Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [187]
Bell tapped the top of the table between them. “How y’all Africans say ’table’?” she asked.
Although he hadn’t spoken in Mandinka since he left Africa, the word “meso” popped from Kunta’s mouth almost before he realized it, and he felt a surge of pride.
“How ’bout dat?” asked Bell, pointing at her chair. “Sirango,” said Kunta. He was so pleased with himself that he got up and began to walk around in the cabin, pointing at things.
Tapping Bell’s black iron pot over the fireplace, he said “kalero,” and then a candle on the table: “kandio.” Astonished, Bell had risen from her chair and was following him around. Kunta nudged a burlap bag with his shoe and said “boto,” touched a dried gourd and said “mirango,” then a basket that the old gardener had woven: “sinsingo.” He led Bell on into their bedroom. “Larango,” he said, pointing to their bed, and then a pillow: “kunglarang.” Then at the window: “janerango,” and at the roof: “kankarango.”
“Lawd have mercy!” exclaimed Bell. That was far more respect for his homeland than he had ever expected to arouse in Bell.
“Now it time to put our head on de kunglarang,” said Kunta, sitting down on the edge of the bed and starting to undress. Bell knitted her brow, then laughed and put her arms around him. He hadn’t felt so good in a long time.
CHAPTER 67
Though Kunta still liked to visit and swap stories with the fiddler and the gardener, it didn’t happen nearly as often as it used to when he was single. This was hardly surprising, since he spent most of his free time with Bell now. But even when they did get together lately, they seemed to feel differently toward him than before—certainly not unfriendly, but undeniably less companionable. It had been they who practically pushed Kunta into Bell’s arms, yet now that he was married, they acted a little as if they were afraid it might be catching—or that it might never be; his obvious contentment with hearth and home didn’t make them feel any warmer on cold winter nights. But if he didn’t feel as close to them as before—in the comradeship they had shared as single men, despite their different origins—he felt somehow more accepted now, as if by marrying Bell he had become one of them. Though their conversations with their married friend weren’t as earthy as they had sometimes been before—not that Kunta would admit even to himself that he had ever enjoyed the fiddler’s crudities—they had become, with the building of trust and the passage of years, even deeper and more serious.
“Scairt!” declared’ the fiddler one night. “Dat’s how come white folks so busy countin’ everybody in dat census! Dey scairt dey’s done brung mo’ niggers ’mongst ’em dan dey is white folks!” declared the fiddler.
Kunta said that Bell had told him she’d read in the Gazette that in Virginia, the census had recorded only a few more thousand whites than blacks.
“White folks scairder of free niggers dan dey is of us’ns!” the old gardener put in.
“I’s heared it’s near ’bout sixty thousand free niggers jes’ in Virginia,” the fiddler said. “So it ain’t no tellin’ how many slave niggers. But even dis state ain’t where de mos’ is. Dat’s down in dem states where de richest lan’ make the bes’ crops, an’ dey got water for boats to take dey crops to de markets, an’ ... ”
“Yeah, dem places it be’s two niggers for every white folks!” the old gardener interrupted. “All down in dat Lou’siana Delta, an’ de Yazoo Miss’ippi where dey grows sugar cane, an’ all down in dat