by Mia Couto
Ever since I was a child, I have learned to distinguish that unmistakable sound of a body being dragged along. It was as if the friction of the act robbed the ground itself of life. The priest, freed from the ropes, but still sitting on the chair, seemed even more lifeless. Xiperenyane walked up to the last of the brigade’s survivors and challenged him face-to-face, saying:
Do you remember me, Manhune? I grew up alongside your king, I lived in your domains until I reached manhood. And I escaped in order to continue being a person.
He had been the victim of the age-old tactic used by the VaNguni to make an effective army. They seized young boys and took them away from their native land, making them forget their families and the bonds of love they once had. And from among their oppressors, they concocted the only family left to them. This tactic had not worked in the case of Xiperenyane. The Chope warrior was passing through Sana Benene on his way back from the Battle of Magul, where he had fought alongside the Portuguese.
I’ve still got the blood of your people on my hands. You’re going to have to take great care when you count how many of your soldiers made it back home.
And he made fun of the most bellicose squadrons of VaNguni soldiers who, according to him, arrived full of plumes and left with their feathers plucked. Then he addressed the emissary of the king of Gaza in Txizulu.
So you came to steal women for your king, did you? Well, so that you shouldn’t leave empty-handed, take him this message from me: Tell him my nails are long like the claws of a lizard. Wherever I am, and without having to take so much as a step, I shall tear at his sleep every night.
You know that I cannot take that message, the other answered. No one can.
You’re a slave, Manhune. It isn’t a king that’s your master. It’s fear.
Manhune was an eminent military commander and adviser to Ngungunyane. He did not abandon his haughty demeanor when he withdrew. As he passed the Portuguese priest, he joked:
You can relax, Father, we shan’t be taking your husband away for the time being.
14
FOURTH LETTER FROM LIEUTENANT AYRES DE ORNELAS
Ayres de Ornelas himself admitted his ignorance, for as he himself wrote: “Although this may seem strange, no mention was made whatsoever of colonial campaigns during my time at the Military School. The Provisional Regulations for the Service of Armies on Campaign, of 1890, had nothing to say on the matter. How were we to wage combat, how did our adversaries wage combat? We had not the faintest idea.”
—AYRES DE ORNELAS, “A COLLECTION OF HIS PRINCIPAL MILITARY AND COLONIAL WORKS,” VOL. 1, GENERAL AGENCY FOR THE COLONIES, 1934, CITED BY PAULO JORGE FERNANDES IN “MOUZINHO DE ALBUQUERQUE: A SOLDIER IN THE SERVICE OF THE EMPIRE,” A ESFERA DOS LIVROS, LISBON, 2010
Chicomo, September 16, 1895
Dear Germano de Melo,
Our good friend Xiperenyane will be the bearer of good news, my dear sergeant: we won the Battle of Magul, and in no uncertain fashion! The secret of our success lay in a prior detail that no doubt few will remember. This detail has a name: the local headman Chibanza. Let me now tell you what happened. When we drew near to Magul, we took four days to cross an inferno of pools, mud, and mosquitoes. With the few men we had at our disposal, and using just two donkeys and two horses, we were obliged to pitch camp in a spot that had no shelter or vegetation, and which was saturated with water. Groups of enemy soldiers could be seen in the distance. But they seemed unaware of our presence. We sent out a few Angolans to provoke them and try to force them to attack our position. This was something I had already learned—the only way we could move with any security among those multitudes was by pretending to be a tortoise with a shell on all four sides. And we certainly could never take the initiative of openly marching against our adversaries. On the contrary, they were the ones who should attack us.
