The covenant - James A. Michener [172]
They had left no visible impact on the tribes, only memories to be talked about at night by warriors in the kraals. But clearly, the little fellow with the white hair had been of that breed. As for the other? 'Who was he, Mandiso?'
'He looked like one of the brown people from the valleys,' the older boy replied, 'but there's something different.'
And when the strange pair vanished in the western distance, the two black travelers turned toward their own homes.
They were Xhosa, members of the great and powerful tribe that lived beyond the big river, and when they returned to their family they were going to have much explaining to do. They could hear Old Grandmother screaming at them: 'Where have you been? Where did you take your little brother? What do you mean, a white boy with a stick that threw flame?' Each night as they moved closer to home, they devised a different strategy.
'You explain it, Mandiso. You're older.' And that night it was arranged that Mandiso would tell how they had wanted to know what lay west of the big river, beyond the hills where the red-paint earth lay.
But on the next evening it would seem desirable that Sotopo do the speaking, since he was younger and would be accorded a more sympathetic hearing: 'We followed the spoor of a large beast, but could not find him, and before we knew it we were beyond the hills.'
On some nights they would mutually acknowledge the fact that neither of these explanations sounded convincing, but how to explain their hegira they did not know. The truth would surely be rejected. 'The reason we were away so long,' Mandiso said as they gnawed on roots from a succulent shrub, 'was that day after day we felt that when we reached the top of the next hill we would see something of magnitude.' He hesitated, and Sotopo continued the narrative: 'But whenever we reached the crest of the hill, all we saw was nothing. More forests, little rivers and a great many more hills.'
'Shall we tell them of the two boys?' Mandiso asked.
'That's difficult,' Sotopo said, 'because the little one with the yellow skin I don't think he was a boy. I do believe he was a Khoi-khoi, maybe twenty summers.'
'I liked the big one,' Mandiso said. 'He wasn't afraid, you know. The little one, you could smell him sweating in fear. But the white-haired boy, he seemed to like us.'
'But at the end he, too, jumped back in fear.'
'He did,' Mandiso agreed. 'You moved toward him and he leaped back, afraid like the little one.'
When they reached the banks of the big river and knew that they must soon encounter other Xhosa, they stopped speculating and faced up to the fact that before nightfall they would have to explain their absence. 'What we'll do,' Mandiso said with a touch of resignation, 'is simply tell them that we wanted to see what lay far to the west.'
'But shall we tell them of the two strangers?'
'I think we better had,' the older boy said. 'If we could smell fear in the little one, Old Grandmother will see excitement in our eyes, whether we speak of it or not.' So it was agreed that they would tell the entire story, embellishing nothing, hiding nothing, and this resolve pacified their fears, and they went forward boldly to meet the scouts that guarded the perimeters, and with them they were quite brave and forthright, but when Old Grandmother started shouting at them, they crumpled and told a very disjointed story.
The Xhosa people took their name from a historic chieftain who ruled around the year 1500. Among his many accomplishments was securing for them the lovely chain of valleys they now occupied between the mountains and the shores of the Indian Ocean. For half a thousand years they had been drifting easily south and west, enticed from in front by a succession of empty pasture