Shaka the Great (65 page)

In his usual way Mgobozi has managed to be both right and wrong, decides the Induna. This one
is
a stranger, but he's not strange. They have both encountered his like before. At the same time, though, there
is
something different about him …

“Could it be that swimming lizard wasn't lying?” wonders Mgobozi, showing that he's guessed what the Induna is also thinking; or at least is on the same path.

“There is a first time for everything, General.” Even when it comes to Jakot telling the truth.

“This is so.”

“See how straight he stands, General.”

“This is so.”

“And he is not alone.”

“I have noticed that, too.”

Another formation passes them.

“In the bushes somewhere, I suspect.”

The Induna nods. Normally they know that hiding is futile. They understand how they must take a chance and deliver themselves to whoever has stumbled upon them, or else they risk starvation. Yet here … ?

“They run, but he stays,” observes the Induna, whose udibi is currently dallying somewhere toward the rear of the column, along with the other herdboys and the captured cattle they are guiding back to Bulawayo.

“Yes,” murmurs Mgobozi, “he stays. And he watches. Do you see? Aiee, there he looks away, would pretend my eyes chase his away but, as soon as I look away, they'll be back …”

“And he doesn't seem hungry. Does he look hungry to you, General?”

“No.”

“But he
is
scared, probably just as scared as those who fled …”

“Yet he is trying to hide it,” says Mgobozi.

It's almost as if the stranger understands him, because at that moment he becomes aware his hands have started trembling and he thrusts them into his coat pockets.

Somewhat taken aback, Mgobozi and the Induna exchange a glance.

Can it be that he understands them?

No, impossible!

If that were so, why would they need the likes of the Swimmer?

Another question: is Mgobozi right? Has Jakot been speaking the truth, after all?

Certainly this one doesn't seem like your average shipwreck survivor spewed up by the sea. He's far too self-contained—despite his obvious fear. He lacks the desperation they've seen in others of this strange tribe who regularly try to drown themselves along the coast. He's scruffy and unkempt, without being … dirty. That he smells is neither here nor there, for that peculiar stench infests all of their breed.

He … The Induna looks at Mgobozi. Mgobozi looks at the Induna. Both look at the savage … Frightened whimpering is to be expected, as is some wailing and weeping, but
this
sound has the two Zulus looking at each other in dismay, yet again.

And, no, they haven't heard wrong. Because there … he makes the sound again.

And again, even more persistently.

And again.

Speaking.
A savage speaking! And making the one sound they'd never expected to hear from an isilwane thrown up by the sea.

Shaka!
he is saying.
Shaka! Shaka! Shaka!

Which is how Henry Fynn makes contact with the Zulu nation. Standing rooted to the spot while what, there and then, seems to
be the biggest fucking army he's ever seen jogs by, singing bloodcurdling songs, and his companions Frederick and Jantjie cower in the bushes (or, who knows, have disappeared into the wide blue yonder, and he can't say that he blames them; the desire to join them is growing stronger every moment), standing there on the white sands, irresolutely resolute, and repeating Shaka's name over and over again, as a talisman he hopes will give these extremely intimidating (not to mention murderous-looking) fellows pause for thought.

Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

From “Waiting For The Barbarians” by C. P. Cavafy
(in
Collected Poems
, translated by Edmund Keeley
and Philip Sherrard)

Eyes, swiveling, stereoscopic. Pinprick apertures between fused lids, encircled by the concentric ripples of tiny wrinkles.

Stained, streaked armor. Spots and splatters. Shades of brown, the darkness of wet mud, the faded khaki of drought-dry winter grass, rusty stripes around the limbs.

Tiny ridged dragon spine becoming a long tail, tightly curled at the end.

Chamai-leon. Earth-lion. Air-eater. Fire-fetcher. Unwabu.

Stiff-necked equivocation. The sense of a double chin, a wealthy oldtimer's disapproving jowls, but also a tightrope walker's concentration. Jerky, sawing motion atop scrawny limbs; a dapper daintiness that's a hit with the females, while at the same time signifying the slow-motion approach of death for assorted beetles, grasshoppers and flies. Like this one—two or three tongues away.

Got. To. Get.

(Something …)

Got to get. Clo.
(… something …)
Ser.
(… wrong …)

Clo. Ser.

Closer.

A growing unease. Not the fear of losing the prey. Not the dipping diaphragm rise and fall of this slender green branch, gripped so tightly by zygodactyl feet. Something else …

(A sense of movement somewhere … A disturbance …)

Hai, but the People Of The Sky do not like unwabu. It was the chameleon that Unkulunkulu sent to tell the Abantu they could live forever. Lazy loiterer that he was, though, the chameleon stopped along the way to catch grasshoppers with his long tongue, and to admire his wardrobe of color changes. Thinking the chameleon had delivered his message, and seeing ungratefulness in their silence, Unkulunkulu angrily dispatched the lizard
to tell the human beings that immortality was theirs no longer. Although leaving some time after the chameleon, the lizard arrived first,
schadenfreude
giving him the speed of a cheetah. “Let you know death, thou sluggards!” he told the Abantu, speaking with gleeful pomposity. “For so sayeth the Great Spirit!”

