He is old, this little man — ancient, antediluvian. His hair is white and corrugated, his face lined like a river delta. He is five foot nothing, ninety-five pounds, looks as if he’s been carved from a shadow. Around his neck a throttled chicken, stiff with rigor mortis, dangles from a cord. There is an awkward moment as explorer and gnome stand there toe to toe, the little man turning his big slow rolling eyes to the explorer, then looking away again, something between astonishment and indignation caught in the web of his face. He looks up once more, then turns away as if dismissing an apparition, bends to one of the sleeping men and begins piping in his ear. ‘‘M’bolo rita Sego!” he hoots. ‘‘M’bolo bolo Sego!”
The effect is instantaneous: Johnson and his retinue start up in unison, clutching at their chests and bugging their eyes, while the old man claps his hands and narrates a shrill tale of doom (Mungo is no linguist, but he can pick up repeated phrases like “cannibal,” “child-skinner” and “Tiggitty Sego”). An instant later the five beer-drinkers are wringing their hands, running into one another and fighting for the ladder.
In his anxiety to escape, Johnson brushes past the explorer, who takes the opportunity to seize his arm. “What’s up, Johnson? Is it Sego?”
The others are licking up the ladder like ants on a stick, while the old man teeters round the room scattering feathers. From above: the roar of cumulative panic.
“Quick!” shouts Johnson, tearing away like a crazed beast and clambering over the old man. “He’s going to put Jarra to the torch!” Johnson hesitates at the top of the ladder. “No prisoners,” he whispers.
♦ ♦ ♦
Outside, it’s a scene from Milton or Dante: weeping and wailing, self-flagellation, misdirection, panic, loss of faith. Mothers run childless, children motherless. There is smoke and dust in the air, the rush of blood. One old man stands in the street whipping his ancient milch cow because it cannot heave up from the ground under the weight of the panniers slung over its shoulders. Another carries his wife, who carries her dog, who carries a scrap of cloth in its mouth. All over people are running and shouting, a mad urgency in the atmosphere, kicking through the drifts and rubble left by the storm, gathering sacks of grain, driving cattle: fleeing the little mud-walled village on the Woobah, the village where they were born.
The explorer, always somewhat slow to react (something in the genes), stands in the midst of all this sorrow and confusion wondering what to do. He can’t very well join the exodus, as his horse and bags (restored to him at Fatima’s insistence) were lost in the storm — and how far could he get on foot? Besides, Johnson’s disappeared, and the Moors certainly wouldn’t. . but wait a minute — where are the Moors? It suddenly occurs to him that he hasn’t laid eyes on a Mussulman in the last twelve hours at least. . and then, even more suddenly, an insidious thought begins poking at the periphery of his brain — the very thought that was about to step out of the wings and announce itself last night when a weathered hand passed him the calabash: here at long last is his chance!
♦ ♦ ♦
What has transpired in Jarra is really quite elementary as the politics of war go. Ali, at some time during the night, experienced a crisis of divided priorities: his own best interest came into conflict with that of the Jarrans, who are, after all, merely Kafirs. After an evening of feasting and good-natured raping and extorting, he ordered ten of his men to select the three hundred fattest cattle from among the Jarran herds and to drive them into the wood where they’d be sheltered from the storm. This, he reasoned, was in his own best interest — merely protecting his investment. The Jarrans felt that Ali’s move was ultimately in their best interest as well, as it constituted his acceptance of their payment in advance for his services. Three hundred cattle are alot to lose, but not when you consider the alternative — i.e., losing the entire herd, as well as your goats, crops, huts and daughters to the raging and mindless Tiggitty Sego, known far and wide for his bloodlusting and vindictive nature.
But late that night, after the storm had abated, another factor entered the equation: Ali learned that Sego’s armies, taking advantage of the weather, had marched to within striking distance of Jarra, and that from there they planned an early morning attack. This intelligence precipitated Ali’s crisis of priority. Since he’d already collected his virgins and his cattle, he reasoned that he was satisfied — and that by fighting the Kaartans he would certainly derive no further satisfaction, and in fact ran the risk of losing what he’d already gained. He didn’t agonize long over the decision.
Within minutes the tents were struck, his men mounted. They rode through the night, nineteen ex-virgins under their arms, driving the cattle before them. By the following evening they would be back at Benowm.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Free at last!” thinks the explorer, jubilant in a slough of despond. A woman scuttles by, her life balanced in the earthen jar perched on her forehead. Mungo wants to dance with her, sing a song of deliverance, roar like a lion burst from his cage. “Hee-hee!” he laughs, tossing his hat as a group of stunted children dart past, swift, dark and furtive as rats. He kicks up his heels and begins whistling “Oh whare hae ye been a’ day, my bonnie wee croodlin’ dow?” as an old woman claws at the door of her hut, sobbing and pleading with the two men who tug at her arms. He flows along with the crowd, a silly grin on his face, as children cry for their mothers, cripples grope in the dust and women frantically snatch up provisions for the road. His plan is to head east with the refugees — horse or no horse — toward Bambarra. And the Niger.
On the far side of the village his conscience catches up with him, and he suddenly finds himself hoisting children, loading litters, pounding grain, prodding goats. The Jarrans, too harried and distraught to think twice, accept his hands and shoulders and then look up at him as if he were transparent. A cow here, a lost child there, wives and husbands reunited on the road, they begin to move — passing the eastern gates, fording the Woobah, struggling up the distant rise, the town lying desolate at their backs. Things are beginning to run smoothly, the stragglers closing ranks, the whiners and shriekers running short of breath, when suddenly a fearsome rumor shoots through the crowd: Sego is coming! Sego! The crowd falls silent, momentarily stunned, while a heavyset woman in a babushka pushes her way through, broadcasting the news: “He burned Wassiboo during the night! Roasted children! Drank blood!”
This information is followed by a series of gasps and moans, and then finally by a long generalized screech like the screech of hogs scenting the butcher’s block. Then they’re off like the start of a marathon: heels and hoofs flying, dust rising in billows till it filters out the sun. “So this is mass hysteria,” thinks Mungo, drawing back from the scene, until suddenly, as if he’d just wakened from a dream of falling, it seizes him. His pupils dilate, his breath comes in bursts. And then all at once he’s running, bolting like a spooked mare, throwing aside the lame and halt, kicking at livestock, clawing for position. When he thinks to look back the field is already behind him and he’s steaming up a hill past the fleetest of the teenage boys, loping athletes and spear carriers, running for his life, running for his liberty, running for all he’s worth.