by Mia Couto
There was something of me in that stolen metal, I said, interrupting my long narration.
In order to counter the influence of the Protestants, Rudolfo decided to translate the Bible. For months I helped him convert the Portuguese into Txitxope. On one occasion I was even impertinent enough to doubt the book’s holy character. Whoever wrote it and printed it, were they not mere mortals? For Rudolfo, the answer was simple and straightforward:
Books are never written. When we read them, we write them.
That book might not be holy. But it made people holy. This was what the priest taught us at catechism. However, neither the book nor his faith helped him preserve his lucidity and integrity. Far from Goa, and his people, the young clergyman began to lose his sense of reality. Various women slept with him in the church. He explained that this was the best way of administering their first Communion. His laxity, however, was not limited to carnal pleasure. The beach was the guardian of an accumulation of empty wine bottles along its waterline. The sea would seize these bottles round their midriffs and leave them bobbing, like solitary ballerinas, on the crests of the waves. According to the missionary, they were setting out on the journey back to the beaches of Goa. Empty, as empty as the man who had drained them.
Then one day he ordered me to stop my task of translating and return the Bible to him.
We don’t need translation anymore. Nor do we need any more books.
Pointing to the river, the dunes, and the sea beyond, he declared:
This is my library.
12
SERGEANT GERMANO DE MELO’S THIRD LETTER
The worst form of suffering is not defeat. It is not being able to fight.
—A PROVERB FROM NKOKOLANI
Sana Benene, September 9, 1895
Dear Lieutenant Ayres de Ornelas,
I know, sir, that following the Battle of Magul you returned to Inhambane, and I imagine that while rejoicing at such magnificent news, you have not been aware of the events that I shall now relate. It all began last night when the presence of an intruder roused the dogs. People rushed outside to see what was happening. A black man of the VaNdau group had staggered into the village. He was wounded and bleeding from his chest and legs. Just imagine, sir, he had survived a firing squad at Chicomo. He pretended to be dead after falling to the ground. The soldiers were bending over his body to make sure he was dead when a huge snake appeared from the darkness, causing them to flee in chaos. Gravely injured, the man climbed into a dugout, letting the current take him as far as Sana Benene.
It was Mouzinho de Albuquerque who had sentenced him to death, believing him to be one of Gungunhane’s spies. He was told to take all his clothes off so as to certify that he had all the traditional tattoos of our enemies. This was merely a minor delay in carrying out the sentence. Whether or not he sported the insignia proving the guilt of his ethnicity, the wretched man was doomed. The mere fact that he had dared stray into the area abutting the garrison was sufficient proof.
It was a miracle that the kaffir managed to make it to Sana Benene alive. When Bibliana appeared, I noticed that there was something special happening between her and the survivor. The healer was dumbstruck as she contemplated the intruder, and then suddenly threw herself into his arms. It’s my brother-in-law, Manyara, she announced tearfully. And arm in arm, the two of them went into the church. Everyone knew what they had to do: Imani went to boil water, Bianca went to fetch bandages and clean clothes, and the priest remained seated, looking at me with a fixed stare. What’s wrong, my son? he asked me in a tone of paternal irritation. I reminded him that the kaffir was a prisoner who had been sentenced and should be escorted back to Chicomo and the judicial process. To go back and get killed? the priest asked with irony.
I further reminded him that, in allowing this to happen, we were the accomplices of a criminal. Rudolfo turned to me with unexpected aggressiveness:
This man was never here, do you understand? Bibliana is going to tend to him just as she tended to you, and afterwards he will go on his way just as you will go on yours.
I entered the church and smelled the aroma of infusions that I knew so well. The wounded kaffir occupied the bed in which I had spent my convalescence. I ordered the black to tell me what had happened at Chicomo. I was trying to establish whether he had admitted to being a spy when interrogated. It was Bibliana who, in her limited Portuguese, translated her brother-in-law’s muttered statement: My brother-in-law tells me he spoke his language, Xindau, and none of the Portuguese understood him. Then the soothsayer commented that a similar mistake occurred more generally between whites and blacks: Those whose language we do not understand are already confessing their guilt.
I could not stop thinking of your new instructions, sir. This was why, in spite of the healer’s opposition, I insisted that the mistreated Negro should give me an account of the circumstances surrounding his arrest and subsequent flight. Amid groans and grimaces, the man recalled his hellish experience at Chicomo. When they dragged him over to the wall, Mouzinho de Albuquerque made his soldiers stop and reminded them that only whites could make up a firing squad. After the shots, the kaffir really thought he was dead. I didn’t have to pretend, I’m here because I was restored to life, he mumbled. And he added, with just a flicker of a smile: I returned thanks to my sister-in-law. For two days he dragged himself along painful paths in order to give thanks to Bibliana, the widow of his late brother. It was she, with her spells, who had protected him against the bullets. And it would be thanks to the treatment of this sangoma—which is what they call healers around here—that he would recover from his grave wounds.
Exhausted and in pain, the man asked to be left alone. But before we withdrew, he muttered something that Bibliana translated. He was advising me to flee the area. He said that war was coming. And this was no place for either whites or those of his tribe, the VaNdau. We were both phantoms, and we stood out in that wilderness.
