Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [172]
Kunta said that in The Gambia, he would have been carving something from a large dried mango seed. “Whole heap of times I done wished I had a mango seed to plant an’ grow up to remin’ me a home,” he said.
The Ghanaian looked solemnly at Kunta. Then he smiled. “You’s young. Seeds you’s got a-plenty, you jes’ needs de wife to plant ’em in.”
Kunta was so embarrassed that he didn’t know how to reply. The Ghanaian thrust out his left arm, and they shook their left hands in the African manner, meaning that they would soon meet again.
“Ah-salakium-salaam.”
“Malaika-salaam.”
And Kunta cripped hurriedly out into the deepening dusk, past the other small huts, and up toward the big house, wondering if the massa had already come out looking for him. But it was another half hour before the massa appeared, and as Kunta drove the buggy homeward—scarcely feeling the reins in his hands or hearing the horses’ hooves on the road—he felt as if he had been talking with his dear father Omoro. No evening of his life had ever meant more to him.
CHAPTER 62
“Seen Toby passin’ yestiday, hollered at ’im, ‘Hey, drop by an’ set awhile, nigger!’ You oughta seen de look he give me, an’ ain’t even spoke! What you reckon it is?” the fiddler asked the gardener. The gardener had no idea, and they both asked Bell. “Cain’t tell. If he sick or sump’n, he oughta say so. I’m jes’ leavin’ him’lone, he actin’ so funny!” she declared.
Even Massa Waller noticed that his commendably reserved and reliable driver seemed not to be his usual self. He hoped it wasn’t an incubating stage of a current local contagion to which they both had been exposed, so one day he asked Kunta if he felt badly. “Nawsuh,” Kunta quickly replied, so Massa Waller put further concern out of his mind, so long as his driver got him where he was going.
Kunta had been rocked to the core by his encounter with the Ghanaian, and that very fact made it clear to him how lost he had become. Day by day, year by year, he had become less resisting, more accepting, until finally, without even realizing it, he had forgotten who he was. It was true that he had come to know better and learned to get along with the fiddler, the gardener, Bell, and the other blacks, but he knew now that he could never really be one of them, any more than they could be like him. Alongside the Ghanaian, in fact, the fiddler and the gardener and Bell now seemed to Kunta only irritating. He was glad that they were keeping their distance. Lying on his pallet at night, he was torn with guilt and shame about what he had let happen to himself. He had still been an African when he used to awaken suddenly here in his cabin, jerking upright, shocked to discover that he wasn’t in Juffure; but the last time that happened had been many years ago. He had still been an African when his memories of The Gambia and its people had been the only thing that sustained him, but months might pass now without his having a single thought about Juffure. He had still been an African back in those early years when each new outrage had sent him onto his knees imploring Allah to give him strength and understanding; how long had it been since he had even properly prayed to Allah?
His learning to speak the toubob tongue, he realized, had played a big part in it. In this everyday talking, he seldom even thought of Mandinka words any more, excepting those few that for some reason his mind still clung to. Indeed, by now—Kunta grimly faced it—he even thought in the toubob tongue. In countless things he did as well as said and thought, his Mandinka ways had slowly been replaced by those of the blacks he had been among. The only thing in which he felt he could take some