Roots: The Saga of an American Family

by Alex Haley

  No one could have accused the fiddler of becoming tight-lipped, but as time went on, his famous monologues became shorter and shorter and more and more infrequent; and he hardly ever played fiddle for them anymore. After he had acted unusually subdued one evening, Kunta mentioned it to Bell, wondering if he had done or said anything that might have hurt his feelings.

  “Don’ flatter yourself,” she told him. “Day an’ night fo’ months now, fiddler been runnin’ back an’ fo’th ’crost de county playin’ fo’ de white folks. He jes’ too wo’ out to run his mouf like he use to, which is fine wid me. An’ he gittin’ dollar an’ a half a night now eve’y time he play at one a dem fancy white folks’ parties he go’to. Even when de massa take his half, fiddler get to keep a sebentyfive cents fo’ hisself, so how come he bother playin’ fo’ niggers no mo’—less’n you wants to take up a c’llection an’ see if’n he play fo’ a nickel.”

  She glanced up from the stove to see if Kunta was smiling. He wasn’t. But she would have fallen into her soup if he had been. She had seen him smile just once—when he heard about a slave he knew from a nearby plantation who had escaped safely to the North.

  “I hears fiddler plannin’ to save up what he earn an’ buy his freedom from de massa,” she went on.

  “Time he got enough to do dat,” said Kunta gravely, “he gonna be too ol’ to leave his hut.”

  Bell laughed so hard she almost did fall into her soup.

  If the fiddler never earned his freedom, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying, Kunta decided, after hearing him play at a party one night not long afterward. He had dropped off the massa and was talking with the other drivers under a tree out on the darkened lawn when the band—led by the fiddler, obviously in rare form tonight—began to play a Virginia reel so lively that even the white folks couldn’t keep their feet still.

  From where he sat, Kunta could see the silhouettes of young couples whirling from the great hall out onto the veranda through one door and back in again through another. When the dancing was over, everybody lined up at a long table glowing with candles and loaded with more food than slave row got to see in a year. And when they’d had their fill—the host’s fat daughter came back three times for more—the cook sent out a trayful of leftovers and a pitcher of lemonade for the drivers. Thinking that the massa might be getting ready to leave, Kunta wolfed down a chicken leg and a delicious sticky sweet creamy something or other that one of the other drivers called “a ay-clair.” But the massas, in their white suits, stood around talking quietly for hours, gesturing with hands that held long cigars and sipping now and then from glasses of wine that glinted in the light from the chandelier that hung above them, while their wives, in fine gowns, fluttered their handkerchiefs and simpered behind their fans.

  The first time he had taken the massa to one of these “high-falutin’ to-dos,” as Bell called them, Kunta had been all but overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: awe, indignation, envy, contempt, fascination, revulsion—but most of all a deep loneliness and melancholy from which it took him almost a week to recover. He couldn’t believe that such incredible wealth actually existed, that people really lived that way. It took him a long time, and a great many more parties, to realize that they didn’t live that way, that it was all strangely unreal, a kind of beautiful dream the white folks were having, a lie they were telling themselves: that goodness can come from badness, that it’s possible to be civilized with one another without treating as human beings those whose blood, sweat, and mother’s milk made possible the life of privilege they led.

  Kunta had considered sharing these thoughts with Bell or the old gardener, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to find the right words in the toubob tongue. Anyway, both of them had lived here all their lives and couldn’t be expected to see it as he did, with the eyes of an outsider—one who had been born free. So, as it had always been when he thought about such things, he kept it to himself—and found himself wishing that, even after all these years, he didn’t still feel so alone.

  About three months later Massa Waller—“’long wid jes’ ’bout ev’eybody who’s anybody in de state a Virginia,” according to the fiddler—was invited to attend the Thanksgiving Ball his parents held each year at Enfield. Arriving late because the massa, as usual, had to stop off and see a patient on the way, Kunta could hear that the party was well under way as they clip-clopped up the tree-lined driveway toward the big house, which was lit up from top to bottom. Pulling up at the front door, he leaped down to stand at attention while the doorman helped the massa out of the buggy. That’s when he heard it. Somewhere very nearby, the edges and heels of someone’s hands were beating on a drumlike gourd instrument called a qua-qua, and doing it with a sharpness and power that made Kunta know the musician was an African.