(… something …)

In this way the human beings became the only creatures to know death, to know they would die, which led them to foolishly regard Life and Death as upper-case opposites, when, truly, like birth, death is but a phase—a motion toward—while Life endures (before, beyond, above language) without end or antonym.

(… something odd … out of place …)

When the chameleon finally arrived, it was too late. People had begun to die and, like all knowledge, the knowledge of death could be suppressed or ignored but never banished.

(… some thing …)

And so, feeling tricked and betrayed, the People Of The Sky came to loathe the chameleon, and would always seek to kill him whenever they came across him. To this day those considered untrustworthy, or simply slow and dithering, are called “izinwabo,” chameleons. It didn't help that, on hearing what had really happened, Unkulunkulu relented somewhat and instituted marriage as a means for human beings to attain some kind of immortality, if only through their children. Cha! This is often the cause of an even more enthusiastic vengeance being wrought upon the reptile.

(… wrong …)

The sides of the ravine are sheer here, as though the walls are trying to restrain the spread of the bushes. An upward motion: a leaping, clinging, creeping; but a tangle, too,—a buzzing, hissing, singing tangle.

Hesitant sawing motion, forward-back, forward-back, left front foot raised, the pair of fused toes parted …

Raised, hovering, should-I-shouldn't-I, then dropping on the forward slant, toes becoming tongs to grip the branch, as it dips then rises again.

His tongue compressed, spring-loaded within its U-shaped hyoid bone, moments away from being unleashed, the chameleon's equivocation now has
less to do with a fear of disturbing his prey and more with a sense of disruption, displacement, something …

(… not right …)

The cells lying in layers beneath unwabu's skin mirror this growing fear, as pigments merge and the chameleon's color darkens. Something …

(… imminent …)

Something's not right and, somehow, eyes swiveling wildly, the reptile knows he's going to become a part of this fast-approaching something.

Suddenly it's as if the chameleon's darkening skin color dissipates, escapes into the air around him in a swarm of chromatophores, because, for an instant, he's covered in shadow …

Then a plummeting crash, a shattering of branches and leaves. Sound that's also movement: an explosion expelling the reptile from the branch, as though the chameleon has become his own tongue.

Wild ratcheting. A spinning away. The flung and the fleeing. A sense of screaming shock, noisy bewilderment, a shuddering. Thunder and lightning from a blue sky. The bruise forming beneath the knuckles. A gulping, gasping, gagging.

Then …

The rearranging.

It's as if the ravine gets its breath back, brings its heartbeat under control. There's an easing, a moving on and around, the explosion forgotten, its cause a fixed feature that's been there as long as the rocks themselves.

The chameleon scuttles off to more salubrious environs. The ants continue trooping. The beetles and crickets return to doing whatever crickets and beetles do in ravines on sunny mornings, where the passing of time is just a moving line combing shadow into the leaves and grass.

And, at the center of all this scurrying: eyes.

Staring, unseeing eyes, cornea and iris, floating on a shattered and flayed face.

Blue sky. Green grass. Flat-topped acacias, tall and aloof, as dignified as tribal elders. Scruffier marula trees standing slightly askew, like husbands trying to feign sobriety after drinking the beer that's made from the same trees' berries. Brown columns, five men abreast and eighty men long, with indunas jogging up and down their flanks to ensure the stamping feet keep in line, while others set the pace up front so that there's always about fifty meters or so between the formations. Each man carries a small ihawu shield and a stick. Because the warriors aren't armed, they're watched over by a contingent of the Fasimba ibutho. Some are roaming the surrounding countryside, while a larger group sit on their shields at the entrance to the valley.

Umasingana, the month of the Casting About Moon when women begin to search their fields and gardens for the new crops, has given way to the month of the December–January moon, and the climax of the First Fruits is approaching. With Shaka in seclusion, the processions are watched over by Mbopa, Mdlaka and various other dignitaries and high-ranking officers. They've spread themselves out under some trees, just below the crest of the highest slope which is near the entrance to the valley. With them are a group of udibis, who keep them supplied with beer, slices of pumpkin, and with platters of amacimbi, a plump, edible green caterpillar.

The last column has just gone by. Tramping the flattened grass, it's as if the men are following a giant rope plaited and played out by the first formation.

In terms of numbers, this is only a small foretaste of what is to come. Though involving only a few companies from the regiments quartered closest to this special place, it's nevertheless an important
part of the First Fruits. For this is sacred KwaNkosinkhulu, the Place of the Great Chief, and they have come here, these brown columns, to pay homage to the Bloodline. For it was here in this shady, fertile basin, surrounded by a rampart of hills and fed by a spring on the Tonjaneni Heights, that Zulu and his clan settled and prospered and grew. Here, in this place of plenty between the White Mfolozi and the Mhlatuze rivers, the seeds of greatness were sown as a clan became a nation and the AbakwaZulu—the People of Zulu—became the Amazulu.