The Covenant (14 page)

When he accompanied the king down from the citadel, servants with flares led the way and stayed with them on their progress through the city. Out of deference to the king, Nxumalo volunteered to attend him to the gateway of the royal enclosure, but the king halted midway in the city and said, “It’s time you visited the Old Seeker.”

“I see him often, sir.”

“But tonight, I believe, he has special messages.” So Nxumalo broke away and went to his mentor’s house beyond the marketplace, and there he found that the old man did indeed have special information: “Son of Ngalo, it’s time you took the next cargo of gold and rhino horns to Sofala.”

This was a journey of importance which only the most trusted citizens were permitted to undertake. It required courage to descend the steep paths lined with leopards and lions; it required sound health to survive the pestilential swamps; and it required sound judgment to protect one’s property against the Arabs who bartered there.

“The Arabs who climb the mountain trails to visit Zimbabwe have to be good men,” the wise old fellow warned. “But those who slip into a seaport and remain there, they can be ugly.”

“How do I protect myself?”

“Integrity is a good shield.” He paused. “Did I ever come armed to your father’s kraal? Couldn’t he have killed me in a moment if he wished? Why didn’t he? Because he knew that if he killed a man of honor, he’d soon have on his hands men with none. And then the whole thing falls apart.”

“You know, I’m sure, that my father used to laugh at your stories. The miracles you spoke of, the lies.”

“A man cannot travel great distances without developing ideas. And now I have one of the very best to bring before you.”

He clapped his hands, and when the servant appeared, he gave a signal. Soon the curtains that closed off the living quarters parted and a young girl of fourteen, black as rubbed ebony and radiant, came dutifully into the room. Lowering her eyes, she stood inanimate, like one of the carved statues the Arabs had presented to the king; she was being presented to Nxumalo, the king’s inspector of mines, and after a long time she raised her eyes and looked into his.

“My granddaughter,” the old man said.

The two young people continued gazing at each other as the Old Seeker confessed: “From the first day I saw you at the lake, Nxumalo, I knew you were intended for this girl. Everything I did thereafter was calculated to bring you here for her to see. The rhino horns? I had all I needed waiting in the warehouse. You were the treasure I sought.”

Because of the pain that comes with all living, Nxumalo could not speak. He was acutely aware of this girl’s beauty, but he could also remember Zeolani and his promise to her. Finally he blurted out: “Treasured Father, I am betrothed to Zeolani.”

The old man took a deep breath and said, “Young men make promises, and they go off to build their fortunes, and the antelope at the lake see them no more. My granddaughter’s name is Hlenga. Show him the garden, Hlenga.”

It was in 1458 that Nxumalo assembled a file of sixty-seven porters for the perilous journey to the coast. The route to Sofala was horrendous, with swamps, fever-ridden flats, precipitous descents and swollen rivers barring the way. As he listened to accounts of the journey from men who had made earlier trips, he comprehended what Old Seeker had meant when he said, “A wise man goes to Sofala only once.” And yet Arab traders appeared at Zimbabwe regularly, and they had to traverse that formidable route.

This contradiction was resolved by the Old Seeker: “The Arabs have no problems. They start from Sofala with fifty carriers and arrive here with thirty.”

“How is it they’re always the ones that arrive?”

“White men protect themselves,” the old councillor said. “I went down with the father of the man who gave you that disk. At every river he said, ‘You go first and see how deep it is.’ So at one crossing I said, ‘This time you go first,’ and he said, ‘It’s your task to go. It’s my task to protect the gold.’ ”

Nxumalo laughed. “That’s what one of our mine overseers says when tossing a catch of little brown men down the shaft: ‘It’s your task to go down there. It’s my task to guard the gold when you send it up.’ ”

“One more thing, Nxumalo. Arabs in a caravan will be your staunchest friends. Share their food with you, their sleeping places. But when you reach Sofala, be aware. Never go aboard ship with an Arab.”

Nxumalo coughed in some embarrassment. “Tell me, Old Seeker, what is a ship? The king spoke of it and I was ashamed to ask.”

“A rondavel that moves across the water.” While the young man contemplated this improbability, the old man added, “Because if you step aboard his ship, the Arab will sell you as a slave and you will sit chained to a bench and never see your friends again.”

