Chapter 44 ○ four four

Kunta had spent four days and three nights in this house.He lay every night listening to singing from a nearby cabin and felt even more African than at home.He figured they must be some kind of Negro who came to a toubob land to sing for a living.He wondered how many weird blacks like this were out there in all of toubob country who didn't seem to care who they were or what they did. Every time the sun rose, Kunta felt a special kindness in his heart.He recalled that the chief on the ship had said: Every day the new rising sun reminds us that it has just come from our Africa, because Africa is the center of the whole world.

Although Kunta's limbs are chained in a zigzag shape, he has learned how to use his back and hips to move forward and backward a little, so that he can see more carefully that the small and thick iron rings like bracelets tightly hold the chains together. to the stake in the corner of the house.The stake was about as thick as his calf, but he knew in his heart that there was little hope of breaking it or lifting it from the solid floor, since the top of the stake went right up to the roof.Kunta carefully inspected the small hole in the thick iron ring first with his eyes and then with his fingers; he had seen his captors put some kind of narrow metal device into the hole, making a clicking sound.When he shook the hoops, the chains kept rattling so loudly that others could hear him so he gave up on the idea.He tried to put a ring of iron rings in his mouth and bite hard; but one of the teeth was broken, and a sharp pain immediately flowed through his brain.

In order to create spiritual comfort, Kunta looked for some sand that was better than the ground, and he scraped the hard mud between the logs with his fingers.Seeing the short black manes in the mud, he examined one curiously.But when he saw that it was bristle of blasphemy, he threw it away hastily, and wiped his hands vigorously. The black person came in shortly after the wake-horn sounded on this filthy morning.When Kunta saw that he was holding two thick iron cuffs in addition to the usual short stick, all the muscles in his body tensed up.He bent down, put Kunta's feet in iron cuffs, and the iron cuffs were connected with a thick iron chain, and then he untied the iron chains that originally bound his hands and feet one by one.Kunta, who was finally able to move freely, couldn't help jumping up, but was hit hard by the black man's prepared fist.As Kunta pushed himself up, a booted foot kicked hard into his ribs.Annoyed, he staggered up again, only to be kicked down hard again.He didn't realize that lying down for the past few days had consumed so much energy.He was lying now, gasping for breath as the black man stepped on top of him with the expression on his face that told Kunta that he would keep kicking him down until Kunta understood that he was the master.

Now the black man roughly motioned Kunta to stand up.When he couldn't even get up on his hands and knees, the black man angrily grabbed Kunta's feet and pushed them forward, and the iron cuffs on his ankles made Kunta stagger forward unsteadily. The bright light coming in from the door prevented Kunta from looking straight at first, but after a while he began to vaguely see a nearby file of blacks hurrying on the heels of a toubob riding an animal they called a horse. .From him, Kunta could smell that he was the toubob who came after him with a thick rope when he was thrown down by the dogs.The column consisted of about ten or twelve black women with red or white rags tied around their heads, and most of the men and children wore tattered straw hats, and some were bald.Also, he didn't see any charms tied around their necks or arms.But some people carried what looked like tough long knives, and the whole column seemed to be heading in the direction of the big farm.Kunta guessed that the singing he heard at night must be coming from them, and he was really ashamed for them.Kunta counted the thatched huts they came out of, including his own, there were a total of ten, all of them were as narrow as his, and none of them looked as solid as the mud huts with scented thatched roofs in Juffure Village. .Kunta noticed that these huts were five in a row, so that the toubob who lived in the big white house could monitor every move of the black people in the hut.

Suddenly, the black man poked Kunta's chest with his finger and yelled, You, Toby!Kunta's face showed a puzzled expression, so the black man continued to poke him, repeating that sentence over and over again.It slowly dawned on Kunta that the black man was trying to make him understand something in the strange toubob language. While Kunta was still staring at the black man speechlessly, the black man started poking his own chest.I'm Shansen, he cried, Shansen!He poked his finger at Kunta again.You Toby!Toby, the master says your name is Toby! When Kunta realized what he meant, he tried his best to control the anger that was about to erupt like a volcano, with an expression of ignorance on his face.He wanted to shout: I am Kunta.Jinte, the eldest son of Omoro, the saint Karaba.Conda.Gent's eldest grandson!

The black man had lost patience with Kunta's slowness. He cursed a few words, shrugged, and led Kunta to another hut, then motioned for Kunta to wash in a large tank filled with water.The black man threw a rag and a brown object into the water, and Kunta's nose told him that it looked like soap made by the women of Juffure Village by mixing hot fat with gray water.When Kunta took the opportunity to take a good shower, the black man watched and frowned.When he was done, the black man threw him some different toubob suits to cover his chest and legs, and a battered yellow straw hat like the others.Kunta wondered how these pagans would survive under the blazing African sun.

The black man took Kunta to another hut.Upon entering the house, an old woman reluctantly slammed a plate of food down in front of Kunta.He wolfed down the thick porridge and a slice of bread that looked like an African honey cake, and then he drank the beef-flavored clear soup from the gourd gourd, flushing the food stuck in his throat into his stomach.Then they headed for a narrow hut whose purpose Kunta could tell by its smell.The black person pretended to take off his lingerie, and then stepped through a big hole in a plank seat, as if to take a shit.There was a bundle of cornstalks piled up in one corner, but Kunta didn't know what it was for.He guessed that the black man's behavior was probably to demonstrate the toubob's way of going to the toilet. Kunta hoped to learn as much as he could, so that it would be easier to escape.