Dona Bianca agreed with the stranger’s message and she gesticulated furiously, as if we needed to see her words rather than hear them:
The man is right. Run away from the army, Germano.
Do you know what they do to deserters? the priest warned bitterly.
But, Father, in the midst of this turmoil, who even knows of this man’s existence? Bianca asked. If no one paid him any attention before, when he was at his post, who is going to notice him now?
Bianca and Rudolfo went on talking as if I were not present. I looked at Imani, but she averted her eyes. I understood. To be honest, I was barely aware of my own existence!
So these, sir, were the turbulent events that occurred here. I returned to my room and began to scribble this letter. And I spent the rest of the morning in an inexplicable state of inertia. I have to confess that I felt a deep yearning for Imani. At noon, I was told that Bibliana’s brother-in-law had not survived his injuries. The last thing he asked for was for someone to come and sing to him in his mother tongue. I attended the initial preparations for his funeral. The priest called me aside to tell me that, as he was giving him the last rites—which, for kaffirs, is their baptism—the black had confessed to him that the charges against him were true. He had been working as a spy for weeks beforehand. He was sending Gungunhane information in exchange for the safety of his enslaved family at the court of Gaza. And this, sir, was when the priest made an extraordinary comment. I am writing his exact words: There is certainly no shortage of spies out there. If we were to shoot all of them, maybe you would no longer be with us.
There was, in the priest’s words, a veiled suggestion I found unpleasant. It may have been due to my guilty conscience, but I was unable to sleep that night. The fact of the matter is that I was a spy by trial and error. What was more, I had failed in my trial. Rudolfo’s words left me feeling truly helpless. Having regained the use of my hands, I now lacked my soul.
As night fell, when the rituals for the intruder were over, I knocked on Bibliana’s door. I wanted to be shielded by
the African spirits. I wanted to be protected from bullets, from loss of love, from my past, and from myself. No one should know what my intentions were, which is why I was desperate for Bibliana to attend to my muffled taps on her door with all possible haste.
The soothsayer was in a state of undress when she half opened the door, her firm breasts and thighs revealing themselves through the slit in her capulana. What happened after that, sir, will be of no interest to you. I shall, nevertheless, alert you to our need to keep a close watch on this polemical, charismatic figure. You cannot imagine the powerful influence that this witch exerts over the natives. You can be sure: No army can offer us more of a threat than this woman with her prayers and prophecies. I recommend that we keep this black woman under surveillance. It was not for this reason that I visited her, and I have already admitted to that. But the execution of her brother-in-law, the spy who ended up dying here at Sana Benene, does not place us in a favorable position. All we can assume is that Bibliana must feel considerable hostility toward the Portuguese.
In a word, we must keep a close eye on this woman. We need to know something about her past in order to see how we can turn her into our ally. In the following lines, I provide a brief outline of the life of the person in question.
Bibliana was born and until recently lived in a village near Chicomo. As is quite common here, she had another name, which is of no interest to us. Her father was taken as a slave, and her mother was killed trying to defend the family. For weeks the slave hunters searched the village to be sure that no one had escaped from their captivity and returned home. The slaves and slave owners were all of the same race, the same language, and had the same gods.
This was how, while still a young girl, Bibliana was left with only her maternal grandmother by way of family. The old woman had deformed legs and would be unable to escape in the event of an attack. At the end of each day, her granddaughter would place her in a gunnysack in case she had to be dragged out into the bush in an emergency. One night, the village was set on fire and Bibliana was obliged to abandon her grandmother whom she had vowed to protect. The girl fled and disappeared into the forest.
She was taken in some days later by the first Protestant missionaries to visit the region. None of them was European. The two Negroes were from the Transvaal and spread the gospel in African languages. During her catechism, Bibliana saw that her story was written in the sacred book. With the permission of the missionaries, she changed her name from the one she had been given as a child to the one by which she is known by everyone today. With the blessing of the missionaries, she married a fisherman in the village. Years went by and she never became pregnant. The husband had a right to abandon her. But he did not do so. Nor did he ever accuse her openly of being a barren woman. To demonstrate her gratitude, Bibliana worked tirelessly, hunting snakes and crocodiles in order to sell their skins. Her husband suspected that she might be a tamer of crocodiles. But she proved her truth by exhibiting her cutlass and traps.
With the money she saved, Bibliana bought her husband two new wives. These spouses produced children and the family began to take shape. During an attack on the village, her husband was killed by Ngungunyane’s soldiers. As a widow, she thought the family would disintegrate. But this did not happen. The other wives remained with her, together with their children. Funnily enough, the little ones began to call Bibliana Tate, the word for “Father.” The wives feared that the dead man’s soul would be angry. But nothing happened. And Bibliana thought: I’ve had more good luck than I could have hoped for. Her sex, age, and widow’s status did not permit such good fortune. Before long, people would accuse her of being a witch. So she made her decision:
Keep my house and possessions. I’m the one who’s leaving.