  It was all he could do to stand still until the door closed behind the massa. Then Kunta tossed the reins to the waiting stableboy and raced as fast as his half foot would let him around the side of the house and across the backyard. The sound, which was getting louder and louder, seemed to be coming from the middle of a crowd of blacks stomping and clapping beneath a string of lanterns that the Wallers had allowed the slaves to put up for their own Thanksgiving celebration. Ignoring their indignant exclamations as he pushed his way through them, Kunta burst into the open circle, and there he was: a lean, gray-haired, very black man squatted on the ground pounding on his qua-qua between a mandolin player and two beef-bone clackers. As they flicked glances up at the sudden commotion, Kunta’s eyes met his—and a moment later they all but sprang toward each other, the other blacks gawking, then snickering, as they embraced.

  “Ah-salakium-salaam!”

  “Malakium-salaam!”

  The words came as if neither of them had ever left Africa. Kunta shoved the older man away to arm’s length. “I am’t seed you here befo’,” he exclaimed.

  “Jes’ sol’ here from ’nother plantation,” the other said.

  “My massa yo’ massa’s young’un,” said Kunta. “I drives his buggy.”

  The men around them had begun muttering with impatience for the music to start again, and they were obviously uncomfortable at this open display of Africanness. Both Kunta and the qua-qua player knew they mustn’t aggravate the others any further, or one of them might report to the white folks.

  “I be back!” said Kunta.

  “Salakium-salaam!” said the qua-qua player, squatting back down.

  Kunta stood there for a moment as the music began again, then turned abruptly, through the crowd with his head down—frustrated and embarrassed—and went to wait in the buggy for Massa Waller.

  Over the weeks that followed, Kunta’s mind tumbled with questions about the qua-qua player. What was his tribe? Clearly he was not Mandinka, nor of any of the other tribes Kunta had ever seen or heard about either in The Gambia or on the big canoe. His gray hair said that he was much older; Kunta wondered if he had as many rains as Omoro would by now. And how had each of them sensed that the other was a servant of Allah? The qua-qua player’s ease with toubob speech as well as with Islam said that he had been a long time in the white folks’ land, probably for more rains than Kunta had. The qua-qua player said that he had recently been sold to Massa Waller’s father; where in toubob land had he been for all those rains before now?

  Kunta reviewed in his mind the other Africans he had chanced to see—most of them, unfortunately, when he was with the massa and couldn’t afford even to nod at them, let alone meet them—in his three rains of driving the massa’s buggy. Among them had even been one or two who were unquestionably Mandinkas. Most of the Africans he had glimpsed as they drove past the Saturday morning slave auctions. But after what had happened one morning about six months before, he had decided never to drive the buggy anywhere near the auctions if he could possibly avoid it without massa suspecting his reason. As they drove by that day, a chained young Jola woman had begun shrieking piteously. Turning to see what was the matter, he saw the wide eyes of the Jola
woman fixed on him on the high seat of the buggy, her mouth open in a scream, beseeching him to help her. In bitter, flooding shame, Kunta had lashed his whip down across both horses’ rumps and they all but bucked ahead, jolting the massa backward, terrifying Kunta at what he had done, but the massa had said nothing.

  Once Kunta had met an African slave in the county seat while he was waiting for the massa one afternoon, but neither one of them could understand the other’s tribal language, and the other man hadn’t yet learned to speak the toubob tongue. It seemed unbelievable to Kunta that it was only after twenty rains in the white folks’ land that he had met another African with whom he could communicate.

  But for the next two months, into the spring of 1788, it seemed to Kunta that the massa visited every patient, relative, and friend within five counties—except for his own parents at Enfield. Once he considered asking him for a traveling pass, which he had never done before, but he knew that would involve questions about where he intended to go and why. He could say he was going to see Liza, the cook at Enfield, but that would let the massa think there was something between them; and he might mention it to his parents, and they might mention it to Liza, and then he’d never hear the end of it, because he knew she had her eye on him and the feeling was definitely not mutual, so Kunta dropped the idea.