As the negro led him through the next few huts, they also passed an old man sitting in some strange chair.The chair rocked slowly back and forth as the old man weaved dried ears of corn into what Kunta guessed was a broom.The old man didn't look up, but gave Kunta a friendly look, but Kunta ignored him coldly. The black man raised a long, tough knife that Kunta had seen others hold, and gestured to the distant fields with his head.He muttered something Kunta couldn't understand while asking Kunta to go with him.Kunta staggered along in chains. The chains were rubbing his feet. He could see black women and young black men bending up and down in the field ahead. Collect the corn stalks and pile them up.

Glittering beads of sweat glistened on most of the men's bare backs, and Kunta's eyes searched for the same branding iron marks on his backs, but all he could see were the scars from where they had been whipped.The toubob mounted his horse and spoke briefly to the black man beside him.When the black man pointed at Kunta to ask the toubob to take a look, the toubob gave Kunta a threatening look. When the black man had cut down a dozen corn stalks, he turned and bent down, and motioned Kunta to pile up the stalks as the others had done.The toubob rode his horse close to Kunta, raised his whip and gave him a sullen look, trying to show Kunta what would happen if he disobeyed.Furious at his helplessness, Kunta bent down to pick up two handfuls of cornstalks.As he hesitated, he heard the black person's knife swishing in front of him, and he stooped again and picked up two more cornstalks, and two more.He could feel the eyes of the blacks next door looking at him, and he could see the feet of the toubob's horses.He too could feel the relief of the other blacks when the horse's feet finally moved away.

Although he didn't look up, Kunta saw that whenever someone didn't work hard enough to satisfy the toubob, he would ride over and scold them angrily, and then the whip whipped across their backs. In a slightly further direction, Kunta saw a road.Along the way, several times in the hot afternoon, Kunta caught glimpses of a single knight on horseback through the irritating sweat streaming from his brow to his eyes, and twice saw a carriage pass by.He turned his head the other way and could see the edge of the forest into which he had tried to escape.Looking into the forest now from where he was making the corn pile, he could see how narrow the forest was, and that was how he got caught, because he didn't know how narrow it was before.After a while, Kunta had to restrain himself from looking in that direction, because the urge to jump up and run towards those woods was always strong and irresistible.In any case, every time he took a step, he would remind himself that with these chains on his body, he would never be able to take five steps in this farmland!As he worked all afternoon, he decided he had to find some weapon against the pack and toubob before his next escape.He reminded himself that any child of Allah would stand up when attacked, whether it was a dog or a man, a wounded buffalo or a hungry lion, Omoro.None of Gent's sons would have thought of giving up or surrendering.

After the sun went down, the horn sounded again in the distance this time.When Kunta saw the other blacks hurrying in line, he wished he had stopped thinking of them as the tribe people they belonged to, because they were disdainful heretics who could not be with him on the same boat. The blacks who came were mixed up. But even though these guys are mean, everyone knows that Fulani are natural good shepherds, but toubob are stupid enough to ask these Fulani to pick up cornstalks instead of tending cattle They can even talk to the cows too!Just as Kunta was thinking about this, the toubob on the horse whipped his whip hard and told Kunta to go to the end of the line.As he did so, the short, fat woman at the back of the line pulled away and walked briskly forward, trying to stay as far away from him as possible.Kunta really wanted to spit at her. As they began to walk forward, each staggering step scraped at his frayed ankle, which was beginning to ooze blood.Kunta shuddered when he heard the barking of hounds in the distance, and remembered the pack of dogs that had tracked him down and attacked him.At this moment, the scene of his wulong dog dying in Africa while fighting with the toubob who captured him flashed through his mind. After returning to the house, Kunta immediately knelt down facing the direction where the sun would rise tomorrow, and pressed his forehead to the hard mud on the ground.He prayed a long time to make up for the guilt of working in the fields all day and not being able to pray because the prayers would never be interrupted by the whip of the mounted toubob. After praying, Kunta sat upright, and softly asked his ancestors in adult language to give him the strength to endure.Between his fingers was a chicken feather that he had secretly picked up when Sansen led him around this morning, and he wondered when he would have the chance to steal an egg.Armed with chicken feathers and some freshly cracked eggshells, he can call upon the mighty gods to bless the places he has traveled in the village.If these places are blessed, his footprints will reappear in Jiafu Village one day in the future.Besides, his neighbors would recognize his footprints and would be delighted to learn that Kunta.Gent is still alive and looking forward to his safe return someday! For almost the thousandth time, the nightmare of his capture resurfaced vividly in his mind.If only the snapping branches had alerted him to the toubob's footsteps earlier, he could have jumped up and grabbed his spear!Tears of anger immediately wet Kunta's eyes.Over the past few months, he has remembered every moment of being followed, attacked, captured, and finally chained. No!He couldn't allow himself to be so cowardly.He was a man now, after all, and a seventeen-year-old man was too old to cry and wallow in self-pity.After wiping away his tears, he crawled onto his rough bedding made of dried cornstalks and tried to fall asleep.But all he could think of was Toby's name, and then the anger rushed to his chest again.In a fit of rage, he kicked his feet frantically, but the action only cut the cuffs deeper into his ankle, making him scream in pain. Is it possible for him to grow into a man like Omoro?He wondered in his heart if his father still missed him?Did the mother transfer her love to Ramin, Suwadu, and Madi when he was taken by the toubob?He thought of everyone and everything in Jiafu Village, but he had never realized how much he loved his village more than now.Just like when he was still on the boat, as long as he was lying down, his mind was filled with the images of Juffure Village for most of the time, until finally he forced himself to close his eyes and slowly fall asleep.