Roots (29 page)

But in obedience to the Foulah, Kunta and most of the men tried to keep acting happy as they danced in their chains, although the effort was like a canker in their souls. It was possible to see, though, that when the toubob were thus made more relaxed, fewer whips fell on backs, and the men were allowed to remain on the sunlit deck for longer periods than before. After enduring the buckets of seawater and the torture of the scrubbing brushes, Kunta and the rest of the men sat resting on their haunches and watched the toubob’s every move—how they generally spaced themselves along the rails, how they usually kept their weapons too close to be grabbed away. No chained man’s eye missed it whenever any toubob leaned his gun briefly against the rails. While they sat on the deck, anticipating the day when they would kill the toubob, Kunta worried about the big metal thing that showed through the barricade. He knew that at whatever cost in lives, that weapon would have to be overwhelmed and taken, for even though he didn’t know exactly what it was, he knew that it was capable of some terrible act of destruction, which was of course why the toubob had placed it there.

He worried also about those few toubob who were always turning the wheel of the big canoe, a little this way, a little that way,
while staring at a round brownish metal thing before them. Once, when they were down in the hold, the alcala spoke his own thought: “If those toubob are killed, who will run this canoe?” And the Foulah leader responded that those toubob needed to be taken alive. “With spears at their throats,” he said, “they will return us to our land, or they will die.” The very thought that he might actually see his land, his home, his family once again sent a shiver down Kunta’s spine. But even if that should happen, he thought he would have to live to be very old if he was ever to forget, even a little bit, what the toubob had done to him.

There was yet another fear within Kunta—that the toubob might have the eyes to notice how differently he and the other men danced in their chains on the deck, for now they were really dancing; they couldn’t help their movements from showing what was deep in their minds: swift gestures of hurling off shackles and chains, then clubbing, strangling, spearing, killing. While they were dancing, Kunta and the other men would even whoop out hoarsely their anticipation of slaughter. But to his great relief, when the dancing ended and he could again contain himself, he saw that the unsuspecting toubob only grinned with happiness. Then, one day up on the deck, the chained people suddenly stood rooted in astonishment and stared—along with the toubob—at a flight of hundreds of flying fish that filled the air above the water like silvery birds. Kunta was watching, dumfounded, when suddenly he heard a scream. Whirling, he saw the fierce, tattooed Wolof in the act of snatching a metal stick from a toubob. Swinging it like a club, he sent the toubob’s brains spraying onto the deck, as other toubob snapped from their frozen positions of shock, he battered another to the deck. It was done so swiftly that the Wolof, bellowing in rage, was clubbing his fifth toubob when the flash of a long knife lopped off his head cleanly at the shoulders. His head hit the deck before his body had crumpled down,
and both spurted blood from their stumps. The eyes in the face were still open, and they looked very surprised.

Amid shoutings of panic, more and more toubob scrambled to the scene, rushing out of doors and sliding like monkeys down from among the billowing white cloths. As the women shrieked, the shackled men huddled together in a circle. The metal sticks barked flame and smoke, then the big black barrel exploded with a thunderous roar and a gushing cloud of heat and smoke just over their heads, and they screamed and sprawled over each other in horror.

From behind the barricade bolted the chief toubob and his scar-faced mate, both of them screaming in rage. The huge one struck the nearest toubob a blow that sent blood spurting from his mouth, then all of the other toubob were a mass of screaming and shouting as with their lashes and knives and firesticks they rushed to herd the shackled men back toward the opened hatch. Kunta moved, not feeling the lashes that struck him, still awaiting the Foulah’s signal to attack. But almost before he realized it, they were below and chained back in their dark places and the hatch cover had been slammed down.

