Tefuga by Peter Dickinson Page A

being?”
    â€œIt would make all the difference in the world. Everything here depends on authority. Who gives orders, who accepts them, and why. Why is the most important. The native has to recognize your right to rule. You have to keep showing him your reasons. You can’t show him the real reasons, of course. We can’t send out the soldiers and shoot someone once a week, so we keep a flag in front of the house and run it up and down. It is a juju—a way of saying without doing.”
    â€œI don’t see what that’s got to do with Kama Boi keeping women like cattle.”
    â€œBeing able to send for the soldiers isn’t the only source of power. In Africa if you are believed to have magical powers that can be just as important. Down south you got kings who only appeared to their people once a year. They shut themselves away and ruled by mystery. I often think we owe a bit to that, you know. The white man is incomprehensible, therefore mysterious, therefore magical. In the pagan tribes it’s mostly a matter of tradition. Up in the north, it’s … let’s call it greatness. You have to keep showing the people you are a great man. You have robes, and processions, and you get given presents and dish out titles and so on. And you have more possessions than anyone else. More slaves in the old days. More wives.”
    â€œMore cows, you mean!”
    â€œThat’s the cattle Fulani … Oh, I see what you’re getting at. It’s something everyone understands, Rabbit.”
    â€œI don’t believe that was all Kama Boi was thinking about when he insisted on showing me his collection.”
    â€œIt was certainly one of the things he was thinking about. He was boasting.”
    â€œWhy wives? Why’s it got to be those wretched women? Why not horses or … or stamps ? Our king collects stamps. Why shouldn’t he?”
    â€œBecause people wouldn’t understand. This is a semi-paganized area. Kama Boi himself is only dubiously a Muslim. People here have a very primitive view of power. When I was over south of Gombe in ’twenty-one the local chief, a nominal Muslim like Kama Boi, took a cracking fall out hunting. He was stunned, out cold for twenty minutes, and groggy for the rest of the day. Spite of that, the first thing his followers did when they saw he wasn’t going to die was round up a local corvée—it was a pagan area—and set them to building a hut. Then they sent a couple of chaps to the nearest village to choose a suitable girl. The chief married her on the spot—I doubt if he had much notion what was happening, tell you the truth—and took her to the hut that night. Divorced her first thing next morning and sent her home with five shillings. She was as pleased as Punch and so I bet were the village. But the thing that mattered was that all the people had been shown their chief was still fit to rule over them.”
    Ted always talks slowly. He doesn’t like saying anything he hasn’t thought about, but you know he has thought. I’m just the opposite, quick and silly! During that last bit he’d been talking extra slow ’cos he was trying to get his pipe going. The shadows sort of came and went as he sucked at the flame. It was almost like looking at two people, dear old Ted and then, suddenly, sharp black shadows like a painted mask, a devil-mask. Then Ted again. I could see he was a bit excited by the story—excited about telling it to me .
    â€œWell, I think it’s perfectly disgusting,” I said. “And if I had my way I’d stop it, whatever you say about power and things. I think people should only give orders when they know what’s best, and other people should only take orders when they can see it’s a good idea. I always thought that was why we’re here, ’cos we’re doing the Africans good.”
    â€œThat may be our justification to ourselves,”