chapter 15

Kazeh—the noisy marketplace—the Victoria puts in an appearance—the wagangas—the sons of the moon—the doctor’s stroll—townspeople—the royal tembé—the sultan’s wives—royally drunk—Joe adored—how they dance on the moon—about-face—two moons in the sky—the fickle glories of godhood.

A major locale in central Africa, Kazeh isn’t a town; to tell the truth, the interior doesn’t have any towns. Kazeh is just an assemblage of six huge clearings. Inside them are huts, slave shacks with small courtyards and small, carefully tended gardens; onions, spuds, eggplants, pumpkins, and superbly tasty mushrooms grow in them to perfection.

In the Land of the Moon, Unyamwezi is the community beyond compare, Africa’s garden spot, fertile and magnificent; the district of Unyanembé lies in its center, a delectable area where a few Omani families lead lazy lives, being authentic pureblood Arabs.

For years they have done business in Africa’s interior and Arabia; they have dealt in gum, ivory, print fabrics, and slaves; their caravans have crisscrossed these equatorial regions; in addition their convoys visit the coast in search of luxuries and playthings for these wealthy merchants, and the latter lounge in the midst of their wives and servants, leading the least agitated and most horizontal of existences in this delightful district, always reclining, laughing, smoking, or dozing off.

Around these clearings are many native huts, huge enclosures for marketplaces, fields of cannabis and moonflower, lovely trees and cooling shade—there you have Kazeh.

This is the general meeting place for caravans: those from the south with their slaves and shipments of ivory; those from the west that export cotton and glass beads to tribes around the great inland lakes.

And perpetual pandemonium reigns in the marketplaces, an indescribable ruckus that mingles the yelling of half-breed carriers, the playing of drums and cornets, the neighing of mules, the braying of donkeys, the singing of women, the squealing of children, and the shaking of wooden rattles by jemadars,* who give the beat for this pastoral symphony.

Spread out there in no particular order—and even in delightful disorder—are gaudy fabrics, beadwork, ivory tusks, rhinoceros horns, shark teeth, honey, tobacco, and cotton; and there the oddest bargains are struck, where the asking price of each article is based on how badly the buyer wants it.

All at once this pandemonium, running around, and noisemaking abruptly died out. The Victoria had just appeared in the sky; she soared majestically overhead and dropped straight down little by little. Men, women, children, slaves, merchants, Arabs, and Negroes all slithered across the tembés¹ and vanished into their shanties.

“My dear Samuel,” Kennedy said, “if we keep having this kind of effect, it’ll be hard doing business with these people.”

“But simple doing some funny business,” Joe said. “We could quietly disembark, then walk off with the most valuable merchandise without bothering about the merchants. We’d be rich.”

“Steady there!” the doctor remarked. “These natives were frightened to begin with. But their curiosity or their superstitious beliefs will win out, and they’ll soon be back.”

“You think so, master?”

“We’ll see; but it wouldn’t be wise to get too close to them, since the Victoria isn’t covered with armor plate or chain mail; so she’s not immune to bullets or arrows.”

“So, my dear Samuel, you’re figuring to enter into negotiations with these Africans?”

“If it’s possible, why not?” the doctor responded. “There must be Arab merchants in Kazeh who are less barbaric and better educated. I recall that Messrs. Burton and Speke had nothing but praise for the hospitality of the townspeople. Therefore it’s a risk we can run.”

As the Victoria inched closer to the ground, one of her anchors latched onto a treetop near the marketplace.

Just then the whole populace reemerged from where they were holed up; heads peeked out cautiously. Identifiable from their regalia of conical seashells, several wagangas2 strode boldly forward; they were the local witch doctors. From their belts dangled little black gourds coated with grease, plus various magical props that were grimy from long professional use.

Little by little the crowd moved in the travelers’ direction, women and children circling below them, drums competing in clamor, hands colliding and then reaching for the sky.

“They’re pleading,” Dr. Fergusson said. “That’s how they go about it; and if I’m not mistaken, they’ll call on us to play a major role.”

“Fine, sir, play it!”

“You too, my gallant Joe—maybe they’ll turn you into a god.”

“Oh, that wouldn’t bother me, sir. I don’t mind incense.”

Just then one of the witch doctors, a Myangan,³ gestured for silence, and all the hubbub died down into utter stillness. He spoke a few words to the travelers, but in a language they didn’t know.

Not understanding him, Dr. Fergusson took a chance, threw out a few words of Arabic, and got an immediate answer in that language.

The speaker delivered a long-winded, flowery address to his toler ant audience; the doctor soon realized they had quite simply mistaken the Victoria for the moon herself; they thought that good-hearted goddess had deigned to drop in on their town along with her three sons—a never-to-be-forgotten honor in that land so loved by Old Sol.

With great dignity the doctor replied that the moon toured the provinces every thousand years, feeling a need for closer contact with her devotees; so he urged them to breathe easy and take advantage of her divine presence by making their wants and needs known.

The witch doctor answered in his turn that the sultan, the mwani, had been sick for many years and had begged the heavens for help; he invited the son of the moon to come see him.