At Magul, however, neither one thing nor the other occurred. Our forces remained at a standstill. And the enemy forces would not budge either. As I have already said, we obliged the Angolans to make an incursion by way of provocation, but this plan did not have the desired effect. Or rather, it had an effect, but not the one we expected. Apart from the two thousand soldiers we had caught sight of, we began to hear a crescendo of chanting and the syncopated crash of spears striking shields. And suddenly, the entire skyline was filled with some seven thousand warriors advancing towards us in a kind of war dance. Their intention was obvious: to lay siege to us in the middle of that swamp and watch us starve to death. Never had a platoon wanted to be attacked so much. Then, when we had already lost hope that anything would change, we saw the local chieftain Chibanza emerge from our ranks carrying a rifle. With a firm, solemn step he advanced toward the Vátua hosts. Next to me, a soldier commented: That black son of a bitch is going to give himself up to his brothers! To our growing surprise, he climbed to the top of a huge termite mound. And from that improvised platform he launched into a violent speech, laden with insults against Gungunhane. The Vátuas protested and jeered but they allowed the chieftain to continue his tirade of invective. When he had finished, Chibanza fired seven shots into the Vátua horde. Then he spat on the ground and hurled the ultimate abuse: Cowards! After this, he returned to our lines. Chibanza’s display of bravado had the desired effect. A rabid human wave rushed toward our position. The Vátuas were unleashing their assault. The blacks threw themselves, bare-chested, against the crackling of our machine guns. And the fighting was all over in a few minutes. Enemy casualties were so many that it was impossible to count all the bodies scattered among the grass. But I was unable to count our own dead either. I was told that there were no more than about thirty and most of those were Negroes from Angola. Nevertheless, when the time came to collect them up and lay them in the ground, there were not enough tears in my eyes for so much pain. Each one of those young men was part of me and the guilt of losing them will weigh upon me for the rest of my days.
And then there was more pain to add to my guilt. As soon as the enemy had retreated, the forces of the local headmen of Matola and Mahotas, on seeing the fragility of the defeated army, pillaged the houses, women, and cattle belonging to Mahazul’s and Zixaxa’s people. It is impossible to imagine the desolation in which the ravaged territories were left. It was a quarrel among themselves, the blacks, but I cannot help thinking that it was we who facilitated such devastation. For my colleagues, such gruesome pillages were greeted as encouraging news. As far as they were concerned, the desire for vengeance on the part of Mahazul’s and Zixaxa’s folk had now become greater than the hostility they previously felt toward the Portuguese.
The most experienced military commanders in Africa were, after all, completely correct in their argument for a slow, cautious advance. At first, I confess, I did not understand (or I understood but I did not respect) the wise counsel of that old fox who goes by the name of Caldas Xavier. According to this experienced strategist, one should not engage the Vátua army in open attack, for it was preferable to surround it with a belt of fortified military posts that would gradually squeeze the life out of it. If the enemy, realizing the threat, elected to react, all the better, because, as Xavier assured us, the Vátuas did not need to be feared when they went on the offensive. It was even good to provoke them. And Caldas Xavier even recommended that these posts should be built in such a way as to appear vulnerable, to encourage the enemy to attack them. Who knows whether that post of yours at Nkokolani wasn’t in such a degraded condition in order to conform to this tactical recommendation?
However, this whole plan, no matter how sound its basis, had one fatal flaw as far as I was concerned. It was going to take time. And I was in a hurry. I was recently qualified and young, and had just arrived in Mozambique, with an aspiration to rise in the hierarchy as quickly as possible. I was one of those who argued in favor of an attack at Magul. And I am proud of my gamble. But that final battle proved another principle: In war, those who are in a hurry, die in a hurry. Caldas Xavier was right; we are not facing an
army but rather a people armed with weapons.
Let me give you a piece of advice, Sergeant. Do not reveal yourself as being so fragile, so human, and so equal to the kaffirs. You, my dear sergeant, are a white, and for the time being, at any rate, you are still a soldier. You are wounded, and in isolation. But you must not open your heart to the natives, weep or laugh with them, and above all, you must not show love for a black woman.
Caldas Xavier was correct in his long-term strategy. Magul should never have happened. But it did, and we emerged from it with tremendous advantage. For we need to carry out daredevil actions. These audacious deeds are not only to intimidate rebellious kaffirs. They will also impress public opinion in Portugal, which has a dim view of the fortunes being spent on a distant, remote war. And of course, other European nations will be made aware of our effective dominion in East Africa.
