The Sword and the Spear

by Mia Couto

  The entire discourse was recited without an interlude. Exhausted, the priestess dragged herself back to the river and waded into the water up to her waist. Holding on to the edge of the dugout, she kept submerging herself until she was breathless. Then she poured water over the sergeant’s head, just as in Christian baptisms. When she returned to the riverbank, she raised her arms and started to dance. This was a signal. Suddenly, the drums began to roll and people bounded onto the terreiro with leaps and pirouettes.

  Unexpectedly, Bianca joined the dance, swaying around Bibliana. She placed her hands on the black woman’s hips and the two women moved together to the rhythm of the music. The priest looked at this scene aghast. And he asked:

  So you’re dancing as well, Dona Bianca?

  The Italian woman, on the verge of tears, shook her head. She wasn’t dancing. She was trying to make the witch stop dancing. She was trying to put an end to that blasphemous performance. But then she abandoned her attempt and, struggling for breath, took her place again among the onlookers. When she burst into tears, the priest sought to reassure her:

  You do not understand, Dona Bianca. This ritual that troubles you so deeply is what is saving you from being devoured alive. And he added: The famished of this world, more than bread, seek someone to blame.

  At that point, Bibliana returned to the dugout and raised the sergeant’s arms as if they were a pair of sagging flagpoles. Then she took a few sheets of paper out of the bottom of the boat and threw them into the waters. She waited while they drifted away until they were lost to sight. No one was aware then, but what was floating along on the current was later found to be nothing less than a letter to the sergeant from the lieutenant. Ayres de Ornelas’s florid Portuguese words dissolved like shadows in the waters of the Inharrime.

  Eventually, Bibliana climbed back onto the riverbank and lay facedown on the damp ground. The crowd, enraptured, pressed forward to catch a glimpse of the woman, who seemed to be kissing the ground. But she wasn’t: She was pecking the earth as chickens do. Her arms folded over her back reinforced this comparison. It was only afterward that we understood: Bibliana was writing. With her tongue, she was drawing letters, opening grooves in the damp sand. In this way, she was representing Germano’s inability to use his hands. From time to time, the woman raised her head as if to admire her work, like a painter stepping back from a canvas in order to gain perspective. And she spat out the grains of sand that had stuck to her mouth. When she had finished, she got to her feet and pointed to the fruit of her labors. She had written a name in the soil. Germano.

  6

  SECOND LETTER FROM LIEUTENANT AYRES DE ORNELAS

  Someone said that the tribal throngs from the Vátua empire, when on a war footing, would be the most fearsome thing when pitched against our weakness. Someone who had frequented Gungunhane’s kraal, came to tell us he had watched an ominous looking parade of fifteen thousand warriors. But those who made such claims were forgetting that an armed multitude is not an army and that the cohesion demanded by military institutions is incompatible with the mindlessness of these savages.

  —COLONEL JOSÉ JUSTINO TEIXEIRA BOTELHO, “MILITARY AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE PORTUGUESE IN MOZAMBIQUE FROM 1883 TO THE PRESENT DAY,” 1921

  Chicomo, July 18, 1895

  Dear Sergeant Germano de Melo,

  You have probably already been told that I am now provisional director of the Royal Commission at Chicomo, charged with an almost impossible mission: to convince Gungunhane to surrender to our conditions of sovereignty. These conditions, as you are no doubt aware, are manifold: the surrender to us of the two rebel leaders, annual payment of a tribute amounting to ten thousand pounds, and the licensing of white Gujarati and Moorish traders in his territory. We also insist that the ruler should allow the establishment of telegraph lines between our military posts. Gungunhane argues that modern communications offend the spirits of his ancestors, his father and grandfather buried in that sacred soil. Our agreeing to wait for his authorization is a good example of our naïve acquiescence. We agreed not to disrespect the beliefs of the natives. Then we discovered that the astute ruler is merely taking advantage of our ingenuousness. It is not the spirits that concern him. It is for reasons of military strategy. Gungunhane is only too aware of the value of rapid communication over long distances.