The doctor reported this invitation to his companions.

“And you’re going to see this Negro king?” the hunter said.

“Certainly. These people seem well disposed toward us; the sky’s calm; there isn’t a puff of wind! No need to worry about the Victoria.”

“But what are you going to do?”

“Don’t be concerned, my dear Dick; with a little medicine I’ll see it through.”

Then, speaking to the crowd:

“The moon feels compassion for this sovereign so dear to the children of Unyamwezi, and she has entrusted us with healing him. Have him prepare to welcome us!”

The hubbub, singing, and outbursts grew louder, and that huge anthill of black noggins started off again.

“Now, my friends,” Dr. Fergusson said, “we need to be ready for anything; we might have to leave in a hurry at any given moment. So Dick will stay in the gondola and maintain adequate lifting power with the burner. The anchor is firmly secured; there’s nothing to fear. I’ll climb down to the ground. Joe will disembark with me; except he’ll remain at the foot of the ladder.”

“What! You’re going to that rascal’s lair by yourself?” Kennedy said.

“What!” Joe exclaimed. “You don’t want me sticking with you, Mr. Samuel?”

“No, I’ll go alone; these good people imagine that their great moon goddess has come to visit them, hence their superstitious beliefs will protect me; so don’t worry, and both of you stay at the posts I’ve assigned you.”

“Fine, have it your way,” the hunter replied.

“See that the gas keeps expanding.”

“Right.”

The natives were shouting with greater intensity; they were vehemently demanding that the heavens intervene.

“Tsk, tsk,” Joe commented. “I think they’re a little bossy with their kindly moon and her divine sons.”

Equipped with his portable medicine chest, the doctor disembarked, Joe climbing down first. The lad was as solemn and dignified as you could want, sitting at the foot of the ladder, crossing his legs under him in good Arab fashion, while part of the crowd formed a respectful circle around him.

Meanwhile, guided by the sounds of instruments, escorted by ritual war dances, Dr. Fergusson headed slowly toward the royal tembé, located some distance outside the town; the time was about three o’clock, and the sun shone resplendently, which was the least it could do on such an occasion.

The doctor walked with dignity; the wagangas surrounded him and took care of crowd control. Soon Fergusson was joined by the sultan’s bastard son, a rather good-looking lad who, in line with local custom, would inherit all of his father’s goods, to the exclusion of the legitimate children; he fell prostrate before the son of the moon; the latter graciously motioned him back up.

Going down shady lanes, surrounded by every luxuriant form of tropical vegetation, that fired-up procession arrived forty-five minutes later at the sultan’s palace, a squarish edifice called Ititénya and located on a hillside. Formed by a thatched roof, a sort of veranda dominated its exterior, supported by wooden posts that had some pretensions to being carved. Drawn with reddish clay, long streaks decorated the walls and tried to reproduce the figures of men and snakes—the latter with more success than the former, naturally. The roof over this dwelling didn’t rest right on the walls, and air could circulate freely; otherwise no windows, and barely a door.

Dr. Fergusson was welcomed with great ceremony by the guards and the sultan’s favorites, men of fine Nyamwezi stock, the most characteristic of central Africa’s people, strong, sturdy, well put together, sound in mind and body. Divided into a large number of little tresses, their hair fell over their shoulders; their cheeks were striped with blue or black incisions from temples to mouth. Their earlobes were fearfully stretched, hung with wooden disks and shards of gum copal;4 they were dressed in brilliantly painted fabrics; the soldiers wielded hardwood lances, longbows, barbed arrows poisoned with spurge sap, cutlasses, long saw-edged sabers called simes, and small battle-axes.

The palace of an African sultan

The doctor went inside the palace. There, despite the sultan’s illness, the uproar increased when he arrived, although it was already horrendous. He noted some rabbit tails and zebra manes dangling from the lintel of the door as if they were amulets. His majesty’s entire harem welcomed him to the mellifluous harmonies of the upatu—a sort of cymbal made from the bottom of a copper pot—and to the banging of a kilindo, a drum five feet tall, carved from a tree trunk, and which two virtuosos were working over with smacks of the fist.

Most of the sultan’s wives seemed quite pretty, laughing as they smoked tobacco and weed in big black pipes; they looked very shapely under their long, gracefully draped gowns, and they wore a kind of “kilt” made from calabash fibers and fastened around their waists.

Six among them weren’t any less merry than the rest, although shunted off to one side and on reserve to be cruelly sacrificed. When the sultan died, they were to be buried alive next to him, to divert him in his eternal solitude.

Taking in the whole scene at a glance, Dr. Fergusson walked up to the sovereign’s wooden bed. There Samuel saw a man of around forty—he was in a total stupor from every kind of carousing, and nothing could be done for him. The illness that had hung on for so many years was simply perpetual intoxication. This regal drunk was pretty much dead to the world, and all the ammonia water in existence wouldn’t straighten him out.

