The collapse of the tree came as something of a blessing. It jolted him from his torpor, and he began to probe the enclosure for a means of escape. He crept round on his hands and knees in the dark as dry scuttling things backed away from his fingers and the rain slashed through the bars to awaken the dormant odor of lion piss. Smelling salts couldn’t have cleared his head more effectively. He gasped and gagged, his eyes tearing, hands frantically pawing over every nook and joint of his cell. The first time round he found nothing — the native joiners had done their work well. But then, on closer examination, he discovered a rough spot in the upper right-hand corner where the planks of the ceiling met the cornerpiece. The wood was abraded where the lion had persistently gnawed at it during the weeks of his captivity. Mungo’s blood pressure rose: here was a chance! But how to take advantage of it? Instinctively he applied his teeth to the gnawed wood, but managed only to collect the odd splinter in his lips. Then he gouged at it until his fingernails began to bleed. Still nothing. Finally, he frisked the ground outside the cage until he came up with a sliver of stone that chewed away at the weak spot like a saw.
Three hours later the first of the bars gave way with a snap of protest. He held his breath and glanced round. The rain beat down with a steady mechanical roar. There was no light anywhere. He went back to work, bent over the wooden struts like a huge sedulous rodent. It took him two hours more to carve himself free. The final bar snapped and he slipped out into the deluge, working the hat down over his brow. Nothing stirred in Sibidooloo — not even a dog — as he leaned into the storm and headed up the road for Kamalia.
♦ ♦ ♦
It took him six days to get there. He traveled by night, holing up in the forest during the day, drinking from puddles, chewing at roots, picking leeches from his skin. He was startled awake on the afternoon of the second day by the clatter of hoofs, and peered out from his cover to observe One-Eye and his companion hurrying up the road. At dawn on the fourth day he came across a tiny cluster of huts beside the road. He hadn’t eaten in days: what little strength he had was ebbing. Desperate, he woke the Dooty and offered to write charms in exchange for a bite to eat. The Dooty said that there was no food in town for the likes of him, a common thief. “All right,” the explorer said, squatting outside the door. “I’ll sit here until I’ve starved to death. And I’ll curse you and your crops and your descendants and their crops through all eternity and in the name of Mansa King George III of England.” Twenty minutes later the Dooty’s wife appeared in the doorway with a bowl of kouskous.
At Kamalia he traded a half-written letter to Ailie for a cup of milk and a platter of boo, a dish which was made from corn husks and tasted like sand. When he asked his host about the possibility of joining a slave coffle for the coast, the man directed him to Karfa Taura’s house on the far side of town. The month was September. Mist rose from the streets and everywhere there was the insidious clank of chains as slavers gathered their wares against the end of the rainy season and the march to the sea. The explorer kept his head down.
Taura’s house, a four-or five-room affair built of clay and stone, dominated a hill in the center of town. There was a well, a shade tree or two and an expanse of muddy red earth pocked with goat tracks. Out back were a number of cane huts and a corral fenced round with thorn. The explorer presented himself at the door, suffering from fatigue, starvation, mental duress, emaciation, jungle rot, blisters, hemorrhoids, various local infections, hepatitis, diarrhea and a febrile body temperature of one hundred and one degrees. His toga had degenerated to a web of knotted strips, his hat looked like a byproduct of cat-skinning, and he was barefooted. Twenty-five years old, he could easily have passed for sixty. “Tell your master,” he croaked at the incredulous black face at the door, “that I am a white man desirous of traveling to the Gambia with one of his slave coffles. Tell him. .” here he lost his train of thought, “tell him. . I. . I failed Greek but could kick a football the length of the field.”
A moment later he was led through the house to the baloon, a large airy room reserved for guests. There he found Karfa Taura sharing a pipe of tobacco with a number of slatees[4] who had come to join his coffle. Taura was wearing a tarboosh and a lustrous blue robe. A gray parrot perched on his shoulder, peeling a berry. “So,” he said, “you claim to be a white man from the west. I have never seen a white man, though as a boy I once saw two Portugee in Medina.” Taura was Mandingo by birth, Muslim by conversion. He was also filthy rich. “It’s funny,” he continued after a pause, “but you don’t look white. I expected something, well — brighter. Like the belly of a frog.”
One of the slatees spoke up. He was a murderous-looking character with corrosive eyes. “He’s no white man.”
“Never,” spat another. “I’ve seen white men at Pisania and Goree, and their skin is as white as the pages of this book.” He held up a copy of the Koran.
The explorer felt woozy. He found it difficult to remain standing. “Give me a football,” he shouted, lapsing into English, “and I’ll show you who’s white.”
This outburst seemed to startle his interrogators for a moment, and they stared up at him with renewed interest. “What’s that he said?” But then the first slatee growled, “Aaaah, he’s just a pariah Moor down on his luck, coming round here on false pretenses in the hope of getting a handout.”
“Mad is what he is,” his cohort said. “Mad as a hyena. Look at his rags — and that hat!”
Karfa Taura held up his palm. “Suleiman,” he said to the man with the book, “give the newcorner your book.”
Suleiman handed the book to the explorer.
“Can you read the Koran?” Taura asked.
Mungo tried, straining to remember Ouzel’s Grammar and how those arcane dots and slashes related to letters and words. After staring at the book a moment he raised his head and mumbled, “No, I can’t read it.”
“Illiterate!” shouted the first slatee.
“Kafir!” muttered another.
Taura whispered something to his servant and the man left the room to return again in a moment with a second book in his hand. As the servant handed it to the explorer, Taura’s voice, calm and patient, purred over the prickling silence: “Perhaps you can read this?”
The leather binding was splotched with mold, there were fingerprints in the dust on the cover. The explorer opened the book and tried to concentrate on the black printed letters that swam before his eyes like sunspots. He couldn’t focus. The slatees were shouting out insults. “You cannot?” Taura asked.
Then all at once the letters came into focus and he was reading, reading like a man at the breakfast table with a copy of The Monthly Review spread out before him: