The covenant - James A. Michener [181]
'He shares the guilt.'
'Can he do nothing?' the boy asked.
'No. The evil is upon him.' And no amount of pleading, no amount of future gifts would alleviate this dreadful curse. The community, through the agency of their diviner, had named Xuma's father as a source of contamination, and he must go.
Shortly after this visit he was found beaten to death at the gateway to his kraal, an especially ominous way to die, implying that even the sleek and growing cattle had been powerless to protect him.
That night Mandiso and Xuma came to the big hut, the wife sitting circumspectly to the left among the women as the fateful discussion began.
'You must leave us,' Old Grandmother said without any show of sorrow. 'But why must I surrender . . .'
'The time has come to go,' she said forcefully. 'Tell him, Makubele.' And the boys' father referred only to his own selfish interests: 'The old one's right. You must go. Otherwise the curse will apply to us all, won't it, Old Grandmother?'
But she refused to allow her own predicament or that of her family to intrude in this matter: 'What is important, Mandiso, is not what will happen to your father, but what will happen to you and Xuma. What do you think your future is now, with her father killed in that manner, at the gateway to his kraal?'
'If there is one sacred place' Mandiso began, but Xuma broke in: 'We must go. And we must go before nightfall tomorrow.'
'Can it really be so!' her husband said, appalled at the implications of what Xuma had said.
'Isn't that true, Old Grandmother?' the girl asked.
'I'd go tonight,' the old woman said. And it was agreed that before the next sun set Mandiso and Xuma would start for the west, to a new settlement, to a new home. They would take cattle, and skin bags of mealies for seed, and other oddmentsbut they must go, for the consensus of their community, arrived at in complex ways, had decreed that they were no longer wanted.
But where did this leave Sotopo, not yet a man but deeply devoted to his brother and his brother's wife? When the family conclave broke up, he remained with his grandmother a long time, discussing his difficult alternatives: remain, with the diviner probably opposed to him; or flee, when he had not yet been ordained a man? He had absolutely no hard evidence that the witch doctor had declared war upon him, but he knew it had happened and that sooner or later the rumors would begin to circulate against him. But he also knew that to face the future without the sanctions of circumcision entailed dangers too fearful to contemplate. Having watched his brother's joyous entrance into married life, with a girl as admirable as Xuma, he had begun to sense how awful it would be to have the girls of his community categorize him as less-than-man and to be deprived of their companionship.
This was something he could not discuss with his grandmother, so in the dead of night he crept to his brother's kraal and whispered, 'Mandiso! Are you awake?'
'What is it, brother?'
'I shall go with you.'
'Good. We'll need you.'
'But how will I ever become a man?'
Mandiso sat in the dark with his left hand over his mouth, considering this perplexing question, and then, because he felt he must be truthful, he listed the impediments: 'There'd be no guardian to bless the hut. There'd be no other boys to share the experience. We probably couldn't find clay to cover your body. And at the end there'd be no grand celebration.'
'I've thought of that, Mandiso. I've thought of it all, but still I want to stay with you.' And he added, 'With you and Xuma,' for he was not ashamed of his love for his sister-in-law.
'It seems to me,' Mandiso said, 'looking back on everything that happened, that a boy becomes a man with the pain, with the courage. He becomes a man not with the dancing and the food and the cheers of others. He becomes a man within himself, through his own bravery.'
They pondered this for a long time, during which Mandiso hoped that his brother would speak up, would volunteer proof of his courage, but Sotopo was too confused by this necessity