  In his impatience to get back to Enfield, he had begun to grow irritable with Bell—the more so because he couldn’t talk with her about it—or so he told himself, knowing all too well her aversion toward anything African. Thinking about confiding in the fiddler and the old gardener, he had finally decided, that although they wouldn’t tell anyone else, they wouldn’t be able to appreciate the magnitude of meeting someone to talk to from one’s native land after twenty rains.

  Then one Sunday after lunch, without any notice at all, the massa sent out to have him hitch up the team: He was going to Enfield. Kunta almost leaped from his seat and out the door, Bell staring after him in amazement.

  Liza was busy among her pots when he entered the kitchen at Enfield. He asked how she was, adding quickly that he wasn’t hungry. She looked warmly at him. “Ain’t seen you in a time,” she said, her voice soft. Then her face became somber. “Heared ’bout you an’ dat African we done got. Massa heared, too. Some dem niggers tol’’im, but he ain’t said nothin’, so I wouldn’ worry ’bout it.” She grasped and squeezed Kunta’s hand. “You jes’ wait a minute.”

  Kunta felt ready to explode with impatience, but Liza was deftly making and wrapping two thick beef sandwiches. She gave them to him, again pressing his hand within hers. Then she walked him toward the kitchen door, where she hesitated. “Sump’n you ain’t never ax me, so I ain’t tol’ you—my mammy was an African nigger. Reckon dat’s how come I likes you so much.”

  Seeing Kunta’s anxiety to leave, she turned abruptly and pointed, “Dat hut wid de broke chimney his’n. Most de niggers massa’s let go off today. Dey won’t git back fo’ dark. You jes’ be sho’ you at yo’ buggy fo’ your massa come out!”

  Limping quickly down slave row, Kunta knocked at the door of the ramshackle one-room hut.

  “Who dat?” said the voice he remembered.

  “Ah-salakium-salaam!” said Kunta. He heard a quick muffled movement within, and the door swung open wide.

  CHAPTER 61

  Since they were Africans, neither man showed how much this moment had been awaited by both of them. The older man offered Kunta his only chair, but when he saw that his guest preferred to squat on the dirt floor as he would have done in a village back home, the qua-qua player grunted with satisfaction, lighted the candle on his leaning table, and squatted down himself.

  “I comes from Ghana, an’ mine is de Akan peoples. De white folks gimme de name Pompey, but my real one’s Boteng Bediako. I’s been a long time here. Six white folks’ plantations, an’ I hopes dis de las’ one. How ’bout you?”

  Trying to copy the Ghanaian’s terse way of speaking, Kunta told him of The Gambia, of Juffure, of being Mandinka, of his family, of his capture and escapes, his foot, doing gardening, and now driving the buggy.

  The Ghanaian listened intently, and when Kunta finished, the Ghanaian sat thinking awhile before he spoke again. “We’s all sufferin’. A man wise, he try to learn from it.” He paused and looked appraisingly at Kunta. “How ol’ you is?” Kunta said thirty-seven rains.

  “You ain’t look it. I’s sixty-six.”

  “You ain’t look dat neither,” said Kunta.

  “Well, I’s been here longer’n you been born. Wishes back den I could’a knowed sump’n dat I’s learned now. But you still young, so

  I tell it to you. Ol’ gran’mammas in you country, dey tell young’uns de stories?” Kunta said that they did. “Den I tell you one. It’s ’bout growin’ up where I come from.

  “I ’members how de chief a our Akan peoples use to set in this big chair made outa elephants’ teeth, an’ it was a man always held a umbrella over his head. Den ’longside was de man de chief spoke through. Only way he ever talked, or anybody could talk to him, was through dis man. An’ den a boy set at de chief’s feet. Dis boy stood for de chief’s soul, an’ he run de chief’s messages to de people. Dis boy run wid a thick-bladed sword, so whoever seed ’im comin’ knowed ’zactly who he was. I growed up bein’ dat boy, runnin’ messages ’mongst de peoples. Dat’s how de white mens cotched me.”

  Kunta was about to speak when the Ghanaian held up his hand.

