FLESH AND THE DEVIL by Kola Boof Read online

  When the King of the Gods looked up and saw his tall, brawny ebony black grandson entering the palace court wearing nothing more than an Ajowan loin cloth and carrying a spear, he thought for a moment that it was the ghost of Prince Shango Ogun returning for revenge.

  Shange knelt down at the pumice stone, his eyes lowered in respect, and asked permission to approach the throne.

  “Come”, said Katanga as Queen Ambi leaned forward, her sparkling eyes delighted by the sight of him, but also, melancholy and muddy, because the lonely death of Princess Ife Ife had never left her.

  As Shange approached his grandparents, he found himself humbled by their effortless majesty. Their wide, thick noses hung on their faces like emblems of truth and justice, beauty and wisdom. Katanga, who was now slightly gray haired, his charcoal face smooth and unlined but hanging just a little, still had the lithe body of a warrior--the shoulders erect, the arms muscled, the chest wide and commanding beneath the flowing indigo robes that he wore as he held his head high and stevedore-like, his aura having the likeness of a great flying bird, a lion and a giant baobab tree all at once. Queen Ambi, on the other hand, had actually gotten younger since Shange had last been held in her arms as a small boy. She sat between two elegantly protective leopards with her legs crossed, her hands dangling just so glamorously on purpose, her muddy brown curves voluptuous and shapely as ever. Shange smiled in amusement, because Ambi was famous for wearing cornrows and braids, but kept her head bald now and wore a dozen giant silver hoop rings in each of her ears. Her bloom-thick lips glistened under honey and sepia.

  She could not be more beautiful, thought Shange, and it dawned on him that in both God and Ajowa, the older the women got, the more vibrant and womanly they became, their faces filled with character and a sexy wisdom.

  “I’ve come searching for my mother’s essence”, he blurted out suddenly, his eyes fastened on Ambi, because he remembered that she could never resist catering to him. He said, “It’s a lake, I think, because I’ve dreamt of it my whole life. A strange lake, because the moon seems to shine on it in such a way that there appears to be a moon underneath the water.”

  “It’s called ‘Lake Ambi’”, sang his grandmother, proudly. “And yes, I knew you’d come looking for it. Your mother practically lived there and...it is the place that your father died.” She looked at Katanga and took hold of his hand. “It is also the place where all the children of my womb were conceived... and...it’s the place where you were conceived. And not in silence.” She lowered her eyes to the ground. “Your grandfather will take you there, I’m sure.”

  Katanga looked at his Queen as though she were crazy, but sure enough, he ended up escorting his grandson to the garden of Lake Ambi.

  “What’s that smell?” Shange asked as they descended the stone steps from Princess Ife Ife’s sealed bungalow. He could swear that he smelled sea anemones.

  “It’s the smell of the flowers and trees dying. The whole garden began to wilt after your mother took ill. Your Aunt Thiaroye has not been able to reverse the rotting no matter what she does. There used to be crocodiles...but now, as you can see, they’ve been replaced by flamingos.”

  As the hot sun beat down on the surface of the lake, it took on a strangely pink coloring.

  “It’s not supposed to be pink!” Shange complained. “In my dreams, it’s black as oil and silvery with fog.”

  King Katanga looked at his grandson with a loving smirk. What wonderful arrogance the boy had. Katanga said, “It’s not supposed to move, either, but it’s been moving...little by little...ever since your mother died. It’s as though the lake is seeking the ocean. Of course, it’s madness, craziness, insanity...but it’s true. The color faded after your mother died as well. Even the moon at the bottom--turned out to be nothing more than a glowing eggshell made of salt. And now, whenever the sun hits the water at a certain angle, it’s pink.”

  Slowly, Shange walked to the edge and looked in. He said, without looking, “There’s a cavern at the bottom of the lake.”

  “Yes”, said Katanga. “It’s where I cut your father’s head off, because he disrespected my daughter and brought dishonor to my cock and my foot and defiled all the women of God.”

  “But he loved mother!”, Shange shouted angrily. Hot tears burst in his eyes. “He worshipped her!”

