The covenant - James A. Michener [46]
It is difficult, five hundred years after the event, to describe in words the precise quality of thought available to the men who made this decision to abandon Zimbabwe, but because the act was so crucial in the history of southern Africa, an attempt must be made without inflating or denigrating reality. The king was no Charlemagne; he was unaware of libraries and monetary systems, yet he had an uncanny sense of how to keep a sprawling empire functional, and if he knew nothing about armies or military policy, it was only because he kept his nation at peace during a long reign. He spoke only one language, which had never been written, and he had no court painter to depict his likeness for foreign princes, yet he knew how to keep Zimbabwe beautiful; the additions he made to both the lower city and the citadel were commendable. He was a ruler.
The Mhondoro was certainly no Thomas Aquinas speculating upon the nature of God and man; indeed, he was sometimes little more than a shaman propitiating dubious spirits that might otherwise destroy the city. But if he lacked a comprehensive theology like Christianity or Islam with which to console his people, he did have remarkable skill in banishing their grosser fears, controlling their wilder passions, and lending them the assurances they needed to keep working. He was a priest.
The condition of Nxumalo was more puzzling. Offspring of a minimal society, child of a family with extremely limited horizons, he had been allowed adventures which lured him always toward larger concepts. He was one of those wonderful realists who can add a tentative two to a problematic three and come up with a solid five. He saw Zimbabwe exactly as it was, a city fighting for its life in a rapidly changing world, but he also saw in his imagination the cities of India and China, and he guessed that they were struggling too. He realized that if there existed something as magnificent as an ocean, there could be no reasonable limit to the wonders its shores might contain. He could not read or write; he could not express himself in scholastic phrases; he knew nothing of Giotto, who was dead, or Botticelli, who was living, but from the first moment he saw those carved birds adorning the citadel he knew they were art and never some accidental thing from the marketplace. He was a pragmatist.
Any one of these three, or all as a group, could have learned to function in any society then existing, given time and proper instruction. The king certainly was as able as the Aztec rulers of Mexico or the Incas of Peru and markedly superior to the confused brothers of Prince Henry, who ruled Portugal abominably; had the Mhondoro been a cardinal at Rome, he would have known how to protect himself at the Vatican as it then operated; and if Nxumalo with his insatiable curiosity had ever had a chance to captain a ship, he would have outdistanced Prince Henry's reluctant navigators. These three might be called savages, but they should never be called uncivilized.
Yet this is precisely what Henry the Navigator did call them as he lay dying in his lonely monastery on the forlorn headland of Europe. He sat propped in bed, surrounded by a lifetime of books and documents, striving to devise some stratagem that would speed his captains in their attempt to turn the southern tip of Africa and 'discover and civilize' places like Sofala and Kilwa. It required an arrogant mind to consider these great entrepots 'undiscovered' merely because no white Christian had yet traveled up the eastern coast of Africa, whereas thousands upon thousands of dark Arabs had traveled down it, and had been doing so for a thousand years.
These were the closing weeks of 1460, while Zimbabwe still functioned as the capital of a vast but loosely ruled hegemony, with its royal compounds decorated by celadons from China, but Prince Henry could say to his assembled captains, 'Our mighty task is to bring civilization to the dark shores of Africa.' He added, 'That the gold mines of Ophir should be occupied by savage blacks is repugnant,