Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 135
list of items in his funeral bill is stolidly fought for day
by day :
** death damages," the most complicated of all.
For—and note this—death to a negro is indeed dissolution
of life's pleasures as well as dissolution of a mere mortal
body, and all the details of that woman's wedded life must
now be paid for. Of course, she cooked his food, so now
for paying the total cookery bill. She fetched firewood,
milled the meal and drew water, now's the time to pay up,
ay, pay for every drink of water and every faggot of
fire. Mark you, pay up for every item to every kinsman,
all at once and once for all. One item in this incredible
invoice naturally makes you laugh, for the thing itself is
about laughter : "To
the much laughter you enjoyed for
years when conversing with your late spouse, our legal
cousin—total value, one goat." Not much to laugh at
now. And so on and on, the post-mortem invoice runs,
many a shameless (because nameless) item haggled over
on a money basis, £ s. d. as to its very initials being
suitably equivalent to Law Suit Damages. Alas ! the
higher you ascend in the social scale the lower things sink,
the worse and wilder the extortion. The great Queen her-
self, Nyakatoro, is the lewdest of the lot, and the occasion
of her grandchild's death was the scene of a loathsome
Chipeshi. Weeks and weeks dragged past, but no burial,
the mourners forced to nurse the putrefying corpse on
their knees on the Luvale *' we bury only bones " principle.
Meanwhile, the shameless Queen is conducting an inquiry
into the death of her Musukvlu, a ** who-killed-cock-robin "
sort of investigation this, in which she unblushingly