Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [104]
A day or two later, the chief toubob began to enter the hold himself, discovering each time—and unchaining—at least one more lifeless body. Gagging in the stench, with others holding up lights for him to see by, he applied his salve and powder and forced the neck of his black bottle into the mouths of those still living. Kunta fought not to scream with pain whenever the fingers touched the grease to his back or the bottle to his lips. He also shrank from the touch of those pale hands against his skin; he would rather have felt the lash. And in the light’s orange glow, the faces of the toubob had a kind of paleness without features that he knew would never leave his mind any more than the stink in which he lay.
Lying there in filth and fever, Kunta didn’t know if they had been down in the belly of this canoe for two moons or six, or even as long as a rain. The man who had been lying near the vent through which they had counted the days was dead now. And there was no longer any communication among those who had survived.
Once when Kunta came jerking awake from a half sleep, he felt a nameless terror and sensed that death was near him. Then, after a while, he realized that he could no longer hear the familiar wheezing of his shacklemate beside him. It was a long time before Kunta could bring himself to reach out a hand and touch the man’s arm. He recoiled in horror, for it was cold and rigid. Kunta lay shuddering. Pagan or not, he and the Wolof had talked together, they had lain together. And now he was alone.
When the toubob came down again, bringing the boiled corn, Kunta cringed as their gagging and muttering came closer and closer. Then he felt one of them shaking the body of the Wolof and cursing. Then Kunta heard food being scraped as usual into his own pan, which was thrust up between him and the still Wolof, and the toubob moved on down the shelf. However starved his belly was, Kunta couldn’t think of eating.
After a while two toubob came and unshackled the Wolof’s ankle and wrist from Kunta’s. Numb with shock, he listened as the body was dragged and bumped down the aisle and up the stairs. He wanted to shove himself away from that vacant space, but the instant he moved, the raking of his exposed muscles against the boards made him scream in agony. As he lay still, letting the pain subside, he could hear in his mind the death wailings of the women of the Wolof’s village, mourning his death. “Toubob fa!” he screamed into the stinking darkness, his cuffed hand jangling the chain of the Wolof’s empty cuff.
The next time he was up on deck, Kunta’s glance met the gaze of one of the toubob who had beaten him and the Wolof. For an instant they looked deeply into each other’s eyes, and though the toubob’s face and eyes tightened with hatred, this time no whip fell upon Kunta’s back. As Kunta was recovering from his surprise, he looked across the deck and for the first time since the storm, saw the women. His heart sank. Of the original twenty, only twelve remained. But he felt a pang of relief that all four of the children had survived.
There was no scrubbing this time—the wounds on the men’s backs were too bad—and they jumped in their chains only weakly, this time to the beat of the drum alone; the toubob who had squeezed the wheezing thing was gone. As well as they could, in their pain, the women who were left sang that quite a few more toubob had been