Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [112]
When the two toubob returned, they quickly unchained and marched from the room three of the five black ones who had originally been there. All of them acted somehow as if this had happened to them enough times before that it no longer mattered. Then, within moments, there was a change in the toubob sounds from outside; it grew much quieter, and then one toubob began to shout. Struggling vainly to understand what was being said, Kunta listened uncomprehendingly to the strange cries: “Fit as a fiddle! Plenty of spirit in this buck!” And at brief intervals other toubob would interrupt with loud exclamations: “Three hundred and fifty!” “Four hundred!” “Five!” And the first toubob would shout: “Let’s hear six! Look at him! Works like a mule!”
Kunta shuddered with fear, his face running with sweat, breath tight in his throat. When four toubob came into the room—the first two plus two others—Kunta felt paralyzed. The new pair of toubob stood just within the doorway holding short clubs in one hand and small metal objects in the other. The other two moved along Kunta’s side of the wall unlocking the iron cuffs. When anyone cried out or scuffled, he was struck with a short, thick, leather strap. Even so, when Kunta felt himself touched, he came up snarling with rage and terror. A blow against his head made it seem to explode; he felt only dimly a jerking at the chain on his cuffs. When his head began to clear, he was the first of a chained line of six men stumbling through a wide doorway out into the daylight.
“Just picked out of the trees!” The shouting one was standing on a low wooden platform with hundreds of other toubobs massed before him. As they gaped and gestured, Kunta’s nose recoiled from the thickness of their stink. He glimpsed a few black ones among the toubob, but their faces seemed to be seeing nothing. Two of them were holding in chains two of the black ones who had just been brought from the barred room. Now the shouting one began striding rapidly down the line of Kunta and his companions, his eyes appraising them from head to foot. Then he walked back up the line, thrusting the butt of his whip against their chests and bellies, all the while making his strange cries: “Bright as monkeys! Can be trained for anything!” Then back at the end of the line, he prodded Kunta roughly toward the raised platform. But Kunta couldn’t move, except to tremble; it was as if his senses had deserted him. The whip’s butt seared across the scabbing crust of his ulcerated buttocks; nearly collapsing under the pain, Kunta stumbled forward, and the toubob clicked the free end of his chain into an iron thing.
“Top prime—young and supple!” the toubob shouted. Kunta was already so numb with terror that he hardly noticed as the toubob crowd moved in more closely around him. Then, with short sticks and whip butts, they were pushing apart his compressed lips to expose his clenched teeth, and with their bare hands prodding him all over—under his armpits, on his back, his chest, his genitals. Then some of those who had been inspecting Kunta began to step back and make strange cries.
“Three hundred dollars! . . . three fifty!” The shouting toubob laughed scornfully. “Five hundred! . . . six!” He sounded angry. “This is a choice young nigger! Do I hear seven fifty?”
“Seven fifty!” came a shout.
He repeated the cry several times, then shouted “Eight!” until someone in the crowd shouted it back. And then, before he had a chance to speak again, someone else shouted, “Eight fifty!”
No other calls came. The shouting toubob unlocked Kunta’s chain and jerked him toward a toubob who came stepping forward. Kunta felt an impulse to make his move right then, but he knew he would never make it—and anyway, he couldn’t seem to move his legs.
He saw a black one moving forward behind the toubob to whom the shouter had handed his chain. Kunta’s eyes entreated this black one, who had distinctly Wolof features,