by Mia Couto
The woman’s mad! She’s going to set fire to the church!
With one foot on either side of the flame, Bibliana opened her legs as if she were heating her insides. Slowly raising her arms, she intoned a melody. The song became more and more energetic as she executed a succession of virile dance steps, raising her knees high and then stamping the ground vigorously with her feet. She straightened and bent her spine as if she were giving birth. Her hands brushed the floor, raising clouds of dust. At one point, she produced a handful of powder from the scarf tied around her head and cast it into the fire. Her cackling laughter blended with the crackle of the powder in the spluttering flames. Then she revealed, in a tone of voice that was more raucous than ever:
This poisonous powder has spread throughout the world. This powder tears open your throat, devours your breast, and in the end, turns nations blind. This blindness is called war.
With her hand on her hip, her head held high, she began to issue warlike commands. It was obvious: A spirit had taken hold of her. The masculine voice issuing from her belonged to a warrior of old. This dead soldier spoke in my mother tongue, Txitxope. The dead man made the following exhortation through Bibliana’s mouth:
I beg you, my ancestors: Show me your scars! Show me your open vein, your shattered bone, your lacerated soul. Your blood is the same as that blood there in the basin, red and full of life.
Then Bibliana began to move in a wide arc again, in a rhythm that mingled dance and military march. After this, she paused, breathless, and put out the fire with her boots. Approaching the altar, she plunged her fingers into the sergeant’s thick hair and, turning to us, whispered:
This white man is almost ready.
What do you mean? I asked nervously.
He’s already losing his arms, later he’ll lose his ears, and then straight after that his legs. In the end, he’ll be a fish. And he’ll swim back to the boats that brought him to Africa.
That was what they thought of the Portuguese: They were fish from distant seas. Those who stepped ashore were young, sent by their elders, who stayed on the boats. Those who visited us still had their limbs stuck to their bodies. But in the course of time, they began to lose their hands, their feet, their arms, and their legs. At that point, they returned to the ocean.
Prepare yourself, sister: Soon you won’t have this white man’s company anymore, she said, pinching my arm.
* * *
I fell asleep, dreaming that I too was a fish and that, together with Germano, was swimming across endless seas. This was our home: the ocean. I could have been woken up by a gentle lull. But it didn’t happen like that. Shouting and uproar tore me from my bed and brought me to the door. A small, angry crowd was gathering next to the church. In the middle of the throng was a man without any clothes, his hands tied, looking as if he had been beaten.
It’s one of Ngungunyane’s soldiers, we heard someone shout.
Some claimed loudly that he was a spy, but most people were convinced he was a “night bird,” one of those witch doctors who work to order. The supposed wizard was so caked in red sand that he looked like a lump of earth in human form. Maybe that was why it did not pain me much to watch him being kicked.
The priest raised his arms asking to intervene. Then he interrogated the man as to his intentions. To which the intruder replied that he had come to “see women.” A clamor drowned out the rest of his explanation. And once again blows and kicks rained down upon him, the wretched man no longer attempting to defend himself. He had ceased even being a lump of earth. Now he was just dust.
This was when Bibliana appeared and took charge of the situation. She led the intruder down to the river and ordered him to be lashed to a trunk. The man silently suffered the violence with which they bound him to the tree, just as they would an animal that is about to be butchered. He did not even close his eyes to avoid the sunlight on his face. At an order from the soothsayer—known to everyone as a sangoma—the trunk of the tree, along with the man tied to it, was tossed into the water. Complete silence reigned as the improvised craft was swept away by the current. At that point, Bibliana announced:
You wanted to see women? Well, open your eyes under the water and you’ll see nothing but women.
4
SERGEANT GERMANO DE MELO’S FIRST LETTER
God did not create people. He merely discovered them. He found them in the water. All living creatures lived underwater like fish. God closed his eyes in order to see inside the river. At that moment, he saw creatures who were as ancient as himself. And so he decided to take possession of all the watercourses. This was how he came to wrap all the rivers inside his veins and kept all the lakes inside his chest. When he reached the savanna, the Creator released his load. Men and women tumbled out onto the ground. Squirming around on the sand, they opened and closed their mouths, as if they were trying to speak, and words had not yet been invented. Outside water, they did not know how to breathe. They suffocated and lost consciousness. And they dreamed. It was as they dreamed that they learned how to breathe. When they filled their lungs for the first time, they burst into tears. As if part of them had died. And indeed it had: the part of them that was fish. They wept with pity for the creatures of the river to which they no longer belonged. So now, when they sing and dance, they do so in order to express this yearning. Song and dance deliver us back to the river.
—A LEGEND FROM SANA BENENE
Sana Benene, July 14, 1895
Dear Lieutenant Ayres de Ornelas,
Let me begin by thanking you, sir, for having gone to the trouble of replying to my letter and, what is more, for having sent a messenger who traveled many miles in order to deliver your most encouraging missive.
