The covenant - James A. Michener [177]
But this was forgotten as the time approached when the nine manhood-boys in the lodge reached the end of their confinement, and now a sad thing happened: Sotopo, who had been so close to his brother, became aware that henceforth a gulf would exist between them. Sotopo was still a boy; Mandiso was a man, and his allegiance to the eight others who had undergone the ordeal with him would always be much stronger than his friendship for his own brother, who had not, and it was with sorrow that the boy watched the emergence of the man.
The lectures on manhood delivered by the headman and the guardian were now ended. The intricate rituals, the secrets of the tribe had been shared, and the time for burning down the lodge and all its pains was at hand. But first the nine new men must go to the river in sight of the entire community and cleanse themselves of the white clay that had marked them for the past hundred days. In stately procession, naked, with the mark of their circumcision plain for all to see, the new-men marched to the river, immersed themselves, and spent several hours trying to clean away the adhesive mud. When they emerged, their bodies, long protected from the sun, were lean and pale. Anointed with butter and red-earth, they glimmered in the unaccustomed light; never again in their lives would they appear so manly, so promising of noble conduct.
Then came the celebration! Dried gourds, their seeds intact, were rattled in fine rhythms. Musical instruments, consisting of a single cord of cured gut tied tight between the ends of a bowed piece of wood, were plucked, the musician keeping one end of the wood between his teeth, and altering the sound by altering the movements of his mouth. Old women held two sticks, beating them together, and young men who had completed their ritual three or four years before dressed themselves in wild costumes of feather, rush and reed, ready to dance till they collapsed in exhaustion.
Before the manhood-boys were free to join the celebration, their guardian lighted a brand, carried it solemnly to the ceremonial lodge and set it ablaze. Now the nine inductees rushed from their place of seclusion for the last time, dressed in gaudy costumes topped by their elongated hats, which they still wore horizontally. Turning their backs to the blazing lodge, they kept their eyes rigidly forward as they walked away, for if they dared look back, evil spirits would doom them.
Free of the lodge, they became like wild men as they joined their exultant families and friends, cavorting without rule and leaping into the air as if to challenge the fire-bird himself. Then slowly order began to take over, the clapping of hands assumed a stately rhythm, and all associated with the ceremony leaned forward to see which new-man among the nine would step forward as spokesman for the group.
It was Mandiso, and at this moment of honor Sotopo gave a cry of joy and nodded to the diviner, who did not nod back.
'Today we are men,' Mandiso said, and with these words he began the great dance of the Xhosa, keeping his feet planted on the ground but gyrating all parts of his body as if each were a separate entity. He was especially adroit at sending his belly in one direction, his buttocks in another, and at the moment when he did this to perfection, the other eight new-men leaped in the air, tore about the dancing ground and settled into their version of this dance, so that the entire area was filled with wildly twisting bodies, cries, and the rumble of approval.
The feasting lasted two days. At times both the young men and the spectators collapsed in exhaustion, slept in a kind of daze, awakened,