Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [109]
The chained men sat frozen with terror. Kunta’s arms were locked around his knees, and his eyes were clamped shut as if he were paralyzed. For as long as he could, he held his breath against the sickening wave of smells, but when something clumped heavily onto the deck, he slit his eyes open and saw two new toubob stepping down from a wide plank holding a white cloth over their noses. Moving briskly, they shook hands with the chief toubob, who was now all grins, clearly anxious to please them. Kunta silently begged Allah’s forgiveness and mercy as the toubob began rushing along the rails unchaining the black men and gesturing with shouts for them to stand up. When Kunta and his mates clutched at their chains—not wanting to let go of what had become almost a part of their bodies—the whips began to crack, first over their heads, then against their backs. Instantly, amid screams, they let go of the chains and stumbled to their feet.
Over the side of the big canoe, down on the dock, Kunta could see dozens of toubob stamping, laughing, pointing in their excitement, with dozens more running from all directions to join them. Under the whips, they were driven in a stumbling single file up over the side and down the sloping plank toward the waiting mob. Kunta’s knees almost buckled under him as his feet touched the toubob earth, but other toubob with cocked whips kept them moving closely alongside the jeering crowd, their massed smell like the blow of a giant fist in Kunta’s face. When one black man fell, crying out to Allah, his chains pulled down the men ahead of and behind him. Whips lashed them all back up again as the toubob crowd screamed in excitement.
The impulse to dash and escape surged wildly in Kunta, but the whips kept his chained line moving. They trudged past toubob riding in extraordinary two-wheeled and four-wheeled vehicles drawn by huge animals that looked a little like donkeys; then past a toubob throng milling around in some kind of marketplace stacked with colorful piles of what seemed to be fruits and vegetables. Finely clothed toubob regarded them with expressions of loathing, while more roughly clad toubob pointed and hooted with enjoyment. One of the latter, he noticed, was a she toubob, her stringy hair the color of straw. After seeing the hungry way the toubob on the great canoe had lusted after black women, he was amazed to see that the toubob had women of their own; but looking at this specimen, he could understand why they preferred Africans.
Kunta darted a glance sideways as they passed a group of toubob screaming crazily around a flurry of two cocks fighting with each other. And hardly had that din faded behind them when they came upon a shouting crowd leaping this way and that to avoid being bowled over by three toubob boys as they raced and dove after a squealing, filthy swine that looked shiny with grease. Kunta couldn’t believe his eyes.
As if lightning had struck him, Kunta then glimpsed two black men who were not from the big canoe—a Mandinka and a Serere, there was no doubt. He jerked his head around to stare as they walked quietly behind a toubob. He and his mates weren’t alone after all in this terrible land! And if these men had been allowed to live, perhaps they too would be spared from the cooking cauldron. Kunta wanted to rush over and embrace them; but he saw their expressionless faces and the fear in their downcast eyes. And then his nose picked their smell; there was something wrong with it. His mind reeled; he couldn’t comprehend how black men would docilely follow behind a toubob who wasn’t watching them or even carrying a weapon, rather than try to run away—or kill him.
He didn’t have time to think about it further, for suddenly they found themselves at the open door of a large, square house of baked mud bricks in oblong shapes with iron bars set into a few open spaces