Like a topaz set in a jade ring was the city of the Snake, the place of Kings, a village of some eight hundred huts huddled upon a slight rise above a sea of banana fronds, some two hundred miles to the west of Ingonya.
On the summit was a large conical hut like an enormous candle snuffer, the dwelling place of Usakuma, the spirit of the Snake, whose name was forbidden to all save the Priest-God and Rain Maker, King MFunya MPopo, who was so holy that after succeeding to the sacred office he was doomed to live within the compound, even as were the Kings of Eutopia, Sheba and China, a celibate for the remainder of his life: for, as the incarnation of the Idol, Usakuma, and therefore the controller of the Heavens and the Earth, his body must be kept from all danger of witchcraft lest the rains cease and the blue skies fall.
From the compound, looking towards the north-west where the snow-capped Gamballagalla rose violet against the horizon, another brown cone peeped above the green fronds, the late residence, and now the tomb of King MKoffo, predecessor of MFunya MPopo. For where a King-God dies there is he buried, he and his wives after him; the site becomes holy ground, a place of pilgrimage and sanctuary.
In each of the small huts to the rear of the temple of MFunya MPopo, but outside the sacred enclosure, lived [pg 20] his wives who, although forbidden to their husband, were permitted a royal promiscuity. Just within the precincts was a small replica of the temple where dwelt a young chief, also bound to celibacy, whose duties were to keep the royal fire burning as long as the king should reign. No one was allowed to converse with the king, save on matters of state, except this man; through him was spoken the royal will—what there was left of it—to the council which sat in a long rectangular building opposite to the temple entrance and open to the village, a body of witch-doctors and chiefs.
Solely the kingly office existed as a beneficent agent, a matter of self-preservation on the part of the tribe. The King-God’s functions were divine; to make magic for the victory of his warriors and principally to make rain, on which, of course, the alimentary needs of his subjects depended—an incarnation of a god who was in reality the scapegoat of the god’s omissions.
The office was hereditary. Perhaps no one else would willingly accept such an onerous post. The making of magic was performed before the god with the assistance of the chief witch-doctor, an exceedingly lucrative post won upon merit, occupied by one Bakahenzie, a tall muscular man in the prime of life, whose bearing was that of the native autocrat, fierce and remorseless. The King’s personal wishes could be safely granted as long as he did not endanger the existence of the people by a desire to break any of the meshes of the tabus designed to ensure the safety of his sacred body, and therefore that of the tribe, on the assumption that if the incarnation were injured the god would be injured, and so would his creations be [pg 21] affected: any infringement of these laws entailed the penalty of death, a code which revealed the native logic in the confusion of cause and effect, the concrete and the abstract.
In the door of a hut on the outskirts of the village squatted a wizened man with a tuft of grey beard upon his chin. He was clad in a loin-cloth fairly clean, and about his neck was suspended by a twisted fibre an amulet wrapped in banana leaves containing the gall and toenail of an enemy slain by a virgin warrior, a specific against black magic whose powerful properties were proven by the undisputed influence and wealth of the owner.
A tall lithe savage, bearing upon his arms and ankles the ivory bracelets of the royal house and the elephant hair chaplet of the warrior, advanced leisurely towards him from the banana plantation. Marufa continued to gaze in rumination at the opposite hut. But as they had not met since the rising of the sun, he did not fail to make the orthodox greeting at the exact moment that the chief’s shadow passed in front of him, which Zalu Zako returned punctiliously, thereby averting an evil omen. As soon as the young man had passed beyond the next hut appeared in the grove a girl, modelled like a bronze wood nymph. She wore the tiny girdle of the unmarried and walked furtively, carrying in her hand a parcel wrapped in banana leaves. In the shadow of a compound fence she halted, one slender brown arm set back in apprehension as her eyes followed the lithe figure of Zalu Zako.
Motionless sat Marufa staring in mystic contemplation. Bakuma glanced swiftly about her. Apparently satisfied that no one was observing her save a lean dog [pg 22] and two gollywog children, she continued on as if to pass the old man, her eyes still ranging like a fawn’s. But when she was beside Marufa she subsided on her haunches beside him, clutching the bundle as she whispered:
“Greetings, O wise one!”