My handwriting may be barely legible. I do not even know, sir, how I was able to compose these paltry lines, given that I almost have no hands left, and my fading memory does not allow me to evoke the torments which I have recently suffered. Writing, for me, is so crucial that I no longer feel my pains when I take up a pen. I do not know, sir, where we get this stubborn will to live. I speak for myself, because I am not dying merely in order to be polite.
I struggled so hard to finish this letter that I began to bleed again. For it is difficult to use my hands in their present state, and almost impossible to write with my hands all bandaged. My handwriting is frightful, but I had to write these lines without anyone else’s help. This is because I want to express my deep gratitude to you personally for your promise to get me back to Portugal. My happiness, I confess, would be complete, and forgive my audacity in being so open with you, if I could take my dear Imani with me. When I think about living, it is Imani who is at the forefront; when I think about dying, it is Portugal that prevails.
The truth is this: I do not know whether I want to leave, shorn of this woman’s company. When I first conceived of this letter, I decided to be honest with you and state that I would not travel without Imani. But now I am not so sure. My greatest concern is not that I might offend you, sir. It is rather that I should not be truthful to myself. The fact is that this girl is now tied to my own destiny, she is my homeland. Will she still be that tomorrow? Can it be that this black woman’s love for me is completely devoid of self-interest? Might I not just be a passport for her to escape her place in the world and her past?
These are some of the many doubts I have to face. They are my dilemmas and it is up to me alone to resolve them. I am sure that your insistence that I must travel alone is not the result of some whim or lack of willingness on your part. You, sir, are simply unable to act in any other way. And I can understand this: How can you consider an individual’s love problems in the midst of such a cruel war? How can you think of an obscure sergeant’s sweetheart in the midst of an entire army?
You may wonder, sir, why I remain so attached to a girl who fired a shot at me, leaving me permanently maimed. I do not know the answer. Was she in fact to blame? Do I have any firm recollection of what really happened?
Bian
ca Vanzini insists that Imani is innocent. The Italian woman was present at the store when it happened and assures me that I was shot by the kaffir rebels. The truth is that I have no clear memory of that sad moment. And I must admit, sir: I no longer care about the truth. I willingly accept the Italian woman’s version of events. For I am not seeking memories anymore. Stories are enough for me. And maybe these letters are just a way of inventing someone to listen to my rambling, solitary thoughts, on the reverse side of this sheet of paper.
In the midst of my febrile raving, I am no longer sure whether I am recalling things or whether I am imagining memories, but I have an idea that during a pause in our journey, I lay with the beautiful Imani on the banks of the river. The girl looked at me with her huge eyes, so huge that they contain all the nights in the world. Then I tore some pages from an old notebook, and laid them on the ground. Come, I said, come and lie down on these papers. She tried to stop me from dismantling the notebook. Where are you going to write letters to your superiors? she asked. And then, with a mixture of defiance and malice, she whispered: Or is it that I am more important than your superiors?
I cannot help telling you how much this girl gives my life meaning. Just a short while ago, I had to stop writing this letter because of the acute pain in my hands. Once again, it was Imani who came to my aid. Everything she said, she did so with her eyes poised on the ground. Massaging my damaged arms, she murmured gently but firmly: More than flesh and bone, our hands are made of emptiness. The space between our fingers, the cup our palm makes, it is in this empty space that our gestures are fashioned. The strength of our hands, Imani said, lies in what they lack. If there weren’t this emptiness, we would be unable to feel our way forward or hold on to anything. We would be unable to caress, she added apprehensively. And she finished in a tone that was almost inaudible: Now that you only have a few fingers left, you will feel things more intensely than when your hands were whole.
Ashamed of her long disquisition, she hurriedly wrapped my arms with cloth that had been washed in the river and cleansed by the sun. You are much better, is what she said. And her youthful optimism helped me to resist the weariness I felt.
It is these trivial occurrences I wished to tell you about. You may find them of little consequence, sir. But in narrating these events, they only gain any significance if they are shared with someone who receives them with the same sense of astonishment with which I experienced them.
* * *
P.S. I do not want to end this letter without assuring you of the following: I have no way of avoiding going to the Swiss hospital at Manjacaze. Consider the positive aspect of this matter. Maybe it will serve the interests of the Portuguese. Through our Swiss friend Liengme, I shall come to know what is happening at the court of Gungunhane. And, naturally, I shall not miss any opportunity to tell you what I have seen or not seen, what I have been told and what has been concealed from me.
5
GODS THAT DANCE
At the beginning of Time there were neither rivers nor sea. Dotted around the landscape there were a few lakes, ephemeral offspring of the rains. Noticing the aridity of the plants and animals, God decided to create the first river. It happened, however, that the riverbed kept extending beyond its banks. For the first time, God feared that the creation might challenge the authority of the Creator. And he suspected that the river had learned to dream. Those who dream taste eternity. And this is an exclusive privilege of the gods.
With his long fingers, God suspended the river on high and clipped its extremities, severing its mouth and its source. With paternal care, he then laid the thread of water back in its earthen groove. Lacking a beginning and an end, the river pushed its banks aside and extended endlessly. Its two banks became so distant from each other that they provoked an even greater desire to dream. And this was how the sea was invented, the river of all rivers.
