A Feast Unknown Read Free Page A

happened to me, the blast lifted my spring and mattress and me upwards and backwards and out the window behind me.
    I must have landed in a pile of wood and plaster and bricks. I was still on my mattress, which was by what was left of the veranda. I crawled slowly out of the pile, like the naked body of a tortoise working through its shattered shell. I felt but could not hear other shells. None of these came close enough to damage me; they must have been striking other parts of the house. Through the smoke, I could see the stone foundations and these were sending off chips of stone and also pieces of wood were breaking off and flying into the air. Machine guns and rifles were trying to shred away all the stone and brick andmortar and wood and anything of flesh which the shells might have missed or failed to utterly destroy Rock fragments struck me in many places.
    I was half-stunned, but I had one thought. That was to get to the refuge prepared for such an emergency. More smoke poured over, obscuring my vision and making me cough. I had, however, seen that the thin stone shell which was actually a doorway, an exit, to the refuge, had split open. I reached inside the portion of foundation still standing, felt the steel handle, turned it, and slid inwards.
    Even as I closed the door it swung in hard, propelled by a bullet. I was in darkness and utter silence. I groped around until I found the oxygen bottles and cracked them to make sure they had a sufficient supply. I couldn’t hear the hissing, so I felt out the nozzles. Cool air struck my palm.
    I decided to use the lamp for a moment and examined the room. It was a box twelve feet by twelve by eight. It was double-walled steel with fiber glass insulation between the walls. It contained the oxygen bottles, five gallons of distilled water, medical supplies, some cans of food, pistols, two rifles, and ammunition. The main entrance was through a trapdoor in the bedroom above, but the two small exits could be used as entrances. The refuge had been built thirty years before and updated now and then, hence, the fiber glass stuffing. I had built it at my wife’s insistence, who had pointed out that we would have been safe a number of times if we had had the refuge. So I had built it and it had not been used until now. In fact, I had almost neglected replacing the empty oxygen and water bottles and over-aged cans.
    I hoped that no one outside there knew about the box. Since it had been built, I had taken great pains to get the stores into it unobserved and to never speak of it to anyone besides my wife. If the enemy got hold of an old Bandili who remembered it, and the old one talked, I would be as helpless as an elephant in a pit.
    While I crouched in a corner, I discovered that I had spouted jism over my right leg. This probably occurred when the first shell exploded.
    Hemingway and his imitator, Ruark, are usually full of shit when they speak of Africa. Or, as the Yankees say, they didn’t know shit from shinola. But they were sometimes accurate in their observations of animals, particularly leopards, shooting sperm at the moment of violent death. Ejaculation is a form of protest of the body against death. The cells want to live forever, and they will try to impregnate the air in desperate copulation, to perpetuate themselves when faced with the end.
    That is my explanation. I, personally, do not fear death, but my cells are not as rational as I.
    What women do at the moment of suffering a violent death, I do not know. I never heard of a woman shooting out an ovum. Perhaps they do this, but the egg is so small it’s unnoticed. Of course, there are so many days when no egg is available, and a man always has sperm. It’s possible women substitute voice for sperm; their ejaculations are screams.
    I waited in the corner. The box was dark now because I had turned out the lamp to conserve the battery. The silence continued for a long time. I had a sharp headache which I endured for