Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [152]
Kunta could understand their having to do what they were told, but why did they seem to enjoy it so much? And if the whites were so fond of their slaves that they gave them presents, why didn’t they make them really happy and set them free? But he wondered if some of these blacks, like pets, would be able to survive, as he could, unless they were taken care of.
But was he any better than they were? Was he all that different? Slowly but surely, he couldn’t deny that he was easing into acceptance of their ways. He was most troubled about his deepening friendship with the fiddler. His drinking of liquor deeply offended Kunta, and yet had not a pagan the right to be a pagan? The fiddler’s boastfulness also bothered Kunta, yet he believed that all the fiddler had boasted of was true. But the fiddler’s crude and irreverent sense of humor was distasteful to him; and Kunta had come to dislike intensely hearing the fiddler call him “nigger,” since he had learned that it was the white man’s name for blacks. But had it not been the fiddler who had taken it upon himself to teach him to talk? Was it not he whose friendship had made it easier for him to feel less of a stranger with the other blacks? Kunta decided that he wanted to know the fiddler better.
Whenever the proper time came, in the best roundabout way he could, he would ask the fiddler about some of the questions that were in his mind. But two more pebbles had been dropped into his gourd before one quiet Sunday afternoon, when no one was working, he went down to the familiar last hut on slave row, and found the fiddler in a rare quiet mood.
After exchanging greetings, they were both silent for a time. Then, just to make conversation, Kunta said he had overheard the massa’s driver, Luther, say that white folks were talking about “taxes” wherever he drove the massa. What were taxes, anyway, he wanted to know.
“Taxes is money got to be paid extry on near ’bout anything white folks buys,” replied the fiddler. “Dat king ’crost de water puts on de taxes to keep him rich.”
It was so unlike the fiddler to be so brief that Kunta figured he must be in a bad mood. Discouraged, he sat there for a while in silence, but finally he decided to spit out what was really on his mind: “Where you was fo’ here?”
The fiddler stared at him for a long, tense moment. Then he spoke, his voice cutting. “I know every nigger here figgerin’ ’bout me! Wouldn’t tell nobody else nothin’! But you diff ’rent.”
He glared at Kunta. “You know how come you diff ’rent? ’Cause you don’t know nothin’! You done got snatched over here, an’ got your foot cut, you thinks you been through all dey is! Well, you ain’t de only one had it bad.” His voice was angry. “You ever tells what I’m gonna tell you, I’ll catch you upside de head!”
“I ain’t!” Kunta declared.
The fiddler leaned forward and spoke softly so as not to be overheard. “Massa I had in No’th Ca’lina got drowned. Ain’t nobody’s bidness how. Anyway, same night I lit out, an’ he ain’t had no wife or young’uns to claim me. I hid out with Injuns ’til I figured it was safe to leave an’ git here to Virginia an’ keep on fiddlin’.”
“What ‘Virginia’?” asked Kunta.
“Man, you really don’t know nothin’, does you? Virginia’s the colony you livin’ in, if you want to call dis livin’.”
“What’s a colony?”
“You even dumber’n you look. Dey’s thirteen colonies that go to make up this country. Down south of here there’s the Ca’linas, and up north they’s Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and a bunch of others. I ain’t never been up dere, an’ neither has most niggers. I hear tell lotta white folks up dere don’t hold with slavery and sets us folk free. Myself, I’m kind of a half-free nigger. I have to be roun’ some massa ’case pattyrollers ever catches me.” Kunta didn’t understand, but he acted as if he did, since he didn’t feel like getting insulted again.
“You ever seen Injuns?