  “The dead can worship just as good as the living!” retorted the King, unapologetically. “I am the man, the lion of this tribe, the father and foot of the law. It is my job to uphold the honor of the Gods and the sanctity of the women and to place my royal cock and balls above the ire of the wild beasts. I am the son of the man who slew ten thousand zombies in Egypt. For all the mornings of the world--I am King Katanga--you don’t come on my property and fuck my daughter! What kind of man would I be if I allowed that? Obviously, there was some love there, because Shango sent you to me, to be one of my grandsons. For that, I love him eternally. But I would cut off his head again in a heartbeat. You do not come in a man’s house and fuck his daughter under any circumstances. Men’s ways are never right, but they are necessary.”

  “Yes, grandfather”, said Shange as he hung his head.

  “I don’t like Ajowans...they eat dirt, they kiss, the men walk around naked as you are now. What happened to the indigo robes that I sent you for the Sky bird holiday?”

  “Kofi Hoodi urinated and shit all over them. He said only the Gods are deceitful enough to cover their bodies.”

  Katanga laughed. “I hear that stupid baboon is dealing with hairy-backed apes from Europe now.”

  Shange gasped in surprise. “You’ve heard of Europe? Of white people?”

  “Of course I have”, snapped Katanga. “I built the greatest army in West Africa by trading and outwitting the Arabs, the Berbers, and in some rare instances, the white men from the mystery world beyond the Sea. They call it England, Rome, Portugal...I sailed there once on a great expedition and sold them elephants and lions for what they call a ‘zoo’. They have an obsessive fascination with our wildlife, our totems and tombs, our penis’s and our women. They like to study you and then they eat you--only they don’t eat your flesh, they eat your soul, they steal your identity--and then they imitate it. It’s only ignorant bullies like Kofi Hoodi who didn’t know that white people existed. To his stupid ass, they’re a miracle from the moon.”

  “It makes me nervous”, said Shange, “to see the white men given so much free reign in Banjula City. The Kofi has even declared them to be Ajowans. It’s as though they’ve established their own city within our city.”

  “Of course they have”, said Katanga. “They’re planning to overthrow Kofi Hoodi and steal all the Ajowans, the real Ajowans, and turn them into slaves. That’s what they do. They love dumb black men such as Kofi. They make them into niggers. But when that day comes...I will have a surprise for them. And I advise you to come directly here to God when it happens, because only we have the power and the might to defeat the white man.”

  “But grandfather, they have guns and fire bombs.”

  “But we are the Gods”, demanded Katanga.

  And just then, Queen Ambi walked her leopards into the garden, their leashes flowing from a single hand. She stood for a moment in the clearing where the sun was the brightest, the light making her black as plums body look even darker, even more regal as there suddenly seemed to be an amulet around her neck that called to Shange’s eyes.

  She said, dramatically, “Katanga--my husband, my master. I have but one wish of you.”

  “Yes, goddess, what is it?”

  “I want Shange to have the head of his father. To wear it around his neck.”

  “Absolutely not”, Katanga said evenly. “It isn’t our custom to...”

  “But you must!”, said Ambi passionately. “It is only right. Shange, my beloved grandson...come to me!”

  Shange went to his grandmother and noticed for the first time in his life that the beautiful shell and crystal necklace around her neck featured
a shrunken skull dangling in the middle of it. With her free hand, she removed the shrunken head of Prince Shango Ogun. She rose the rope of it over Shange’s head and pulled it down his neck--his father’s head now hanging like a shark’s tooth below his clavicle.

  “How appropriate”, said Queen Ambi, “that the son should find his father’s head...connected to his own.”

  “So this is what I came for...my father’s skull.”

  “No”, said the Queen. “You came for love. Because it never dies. Katanga--give your grandson one of your swords.”

  The King stared at his wife disapprovingly, but as always, her velvety eyes and panther-like sensuality got the best of him and he clapped his hands and ululated for a guard to arrive bearing a greatly beautiful sword, the handle of which was a dragon, the steel blade shining like a beam of evil sun.

  Queen Ambi walked away as Katanga presented the sword to Shange, even embracing him like a son. She left her leopards among the flamingos and walked into the lake up to her ankles, her large mud chocolate breasts hanging at last with age as the pink water shimmered in Ife Ife’s dying garden like a beating heart.

  Katanga told Shange, “I trust you.”

  With her back to the men, Queen Ambi found herself saying ominously, “There are two things that cannot be detected with the naked eye--love and beauty. We must learn to see without sight, and to know always, that the wise ones...they give birth...to the people that they need.” Bitterness filled her mouth as she spoke insanely, but somehow knowingly, tears filling her languid eyes as she told them, “The Sky is falling.”

  ••

  The royal wedding of Kofi Hoodi was held two weeks after the funeral of Rain Iyanla.

  The white people engaged him with an offer to deliver, as a gift, one of their finest white virgin brides all the way from England. At first, Hoodi had been frightened by the prospect, because although he had fantasized about sex with the white men’s women, he had been repulsed upon finding out that their women were not virginally circumcised. “But think of the prestige”, they told him. No other African King possessed such a bride and the whites promised that she would be a virgin, circumcised upon arrival.

  Gertrude Beatty, a two foot dwarf and former carnival performer arrived topless, draped in African beads and a grass skirt--a dwarf, Mother Iyanla realized, because she was the only kind of their women they would sacrifice to be pawed by a “nigger”. She had that same long, masculine hair that the Caucasoid women flaunted, horse-like and oily.

  Bravely, she walked up to Kofi Hoodi crying, her eyes pleading for sympathy from the whites in the crowd as though she were being placed, as a sacrifice, in the palm of a giant wild ape--her body leaning side to side like a penguin when she walked, because her legs were short and stubby and her head was huge and box shaped.

  Hoodi grinned as though he were receiving a fortune in cattle and gold, and perhaps he was, his white teeth and marble black eyes shining in the sunlight as he proclaimed Gertrude his new lead wife and Queen.

  The people of Ajowa watched on in a stunned silence, their souls dying a quiet death, but so it was--wonder of wonders--a white European pygmy who spoke English only had become the new Rain Iyanla of Ajowa!

  “First you called them Ajowans...now you place one above me.”

  The wedding ended with Mother Iyanla walking up to Kofi Hoodi and violently spitting in his face. The crowd let out an audible gasp, fearing Kofi Hoodi would strike his mother again, but he only glared at the wrinkled flesh on the back of her neck as she turned on her cane and wobbled away weeping and muttering the real name of her son’s dead wife.

  ••

  November 17th, 1630

  •

  Gulliver Swiss, one of England’s greatest slave catchers docked his ship, the Queen’s Majestic, at the port of Ajowa and planted his black boots upon the rich but haunted soil of what the Africans called--”the motherland”.

  Drums and fire dancers greeted him, the dark brown and ebony black bodies of naked goddess flowers baptizing not just the beast in men, but the beast in heaven, the beast in the jungle and the beast in blood. There was no way, you understand, for white men to lay eyes on Africa and then leave it alone. She was a land so spiritually virtuous and erotic, a land so epic with natural wonders, unequaled in its beauty and yet so demonic--that there was just no way to be fully human without her.

  “Welcome”, said Kofi Hoodi as the great white hunter entered his compound.

  “Your majesty”, said Gulliver Swiss with a cynical smile. Like all white men, he loved stupid, selfish, greedy black nigger men more than any other creatures on earth.

  At Hoodi’s right sat Chief Mullaba, the leader of the great Phassi warrior tribe, and on his left sat Geert Von Funkel and Reverend Sherwood. Both nations, Ajowa and Phassi, had by now agreed to provide one hundred thousand slaves a year to the Protectorate and noblemen of Great England, Dutch Orr and the Royal House of Portugal.

  The only major problem--was King Katanga.

  Quite wearily, Reverend Sherwood reported to Gulliver Swiss, “King Katanga has joined forces with the Ashanti nation, the Serahuli Queen, TinkaTekur II and the Mandingos. All of them have been quite vicious in their resistance to slavery. They don’t like progress.”

