[30]. Notopterus afer.
The next morning he pretended to go to his traps, but turning back quickly he hid himself behind his house and watched through an opening in the wall. By and by he was amazed to see the Lolembe turn into a woman, who at once began to cook the food, whereupon the man showed himself to her and said: “Oh, you are the one who cooked my food yesterday!”
“Yes,” she replied. They were married, and in due time the woman gave birth to two boys and a girl; and they lived with much contentment on the island.
One day the man said to one of his sons: “You come and help me with the fish-traps,” and away they went together to look at the various traps.
The lad was a lazy, disobedient boy who would not listen properly to what was told him, so when the father wanted to empty the water out of the canoe and told him to go to the right side, the boy went straight to the left side, because it was nearer to him than the other side. The father became very vexed, and beating him in his anger, he said: “You are too lazy and too proud to do what you are told. Do you know that your mother came out of one of these fish-traps, for she was only a Lolembe?”
The boy on hearing this went crying to his mother, and told her all his father had said. The mother soothed him, but in her heart she said: “My husband jeers at me because I am only a Lolembe, yet I have been a good wife to him; perhaps some other day he will call me worse names, and when we return to the town everybody will know that I came out of one of his fish-traps. I will return to my own place in the river.”
She thereupon fell into the river, and changing into a Lolembe she swam away. “Therefore,” says the native storyteller, “never taunt a person with being a slave.”
The next two stories are illustrative of the native reason for the loss of eternal life, or why people die, instead of continuing to live for ever on the earth.
Story XII