The Priests Tale - Père Etienne | Page 5

I guessed the central person to be Mwezi. I think he was the oldest native I have ever seen, bent, shrivelled, and stiff-jointed, but with keen dark eyes which, a little later, fixed themselves inquiringly on my face and then clouded with acute disappointment. On either side his sons helped him with a hand beneath his arm-pits, and he himself walked by means of a great stick. The crowd of hangers-on stopped respectfully below, but these four climbed up to the dais. A stool was brought for the old man, but at first he would not sit. He stood there, staring at me and shaking his head. 'It is not he,' he said, 'it is not he. Yet he is like, very like. But it is not he.'
"I was still perplexed at all this, but by this time a little amused. Nevertheless I hid that, for the old fellow was so plainly disappointed.
"'Come, father,' I said. 'I am very sorry, but will you not explain? Perhaps it is a brother of mine whom you have seen. Seat yourself and tell me about it.'
"He did not seem at once to comprehend, but when his sons had persuaded him to sit, he made a peremptory motion with his stick towards the old councillor who had spoken before. This individual glanced at the chief for permission, and having received it, told me this story at considerable length.
"He said that, very many years before, in the time of the late king, the village had been one day thrown into a state of great excitement by the advent of a stranger. This had been Mwezi, at the time a man of middle age. He had come from the south and west--from Central Africa, that is--and he had said that he was seeking a white man whom it had been shown him he should find in that village. Pressed for details, he announced that he had come from a town far away by a wide river where there were great falls over whose rocks the water thundered night and day in a perpetual cloud of spray. One night he had awakened in his hut, and had seen a white man standing before him dressed in a black robe, a string of beads, and carrying a book. Behind the white man he could see, as it were, the vision of a town, a river, a precipice--in short, what he now saw to have been Mtakatifuni. The figure had beckoned him solemnly, and he had sat up in his bed in fear. It had beckoned again, and had then pointed north and east, and at that the vision had died away before the startled sleeper's eyes. But Mwezi understood. In his mind there had been no question as to what he must do. In the dawn he had risen, said good-bye to his wife and family, and set out. For two years he had journeyed, wandering from place to place, scarcely knowing whither he went save that it was always north and east. The very wild beasts had respected him, and men, seeing the vision in his eyes, had withheld their hands from him. At length, then, he had reached Mtakatifuni. There, as always, he had inquired for his white man, and, hearing that no white man had ever been there but convinced that it was the place of his dream, he sat down to wait. He had grown old waiting; had married, and had begotten sons and daughters. Now he was too old to move; all but too old to live; but still he waited. Still he believed he would see his white man again before he died; indeed, he could not die until he had seen. My coming had seemed to the whole place the fulfilment of his vision, but I was not the man. Mwezi was sure of that and no one doubted him. And maybe, now, added the councillor, he would never see him. That was all.
"Now I had been long enough in Africa to set little store by native dreams as a rule. The affair, then, seemed to me pathetic rather than interesting.
"My eyes kept straying to the old fellow while the story was being told me, and I marvelled to think of the simplicity of his faith, the weariness of his journey into the unknown, and the tenacity with which he had clung to his obsession. That this man should have given his whole life to such a quest, and should now be so bitterly disappointed when a remote chance had brought it nearer realisation than had been in the least degree likely, was indeed certainly cruel. I therefore turned to him to make what amends I could.
"'But, old Mwezi,' I said as kindly as possible, 'doubtless you are mistaken. It was