The Baboons Who Went This Way And That: Folktales From Africa. Alexander McCall Smith
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believe that the family would be leaving the place where they had lived for so long and of which she felt so fond. She tried to persuade her father to stay, but he was convinced that they were in great danger by staying where they were.
“It is better to move now,” he said, “than to regret it later.”
The girl wept, but her tears were ignored by her father. Soon he had all the family’s possessions loaded on his back and was calling out to the others to follow him on the path.
“I shall not come with you,” the girl said defiantly. “I have been happy in this place and see no reason to move.”
The girl’s mother pleaded with her to go, but the girl refused. Eventually the father became impatient.
“If you must stay,” he said, “then you should at least go and live in a cave in the hillside. There is a place there where there is a large rock which can be used as a door. At night you must roll that rock in behind you and let nobody into the cave.”
The girl agreed to this, as she knew that nearby cave. It was comfortable and cool, and she thought she would be happy there. As the rest of the family disappeared down the path that led to their new place, she took her mat and her pots to the cave and set them on a ledge at the back. Then, since it was beginning to get dark, she rolled the rock in the front into position. Inside the cave, it was pitch black, but the girl felt safe and she slept well that first night.
The next day, the girl’s brother paid her a visit to see how she was. She told him of how comfortable she had been in the cave and of how well she had slept.
“I am safe there,” she explained. “The rock blocks the mouth of the cave and I shall open it to nobody. If you come, though, you should sing this song and I shall know that it is you.”
The girl then sang a short song, which the boy listened to. He kept the words in his mind, as he planned to visit the girl that night to make sure that she was safe and that the rock was acting as a strong enough door.
That evening, when he returned, it was already dark. As he approached the cave, he sang the song which she had taught him:
There is a rock here and the cave is dark;
Open the cave, my sister, and let me in.
When the girl heard this song, she knew straight away that her brother was outside. She pushed at the rock and it rolled to one side. Her brother was pleased to see that the song worked and that his sister was safe. He gave her the food that he had brought her and then said goodbye.
“Make sure that you roll the rock back once I am outside,” he said.
“I shall always remember that,” his sister replied. “A girl could not live alone in a cave like this unless she had a rock for protection.”
The brother came the next day, and the day after that. On his third visit there was something that worried him. Not far from the cave he noticed that there were footprints on the ground and that lying nearby there was a bone which had been gnawed. He picked up the bone and looked at it. Whoever had eaten it must have had a great appetite, for his teeth had cut right into the bone to extract its goodness. The footprints were large, too, and the sight of them made the brother feel uneasy.
He arrived at the front of the cave and began to sing his song. As he did so, he had a strange feeling – as if there was somebody watching him. He turned round, but all that he saw was the wind moving through the dry brown grass and a rain bird circling in the sky. He finished the song, and the girl rolled back the rock to let him into the cave.
“I would like you to come and live with your family again,” he said to the girl. “We are sad that you are not with us.”
“I am sorry too,” she replied. “And yet I love this place too much to leave it. Perhaps one day my father will decide to come back here.”
The boy shook his head. He knew that his father would never come back now that he had found that he liked the other place to which he had gone. Soon the memory of this place would fade and the family would talk no more about it.
The boy ate some food with his sister and then left. As he walked away, he again felt that there was somebody watching him, but again he saw nothing but the wind and a small snake that moved like a dark arrow through the dry leaves on the ground.
The man who had driven the family away from that place was a cannibal. Now he had heard the boy singing his special song to his sister in the cave and he had remembered the words. Under a large tree not far away, he practiced the song which the boy sang. His voice, though, was too rough, and he realized that no girl would be fooled into believing that it was the voice of her young brother.
The cannibal had a way to deal with this. He made a fire, and on the fire he put a number of stones. Then, when these stones were red hot, he put them in his mouth and let them lie against that part of his throat that made the sound. After a few minutes he spat out the stones and tried the song again. The stones had done what he had hoped they would do and his voice was now as soft as the boy’s.
Inside the cave, the girl had settled herself to sleep on her sleeping mat when she heard her brother singing outside. It surprised her that he should come back so soon, but then she remembered that he had left a calabash in the cave and might be returning to collect it.
“I am coming, my brother,” the girl sang out. “The rock will move back and let you in.”
By the time that the mouth of the cave was half open, the girl realized that it was not her brother who was standing outside. When she saw the cannibal, her heart gave a leap of fear and she struggled to roll the rock back. The cannibal, though, was too quick and had seized her before she could seal off the cave mouth.
The girl screamed as the cannibal lifted her off the ground and began to tie her arms and legs with a rope he had with him. Then, when she was firmly tied up, he went to a place nearby and began to make a fire so that he could cook the girl and eat her. As he made the fire, he sang a special song, of the sort that cannibals sing, in which he told of how a poor hungry cannibal had found a fat girl in a cave.
The girl wept with sorrow at the thought of what had happened to her. She wept for her father and mother, whom she would never see again, and she wept for her stupidity in trying to stay in so dangerous a place. Through her tears, she sang a sad song, about how a girl who lived in a cave was captured by a wicked cannibal.
The boy had felt so uneasy on his way home that he had come back to the cave. Now he was hiding in the grass, listening to the sad song of his sister. When he saw the cannibal bending over his fire, the boy rushed forward and pushed him into the flames. The many skins which the cannibal was wearing soon caught fire and he ran wildly away, letting out strange cries as he ran.
The boy untied his sister and then led her back to their father’s new place. That night, the girl told her father of what had happened. He was worried at the thought of the narrow escape that she had had, but he was relieved that she was now safe.