We no longer need envy our own past, were the words of one soldier after the Battle of Magul.
15
WOMEN-MEN, HUSBANDS-WIVES
I had a dream.
But it was a sightless dream.
I saw a path
But it was a craggy path.
I lived until I was old.
But I died before starting to live.
—A SONG FROM NKOKOLANI
That night, Father Rudolfo Fernandes came looking for me so that he could tell me about his linguistic oversight when he had referred to Bibliana as his “husband.” We laughed, and I tried to make light of the matter. Don’t worry, it was just a mistake. But the priest admitted that his relationship with Bibliana was very strange. He made a point of sharing with me the secrets of his liaison with her.
Our dear Bibliana, he began, looked after the church the moment she arrived at Sana Benene. There were a thousand versions of how she came to be here. Some claimed that she had emerged from the waters of the river, others that she had come out of the earth like a blind snake. What is sure is that the woman came to me, offering her services as a domestic.
The priest accommodated her in a shed at the back of the church. They spoke in Txichangana and they would pray together on the banks of the river. Bibliana always addressed God in an un-Catholic way, which was perhaps why the priest at first did not allow the woman to say her prayers inside the church. In the house of God, the black woman just saw to the cleaning of the building.
Late one afternoon, Bibliana heard chanting coming from inside the church. She entered quietly. With his back to the entrance, the priest was standing in prayer before the altar. Bibliana approached him, and embraced the man from behind, as if she were a shadow returning to its body. She allowed her hands to wander over the clergyman’s cassock. She anxiously sought the bulge of his sexual organ. But she found nothing, no bump, not even the suggestion of a protuberance. She decided to look farther up and as she was fumbling his chest, she found two unexpected outthrusts. She took off his cassock, pulling it over his head. When Rudolfo appeared stark-naked before her, she did not look at all surprised: The priest had the body of a woman. Terrified, Rudolfo stammered:
I’m not really like this, my daughter. I’m like all the other men. I don’t know what’s happening.
But I know, Father. You have turned into a woman because of me. You became like this when you touched me.
May God protect me, but this can only be a punishment.
It’s the opposite, Father. This is the only way we can make love.
She added in a whisper: The priest was an impundulu, a man who loves like women. He was one of those men who, when they make love, change into a woman.
Don’t say any more, Bibliana. God has abandoned me to the most obscure of fates.
But his strange visitor did not stop talking. An impundulu, she explained, is a prince, but he has no sexual organ. Instead of a penis, he has a tongue that sticks out of his body like a slow, dark river. This tongue was made for kissing, licking, sucking. The impundulu is like a wingless bird but which has soft, abundant plumage. If a woman is caressed by so much as a feather, she lights up like a torch. And her fire can only be placated by a fire of equal force.
Am I one of these creatures, then?
You are one of my creatures.
The woman moved her hand to the gap between Rudolfo’s legs. Alarmed, the clergyman held his breath. Then Bibliana muttered the following pronouncement in the perplexed missionary’s ear:
Now you’re going to bleed. Every new moon, you will see your own blood.
The priest fell to his knees and closed his eyes, as if this were the only way he might contemplate Heaven.
* * *
The following morning saw Bibliana bustling around in a state of great animation. She even asked me to help her in her tasks as an exorcist. Xiperenyane had stopped by at Sana Benene on his way to Zavala, with a view to subjecting himself and his men to the rituals of purification that Bibliana called kufemba. They had come from the Battle of Magul contaminated by death. There would be no return unless they were cleansed internally.
It involved a whole day’s work. One by one, the warriors sat down next to the soothsayer’s mat and watched her throwing her little magic bones to see whether they bore the spirits of those they had killed. The bearers of other people’s spirits were then seated on the riverbank. The blood of a goat was poured over them, and the capulanas that they wore around their waists were cast into the current. In this way they were unbound from the past, and the dead could not return from death to avenge themselves on the living.