This almost casual mention of friends saddened Nxumalo, for the friend he cherished most was Zeolani, and the possibility of never seeing her again distressed him. At the same time he recognized that all things happening in Zimbabwe were conspiring to prevent him from ever returning to his village, and he supposed that if he succeeded with the forthcoming expedition to Sofala, his position at Zimbabwe would be enhanced. Yet memories of Zeolani and their impassioned love-making behind the twin hills haunted him, and he longed to see her. “I want to return home,” he said resolutely, but Old Seeker laughed.

“You’re like all young men in the world. Remembering a lovely girl who is far away while being tormented by another just as lovely, who is close at hand … like Hlenga.”

“On your next trip to my village …”

“I doubt I shall ever wander so far again.”

“You will. You’re like me. You love baobabs and lions prowling your camp at night.”

The old man laughed again. “Perhaps I am like you. But you’re like me. You love rivers that must be forded and paths through dark forests. I never went back, and neither will you.”

On the morrow, with a kiss from Hlenga on his lips, this young
man, twenty-one years old, set forth with his porters to deliver a collection of gold, ivory tusks and other trading goods to the waiting ships, and so heavy was the burden that progress under any circumstances would have been tedious; through the forests and swamps which separated them from the sea it was punishing. Nxumalo, as personal representative of the king, headed the file, but he was guided by a man who had made the difficult traverse once before. They covered only ten miles a day, because they were so often forced by turbulent rivers or steep declivities to abandon established trails. They were tormented by insects and had to keep watch against snakes, but they were never short of water or food, for rain was plentiful and animals abounded.

At the end of the sixth day everyone had subsided into a kind of grudging resignation; hour after hour would pass with no speech, no relief from the heat, the sweat and the muddy footing. It was travel at its worst, infinitely more demanding than a trip of many miles through the western savanna or southward into baobab country. This was liana land, where vines hung down from every tree, tormenting and ensnaring, where one could rarely move unimpeded for ten feet in any direction.

But always there lay ahead the fascinating lure of Sofala, with its ships, and Chinese strangers, and the glories of India and Persia. Like a tantalizing magnet it drew the men on, and at night, when the insects were at their worst, the men would talk in whispers of women who frequented the port and of Arabs who stole any black who tried to visit with these women. The travelers had an imperfect understanding of the slave trade; they knew that men of foreign cast traveled the Zambezi capturing any who strayed, but these invaders had never dared invade Zimbabwe and risk a disruption of the gold supply, so their habits were not known. Nor did the murmuring blacks have any concept of where they might be taken if they were captured; Arabia they knew only for its carvings, India for its silks.

When the great escarpments were descended and the level lowlands reached, the travelers still had more than a hundred miles of swampy flat country with swollen rivers to negotiate, and again progress was minimal. It was now that young Nxumalo asserted his leadership, dismissing his guide to the rear and forcing his men into areas they preferred to avoid. He had come upon a well-marked trail which must lead to the sea, and as his men straggled behind, unable to keep the pace he was setting with his lighter burden, they began to meet
other porters coming home from Sofala or were overtaken by swifter-moving files heading for the port, and a lively excitement spread through the group.

“We must not step inside a ship,” the guide repeated on the last night, “and all bargaining is to be done by Nxumalo, for he knows what the king requires.”

“We will wait,” Nxumalo said, “until the Arabs make us good offers, and they must be better than what they offer us at home, for this time we have done the hauling, not they.” He was prepared to linger at Sofala for months, selling his goods carefully and obtaining only those things his community most needed.

“What we really seek,” he reminded them, “is salt.” Even his gold bars would be bartered if he could find the proper amount of salt.

When his porters took up their burdens next morning, passers-by confirmed that Sofala would be reached by noon, and they quickened their pace; and when salt could be smelled in the air, they began to run until the man in the lead shouted, “Sofala! Sofala!” and all clustered about him to stare at the port and the great sea beyond. In awe one man whispered, “That is a river no man can cross.”

