Though Matamba was scarce more than a girl she clearly had had much experience of these sexual matters. Her skills were considerable, yet in her way of going about the act she was wholly African, with practices most unfamiliar to me. I have already told you that she would not kiss, the meeting of mouths being deemed unclean in her tribe, lest there be an exchange of spittle from tongue to tongue. Nor did she care to have her private parts much caressed by my hand, nor to touch my own, except when as a particular favor to me she would rest her fingers lightly upon my member. And by no means would she countenance the putting of my mouth to her female zone, and I think she would sooner have died than do the like to me. In these things she did follow the customs of all her sort, rather than any private finicking fastidiousness, for never in African lands did I find a woman who was much fond of kissing or the other kind of mouthing: it is not their way, and they look with distaste upon Europeans who do such things.
On the other hand she was much given to tickling me, notably beneath the arms and along the thighs. The which startled and displeased me, both that it seemed frivolous in the making of love and that it was in itself not a likeable sensation to me; but when I asked her to desist, she burst into tears, thinking herself found unworthy. I learned afterward that such is the practice of her tribe, to tickle, that is as solemn to them as kissing can be among us, and is core and essence of their loveplay. Since she knew that I disliked it she attempted not to do it, but it was too deeply ingrained in her, and when the full heat of the game did come upon her she could not refrain from working her fingertips slyly into my sensitive places, the which I learned to accept from her.
So far as the manner in which coupling was achieved, there, too, she had her own strong preferences. Her favored way was to crouch above me, like one who squats by a riverside washing garments in the stream, and to lower herself until her loins were positioned above mine, and thus to impale herself. Then, too, she liked to lie alongside me and slide herself over me until I was imprisoned by her legs, as she had done that first time when the storm drove her into my bed. And often she turned and knelt with her back to me, so that I had her in the dog-fashion. What she did not care for at all was our familiar English way, the woman on her back with her legs drawn up and the man between them; this she found smothering and perilous, and somehow awkward. It was not the usage of her tribe, in fact, but I think the prime reason for her not wanting it that way was a deeper one. For during her time in slavery she was forcibly had by Portugals any number of times—they violating any handsome slave-wench without shame, whenever the fancy took them—and in such rapes they customarily flung themselves atop her, through which she came to loathe that manner of union. I may add that she loathed Portugals as well, despising everything about them, their faces and their smell and their filthiness of body. When she cried out to me from the corral that I should save her from the slave-masters, it was on account of my yellow hair and English face, for although she had no idea what an Englishman might be, she knew at first sight that I must be something quite different from a Portugal, and chose therefore to cast her lot with me. And when she discovered that I was indeed different, that my skin was not rancid with old stinks and grimes and that I would not shove my yard into her unheated slit at the first chance I got, her devotion to me manifested itself most touchingly. She followed me about the ship, as loving and tender as a puppy; and though she was courteous enough to the Portugal men, they being my comrades, she kept a cool distance between them and herself as far as such was possible in close quarters.
Thus it fell out that I did go to São Tomé a solitary man, and returned as a man of property, with my own private slave that was also the companion of my bed, and, in the best of ways between men and women, my friend.
For we were both lost souls set adrift from our native soil, two wanderers, two victims of seizure and imprisonment, and we clove to one another. It had been my first plan to set her free in Angola and allow her to return to her own land; but swiftly did it become evident to me, as I guided the pinnace down the coast from port to port, that I had no wish to dismiss her. Nor was she eager to leave me again, since in the journey back to her native province she would surely be taken in slavery again, if she were not devoured by Jaqqas or torn asunder by lions or gulped by coccodrillos. As we came to these conclusions we found ourselves rapidly drawing nigh in spirit, which charmed me greatly. I began to instruct her more fully in Portuguese, and she to teach me some African words, so that we needed no longer to be limited to the cumbersome business of miming that was the chief means of communication between us. She was a quick learner. I even taught her a few words of English, telling her that this was my private language, the language of my true nation, that was enemy to these Portugals among whom I did find myself. It was a joy, God wot, to feel good English syllables on my tongue again! Once in jest I had pretended with Dona Teresa a game of talking English to stir the fires of lust; but now with Matamba I did the like in earnest, for the hearing of mine own language in her mouth aroused me greatly.
So we lay together and she said, “God bless Her Protestant Majesty Queen Elizabeth,” and I laughed and caressed her and would have kissed her, if she had let me.
And she said, “Essex, Sussex, Somerset, York.”
“Northumberland, Suffolk, Gloucester, Kent,” said I.
And she said after me in her way, “Northumberland, Suffolk, Gloucester, Kent.”
It was a joyous time. Let the Portugals strive among themselves like serpents and basilisks for power, I told myself: let them lie and cheat and betray, and excommunicate each other with bell and book and candle, and scheme feveredly for advantage. It was not my way. I had carved out a small isle of solace for myself within their dark and tempestuous Africa. I had an occupation; I had my good health; now I had this Matamba of mine, too. It was my purpose henceforth to continue to live carefully and quietly until I could contrive somehow to effect my escape and my return to England, which was the one great canker in the sweetness of my life, that I was so far from home.
There was still the matter of the debt I had incurred in the buying of Matamba out of slavery. But that was easily enough dealt with, in the trading we carried out at the coastal depots. For by order of Don João de Mendoça—an order sustained and confirmed by Don Jeronymo—I stood a full partner with the Portugals of my crew in any enterprises we might conduct by way of commerce. And when we stopped once more in Loango on our southward way, those people did greet us cordially and relate that there had lately been a great hunting and slaughter of elephantos there, so that they had much merchandise to offer us, the which we were able mightily to profit upon.
The elephanto, I should say, is the most awesome of all the African beasts, the same colossus that accompanied the armies of great Hannibal that time he came to conquer Rome. It is found wandering free all over the Kongo land and Loango, and to a lesser extent in Angola, where also the dwellers are not so assiduous in the hunting of him. They are immense beasts, like unto houses that move. I have seen the imprint of their feet in the dust, in plain diameter four spans broad, and their ears are like great gray wrinkled cloaks, in which a man could hide himself. I was told in Loango that the elephantos do live one hundred and fifty years, and until the middle of their age they continue still in growing. Certainly have I seen and weighed divers of their tusks, and their weight amounted to two hundred pounds apiece, and more. These vast teeth are of course prized in civilized lands for the ivory that is cut and polished out of them.