But they were not alone. In the commotion, a toubob had been trapped down there with them. He dashed this way and that in the darkness, stumbling and bumping into the shelves, screaming in terror, scrambling up when he fell and dashing off again. His howlings sounded like some primeval beast’s.
“Toubob fa!”
somebody shouted, and other voices joined him:
“Toubob fa! Toubob fa!”
They shouted, louder and louder, as more and more men joined the chorus. It was as if the toubob knew they meant it for him, and pleading sounds came from him as Kunta lay silent as if frozen, none of his muscles able to move. His head was pounding, his body poured out sweat, he was gasping to breathe. Suddenly the hatch cover was snatched open and a dozen toubob came pounding down the stairs into the dark hold. Some of their whips had
slashed down onto the trapped toubob before he could make them realize he was one of them.

Then, under viciously lashing whips, the men were again unchained and beaten, kicked back up onto the deck, where they were made to watch as four toubob with heavy whips beat and cut into a pulpy mess the headless body of the Wolof. The chained men’s naked bodies shone with sweat and blood from their cuts and sores, but scarcely a sound came from among them. Every one of the toubob was heavily armed now, and murderous rage was upon their faces as they stood in a surrounding ring, glaring and breathing heavily. Then the whips lashed down again as the naked men were beaten back down into the hold and rechained in their places.

For a long while, no one dared even to whisper. Among the torrent of thoughts and emotions that assailed Kunta when his terror had subsided enough for him to think at all was the feeling that he wasn’t alone in admiring the courage of the Wolof, who had died as a warrior was supposed to. He remembered his own tingling anticipation that the Foulah leader would at any instant signal an attack—but that signal hadn’t come. Kunta was bitter, for whatever might have happened would have been all over now; and why not die now? What better time was going to come? Was there any reason to keep hanging onto life here in this stinking darkness? He wished desperately that he could communicate as he once did with his shacklemate, but the Wolof was a pagan.

Mutterings of anger at the Foulah’s failure to act were cut short by his dramatic message: The attack, he announced, would come the next time the men on their level of the hold were on deck being washed and jumping in their chains, when the toubob seemed most relaxed. “Many among us will die,” the Foulah said, “as our brother has died for us—but our brothers below will avenge us.”

There was grunting approval in the murmurings that circulated now. And Kunta lay in the darkness listening to the raspings of a
stolen file rubbing against chains. He knew for weeks that the file marks had been carefully covered with filth so that the toubob wouldn’t see. He lay fixing in his mind the faces of those who turned the great wheel of the canoe, since their lives were the only ones to be spared.

But during that long night in the hold, Kunta and the other men began to hear an odd new sound they had never heard before. It seemed to be coming through the deck from over their heads. Silence fell rapidly in the hold and, listening intently, Kunta guessed that stronger winds must be making the great white cloths flap much harder than usual. Soon there was another sound, as if rice was falling onto the deck; he guessed after a while that it must be rain pelting down. Then he was sure that he heard, unmistakably, the muffled crack and rumble of heavy thunder.

Feet could be heard pounding on the deck overhead, and the big canoe began to pitch and shudder. Kunta’s screams were joined by others’ as each movement up and down, or from side to side, sent the chained men’s naked shoulders, elbows, and buttocks—already festered and bleeding—grinding down even harder against the rough boards beneath them, grating away still more of the soft, infected skin until the muscles underneath began rubbing against the boards. The hot, lancing pains that shot from head to foot almost blacked him out, and it was as if from afar that he became dimly aware of the sound of water pouring down into the hold—and of shrieks amid a bedlam of terror.

The water poured more and more rapidly into the hold until Kunta heard the sound of something heavy, like some great coarse cloth, being dragged over the deck above. Moments later, the flood subsided to a trickle—but then Kunta began to sweat and gag. The toubob had covered the holes above them to shut out the water, but in so doing they had cut off all air from the outside, trapping the heat and stench entirely within the hold. It was beyond tolerance,
and the men began to choke and vomit, rattling their shackles frantically and screaming in panic. Kunta’s nose, throat, and then his lungs felt as if they were being stuffed with blazing cotton. He was gasping for more breath to scream with. Surrounded by the wild frenzy of jerking chains and suffocating cries, he didn’t even know it when both his bladder and his bowels released themselves.