—A LEGEND FROM NKOKOLANI
They say that Life is a boundless teacher. For me, the greatest lessons I ever learned stemmed from what I had not experienced. Moreover, they were revelations that were not born in thought, but in the dazed torpor of waking each morning. Nowadays, I know that every new morning is a miracle. The splendor of renewed light, the scent of dreams still clinging to the bed, all this revives our instinctive faith. Two days ago, this miracle came to me in the person of a white soldier. His name was Germano and he was waiting for me with the same devotion as a fledgling bird awaiting the arrival of its parents. At that moment, I fulfilled the same parental duties: I fed him some mealie pap with a purée of tangy greens. While I was raising the spoon to his mouth, I realized the situation of dependency to which Germano had been condemned in perpetuity.
When the meal was over, he asked me to uncover his wrists. Germano wanted to air his wounds, as he put it. But he had another reason for doing so: He wanted to examine his wreckage. When the bandages fell to the ground, my spirit sank with them. He had five fingers left, always assuming that some of these could still be saved. Five fingers. Three on his right hand, two on his left. At that point, he asked me out of the blue:
How am I going to make the sign of the cross now, Imani?
Then he fell asleep from that gentle fatigue that follows lamentation.
Halfway through the afternoon, a group of men burst into the church. They came at the orders of Bibliana and lifted the dugout with the sergeant inside.
Put me down, the Portuguese insisted. But these were the soothsayer’s orders: The sick man could not leave footprints on the ground there. Where are you taking me? the bewildered Germano demanded as they carefully carried him down toward the river.
We are going to say a mass, Father Rudolfo replied.
But why don’t you have it inside the church? the Portuguese asked in a panic.
This involves different prayers, the priest answered.
The dugout was deposited in the calm waters of the Inharrime. Seated, eyes agog, in the belly of the boat, the Portuguese watched hundreds of country folk approaching, dressed in white. Under a leafy fig tree sat Bibliana, Father Rudolfo, and my father, Katini Nsambe, on the few chairs that had been brought from the church. The Italian woman Bianca Vanzini walked away from the crowd and sat on one of the ruined steps. During a long introduction to the ceremony, the crowd sang a very beautiful hymn, the meaning of which was completely lost on me.
Dressed in a red tunic with white cloths tied to her waist, Bibliana knelt in the middle of that huge ring of people. Complete silence fell as she evoked the ancestors. She named them one by one, an unending list, as if she were welcoming each one at the door of her house. I learned that there is a basic difference in the way whites and blacks treat the dead. We blacks deal with the dead. The whites deal with death. It was this misunderstanding that Germano had to face when he buried the storekeeper Francelino Sardinha, whose funeral ceremony was a way of asking death’s permission to forget the dead.
After her lengthy evocation of her ancestors, Bibliana placed a plaster statue of the Virgin upon her head, wrapped in ribbons of the purest white. The crowd fell silent and prostrated themselves on the ground. The soothsayer descended the slope and hugged the statue before wading into the river with it. She cast a printed cloth of the type we call a capulana over the waters, and proclaimed:
We do not wash in the river. It is the other way around: It is the river that washes in us.
And she draped the wet capulana around the Portuguese man’s shoulders. After an initial shiver, his body began to look more resilient.
Suddenly, the Italian woman opened a path through the crowd of people. She came to a halt next to the priest and screamed at him to put a stop to what she called “this black carnival.” Rudolfo placated her; the whole procedure was not very different from Christian rituals. He told Bianca to be patient. The celebration would soon gain in interest. The irascible Italian mumbled something in her own language and returned to her place on the ruined steps.
The soothsayer climbed back up the slope
to the open space where the crowd awaited her. With her dress clinging to her skin, she rolled her eyes at the emptiness before her and then swayed her body in a strange dance. Her steps became ever more energetic until they attained a military vigor. Galvanized by her ecstasy, the priest began to tap out her rhythm on the cover of a large book.
What’s that book? Bianca asked.
Still keeping time, the priest explained that it was a Bible that the Swiss had translated into the native languages. The local people called this book the “Buku.” Bianca’s reaction was so aggressive that her voice came out as a screech:
So the sacred book is now used as a drum?
Music is God’s mother tongue, Rudolfo retorted.
Neither Catholics nor Protestants, he went on, had understood that in Africa, the gods dance. They all committed the mistake of banning drums. The priest had been trying to correct this error for a long time. In truth, if they did not allow us to dance to our drums, we blacks would turn our own bodies into drums. Or worse still, we would stamp our feet over the earth’s surface and, in so doing, open up cracks in the whole world.
Bibliana’s tunic of fine cloth, soaked in water, clung ever more tightly to her body. And it was obvious why the priest had allowed himself to be seduced. The woman fell to her knees and spoke with such ardor that her voice reverberated in every nook and cranny. We were all reminded of the legend about the creation of the rivers and of men: At the beginning of Time there were neither rivers nor sea … And she continued without pause until, in the end, she prophesied:
This white man will return to the first waters and he will learn to dream in them.
