t very instant the tabu came into force; for
being thus accursed by the possession of two sounds of the sacred name,
she was deemed unholy. Her half-sisters and their mother, with whom Bakuma
shared the hut, fled to another and were exorcised by the wizard, which,
as everybody knows, is an expensive ceremony; gourds and pots, spoons and
utensils of all sorts, were left to the sole use of the unclean one and
would be burned upon her demise. A magic line was drawn around the hut out
of which the soul of the girl as she slept could not escape to bewitch
anybody. Neither her name nor anything that had been hers would be ever
mentioned again; any word of a household article or any thing or beast
which had one syllable of the name "Bakuma" was changed, lest the user be
accursed and bewitched.

For the whole day, in this isolation, sat the girl Bakuma, Marufa's
useless love charm clutched in her hand, as bewildered as if the earth had
suddenly turned inside out under this fact so stupendous and stupefying.
She did not weep. She squatted in the door, her eyes staring with the
glazed inquiring expression of a dying gazelle, a bronze question to Fate.
At the feeding time her mother threw her bananas into the circle. Bakuma
looked at them as they flopped near to her as if she did not realize what
they were. She made no stir to cook or prepare them. The cool twilight
came and passed like a blue breath. Above the insectile chorus of the
night beneath the crystal stars came the faint thrumming of a drum from
MKoffo's hill. The sound of music and dancing reminded Bakuma of her
ambitious dreams. She could neither weep nor wail; she merely emitted a
faint gasping sound. But her mind began to work jerkily, yet more
fluently. Visions of the form of Zalu Zako were weaved and spun in the
darkness: the lithe walk of him, the haughty carriage of the head. Slowly
greened the sky until the banana fronds were etched in sepia against the
swollen moon. The dismal croak of the Baroto bird shattered the black
cocoon of Bakuma's mind.

"Aie-eee! the foul bird of my despair!" she wailed, and at last wept. Then
she rose and flitted like some green ghost into the plantation and across
to the place of water where her lover had first spoken her sweet, recking
naught in her mist of despair of spirits of the night nor of the breaking
of the magic circle. The moon spattered the squatted form with blue
spangles and turned the falling tears to quivering opals.