Then she left for Sana Benene, where she met Father Rudolfo. And the certainty that her story was included in the Holy Book was no longer enough for her. She gradually came to assume that she was Our Lady:
The children I reared were not the other women’s. They were mine. I’m like the mother of God: I was made pregnant by men I never went to bed with.
That was how this unusual woman settled at Sana Benene. The only mystery lies in how she came to be the queen of this place and of the priest’s heart. But I shall explain that in another report.
13
BETWEEN BULLETS AND ARROWS
The river is a tear on its way back to God’s eyes.
—WORDS SPOKEN BY CHIKAZI MAKWAKWA, IMANI’S MOTHER
My sleep was gnawed through by jealousy. I know of no more effective ruminant of one’s soul: Jealousy is a windmill that turns even when there’s not a breath of wind. The curious enthusiasm with which the sergeant told me about Mpezui some days ago was a false breeze. But now there was a real reason. My recollection of the previous night was a knife thrust into my chest: Sergeant Germano knocking at Bibliana’s door late at night. Not a moment goes by without me remembering it. It was then that I heard the Portuguese begging to be treated, in a tremulous voice. Haughty and provocative, the woman asked:
But haven’t I already treated you, my white friend?
I’m asking for another type of treatment.
Germano went in and the door closed. I stopped watching and listening. And I started to guess what was going on, knowing that the imagination is the sharpest of the senses. However, I had no time to torture myself. For moments later the same door opened again and Bibliana emerged into the yard dressed in the sergeant’s uniform. She hesitated in the darkness and then, with a firm step, walked toward me. She offered me her hand and then led me over to her quarters, where the ashamed sergeant crouched gloomily in a corner covered only in a capulana. We exchanged clothes, Bibliana murmured, explaining the obvious. I immediately started to ask myself if they had exchanged anything else.
He came and asked me to shield him from bullets, Bibliana declared, pointing at the Portuguese. This young brave of yours is scared.
I’m in a panic, Imani, the sergeant stammered. I’ve made enemies everywhere. I need help.
Well, I’m not going to shield you, Germano.
And before the sergeant could protest, the sangoma continued:
Do your sums, my white friend. How many soldiers have died in this war? And how many women have been assaulted, raped, murdered? Now answer me this: Who has a greater need of protection?
And she stamped on the ground with her boots as if in the process of turning from a soothsayer into a soldier. Her hand clasped my shoulder firmly as she declared:
You don’t need any ceremonies, my girl. You’ve long been immune.
Then, before our very eyes, she took off the uniform and returned it to the sergeant.
And you, my white friend, can keep that capulana, which looks as if it was made for you, she joked.
Then she told us both to leave and take advantage of the night, as she put it, to immunize ourselves even more.
I led the shivering Portuguese by the arm, making sure that he didn’t stumble over the capulana wrapped around his body. If the lieutenant saw me like this…, he moaned, as we walked along. Once in the sacristy, I helped him lie down in his improvised bed. He held out his arms and asked:
Am I still bleeding?
I never found out. If his bleeding hadn’t been stanched, he had certainly started to bleed inside me. And we fell asleep, our bodies touching each other.
* * *
The following day, the church was empty. The sergeant had gone out in the direction of the river. He had been fishing ever since the early morning. He had made a fishing rod out of an old rifle. He had been there for hours without catching a fish. But that mattered little to him. Fishing is a verb with a wide range of meanings. As wide and deep as the river.
I waited for the priest in the sacristy. And as the waiting grew longer, I lay down on the mat where we had slept. The places where we dream eventually become part of our body. In that bed, I still felt part of Germano. I was torn from these daydreams by the sound of footstep
s inside the church and chairs being dragged around. I peered, apprehensive. I immediately saw that they were VaNguni soldiers. The one who appeared to be the chief sat down next to the altar. The others remained standing. It wasn’t long before Father Rudolfo appeared, more hunched and demure than I had ever seen him.
Ngungunyane told us to come and fetch the two women: the white one and the other one you said was your husband, the leader of the delegation announced in Txizulu.
The intruders laughed so long and loud that the priest also smiled, pretending to join in the mocking of which he was the target. And his voice was so gentle that no one could understand what language he was speaking: No one is leaving here … And he repeated it, this time more spiritedly, adding: not even over my dead body.
Tie him to a chair and call the vultures, the leader of the group commanded.
It wasn’t courage but some unknown force that caused me to emerge from the sacristy into the middle of the church. The men tying up the priest halted what they were doing, surprised. I recognized those strange figures as members of the feared timbissi, the so-called hyenas, the emperor’s death squads.
Can you hear an arrow as it flies through the air? It is not by chance that they call the VaChopi the bow-and-arrow people. A Chope woman like me can hear the hiss of an arrow up to the point when it pierces a man’s chest and he falls into the final abyss. Then, straight after this, a second arrow, and another fallen body. All this in fact happened as if in a dream.
It was then that reality burst into the church of Sana Benene with an almighty crash. Before our astonished eyes Xiperenyane, the most charismatic VaChopi warrior and the most feared of Ngungunyane’s enemies, appeared. With his own hands, Xiperenyane freed the priest while giving the order for the bodies of the VaNguni to be removed.
The house of God cannot receive the blood of the devil, were his words.
