So far so good, reflected Birnier, although the enforced isolation and strict curtailment of his actions had already begun to be irksome; yet to attain so difficult a goal sacrifice must be borne, he argued philosophically.
The royal larder, he noticed with thankfulness, was kept well stocked. Every day appeared a slave who left just within the entrance chickens, bananas, milk and fresh water, and sometimes a young goat. All such provisions which he had happened to take into the forest with him and so had escaped MYalu’s marauding hands had been placed in his tent with other cases, as containing no man knew what mighty magic.
For three days he had been left utterly alone. Sounds of drums and chanting from the distant village had reached them on the still air, but what they were doing he could not discover. No layman was allowed to come near the sacred enclosure. While he strolled, taking a smoke and constitutional around and around his “pen,” as he put it, several of the lesser wizards appeared and stood at a distance from the gate to stare at him. When addressed they made no reply. On the second occasion he began to be irritated, but he kept his temper and went to cover in his tent, muttering: “Why the devil don’t they bring me some buns?”
On the fourth day patience began to fray. He had no notion of knowing how long this quarantine was going to last. He was on the point of going to find out, but Mungongo pleaded so earnestly that they would [pg 244] instantly be killed if they did, that he desisted. So Birnier retired to the tent to seek consolation from a record of Lucille’s voice.
Birnier attempted to cross-examine Mungongo to find out what was the object of this isolation, but beyond the fact that strangers were never permitted to behold the King-God, even lay natives, without special magic, which was only made once a year at the Harvest Festival, lest evil be made upon his person and so endanger the world, Mungongo did not know; merely, that so it was. What power over the head witch-doctor the King really had, Mungongo had no notion. The King-God was the most powerful magician known, asserted Mungongo. Did he not make rain and bear the world upon his shoulders? When Birnier unwisely denied this feat, Mungongo looked pained and began a remark, but balked before the name Moonspirit to ask the name of Birnier’s father.
At the mental image conjured up of a handsome white-haired planter and ex-owner of many slaves Birnier smiled, but he knew the tabu regarding the ban upon the names of the dead and that he, presumably, having ascended into the divine plane, was therefore classed with the departed. He recollected that the old man, who belonged to a cadet branch of a royalist family, had been called “le Marquis,” of which he was excessively proud. Birnier translated into the dialect the nearest possible rendition of the title: The Lord-of-many-Lands.
“The son of the Lord-of-many-Lands,” continued Mungongo satisfied, “doth but tickle the feet of his slave.”
On the fifth afternoon, while the god was engrossed in a cure for love madness which, he reflected, might be of service to zu Pfeiffer, came a voice without crying:
“The son of Maliko would speak with the Lord, the Bearer of the World!”
Birnier glanced across at the photograph of Lucille.