I did not at first comprehend the sense of his words. So he gestured, and the men of the court did push aside their loin-cloths and blithely bare their members, and lo! every man of them was circumcised.
“Aye,” I said. “I understand now. We are not like you in that way, nor are any white men, except only the Jews. We have a few Jews living in our land, though they are supposed to be banned. But the rest of us do not cut our foreskins off.”
“Why is that?” asked Calandola, when he had heard my answer.
“Why,” I said, “it is not our way to do so. Under the Christian law that we obey, we leave that part untouched.”
“But then you are not men!” said Calandola.
“It does not seem that way to us.”
“A man must have that part removed. For it is a female part, and all that is female in him must be cut away, when he enters into a man’s estate.”
I did not propose to dispute this point with the Imbe-Jaqqa, it being a new philosophy to me, and difficult.
“The Bakongo people of the coast,” I said, “leave themselves uncircumcised, now that they are Christian.”
“And their men are mere women,” said Calandola. “Is it not obvious?” Deeply did he frown. “Your prince is a woman who will not admit a man to lie between her legs, and your men will not remove the female piece from their members. So there can be no children born among you.”
“I assure you that that is not the case.”
“But if your Queen—” He broke off, mystified.
“She is the only chaste woman of our realm,” I said, which was not precisely the proper meaning I meant, but it sufficed. “And as for the men, we are quite able to perform our deeds of manhood as we are, which is as we came into the world, which is as God our Maker did intend.”
I thought the Imbe-Jaqqa was angered at that. Perhaps he took God to be his direct rival, and cared not to hear His name. But his anger, if such it was, quickly passed, and he pointed again at my uncircumcised yard and said, “In this land you should be as we are. We will make you now as we are.”
Which struck me deep with a fear that softened my bones. For I mistook the import of his words, being still mostly unfamiliar with the subtleties of the Jaqqa tongue, and thought that he was commanding me to undergo a circumcision on the spot. Whereas he was merely making a friendly offer, or perhaps it was a jest: I am not sure. He did beckon to one of his witches, who drew from a sheath a lengthy knife of commendable sharpness. I shrank back from him and put my hands over my private parts, which had shriveled to the size of a child’s in my terror. Covering myself in that way brought a hearty laugh from the women.
I said miserably, “By your leave, great Lord Jaqqa—”
“Come, Andubatil, we will not cut it all off! Only that one part!” he said, laughing.
“I may not, O Imbe-Jaqqa.”
“And why is that?”
“It is forbidden among my nation to undergo such a surgery, for that would make me a Jew, which was a slayer of our God.”
“Your god is dead?” asked Kinguri quickly, with show of deep interest and surprise.
“Aye, He was killed, but then He rose again—”
“How say you?”
Glad of the diversion of the talk away from the condition of my foreskin, I responded, half babbling my words, “When He came down to earth in human guise to save us, He was taken by enemies and nailed upon a cross, and a spear thrust deep into His side also, and so He perished, who was the Son of God and the Redeemer, but then as was prophesied He arose from the dead—”
“The son of god? But you said it was the god that died!”
“The Son is equal unto God,” I answered, “for He is one Person of the Holy Trinity, which be God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” Kinguri’s eyes showed me his mystification, and upon my soul I could not have given him much true enlightenment of these matters had he pressed me concerning them. But I hurried on, saying, “On the third day afterward of His crucifixion He did arise from the dead, and go to sit on the right hand of the Father—”
“And who was his mother?” Kinguri demanded.
“He was born of a virgin, Mary by name—”
“The Queen of your land, then, is the mother of your god?”
“A different virgin,” said I, “a long time ago, and not in the same country from which I come.”
“But a virgin also, was she? What color was her skin?”
“Why, like mine.”
“No darker?”
“We do not hold it to be the case that she was dark.”
“And the god, he is white also?”
“We do not think of Him as having a color, or a size, or any of the attributes of mortal flesh.”
“But he can die? Is that not an attribute of mortal flesh?”
“It was His son that died,” said I, beginning to think it might have been easier to submit to circumcision than to have to explain these complex and cloudy matters to the cannibal prince.
“Ah,” said Kinguri. “And why did he let himself be killed, if he was a god and the son of a god?”
“To redeem us from the sin that came upon us in the original paradise, when our first father and our first mother did wantonly eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and thereby brought wickedness and death into the world, that had been created free of it.”
Looking most pensive and perplexed, Kinguri held up a hand to shut off my flow of doctrine. “Let me understand these things. Your god, who was his own son by a virgin mother, did come to the world to save you from death, which had come upon you when—”
At that Calandola did break roughly in, demanding, “What are all these words?”
Kinguri turned to him, and again the two engaged in lengthy talk, this time on the mysteries of the Christian faith as I had begun to expound them. How much sense they could make of it all, I know not; but the essence of the thing is that they grew so interested in these fine holy niceties that the question of my circumcision slipped away from the Imbe-Jaqqa’s mind for a time, and the man-witch did put away his blade, and when Calandola returned his attention to me he had lost interest in my foreskin. Which is just as well for me, I having little need of that part of my body but yet no wish at all to see it severed from me by a pagan savage, and I being somewhat past the age when any such surgery is agreeable.
The Imbe-Jaqqa now proceeded to question me on how I had come to this part of the country, he having last seen me on the coast with the Portugals. I explained how I had been pawned to Mofarigosat and falsely abandoned there by Pinto Dourado, and told of my narrow escape from the block, and of my flight into the forest. This interested Calandola greatly.
During this conversing I grew much wearied of standing with my privities exposed, so I begged permission to put on my clothes once again; but Calandola, saying, “Those are no fit garments,” ordered Jaqqa raiment to be brought for me. Several women came forth, and drew from a wooden chest a handsome piece of green palm-cloth that they wrapped about my loins, and then Kinguri took from his own waist a string of bright beads, and one of the witches gave me a collar of shells polished very smooth. I felt at first in this stuff that I was costumed for the masquerado, playing the part of a wild jungle-man, but it was with amazing ease that within the hour I came to feel comfort in such garb, as though I had worn it all my life. My worn and frayed old clothes they took from me and I never saw those things again.
“A feast!” Calandola now did cry. “Make ready a feast, for the English Andubatil!”
These words, which I understood full clear, did strike me with horror deeper than any other. For they brought me face to face with something I had attempted not to consider, since first I had resolved to give myself over to these man-eaters, and that was their choice of favored meat. Oft do we put out of our minds that which we have no stomach to contemplate; and in this case was it most literally the truth that I had no stomach for it. But the moment was coming when needs I must deal with it. I had taken refuge among the Jaqqas; they had clothed me as one of their own; they were mounting a grand feast in my honor.