Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [90]
The next feeding was a tense one. As if the toubob sensed something amiss, their whips fell even more often than usual. Kunta jerked and cried out as a bolt of pain cut across his legs. He had learned that when anyone didn’t cry out from a blow, he would get a severe beating until he did. Then he clawed and gulped down the tasteless mush as his eyes followed the lights moving on down along the shelf.
Every man in the hold was listening when one of the toubob exclaimed something to the others. A jostling of lights could be seen, then more exclamations and cursings, and then one of the toubob rushed down the aisle and up through the hatch, and he soon returned with two more. Kunta could hear the iron cuffs and chains being unlocked. Two of the toubob then half carried, half dragged the body of the dead man along the aisle and up the hatch, while the others continued bumping their food tub along the aisles.
The food team was on the level below when four more toubob climbed down through the hatch and went directly to where the slatee had been chained. By twisting his head, Kunta could see the lights raised high. With violent cursing, two of the toubob sent their whips whistling down against flesh. Whoever was being beaten refused at first to scream; though just listening to the force of the blows was almost paralyzing to Kunta, he could hear the beaten man flailing against his chains in the agony of his torture—and of his grim determination not to cry out.
Then the toubob were almost shrieking their curses, and the lights could be seen changing hands as one man spelled the other with the lash. Finally the beaten man began screaming—first a Foulah curse, then things that could not be understood, though they too were in the Foulah tongue. Kunta’s mind flashed a thought of quiet, gentle Foulah tribe who tended Mandinka cattle—as the lashing sounds continued until the beaten man barely whimpered. Then the four toubob left, cursing, gasping, and gagging in the stink.
The moans of the Foulah shivered through the black hold. Then, after a while, a clear voice called out in Mandinka, “Share his pain! We must be in this place as one village!” The voice belonged to an elder. He was right. The Foulah’s pains had been as Kunta’s own. He felt himself about to burst with rage. He also felt, in some nameless way, a terror greater than he had ever known before, and it seemed to spread from the marrow of his bones. Part of him wanted to die, to escape all of this; but no, he must live to avenge it. He forced himself to lie absolutely still. It took a long while, but finally he felt his strain and confusion, even his body’s pains, begin to ebb—except for the place between his shoulders where he had been burned with the hot iron. He found that his mind could focus better now on the only choice that seemed to lie before him and the others: Either they would all die in this nightmare place, or somehow the toubob would have to be overcome and killed.
CHAPTER 36
The stinging bites, then the itching of the body lice, steadily grew worse. In the filth, the lice as well as the fleas had multiplied by the thousands until they swarmed all over the hold. They were worst wherever the body crevices held any hair. Kunta’s armpits, and around his foto, felt as if they were on fire, and his free hand scratched steadily wherever his shackled hand couldn’t reach.
He kept having thoughts of springing up and running away; then, a moment later, his eyes would fill with tears of frustration, anger would rise in him, and he would fight it all back down until he felt again some kind of calm. The worst thing was that he couldn’t move anywhere; he felt he wanted to bite through his chains. He decided that he must keep himself focused upon something, anything to occupy his mind or his hands, or else he would go mad—as some men in the hold seemed to have done already, judging from the things they cried