  You cannot imagine how sorry I am for having been transferred from my military functions to a mission of a diplomatic character. I admit, for the good of my honor, that an officer’s first task is not to wage war, but to avoid it at all costs. And everything seems to indicate that the king of Gaza also wants to avoid confrontation, now that we have increased our presence in the area where he has holed up. Gungunhane, we are sure, will agree to all our conditions, with the exception of the one which, as far as we are concerned, is crucial: the surrender of the rebels Mahazul and Zixaxa, who, some months ago, had the temerity to lead an attack on Lourenço Marques.

  This intervention in diplomatic matters will help in my promotion to the highest ranks, which I am destined to achieve. It was this conviction that led me to agree to accompany the counselor José d’Almeida in his negotiations with the Lion of Gaza. With his long experience and the precious trust that he has established with Gungunhane, Counselor José d’Almeida was to lead the negotiations. This choice did not receive the acclaim of all the members of the high command meeting at Chicomo. The most vigorous objections were expressed by Captain Mouzinho de Albuquerque, who even went so far as to declare publicly that we can only expect shame from the counselor José d’Almeida. The same Mouzinho wrote to António Enes lamenting the fact that he had not been chosen to negotiate with the king of Gaza. The text of his letter, to which I had access through means I could never divulge, read as follows: “It would be a thousand times better to lose everything in one catastrophic event, than to withdraw without having done anything.” To which he added: “I offer myself for this mission no matter how foolish and dangerous the enterprise may prove to be.” These disagreements are sad. As if our war with the Vátuas were not enough. Our internal discord seems far more serious. There is only one solution: to ignore all the envy and rivalry over positions of prestige. A noble spirit such as mine is what is needed. This is what is expected of lucid leadership capable of facing up to the present challenges.

  It was with this sense of a mission in mind that I made preparations to leave for Manjacaze in the company of the counselor Almeida. Our accommodation was fully assured: Our counselor’s residence was some hundreds of meters from Gungunhane’s court.

  The Royal Commissioner insisted that we should be accompanied by a military escort. We disobeyed these instructions. The false security of an escort does not compensate for the squabbles caused by soldiers when they get involved with local women. And so we traveled from Chicomo to Manjacaze mounted on two fine horses. At the various places we stopped along the way, my horse always approached me as if it wished to tell me something. Its eyes the color of dark cotton looked at me with an intensity that I found disturbing. And I became so attached to the beast that when we reached our final destination, and despite my exhaustion, I got up in the middle of the night merely to gaze again at those eyes that were also so human.

  Once installed in the counselor’s residence, we were obliged to wait longer than we wished. The king of Gaza did not appear at the first meeting. A messenger informed us that he was busy at a funeral. The counselor Almeida asked who had died. The messenger answered that it was “one of the king’s mothers.” I had to stop myself from laughing. One of his mothers? Only a black man could say something like that, I thought.

  At the end, the messenger transmitted Gungunhane’s invitation to the king of Portugal to visit the State of Gaza, and to bring his many wives with him. The counselor corrected him tersely: The king only has one wife. The kaffir graciously assured us of the willingness of his African hosts to help the king compensate for this shortage. This caused much laughter. I mention these exotic occurre
nces by way of a warning regarding your little dalliance with the girl who seems to have so robbed you of your judgment, my dear young sergeant, that you have failed to understand the consequences of a possible marriage to this woman Imani. By marrying a black woman, you will get the most corpulent brother-in-law there is: all Africa. If you marry a Negro woman, you will marry an entire race. Let us leave it at that, for this affair of yours has left me perplexed, and I have enough problems of my own to face at present. I shall return to the narration of my ordeals in Manjacaze.