Sledgehammer waves crashed on the hull, and the timbers behind their heads strained against the pegs that held them together. The choked screams of the men down in the hold grew louder when the great canoe plunged sickeningly downward, shuddering as tons of ocean poured across her. Then, miraculously, she rose again under the torrential rams that beat down on her like hailstones. As the next mountainous broadside drove her back down again, and up again—heeling, rolling, trembling—the noise in the hold began to abate as more and more of the chained men fainted and went limp.

When Kunta came to, he was up on deck, amazed to find himself still alive. The orange lights, moving about, made him think at first they were still below. Then he took a deep breath and realized it was fresh air. He lay sprawled on his back, which was exploding with pains so terrible that he couldn’t stop crying, even in front of the toubob. He saw them far overhead, ghostly in the moonlight, crawling along the crossarms of the tall, thick poles; they seemed to be trying to unroll the great white cloths. Then, turning his pounding head toward a loud noise, Kunta saw still more toubob stumbling up through the open hatchway, staggering as they dragged the limp, shackled forms of naked men up onto the deck of the canoe, dumping them down near Kunta and others already piled up like so many logs.

Kunta’s shacklemate was trembling violently and gagging between moans. And Kunta’s own gagging wouldn’t stop as he watched the white-haired chief toubob and the huge scarred one
shouting and cursing at the others, who were slipping and falling in the vomit underfoot, some of it their own as they continued to drag up bodies from below.

The great canoe was still pitching heavily, and drenching spray now and then splashed over the quarterdeck. The chief toubob had difficulty keeping his balance, now moving hurriedly, as another toubob followed him with a light. One or the other of them would turn upward the face of each limp, naked man, and the light would be held close; the chief toubob would peer closely and sometimes he would put his fingers on one wrist of that shackled man. Sometimes, then, cursing bitterly, he would bark an order and the other toubob would lift and drop the man into the ocean.

Kunta knew these men had died below. He asked himself how Allah, of whom it was said that He was in all places at all times, could possibly be here. Then he thought that even to question such a thing would make him no better than the pagan shuddering and moaning alongside him. And he turned his thoughts to prayer for the souls of the men who had been thrown over the side, joined already with their ancestors. He envied them.

B
y the time the dawn came, the weather had calmed and cleared, but the ship still rolled in heavy swells. Some of the men who still lay on their backs, or on their sides, showed almost no signs of life, others were having dreadful convulsions. But along with most of the other men, Kunta had managed to get himself into a sitting position that relieved somewhat the horrible pains in his back and buttocks. He looked dully at the backs of those nearby; all were bleeding afresh through blood already dried and clotted, and he saw what seemed to be bones showing at the shoulders and elbows. With a vacant look in another direction, he could see a woman lying with her legs wide apart, her private parts, turned in his direction, were smudged with some strange grayish-yellowish paste, and his nose picked up some indescribable smell that he knew must come from her.

Now and then one of the men who were still lying down would try to raise himself up. Some would only fall back, but among those who succeeded in sitting up, Kunta noticed, was the Foulah leader. He was bleeding heavily, and his expression was of one who wasn’t part of what was going on around him. Kunta didn’t recognize many of the other men he saw. He guessed that they must be from the level below his. These were the men whom the Foulah had said would avenge the dead from the first level after the
toubob were attacked. The attack Kunta didn’t have the strength even to think about it any more.

In some of the faces around him, including that of the man he was shackled to, Kunta saw that death was etched. Without knowing why, he was sure they were going to die. The face of the Wolof was grayish in color, and each time he gasped to breathe there was a bubbling sound in his nose. Even the Wolof’s shoulder and elbow bones, which showed through the raw flesh, had a grayish look. Almost as if he knew that Kunta was looking at him, the Wolof’s eyes fluttered open and looked back at Kunta—but without a sign of recognition. He was a pagan, but . . . Kunta extended a finger weakly to touch the Wolof on the arm. But there was no sign of any awareness of Kunta’s gesture, or of how much it had meant.