter is in my heart like wine. And I am sleepy. The doings of the Bulu people are a kind of rumor, a humming of bees about a river-crossing, — the crossing of rivers is the core of their history, — until Ela is born. The whole tenor of history is altered at this point, you feel it. The famines are more severe, and the huntings more exciting, and the conduct of headmen more significant. Even the white man appears upon the scene shortly after Ela is born. Everything takes a turn, either for the better or the worse.

And yet, in spite of adventures and misadventures, and Ela fixing you with an eye when an eye can be spared — you wander. Is this history muddled, or are you?

‘ I must read it myself,’ you beg Ela; and to leave it with you.

‘You will be unable to read it,’ says the Author; ‘I make it better when I read it. Please let me finish it!’

But no, you must read it yourself — not now, some other time. And Ela must write it, more clearly, after you have left the village. Then you will have a writing of it all your own. That will be better.

Ela does not think it will be better, but you tell him good-night. He hates to leave his dusty little cabin and the lantern and the company of the friend for whom he has written the history of the Bulu people. But he picks up his cap from the little heap of his belongings, and goes out. Soon it will be morning, and well he knows how white people rush away in the morning.

The visit is as good as over.

III

THE PREACHER

It was so early when we broke camp on this morning that we did not have prayers. And as it is not conceivable that we should journey all day without prayers, we stop where we are on the trail to have them. Only yesterday Se Menge, who carries the forward end of my hammock pole, was seen to wince, as if he had stepped on a thorn; and he said, when I asked him why, that he had just remembered he had forgotten, the night before, to say his prayers. To obviate sudden pangs of the sort, we pray. We are on the steep ascent of Mpikiliki hill, thrust up into the morning; the stars are paling when we close our eyes, they are gone when we open them; and many carriers have joined our little caravan to pray with us. Like ourselves, they have chosen to mount Mpikiliki in the silver hour; they are returning from a trading expedition to the beach, and they lean a little forward from the weight of the trade goods they carry in their shoulderyokes. The bulk of their loads, extending above their heads, makes a permanent background for their mutable faces. Some of them are our friends, and one of them is Bwamba.

Bwamba, being an Ngumba, is not so good-looking as the Bulu in whose company he is walking; but he wears trousers, and so is distinguished. He has been, it seems, in jail. And when I regret this, — as it is a friend’s part to do, — Bwamba says that it was quite all right; not a thing to be regretted, rather the contrary. And the way of it was this: —

Bwamba carried a load of rubber to the beach. He wore his trousers, and the receipt for his head-tax was in the pocket of them, where he could put his hand on it if he were subject to inspection. When he came to the beach and had delivered his rubber, he went into the sea, leaving his trousers hidden among the rocks. Along comes a black policeman in his khaki uniform, his club in hand, and he sees Bwamba in the water.

‘Hi! you!’ he cries; ‘and where is your tax-receipt?’

Bwamba tells him that he has a pair of trousers and the tax-receipt is in the pocket of them. But the policeman scorns the idea—there is nothing about Bwamba to carry out the pretension of trousers; the policeman, uniform and all, goes out into the sea and arrests the pretender. He will hear nothing of trousers, and together they go to the prison at Kribi.

I make out that solitary confinement is not the policy of the Kribi prison. Whatever your crime may have been, you will find a brother to it there; and if you are a tax-evader, you are legion. It is a matter of luck — but bad luck, indeed. Thrust into the prison of Kribi, you languish and long to go home. You implore every prisoner whose term has ended to pass by your village, and to summon your friends to redeem you. You hear the alien sound of the sea, and you pine for the forest.

Well, the sun was in the middle when the policeman cast Bwamba into that place of many longings. I suppose he saw some friends of his there, but the most of them were strangers. And he asked them did they want to hear ‘ five words of the Word of God.’ They said, certainly yes. So he preached to them for some time, until there was a hand at the door — and there was the policeman with the trousers, and the taxreceipt in the pocket of them. So that was all right. Bwamba put them on, and was immediately most distinguished. And the prisoners grieved to see him go.

The sun was going down when he came out into the air—and by this you may judge how long a sermon they endure in the prison of Kribi. Bwamba did not loiter in that beach settlement; rather he struck off into the forest. And he thought to himself, he tells me, ‘Now, that going into the prison was a good going—like the imprisonments of Paul. Ah, Matyenda, for the purpose of telling the Good News I was cast into prison! And when I had done preaching—there was the policeman at the door— like the Angel!’

Having said our prayers, according to custom, and having heard of a miracle, as we cannot hope to do every day, we go our ways. And when we meet a policeman, — as we most certainly do in these days of the collection of taxes, — we produce, with the utmost agitation, from the wallet at our belts, or the fold of our loin-cloths, the little envelopes of banana leaf in which the most of us carry our tax-receipts. Our fingers tremble as we open these, and our eyes beseech the policeman to be patient. ‘Just wait,’ — we tell him, — ‘it is here— it is certainly here!’

As for Bwamba, and his angel policeman — let it be as he himself has said.