His wives and favorites stayed on bended knee during this solemn visit. The doctor uncorked a bottle that contained a powerfully invigorating stimulant, and with a few drops he momentarily revived the stupefied hulk; the sultan stirred, and given a carcass that had shown no other signs of life for some hours, this development led to louder shouting in the physician’s honor.

Samuel had seen enough, quickly sidestepped his gushing admirers, and left the palace. He headed for the Victoria. It was six o’clock in the evening.

During his absence Joe waited serenely at the foot of the ladder; the crowds paid him the highest homage. Like a true son of the moon, he let them. For a divinity he acted like a pretty regular bloke, not stuck up, even sociable with the young African girls who couldn’t take their eyes off him. Of course he got into chummy conversations with them.

“Adore me, girls! Adore me!” he told them. “I may be the son of a goddess, but I’m still a little devil!”

They undertook to appease him by presenting him with gifts, which normally they would have dropped off at a mzimu (fetish hut). These consisted of barley ears and some pombé.5 Joe felt obligated to sample this potent breed of beer; but although he had refined his palate on gin and whiskey, this brutal brew was too much for him. He reacted with a hideous scowl, which his audience mistook for a lighthearted grin.

And then, joining their voices in a droning chant, the girls performed a solemn dance around him.

“Aha! You’re dancing,” he said. Then, not to be outdone: “All right, I’ll show you how we dance where I come from!”

And he cut loose with a jig to make your head spin, weaving, stretching, crouching, dancing on his feet, dancing on his knees, dancing on his hands, performing outlandish contortions, striking unbelievable poses, mugging outrageously, and in the process giving these townspeople the oddest notions of how deities dance on the moon.

Now then, all these Africans had the mimicking skills of monkeys, and they promptly set about imitating his faces, his leaps, his jiggles; they didn’t miss a single move, they didn’t forget a single expression; so it was a free-for-all, perpetual motion, chaos that words can’t describe, even feebly. At the height of the festivities, Joe spotted the doctor.

Fergusson was coming back in a big hurry, in the midst of a howling, disorderly mob. The witch doctors and chieftains seemed positively manic. They surrounded the doctor; they crowded against him, they threatened him. A strange about-face! What had happened? Did the sultan bungle things and die under the care of his celestial physician?

At his post, Kennedy saw the danger but didn’t understand the cause. Strongly urged by the expanding gas, the balloon strained against her mooring line, impatient to rise into the sky.

The doctor made it to the foot of the ladder. Their superstitious fears still held the crowd back and deterred any acts of violence against his person; he went swiftly up the rungs, and Joe nimbly followed.

“We haven’t a second to lose,” his master told him. “Don’t try to unhook the anchor! We’ll cut the rope! Follow me!”

“But what’s wrong?” Joe asked, scrambling into the gondola.

“Did something happen?” Kennedy said, rifle in hand.

“Look,” the doctor replied, pointing at the horizon.

“What?” the hunter asked.

“The moon, that’s what!”

In essence the moon was rising, red and resplendent, a fiery globe in a field of pale blue! There she was! Right next to the Victoria!

Either the earth had two moons, or these visitors were nothing but imposters, schemers, false gods!

That’s how the crowd very naturally reasoned it out. Ergo this about-face.

Joe couldn’t keep back a huge roar of laughter. Realizing that their prey were giving them the slip, the people of Kazeh let out a long wailing howl; muskets and longbows took aim at the balloon.

But one of the witch doctors motioned to them. They lowered their weapons; he shinnied up the tree, intending to grab the anchor rope and pull the contraption to the ground.

Joe dashed over, hatchet in hand.

“Should I cut it?” he said.

“Wait,” the doctor replied.

“But that Negro …?”

“We may be able to save our anchor, and that’s preferable. There will always be time to cut it.”

High in the tree, the witch doctor was so efficient at breaking branches, he managed to unhook the mooring line; pulled violently upward by the ascending balloon, the anchor caught the witch doctor between the legs, and he took off into the stratosphere like a horseman straddling a hippogriff.

When the crowds below saw one of their wagangas shooting into space, they were filled with immense awe.

“Hooray!” Joe yelled, while the Victoria climbed with great speed, thanks to her lifting power.

“He’s hanging on tight,” Kennedy said. “A little sightseeing won’t do him any harm.”

“Should we let go of this Negro all at once?” Joe asked.

“Certainly not!” the doctor countered. “We’ll let him down gently; and in the eyes of his fellows, I suspect, this adventure will significantly enhance his status as a magician.”

“They might look on him as a god,” Joe exclaimed.

The Victoria had made it to an altitude of about a thousand feet. The Negro clung to the rope with dreadful energy. He didn’t say a word, he just kept staring. He was a mix of terror and amazement. A mild westerly wind swept the balloon a good way out of town.

The witch doctor gets carried off.

Half an hour later, finding the country deserted, the doctor cut back the flame of his burner and dropped closer to the earth. Twenty feet above the ground, the Negro made a quick decision; he jumped for it, landed on his feet, and ran off toward Kazeh; meanwhile, suddenly relieved of his weight, the Victoria climbed back into the sky.

* Caravan leaders.