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

332 THINKING BLACK
find that he had killed his own father, "the author of
his days." Now, although the Commandant gave
orders for decent burial, what did the son do but pass
along the remains to his comrades for consumption
Tribal taboo forbade him the meal, but he could connive
at his own father's disappearance in the pots. The
volunteer drummer of this expedition fared no better.
He disappeared, and some conjectured that he had been
killed by a lurking foe. Not at all. A day or two later
he—all digestive apparatus and no conscience—was dis-
covered dead in a hut by the side of a half-consumed
corpse. Had eaten neither wisely nor well—dined him-
self to death, in fact.
Only a week later, a young Batetela, not more than
fourteen years of age, came up to the Baron's tent when
he was dining and borrowed his knife. No sooner the
possessor of his weapon, he slipped round the tent, cut the
throat of a little girl, three or four years old, who belonged to
him, and proceeded to cook her. Put on the chain as he
was, this punishment was neither adequate nor exemplary,
for soon a number of children began to disappear in the
district. Caught again, this time they found him with a
bag hanging round his neck and the leg and arm of a young
innocent. He was shot. No wonder many of these
liberated prisoners felt they had really fallen out of
the Arab frying-pan into the roasting-fire of, so-called,
liberation. ** Prisoners of war " they were called, most of
them poor naked nobodies, the sport of each new political
move in the country. The ** nether millstone" class is