This was in part, I think, because she was a lusty wench, and I had always taken such keen joy in the pleasures of the flesh. When there is hot passion between a man and a woman, many other points of great difference can be overlooked, for lust is a bridge that links the most remote of islands. And we did frequently play the game of tangled bodies, and play it well, she in her Jaqqa style and me in my English way. She would not kiss, and often she liked to give herself to me dog-fashion, with her strong rump upturned, but no matter: I thrust, we joined, back and forth I slid in the deep but narrow channel of her, that was so frothing with the sweet natural juices of her, and into her, night after night, I shot my hot tallow and she responded with cries of delight.
It was the case that I had by gradual ways come to be enrolled in the very life of Africa by women who, stage by stage, were ever darker, ever more barbarous. My first instructress was Dona Teresa, who gave the outer appearance of a Portuguese woman, and one of serene beauty that any European would recognize; yet mingled within her somewhere was the seed of her African mothers, that showed only in the hue of her nipples and in the mysteries of her soul. After her had come Matamba, that was pure black, a creature of the jungled interior of the land: still she was Christian, and spoke the tongue of Portugals, and stood midway between savage and white in spirit, if not in appearance. And then had come various tribal women, whose names I could not tell you, that had satisfied my lusts in Masanganu and other places along my pilgrimage, leading me step by step toward the depth of this black world: so that by the time I was given Kulachinga to be my Jaqqa bride, I was ready to embrace without reluctance that woman of the cannibal race, and sleep placidly beside her night after night, and only now and then reflect with amaze upon the journey I had taken to bring me over the arch of the years from Rose Ullward and Anne Katherine Sawyer, so sweet and English, to this my Jaqqa wife.
Kulachinga had no wish to learn Portuguese, and did not even know English existed. Only rarely did she show curiosity about that other world out of which I had fallen. Indeed she was not of a searching and probing mind at all, which set her apart from Dona Teresa and from Matamba, both of whom I remembered fondly as being lively in their wit and perceptions and eagerness for learning. Kulachinga did not know what nation she was native to, though it could have been no more than a few years since she had been adopted into the Jaqqas. Nor would she speak to me at all concerning her marriage to Imbe Calandola, except to say, “He was a good husband to me,” and not a word of what the carnal ways of that dark lord might be, or what it was like to have been one of so many wives. Soon I saw that I would learn little from her, and learning has ever been one of my passions. Yet was I content simply to dwell with her, and let her comfort me after I had been a troublesome day on the field of battle, and to take from her the bowl of palm-wine and the meat she had roasted for me at nightfall. And often did I reach for her in the night, and take her breasts into my hands, and slide my stiffened yard into her ready entryway. So when I was with her I was a happy man.
4
When we had done with the sacking and consuming of the town of Kalunga, which we did entirely ruin, we arose and entered into the province of Tondo, which was a deep way to the north and east. To be sure, this was the direction opposite to that in which I most wanted to go, which was toward the coast. But I could no more then influence the Imbe-Jaqqa in the movements of his army than I could control the surge of the tides. And also I was finding life among the man-eaters uncommon pleasing, which was the last thing I would have expected. To run free with them in pagan revelry was like the throwing off of tight garments and constricting boots, and going naked and easy of spirit. Among the Portugals, whom I had found to be generally a people of deceit and petty treacheries and little mean betrayals, I had been a captive and a slave; but among the Jaqqas, who were monsters but yet bore themselves with a certain lofty nobility, I was a prince. So I was in little hurry to depart them. I abided my time in the forest without distress, becoming more Jaqqa in my ways each day, and thinking, I had already waited a dozen year and some to see England again, I could wait a little more.
We came to the River Kwanza, that I had sailed many times in going between the coast and the presidio of Masanganu. Both those places now were far to my back, we being a long way inland, beyond even the supposed silver-mining place called Kambambe. Following along the south side of the river and continuing ever eastward, we entered the domain of a lord that was called Makellacolonge, near to the great city of Dongo.
Here we passed over mighty high mountains, and found it very cold, we being near naked in the manner of jungle folk. In these steep passes the air was very blue and sharp, and there was frost on the ground at morn, like a little white crust; though by midday in the full blast of the sun we were greatly hot, and remained that way until twilight, when all the heat fled from the world. The things that grew on the high country were different from those of the lowland, there being no palms or vines or creepers, but instead certain things without stems, with fleshy thick leaves that bore pale stripes and spots, sprouting on the earth, and out of the heart of them came high spikes trimmed with a myriad little red flowers, that was most beautiful and strange.
On the other side of these passes the Imbe-Jaqqa did camp his forces for some days, making no attack on Makellacolonge. We sent out our scouts and our outriders, to get the lay of the land, but we did not move forward, nor did we give our enemy any hint that we were in their territory. Calandola often consulted his man-witches, and most particularly the nganga Kakula-banga, that was oldest and holiest of that kind. The Imbe-Jaqqa looked solemn and distant much of the time, but did not share with us his captains the nature of his fears.
Yet he had it in his mind to attack Makellacolonge when the omens were right. For we did gather a score of times to plan our strategy, Calandola and Kinguri and the ten other high captains and I. And the Imbe-Jaqqa did shape and reshape his plan, so that it shifted like a running stream in a shallow bed; but one thing was always constant, that I was to be the center of the thrust. “You will take up your post with your musket,” said he, “and when the trumpet sounds, you will give your fire, five times into the town, and then—then—then—”
It was the and then that was always changing. I had never seen Calandola to be so indecisive. For his mind was altogether scattered and would not come into clarity.
It was at this time that often he took me aside, and walked with me, saying little, but I think carrying on some sort of colloquy with me in his mind, a long discourse that he did not deign to share with me, but which satisfied him. Plainly I was the favorite, now. I saw his brow knitting and his jaw working, yet he gave me little hint of what occupied his soul. I came to feel close to him, withal, and there were moments when he appeared to be not some kind of titan and monster, but only a man, albeit of great size and strangeness, with a man’s cares on his spirit.
And finally he told me in one of these long walks together, “I think they are planning my overthrow. Do you think that also, Andubatil?”