  The days that followed in that outpost proved the wisdom of choosing José d’Almeida as a negotiator. On the third day, the king of Gaza appeared in person at our residence in Manjacaze. José d’Almeida was the only Portuguese for whom the king waived the requirement that it was he, Ngungunyane, who was the one visited. The royal retinue was so big that it spread in a circle of more than fifty meters in diameter around the tent in which the conversations were to take place. The tent was erected next to the counselor Almeida’s house, and this induced in me an illusion of comfort. The more than four thousand unarmed soldiers in attendance formed a human frame that stretched away as far as the eye could see. In the front row sat the most notable figures: the king, his uncles, his principal advisers, and officials.

  Here is a curious custom: The king never spoke. An anonymous orator greeted us and presented us with a head of cattle as a proof of goodwill. We had not even gotten as far as beginning negotiations. This was merely a welcoming ritual. But it was also a manifestation of power. The impression of strength they were seeking to show did not merely lie in the large number of soldiers. The chant they intoned left a far deeper impression on me than any bellicose display. In this way, the kaffirs cunningly combine threat and amiability.

  At a certain point, a man the Vátuas called “the king’s dog” leaped into the circle. He was a short fellow, wrapped in a leopard skin, his head covered with feathers. For a while all he did was rush around, barking and howling like a dog.

  This character, to such an extent removed from his human state, struck me so deeply that I was unable to get any sleep all night long. I had read about these performers in a report written by the Swiss traveler Georges Liengme. On various occasions, the doctor had attempted to photograph one of these men. But the image had never been recorded on the photographic plate. That night, I could not get the image of the barking jester out of my head. That man had an animal’s soul. Moreover, he had the tremendous advantage of not suffering the misfortunes of the world and humanity. The only things that troubled him were hunger and thirst. In the midst of my sleeplessness it occurred to me that this was what I wanted to be: a dog. Born to nestle at the feet of some master or other. Or maybe a horse to be caressed by some devoted rider.

  The following morning, there were four continuous hours of meetings which, as you know, the kaffirs call banja. And this was where our adversary’s canny intelligence was confirmed. My colleagues curse the savagery of Gungunhane. Well, I have to acknowledge that he possesses the sagacity of an outstanding negotiator. He did not rebuff or even query our nervous insistence on delivering the rebels Mahazul and Zixaxa into our hands. He put forward a counter-suggestion that we should join forces in finding the fugitives. If the search failed, responsibility would not fall solely on his shoulders. And he criticized us for our lack of intelligence—if we were so desperate to capture these fugitives, why were we making such a noise about it? If one is hunting a furtive prey, one should act all the more furtively. And he challenged us with what I thought an even more irrefutable argument: If we were not seeking war, as we were so adamant in claiming, why were we amassing so many thousands of troops and pieces of artillery on the borders of his territory? Even the ruler’s mother, Impibekezane, who was ever-present in these negotiations, declared that it seemed strange to assemble so much manpower and equipment just to capture two fugitives. I should add that this queen-mother exercises huge influence over her son, and is therefore one of the most powerful figures in the kingdom. This is why the kaffirs call this lady Nkosicaze, which means “the Big Woman.”

  At the close of our discussions, when we were taking our leave, my horse suddenly approached the tent in a state of excitement, coughing raucously and frothing abundantly through its mouth and nostrils. It was producing so much foam that the bystanders were spattered liberally with saliva. The animal lowered its huge head toward me as if it wanted to show me its swollen eyes and thus reveal the death that already dwelt in them. The creature dropped to its knees in almost human fashion. It had chosen me to accompany it in its moment of agony. The king and his advisers watched, intrigued, but remained religiously respectful. You, my friend, are no doubt aware that, for these Negroes, horses are almost unknown animals. The word they use for it is copied from the English word horse. Well, during this incident, one of the kaffirs present, all covered in adornments—doubtless some type of fortune-teller—leaned right over the horse, placed his hand on the creature’s mane, and recited a long litany in the Zulu language. Someone next to me translated the witch doctor’s words:

  When you arrived, we had no name to give you. You brought with you riders carrying shining swords. But you are a living spear, you run faster than the wind and jump over the tallest trees. On the ground you tread, you leave a trail of fire.