The bustling seaport did not disappoint, for it contained features which astonished; the sheds in which the Arabs conducted their business were of a size the Zimbabwe men had never imagined, and the dhows that rolled in the tides of the Indian Ocean were an amazement. The men were delighted with the orderliness of the shore, where casuarina trees intermingled with palms and where the waves ran up to touch the feet and then ran back. How immense the sea was! When the men saw children swimming they were enchanted and sought to run into the water themselves, except that Nxumalo, himself perplexed by this multitude of new experiences, forbade it. He felt that he must face one problem at a time, and the first that he encountered proved how correct he was in moving prudently, for when he inquired about a market for his goods, and traders heard that he had twoscore elephant tusks, everyone doing business with China, where ivory was appreciated, wanted to acquire them, and he was made some dazzling offers, but since he had not intended selling immediately, he resisted. He did allow himself to be taken to an Arab ship, which, however, he refused to board; from the wharf he could see inside, and there, chained to benches, sat a dozen men of varied ages, doing nothing, making hardly a movement.

“Who are they?” he asked, and the trader explained that these men helped move the ship.

“How long do they wait like that?”

“Until they die,” the trader said, and when Nxumalo winced, he added, “They were captured in war. This is their fate.” They were, Nxumalo reflected, much like the small brown men who were thrown down mines to work until they died. They, too, were captured in war; that, too, was their fate.

Wherever he moved in Sofala he saw things that bewildered, but constantly he was enticed by the dhows, those floating rondavels whose passage across the sea he could not comprehend but whose magic was apparent. One afternoon as he stared at a three-masted vessel with tall sails he saw to his delight that the white man who seemed to be in charge was the same tall Arab who had traded at Zimbabwe.

“Ho!” he shouted, and when the Arab turned slowly to identify the disturbance, Nxumalo shouted in Zimbabwe language, “It’s me. The one you gave the disk.” The Arab moved to the railing, peered at the young black, and said finally, “Of course! The man with the gold mines.”

For some hours they stood on the wharf, talking, and the Arab said, “You should carry your goods to my brother at Kilwa. He’ll appreciate them.”

“Where is the trail to this Kilwa?”

The Arab laughed, the first time Nxumalo had seen him do so. “There is no trail. It couldn’t cross the rivers and swamps. To walk would require more than a year.”

“Then why tell me to go?”

“You don’t march your men along a trail. You sail … in a dhow.”

Nxumalo instantly recognized this as a trick to enslave him, but he also knew that he yearned achingly to know what a dhow was like, and where China lay, and who wove silk. So after a night’s tormented judging he sought the Arab and said simply, “I shall deposit all my goods here, with my servants. I’ll sail with you to Kilwa, and if your brother really wants my gold …”

“He’ll be hungry for your ivory.”

“He can have it, if he brings me back here to get it.”

It was arranged, but when his men heard of his daring they protested. They, too, had seen the slaves chained to the benches and they
predicted that this would be his fate, but he wanted to believe the Arab trader; even more, he wanted to see Kilwa and discover the nature of shipping.

Toward the end of 1458 he boarded the dhow at Sofala for the eleven-hundred-mile passage to Kilwa, and when the lateen sails were raised and the vessel felt the wind he experienced the joy that young men know when they set forth upon the oceans. The rolling of the dhow, the leaping of the dolphins that followed the wake, and the glorious settings of the sun behind the coast of Africa enchanted him, and when after many days the sailors cried, “Kilwa, the golden mosque!” he ran forward to catch his first sight of that notable harbor to which ships came from all cities of the eastern world.

He was overwhelmed by the varied craft that came to Kilwa, by the towering reach of the masts and the variety of men who climbed them. He found the Arab equally moved, and as the dhow crept through the harbor to find a mooring place, the trader pointed to the shore where buildings of stone glittered and he said with deep feeling, “My grandfather’s grandfather’s father. We lived in Arabia then, and he sailed his trading dhow to Kilwa. On that beach he would spread his wares. What wonderful beads and cloths he brought. Then he and all his men would retire to his boat, and when the beach was empty of our people, the black-skinned traders would come down to inspect the goods, and after a long while they would leave little piles of gold and ivory. Then they would retire, and my father would go ashore and judge the offer, and if it was miserly he would touch nothing, but return to his dhow. So the men would come again and add to their offer, and after many exchanges, without a word being spoken, the trade would be consummated. Look at Kilwa now!”