Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [108]
Though still blurred in the distance, it was unmistakably some piece of Allah’s earth. These toubob really did have some place to put their feet upon—the land of toubabo doo—which the ancient forefathers said stretched from the sunrise to the sunset. Kunta’s whole body shook. The sweat came popping out and glistened on his forehead. The voyage was over. He had lived through it all. But his tears soon flooded the shoreline into a gray, swimming mist, for Kunta knew that whatever came next was going to be yet worse.
CHAPTER 40
Back down in the darkness of the hold, the chained men were too afraid to open their mouths. In the silence, Kunta could hear the ship’s timbers creaking, the muted ssss of the sea against the hull, and the dull clumpings of toubob feet rushing about on the deck overhead.
Suddenly some Mandinka began shrieking the praises of Allah, and soon all the others had joined his—until there was a bedlam of praise and praying and of chains being rattled with all the strength the men could muster. Amid the noise, Kunta didn’t hear the hatch when it scraped open, but the jarring shaft of daylight stilled his tongue and jerked his head in that direction. Blinking his eyes to compress the mucus in them, he watched dimly as the toubob entered with their lanterns and began to herd them—with unusual haste—back onto the deck. Wielding their long-handled brushes once again, the toubob ignored the men’s screams as they scrubbed the encrusted filth from their festering bodies, and the chief toubob moved down the line sprinkling his yellow powder. But this time, where the muscles were rubbed through deeply, he signaled for his big assistant to apply a black substance with a wide, flat brush. When it touched Kunta’s raw buttocks, the rocketing pain smashed him dizzily to the deck.
As he lay with his whole body feeling as if it were on fire, he heard men howling anew in terror, and snapping his head up, he saw several of the toubob engaged in what could only be preparing the men to be eaten. Several of them, in pairs, were pushing first one chained man and then the next into a kneeling position where he was held while a third toubob brushed onto his head a white frothing stuff and then, with a narrow, gleaming thing, raked the hair off his scalp, leaving blood trickling down across his face.
When they reached Kunta and seized him, he screamed and struggled with all his might until a heavy kick in the ribs left him gasping for breath while the skin of his head numbly felt the frothing and the scraping. Next the chained men’s bodies were oiled until they shone, and then they were made to step into some odd loincloth that had two holes the legs went through and that also covered their private parts. Finally, under the close scrutiny of the chief toubob, they were chained prostrate along the rails as the sun reached the center of the sky.
Kunta lay numbly, in a kind of stupor. It came into his mind that when they finally ate his flesh and sucked the bones, his spirit would already have escaped to Allah. He was praying silently when barking shouts from the chief toubob and his big helper made him open his eyes in time to watch the lesser toubob dashing up the tall poles. Only this time their grunts, as they strained at the ropes, were mixed with excited shouts and laughter. A moment later most of the great white sheets slackened and crumpled downward.
Kunta’s nostrils detected a new smell in the air; actually, it was a mingling of many smells, most of them strange and unknown to him. Then he thought he heard new sounds in the distance, from across the water. Lying on the deck, with his crusty eyes half shut, he couldn’t tell from where. But soon the sounds grew closer, and as they did, his fearful whimperings joined those of his mates. As the sounds got louder and louder, so did their praying and gibbering—until finally, in the light wind, Kunta could smell the bodies of many unfamiliar toubob. Just then the big canoe bumped