  By the time he had completed his assertion, the animal had breathed its last. I was no longer able to remain there. With my eyes brimming with tears, I walked away from the death, which, though that of an animal, was nevertheless to some degree mine as well. Should a career soldier cry in public? And what’s more, over an animal?

  The High Command at Lourenço Marques has stated that these will be the last discussions with the Vátua chiefs. Time is against us: European nations with colonial ambitions lie in wait. That is why, while we negotiate under a burning sun, while a horse with human eyes dies, and while a little man barks and howls, the two armies are busy preparing for war. It is for this reason that I must end with a warning. It is no longer safe for you to move around without a fully armed escort. Nor should you travel along the rivers. If those lands are not ours, even less so are the rivers. The Angolans who accompany us talk of huge aquatic snakes that cause boats to capsize. Our informers assure us that this is a new type of ambush: The natives lay ropes from one bank to the other, and these are tightened when boats pass by. All these dangers invite the greatest possible prudence. Stay where you are until we can prepare to rescue you with all due safety.

  I finish by wishing you a speedy recovery. In a more robust state of health you will, I am certain, see the world through other eyes. Our soul is no more than this: a state of health.

  * * *

  P.S. Let me give you some advice: Do not shower this girl Imani with too much praise. You run the risk of destroying her original purity and humility. I find it hard to say this, but that is how it is with Negroes. You cannot confide in them, for they change immediately in their haste to become like us. There is no solution to this: We despise them for what they are; we hate them when they are like us. Thank God, and assuming your declarations are true, this woman Imani is on her way to ceasing to be black. Let us hope it is no more than this: a fortuitous, passing affair in your long life.

  7

  THE LUMINOUS FRUITS OF A NOCTURNAL TREE

  No one is a person if that person is not all humanity.

  —A SAYING FROM NKOKOLANI

  I found Germano asleep outside the dugout that had served as his bed on the church altar. He had been bleeding, and his bandages were completely soaked. Bloodstained sheets of paper lay scattered all around him. It looked as if the sergeant had used them to try to clean himself. When examined more closely, one could see that the sheets had been scribbled on: They were the beginnings of a letter. The sergeant had started bleeding while he was writing.

  He was so fast asleep that I felt a need to check that he was still alive. I caressed his face to feel his warmth, and listened to his chest to make sure
he was breathing. In the end, I crossed myself in front of the altar, and with backward steps withdrew from the church.

  I made for the improvised quarters that I was going to share with the Italian woman. I found her at the entrance, combing her long hair. Without stopping what she was doing, she told me:

  Germano is confused, he doesn’t remember what happened. From now on, the only valid version of what happened is mine: Those responsible for firing the shot were the rebels. You’re not to blame for anything, Imani.

  I’m not sure, Dona Bianca. I don’t want to lie.

  You can’t lie to someone who doesn’t remember anything.

  But I remember.

  The quarters they had allocated for us consisted of a military tent with one bed at the back. An oil lamp lit up the entrance. On the ground, another lamp caused shadows to dance on the canvas walls. While she was putting her brush and mirror away, the Italian woman declared:

  Your father asked me to take you to Lourenço Marques.

  The shock of this news pounded me to the point of bringing tears to my eyes. Nevertheless, I pretended that this decision was not unexpected and, above all, that I was completely indifferent to it. My false resignation shone through when I replied:

  If that’s what my father wants …

  You’ll like it, Imani. Or would you rather stay here in the middle of this savage bushland?

  In the face of my despondency, the white woman added:

  You’ll find it strange at first. In my establishments, we work at night. You’ll be a woman of the night. But you’ll soon get used to it.

  The lamp faded, disturbed by some mysterious puff of wind. It was not my nocturnal fate that was causing me anguish. I was thinking of Germano. I was thinking about our being separated. Bianca noticed this cloud in my eyes.