“Scheiden tut weh,
Scheiden, ja scheiden, scheiden tut weh!”
Just as the cricket began anew, after having politely ceased to hear the lieutenant’s song, trickled out upon the clammy air the sound of weeping.
Chapter 6
In the violet shadow of his square hut inside the compound, squatted Zalu Zako. The lips and nose were nearer to the Aryan delicacy than the negroid bluntness; for the Wongolo, like the Wahima, are a mixed Bantu-Somali race. In colour his skin had the red of bronze rather than the blue of the negro, and the planes of his moulded chest were as light as the worn ivory bracelets upon his polished limbs. Broad in the shoulders he had almost the slender hips of a young girl and his carriage was as balanced as a dancer’s[.]
From a group of small round huts behind his square hut, where dwelt his two wives, concubines and slaves, came the clutter of voices. A distant drum throbbed gently on the hot air. Away in the cool green of the banana plantation rose the crooning chant of the unmarried girls and slaves bringing water from the river.
Apparently Zalu Zako was absorbed in the movements of a diminutive chicken scratching in the soil. The omen of the goat was occupying his mind: that and the death of his grandfather, MFunya MPopo. There was no sense of grief, for he was not a woman. Now, at the beginning of his warrior’s career, he had not any desire for divine honours and celibacy. No man had. Yet Zalu Zako no more dreamed of questioning the necessity than of spitting in the face of [pg 75] an enemy. Always had the first born male of his family been doomed to the kingly office. There was never a second born male, for it was not meet that a god should have paternal brothers. The wives of his youth and his concubines could have as many children as they could bear; but according to the law, did he select the chief wife from whom should spring the one regal son only when he had become heir apparent; for then was he not already half divine, being so near the sacred enclosure up on the hill?
The choice of that chief wife was free as there were no royal families in the sense of divine descent save the direct male line of the King-God. But the mind of Zalu Zako dwelt more upon his personal career. The life of a warrior was frequently short and that of a god even briefer. MFunya MPopo had reigned but twenty moons; MKoffo, so said the elders, had reigned for full two hundred moons; but then he had been a mighty magician.