A Feast Unknown

Besides, Kenyatta knew that though I was white, I was even more African than he. After all, I was adopted and raised by The Folk. My blood-brothers and warriors, the original tribesmen, had almost all died off. The survivors were creaking-boned whitehairs. I had been given the choice of becoming a citizen of this African state and declaring the source of my wealth or getting out. Old Kenyatta felt strong enough now to send me that ultimatum. Even though he was no longer the titular head of state, his voice was behind the order.

I had refused to do either. And so I had waited. But I had waited so long for action to be taken that I had become a little careless.

The sun was no longer an old lion. It was the red eye of Death, the drunken always-dry sot who had thirsted for me for almost 80 years.

Now the red eye was bisected by my penis, which reared with a piss hard-on. I was lying on my back, naked, and the scarlet ball climbed up the shaft and was on its way to being balanced atop it.

From some distance, there was a click.

The sky was ripped as if it were rotten old cloth.

The sun was on top of the head of my penis, seeming almost to spurt out.

I knew what the ripping sound was the moment I heard it, and I knew what the click had been.

As if it were red seed, the sun burst open from my penis. It disappeared in smoke. The walls flew apart as if they had become a flock of cranes disturbed by an eagle. The smoke poured into me and filled me to the backs of my eyeballs. The noise was squeezed out of me.

I was turned inside out like a glove. I was a tuning fork trying to find the correct resonance.

The first shell may have struck just outside the bedroom window. The second shell may have exploded at the end of my bed. By one of those freaks and coincidences that have caused many to mock my biographer, but have actually happened to me, the blast lifted my spring and mattress and me upwards and backwards and out the window behind me.

I must have landed in a pile of wood and plaster and bricks. I was still on my mattress, which was by what was left of the veranda. I crawled slowly out of the pile, like the naked body of a tortoise working through its shattered shell. I felt but could not hear other shells. None of these came close enough to damage me; they must have been striking other parts of the house. Through the smoke, I could see the stone foundations and these were sending off chips of stone and also pieces of wood were breaking off and flying into the air. Machine guns and rifles were trying to shred away all the stone and brick and mortar and wood and anything of flesh which the shells might have missed or failed to utterly destroy. Rock fragments struck me in many places.

I was half-stu

Even as I closed the door it swung in hard, propelled by a bullet. I was in darkness and utter silence. I groped around until I found the oxygen bottles and cracked them to make sure they had a sufficient supply. I couldn’t hear the hissing, so I felt out the nozzles. Cool air struck my palm.

I decided to use the lamp for a moment and examined the room. It was a box 12 feet by 12 by 8. It was double-walled steel with fiber glass insulation between the walls. It contained the oxygen bottles, five gallons of distilled water, medical supplies, some cans of food, pistols, 2 rifles, and ammunition. The main entrance was through a trapdoor in the bedroom above, but the two small exits could be used as entrances. The refuge had been built thirty years before and updated now and then, hence, the fiber glass stuffing. I had built it at my wife’s insistence, who had pointed out that we would have been safe a number of times if we had had the refuge. So I had built it and it had not been used until now. In fact, I had almost neglected replacing the empty oxygen and water bottles and over-aged cans.

I hoped that no one outside there knew about the box. Since it had been built, I had taken great pains to get the stores into it unobserved and to never speak of it to anyone besides my wife. If the enemy got hold of an old Bandili who remembered it, and the old one talked, I would be as helpless as an elephant in a pit.

While I crouched in a corner, I discovered that I had spouted jism over my right leg. This probably occurred when the first shell exploded.

Hemingway and his imitator, Ruark, are usually full of shit when they speak of Africa. Or, as the

Yankees say, they didn’t know shit from shinola. But they were sometimes accurate in their observations of animals, particularly leopards, shooting sperm at the moment of violent death. Ejaculation is a form of protest of the body against death. The cells want to live forever, and they will try to impregnate the air in desperate copulation, to perpetuate themselves when faced with the end.

That is my explanation. I, personally, do not fear death, but my cells are not as rational as I.

What women do at the moment of suffering a violent death, I do not know. I never heard of a woman shooting out an ovum. Perhaps they do this, but the egg is so small it’s u

I waited in the corner. The box was dark now because I had turned out the lamp to conserve the battery. The silence continued for a long time. I had a sharp headache which I endured for some time and then took two aspirins to relieve. The relief did not come. From time to time, I felt the vibrations of explosions against my back. These, I imagine, were direct hits. The enemy certainly believed in overkill.

To use a ca

Like so many guarantees, it was worthless. So far. One or more of the direct hits must have blasted away part of the outer steel wall. Another direct hit removed the fiber glass and the i

2

When I came to, I could hear somewhat. My sense of smell was as sharp as ever, that is, much more effective than a human’s but not quite as good as a bloodhound’s. (The reasons for this are explained in

Volume I along with another explanation, in the appendix of Volume I, of my YY chromosomal mutation.)

There was, stronger than anything, the knife of gunpowder smoke. There was the needle of widely scattered food. There was the saw-edge of pulverized plaster and rent wood. Faint, the odor of human sweat and of a dog.

I opened my eyes. It was high noon. The sun blazed through a small hole in the mass of wood and bricks covering the ripped open upper corner of the box. I was covered with smoke, ashes, and dirt. The five gallon bottles of water had broken and spilled their contents over the room to make a fine mud. The cans were broken open. I think shrapnel had bounced off the walls and struck them. The weapons were buried under dirt that had fallen in.

On top of a pile of mud was a hunting knife. This was the knife I had found on my uncle’s skeleton in the house he had built. I was ten then and had found out how to gain entrance. There were bones over the floor; The Folk invading the house had eaten my uncle and mother before leaving it and taken some legs and arms with them. I had used the knife much; hence, its thi