  “We tried to strike the southern flank of Katanga’s nation”, said Von Funkel. “But they have a special guard--the throat eaters. They captured both our regiments and cooked our men and fed their throats and penis’s to the hippos and crocodiles. Because of that, we haven’t been able to get anymore men to enter the God nation.”

  “There’s this one warrior--Sumboo the Great”, said Reverend Sherwood. “He took out an entire regiment of armed Dutchmen by himself.”

  Chief Mullaba, a skinny pole of a man with a face painted in white ash and a single gloved hand with tarantula’s moss and hornet’s glitter, presented a great plate of Silver to the men. It bore the likeness of King Katanga and Queen Ambi, their legendary profiles transcending the sun, their huge lips and royal foreheads risen in alliance with the baobab tree. He said to Gulliver Swiss, “If you wish to prosper in Africa--then you must destroy the Gods. There is no other way. You cannot rape the mother without first castrating the father.”

  “Yes brother”, Gulliver Swiss agreed with a nod. “I’m so pleased to hear that you understand that.”

  And on that note, Kofi Hoodi found him self unable to look any of the men in the eye for the rest of the evening.

  ••

  Flesh /and the devil...are one.

  Find my prayer. Open it with your hands.

  •

  Roo Ife Ife felt the men’s hands like ice, two sets of hands, one white and one black, as they grabbed Shange and handled him and busted his lip. Red, red blood blooming from his mouth.

  Roo Ife Ife bolted out of her sleep, the river in her body overflowing for the first time--her first monthlies (menstruation) wet and cool between her lips as she touched it with her hand and saw that love and hate, when one, were the truest face of the Creator. Curiosity and greed causing people to move across landscapes wider than time travel. Love breathing hate and hate kissing love and need aching to covet, to own, in the eye of the insecure. Jealous is the devil. Sweet as flesh and rain. Sweet as life itself. Flesh/and the devil are one.

  “Noooo!” the young girl wept in her hut as she sat up. She could see them yanking the skull from around his proud neck. She could see them taking the sword from him. She could see his black flesh dragged into a cloud of dust and chained up to more black flesh and the different penis’s all in a row, the ashy black knees, the rows and rows of sweaty milk-filled black titties, nappy negro girls weeping through distinguished wide noses and juicy lip rinds. An endless line of utter black humanity, chained and moving like some mysterious serpent...to the Sea and her sudden un-Africanness. The white tide and the white clouds and the beauty that hides her face.

  And as they passed like a caravan of ghosts before her eyes, Roo Ife Ife saw Shan
ge. He who walks like a lion. She raised her hand...in front of her face...and for a split second she thought that it looked prettier with blood on it, but then like most womb-bearers, she suppressed the thought.

  9

  •

  Flesh:

  April/1633...Our Lady of Valor

  Destination--Carolina Colony (South Carolina)

  478 slaves

  •

  Mother Iyanla thought she would die from the heaviness of the chains, the pulling of her old bones into an arthritic long-ness. Of course, the vast majority of female slaves taken from West Africa, as a rule, were under the age of seventeen, but to look after newborns and small so children so that the young negro girls could work and bear new slaves, small groups of much older women were also enslaved to fill the position of what the whites called “Mammies” (surrogate field mothers), and because of the way Europeans aged back in those days, they had mistaken Mother Iyanla for much younger than seventy-three. On their docket, in fact, she was listed as “around fifty-five”. Desperately, she coughed. Her feet swollen four times their normal size and for the first time in her life--her hair growing out of her head--thick, nappy and white as cotton.

  As sick as she was, as hopeless and near death as she felt, she managed to draw strength from her inner spirit, her tired but panicked voice rising above the weakness of her lungs as she tried to calm the cries of the young girls and to ease the rage of the humiliated African soldiers--men whose weakened bodies had become human cages holding their round souls in a squared prism, their eyes burning with insanity.

  “If my father dies”, sang Mother Iyanla. “I will give birth to him again.”

  And that made everybody quiet.

  Flesh:

  August, 1634...Our Lady of Virtue

  Destination--New Netherlands Colony (New York)

  422 slaves