  “Dat ain’t de end a de story. What I’s gittin’ to, on top of de chief’s umbrella was dis carvin of a hand holdin’ a egg. Dat stood for de care a chief used his powers wid. An’ dat man de chief talked through, he always held a staff. An’ on dat staff a turtle was carved. Turtle stood for dat de key to livin’ is patience.” The Ghanaian paused. “An’ it was a bee carved on de shell a dat turtle. Bee stood for dat nothin’ can’t sting through de turtle’s hard shell.”

  In the flickering candlelight of the hut, the Ghanaian paused. “Dis is what I wants to pass on to you, dat I’s learned in de white folks’ land. What you needs most to live here is patience—wid a hard shell.”

  In Africa, Kunta was sure, this man would have been a kintango, or an alcala, if not a chief himself. But he didn’t know how to say what he felt, and just sat there without saying anything.

  “Look like you got both,” said the Ghanaian finally with a smile. Kunta began to stammer an apology, but his tongue still seemed to be tied. The Ghanaian smiled again, fell silent for a moment himself, then spoke again.

  “You Mandinkas spoke of in my country as great travelers an’ traders.” He left the statement in midair, clearly waiting for Kunta to say something.

  At last Kunta found his voice. “You heard right. My uncles is travelers. Listenin’ to stories dey used to tell, seem like dey been jus’ ’bout ev’eywhere. Me and my father once, we went to a new village dey done started a long ways from Juffure. I was plannin’ to go to Mecca an’ Timbuktu an’ Mali an’ all like dey done, but I got stole ’fore I had de chance.”

  “I knows some ’bout Africa,” said the Ghanaian. “De chief had me teached by de wise men. I ain’t forgot what dey said. An’ I’s tried to put it together wid things I’s heared an’ seed since I been here, an’ I knows dat most of us dats brought here is stole from West Africa—from up roun’ your Gambia all de way down de coast to my Guinea. Is you heared of what white folks calls de ‘Gold Coast’?”

  Kunta said that he hadn’t. “Dey named it dat ’count of de gold dere. Dat coast go clear up to de Volta. It’s dat coast where de white folks cotches de Fanti an’ de Ashanti peoples. It’s dem Ashantis dats said to lead most of de uprisins’ an’ revolts when dey’s brought here.

  “Spite dat, de white folks pays some of dey biggest prices for dem, ’cause dey’s smart an’ strong an’ dey’s got spirit.

  “Den what dey calls de ‘Slave Coast’ is where dey gits de Yorubas an’ Dahomans, an’ roun’ de tip of de Niger dey gits de Ibo.” Kunta said t
hat he had heard the Ibo were a gentle people.

  The Ghanaian nodded “I’s heared of thirty Ibos joined hands an’ walked into a river, all singin’, an’ drowned together. Dat was in Lou’siana.”

  Kunta was starting to get worried that the massa might be ready to leave and he might keep him waiting, and a moment of silence passed between them. As Kunta’s mind cast about for some topic appropriate to leave on, the Ghanaian said, “Sho ain’t nobody here to set an’ talk wid like us is. Heap a times qua-qua got to say what I got on my mind. Reckon maybe I was talkin’ to you widout knowin’ you was dere.”

  Deeply moved, Kunta looked the Ghanaian in the eye for a long moment, and then they both got up. In the candlelight, Kunta noticed on the table the forgotten two sandwiches that Liza had given him. He pointed to them and smiled. “We can eat anytime. Now I knows you got to go,” said the Ghanaian. “In my country, whilst we was talkin’, I’d a been carvin’ somethin’ out of a thorn to give you.”

  Kunta said that in The Gambia, he would have been carving something from a large dried mango seed. “Whole heap of times I done wished I had a mango seed to plant an’ grow up to remin’ me a home,” he said.

  The Ghanaian looked solemnly at Kunta. Then he smiled. “You’s young. Seeds you’s got a-plenty, you jes’ needs de wife to plant ’em in.”

  Kunta was so embarrassed that he didn’t know how to reply. The Ghanaian thrust out his left arm, and they shook their left hands in the African manner, meaning that they would soon meet again.