Chapter 47

It is late in the night, but I do not sleep. I cannot for is too much in my mind.

When we return to our new home Linda and I make love. It is as glorious as always, I do not know how I experience such joy. My life is reborn with Linda in a way I never think before, never dream. With her all is well.

But later, it comes to me that there is a thing in my mind that I cannot leave. Beside me in bed Linda sleeps now, but sleep will not come to me. I rise softly so I will not wake her and go to other room in this great house that we now have. I must think to myself.

I make error in this day. Linda says many excuses for my error, but I will not excuse myself from it. I tell her before I am not best at what she and Irving wish me to do, but I will myself to be best, and yet I make error.

M’kamba will not be so easy with me for this. I hear in my mind her voice telling me how foolish I am. “You listen only to surface,” she says, “you do not look beneath. Always it is needed to look beneath, to pierce through many layers to truth, do not stop at one or two or even more, go all way to base where truth lies.”

But this day I do not do. I go to many layers, but there is still more beneath all and there I do not see. M’kamba has shame for me.

M’kamba. She is dead, so many years ago I cannot understand. My children are dead, and the children of my children that I never know, and their children, and theirs, and so many that I cannot think it, all dead, so long ago.

What happens to M’kamba when I am no longer there, when I am vanished and do not return from hunt? Is it only my fantasy, my wish, that Siefert takes her as his woman and she accepts him for her man? I do not know, I can never know.

But in my heart it is so. I am vanished, and M’kamba has no man, and Siefert has no woman. Will they not see this in each other? I know that M’kamba thinks well of Siefert, and he of her. Will they not choose to be together?

It is right that they do. This is worst time for woman, if her man dies. Among us a man may put aside his woman if he chooses, but until woman accepts new man to herself that man must still provide for her and for children. He may leave hearth but he must still bring her meat and skins and all such as if they still dwell together.

When man dies, though, woman has no-one. Others will help at first, and longer when is needed, but help becomes less over time and woman must care for herself and children. Sometimes such a woman must take boy for her man if she finds none else, but often this does not go well. I do not wish such for M’kamba.

I begin to wonder how my life might have gone if it had happened differently. Suppose it is not I who come to this place but Linda who comes to where I am. I think I will still want Lin­da. M’kamba is good woman, good mother to children, good in all ways, and it would grieve me to put her aside, but there is such feeling in me for Linda as I never know before.