TABÙ 173 



world which may seem terrifying but which has been valid 

 for thousands of years to millions of others. 



His life must go straight like a billiard ball through a 

 forest of skittles. The skittles are the tabus. If a skittle is 

 knocked over a point is lost and the black man pays with a 

 malediction. Everything is known to him at the outset and 

 the Law is immutable. All the black man has to do is to obey 

 blindly. Everything is accounted for. If the black man falls 

 ill, if he is bitten by a hyena, if there is a drought, if a snake 

 comes into his house and kills his child, if he dies accidentally 

 — tabu ; he has touched a skittle, perhaps not realizing it at 

 the time. We live through grace and the black man has 

 always known this; he has inherited wisdom, in our esti- 

 mation an absurd wisdom perhaps, but still a wisdom with 

 its own peculiar logic. 



'You don't believe in the Budàhs, Mr Gianni, but what I 

 am telling you is true.' Tesfankièl was staring at me and in 

 the night all I could see were the black centres of his eyes 

 and the whites around. It was a silent night on an island 

 without any human beings but Gigi and me and this black 

 man who was speaking with his finger raised. 



'I saw a Budàh. At Massawa. He had come from the 

 mountains for a cattle sale and the nacuda Santon Sayed 

 pointed him out to me. To me he was just another negro; 

 tall, thin, wearing a lurid barracan and carrying a stick. He 

 walked in the manner of the mountain people of Eritrea, 

 lifting his bony knees like a dromedary. He seemed just 

 another negro. But he was a Budàh. 



'The Budàhs are wicked tribes, but there are so many of 

 them that they come to the other tribes to spread their evil. 

 If Budàh hates you or if you offend Budàh, he closes his door, 

 takes out special root and prays to the devil. Then he speaks 

 your name and — trac — snaps root and you die on the spot 



M 