By the time all these ceremonies were over I was exhausted, as if some of those spirits had dug their claws into me. Divesting myself of my clothes, I washed in the river. It was a pity Xiperenyane was not there to see me. He was a handsome man. For a moment I forgot about my desire for Germano de Melo.
16
FIFTH LETTER FROM LIEUTENANT AYRES DE ORNELAS
The black does not obey us, or respect us, or even know who we are in most of that province. This is the truth in all its crudity and so many and such frequent occurrences demonstrate this fact that no manner of protest or invocations to past glories can invalidate this.
—J. ALBUQUERQUE, “THE ARMY IN THE EASTERN COLONIES,” 1893
Inhambane, September 24, 1895
Dear Sergeant Germano de Melo,
I am deeply disappointed in you, my dear sergeant. You are one of the reasons why I have not yet become sufficiently known to my superiors in the hierarchy. Let me ask you this: Despite all the letters you have sent me, what useful information of the sort I requested have I yet received? Spies have passed your way without you alerting me to them in time; you are going to be tended by a doctor who is our enemy; you spend your time in a church full of black heretics. Is all this just the result of lapses in concentration, mere inattentiveness? And to make matters worse, you persistently call a black a “king” when he merits little more than the epithet of “headman.” You talk about “dynasties” and the “royal blood” of the Vátuas, as if the concept of an aristocracy could be extended to Africans. I assume that for you, an out-and-out republican, all these observations make little sense.
You must be made aware that you are not only insulting the monarchy, which both I and Mouzinho represent along with so many other officers. In truth, we are an army of poor, humble folk commanded by aristocratic monarchists. I would like to put the following on record: I am a descendant of the Lords of the Estate of Caniço on my father’s side and of the Count of Ponte on my mother’s. Our families are proud of the ancient military traditions of which they are the bearers. You, I imagine, benefited from a very sound education. But there are ways of behavior and customs, the possession of which cannot be put down to effort but to the distinction of breeding. To aggravate this whole world of differences, you got involved in a love affair with a black woman. As if this weren’t enough, you have been ignoring my instructions and persist in maintaining a liaison with a girl who, as well as being of too black a race, is too young. And I am concerned to see that your romanc
e has gone beyond a merely casual encounter.
Let me say this without beating about the bush: As a soldier, you are a disaster. You spend too much time thinking, you ask yourself whether the war is a legitimate one, and you are devoid of any career ambitions. Moreover, you have lived for so long and so intimately among Africans that you have even discovered traces of humanity in them. I myself have to admit that on the occasions when I have allowed myself to get near these people, I have ended up making mawkish confessions, such as in the letter I wrote my mother telling her of my intense emotion on hearing the sublime chants of the Vátuas. I can therefore speak from my own experience when I say that all these emotive situations weaken a soldier by rendering him feeble and indecisive. And this is all the more serious because, by occurring in the middle of a war, this type of promiscuity eventually blurs the borders between our territory and that of the adversary.
For all this, let me formally communicate the following to you. You are released from having to send me any more reports, and your functions as my informer are suspended forthwith. With the clumsiness you have already displayed, you would only cause me problems.
I sincerely lament that our epistolary relationship should end in this way. Do not write to me again. Any messenger reaching me under your orders will be immediately detained and receive due punishment.
* * *
P.S. Two days have passed since I composed these brief paragraphs. I have had the opportunity to reconsider and I acknowledge that I exceeded myself in the curt and intransigent tone with which I addressed you. I shall not delete or make any alterations to what I wrote. However, now that I am less impulsive and more discerning, I shall make the following recommendation: From time to time, but only very sparsely, you may share your adventures and misadventures with me, Sergeant. No more than this. And no longer as sergeant. Germano de Melo will suffice. Please abstain from spying on the enemy, whom you have difficulty in distinguishing anyway. It will be enough for you to speak to me as a human being.
