Indaba, My Children: African Tribal History, Legends, Customs And Religious Beliefs. Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa
He made a snap signal to the nearest Night Howler, who promptly snatched up Kahawa and held him aloft in one vulture-like claw.
‘Now, mortal, speak or you shall die!’
Kahawa began to laugh, a harsh, contemptuous and insulting laugh. The Night Howlers stared first at him and then at Nangai in great puzzlement and even the human beings huddled together looked at the son of Marimba in blank amazement.
‘Under the sun that shines in the skies above,’ Kahawa said at last, ‘there is nothing more tragic, more pathetic, than a creature once great and powerful, still clinging with stubborn tenacity to the tattered shreds of his vanished power. There is nothing more tragic than the sight of this creature trying to deceive itself and others into thinking that it still holds the power it held in the past. You are such, Nangai, you are no longer a god. You are nothing but a slightly higher form of common demon. When Mulungu drove you from the golden valleys of Tura-ya-Moya like a wounded and beaten cur he also stripped you of your immortal powers. You use force, Nangai, you torture like a common human thug. You used to have powers with which, if you had retained them, you could have learnt the whereabouts of my mother by simply reading my mind. Using force is an admission of failure. You are a failure, a pathetic fetish that-once-was and the Masai are your dupes. You send them in force to attack the whole settlement when all you could have done was to render yourself invisible, enter our village unseen and carry my mother away. You had to have help – on a large scale at that – you wretched fallen fetish . . .’
‘Silence, mortal dog! When I wish to hear your raving and idiotic prattling I’ll ask for it! Where is your mother?’
‘Find her yourself . . . use your godly powers . . .’
Nangai gave a brisk command to the Night Howler, who slowly started sinking his talons into the flesh of Kahawa.
It was just then that a miracle happened – a miracle in the form of a song that came floating through the night air like a ghost of pure mercy and deliverance. This song had a magic spell about it. It stunned the fiendish Night Howlers. There was a musical instrument in the singer’s hands which in future years became known as the karimba or kalimba. This unearthly music sent a haunting melody through the night and wove a mighty spell around the squatting Night Howlers. It paralysed them – destroyed them.
They let out a mighty roar in unison and, as though they had all become victims of an alien virulent leprosy, their scaly flesh began to slough off their skeletons and to flow sluggishly down the slope of the clearing in the ruined village. Wisps of reeking steam erupted from their distended slime-green bellies as their foul bowels burst with sounds terrible to hear, and from these wisps floated the ghosts of the people they had already devoured.
These ghosts were happy – happy to escape and float away to the land of Forever-Night, there to await their reincarnation.
But first they joined in the song sung by the woman with the kalimba. They soared and dived and soared again. They danced and weaved and leaped in the dark night air, and a regiment of them capsized the evil Nangai’s throne and he fell like a lump of cow dung into the reeking, oozing slime that had been the flesh of the Night Howlers. All the people who had been herded together became caught in the webs of the Song of the Kalimba. They tore off their soiled loinskins, skirts and ornaments, flung them aside, and raised their arms in thanksgiving to the High Gods for their deliverance, after which they too joined in the sacred Song of the Kalimba.
Dead and living joined in and the very stars rejoiced. The gods wept crystal tears and bowed their heads in tribute and acclaim. Marimba led the hosts of dead and living with her song until the eastern sky greyed with the first promise of coming dawn.
Eventually she dropped her kalimba and ran to where her son was lying. She threw her arms around him and wept. She kissed his forehead and both his ears and, drawing him close to her soft breasts, she wept long and loud, tears not of sorrow but of pride and pure joy and unfathomable happiness. When she released him Kahawa did something which shocked his gentle parent and the rest of the Wakambi but which was to become a firm Law of the Tribes in generations to come. With an abandoned axe of sharpened stone he deliberately chopped off his own right hand.
With the bleeding stump raised high, he addressed the shocked Wakambi: ‘People of the Wakambi, with this gesture I am laying down a new law that you must accept with your hearts and souls, and make it part of your lives until the rending of the knot of Time. In order to prevent my parent from delivering herself to the evil Nangai, I had to strike her unconscious with a club before I could hide her. But the ends do not justify the means; I broke the very Law of the Stars by striking the sacred vessel that carried me for more than nine agonising moons. Let this be your law, your very siko, that anyone, male or female, who strikes his or her mother for any reason, shall forfeit his or her right hand – voluntarily or otherwise. By this siko I beg my ancestors to cleanse me, and my children’s children, of the foul taint of my sin, and I also beg the forgiveness of both Ma the Great Mother, and of the beautiful Marimba, who is my mother.’
‘My son, my dear child, did you have to do it?’ Marimba caught her son as he sagged to the ground and everybody crowded around to assist with easing the agony of the brave prince. Kahawa smiled up at his mother and whispered: ‘Tell me mother, how did you manage to escape from the cave?’
‘I did not, son; I was rescued by the witchwoman Namuwiza and her two sons just before the Night Howlers devoured them, and I spent some time making this instrument to help you . . .’
Kahawa heard no more as unconsciousness claimed him.
* * *
A great happiness settled over the land and the Wakambi prospered and multiplied, so they could afford to wrinkle their noses at the Masai in contempt and defiance. The Masai were forever freed of the evil spell of the traitor god Nangai, though they never lost their stiff-necked pride and their arrogance, which was like a disease.
Marimba invented many more songs: love songs, hunting songs and even songs to sing when a beloved one was interred. She invented the xylophone, which is still called the marimba to this day.
People sang and whistled and their souls were uplifted by the melodies and tunes their immortal queen had given them. For the first time since the escape of Odu and Amarava from the destroyed land of the First People, human beings held feasts and dances and came to know again the soothing joy that beautiful tunes bring to depressed and life-weary souls.
For a full ten years Marimba refused marriage. She sturdily resisted the powerful demands of her own bothersome body and endured the searing agony of lonely nights of weeping herself to sleep. She saw her son happily married to two Wakambi girls and prospering in general happiness. She saw more villages of Wakambi clans built to accommodate the spreading population. Soon the original settlement became the High Village of a small empire which she ruled with wisdom that only an immortal can possess.
As the years wore on she found it more and more difficult to resist the ardent wooing of her greatest suitor, Koma-Tembo, the lion-hearted Masai whom Kahawa had captured and who had stood side by side with him against the evil god and the Night Howlers, so many years earlier.
Then one night that which was written in the stars and destined to happen, did happen! Lo, not even immortals are immune to fate.
The hut was dark. The hut was lonely. And in its dark interior on a pile of lion and leopard skin blankets reclined, in queenly solitude, one of the most beautiful women that ever trod this earth – Marimba the peerless, Marimba the Goddess of Music, the Goddess of Happiness.
There was a deep sadness in her long-lashed eyes and a crystal-clear tear stole unbidden down the side of her flat little nose. The battle is hardest when one has oneself for an enemy, and Marimba was her own enemy in many ways. Outside the hut there was merriment. Hundreds of Wakambi were feasting and dancing round a great fire in the village clearing. The happy night rang with their laughter and lusty singing. The