The Confusion Read Online Free PDF Page A

slave -trains waxed, so did the crowds of pilgrims coming from all over the Niger Delta to have their illnesses healed, or to ask questions of the oracle.”
    “Nothing we haven’t seen in Christendom,” Jack observed.
    “Yes—the difference being that, after a time, the priests ran out of crimes, and slaves.”
    “What do you mean, they ran out of crimes?”
    “They reached a point, Jack, where they would punish every crime, no matter how trivial, with enslavement. And still there were not enough slaves to sell down the river. So they decreed that henceforth, any person who appeared before the Aro oracle and asked a stupid question would be immediately seized by the warriors who stood guard in the temple, and flung into slavery.”
    “Hmmm…if stupid questions are as common in Africa as they are where I come from, that policy must’ve produced a flood of wretches!”
    “It did—yet still the pilgrims flocked to our town.”
    “Were you one of those pilgrims?”
    “No, I was a fortunate boy—the son of an Aro priest. When I was very young, I talked all the time, so it was decided I would be a linguist. Thereafter, whenever a white or Arab trader came to our town, I would stay in his lodgings and try to learn what I could of his language. And when the missionaries came, too, I would pretend to be interested in their religions, so that I could learn their languages.”
    “But how did you become a slave?”
    “One time I traveled downriver to Bonny, which is the slave-fort at the mouth of the Niger. En route I passed many towns, and understood for the first time that mine was only one of many feeding slaves down the river. The Spanish missionary I was traveling with told me that Bonny was only one of scores of slave-depots up and down the coast of Africa. For the first time, then, I understood how enormous the slave trade was—and how evil. But since you are a slave yourself, Jack, and have expressed some dissatisfaction with your estate, I’ll not belabor this. I asked the Spanish missionary how such a thing could be justified, given that the religion of Europe is founded on brotherly love. The Spaniard replied that this had been a great controversy in the Church, and much debated—but that in the end, they justified it only by one thing: When white slavers bought them from black slavers, Africans were baptized, and so the good that was done to their immortal souls, in that instant, more than compensated for the evils done to their temporal bodies during the remainder of their lives. ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ I exclaimed, ‘that it would be against the law of God for an African who was already a Christian to be enslaved?’ ‘That is so,’ said the missionary. And so now I was filled with what you call zeal. I love this word. In my zeal I got on the next boat bound upriver—it was a Royal Africa Company longboat carrying pieces of India cloth to trade for slaves. When I reached my town I went straight to the temple and—how do you say it—‘jumped the queue’ of pilgrims, and went before the highest of the high Aro priests. He was a man I had known all my life—he had been a sort of uncle to me, and many times we had eaten from the same bowl. He was sitting there resplendent on his gold throne, with his lion-skin, all draped about with fat garlands of cowrie-shells, and in great excitement, I said ‘Do you realize that this evil could be brought to an end today? The law of the Christian Church states that once a man has been baptized it is unlawful to make him a slave!’ ‘What is your point—or, to put it another way, what is your question ?’ asked the oracle. ‘It is very simple,’ I said, ‘why don’t we simply baptize everyone in the whole town—for these Catholics make a specialty of mass baptisms—and furthermore why don’t we baptize every pilgrim and slave who walks into the city-gates?’ ”
    “What was the oracle’s answer?”
    “After no more than a heartbeat’s