by Mia Couto
17
SERGEANT GERMANO DE MELO’S FOURTH LETTER
Such is our wretched fate: We end up yearning for the previous tyrant.
—THE WORDS OF FATHER RUDOLFO FERNANDES
Sana Benene, October 1, 1895
Dear Lieutenant Ayres de Ornelas,
You are right, sir. As a soldier, I am worthless. Still less talent have I as a spy. Thank you for your letter, even though your comments on me as a person are not flattering. But when you, sir, present yourself to me only as Ayres de Ornelas, that is when I benefit from being in the noblest company. That is why your words did not discredit me. On the contrary. When I read the closing words of your brief missive, I received the most precious of prizes.
I am eternally grateful to you for having dismissed me from my duties as a spy and for having encouraged me to continue sending you these clumsy personal messages. That is the purpose of this letter. And you will see that my accounts will enable you to envisage the African interior as something more than a mere landscape. Maybe I am a second Diocleciano das Neves, the white man who mingled in the world of the natives and who never returned from that world. They called that pathfinder Diocleciano “Mafambatcheca,” the One Who Laughs While He Travels. I do not laugh or travel. But I shall embark on a journey into the depths of the African soul. See my letters as an account of this journey. The continuation of my letters will save me from dying and disappearing forever from the memory of men.
On this occasion, I shall tell you of a mysterious meeting I had this morning. I was strolling along the riverbank with Imani when a little boy came up to us to ask when my wings would grow back. I thought I had misunderstood him, given my paltry grasp of the kaffir language:
My wings? I asked.
The ones that got cut off, he explained.
Imani sat down next to the child and I cannot tell you what was said. But I could tell that they were talking about me and at one point the boy imitated a bird flying around me, while he called me a chapungu. My companion took the kid’s hand and made his little fingers brush the sparse bandages that are still left on my arms. The child was scared at first, but then burst out laughing. The pieces of gauze dangling from my wrists had been interpreted as the remains of my wings. I was not, after all, a chapungu, one of those eagles that never lets go of its feathers. And the boy laughed, half relieved, half disappointed.
Those bursts of laughter made me realize that you, sir, are right. As a soldier, I am a complete failure. But let me tell you this. If, in order to be a good soldier, one cannot have any doubts, I would rather my career stopped right here as a lowly sergeant, who was so utterly forgotten by the army that he ended up oblivious to the purpose of the uniform he wore.
The incident of the boy who took me for a bird is a mere preliminary to the account of a more serious and urgent matter that came to light later in the day. I surprised Katini Nsambe and the Italian woman, Bianca Vanzini, in the middle of a conversation. Katini was asking her to take his daughter Imani to Lourenço Marques and get her to make some money off white men. He argued that the girl was pretty, docile, and light-skinned. The Italian woman would not regret it. Bianca answered that she was not in a position to agree to his request, for she was only the proprietor of some bars. To which Katini replied imploringly: Well, take her to one of your bars. But the wretched kaffir had never been in a city. In those bars, the prostitutes were all white. The black women only worked in liquor stores out in the native areas.
Gradually the Italian woman became less adamant, and promised to give the matter some thought. The following day, she openly brought the subject up with me, as if she owed me an explanation. She confessed that it had also crossed her mind to take Imani with her to Lourenço Marques. And all the more so on that first night, when she had seen her without any clothes on. Katini’s request made complete sense; white prostitutes were losing ground against colored women who were competing with them. When she saw me horrified and lost for an answer, she encouraged me to visit the lively bars of Lourenço Marques. She told me the names of establishments, the International Music Hall, the Tivoli, the Trocadero, the Bohemian Girl, the Russian Bar, and so many others.
In this part of Africa, European visitors felt as if they were in Lisbon, Paris, or London. With a few pounds, one could purchase the sympathy of women of a thousand nationalities, even if most of them were exhibiting a fake identity. Bianca mentioned names as diverse and exotic as Dolly, Kitty Lindstrom, Fanny Scheff, Helen Drysdale, Sarah Pepper, Blanche Drummond, Cecília Laventer. If she were to contract Imani, she repeated, she would be contravening the established rule: white women in the city bars; black in the suburban liquor stores. But Bianca was amused by the idea of disobedience, in a world that was already so disobedient to the laws of God. I’ll call her Black Lilly, she announced. I told her to stop. She didn’t understand my reaction. She thought I didn’t like the name. I complained that Imani, the interested party to all this, had been forgotten.
Has anyone heard Imani’s view on this? I asked.
Since when have women been consulted? she retorted. Imani would be much happier on her own. In your hands, if that is what one can call those appendages at the end of your arms, the girl would merely be a white man’s wife. In my hands, she’ll be a queen.
And she added that we both knew—from our own experience—that white men would lose their prejudices when they saw black women sparkling in the city bars. As for the white women, they would be the ones to worry, swept aside by competition. The only problem, Bianca declared, was that black women soon grow fat and flabby. They need to be recruited very young, before they bear children and go to seed. Young, beautiful, and single, Imani fulfilled all the requirements to have a long, lucrative career.
I listened to her plans with my heart in tatters. If I were not now disabled, I would seize this woman and take her off to a place I suspect does not exist.
You are still right, sir. I have no idea what it would be like to be married to a black woman. In spite of this, I allow myself to dream of it. Yesterday, when I was broaching the subject with Imani, she said something that seems irrefutable: Our two worlds were not after all so different. And she is right. Whether in Africa or in my little village in Portugal, women share the same meager expectations of what it might be like to be married. Nothing is expected of a husband. So he can never disappoint. When it comes to a woman, she is expected to be a mother. Not to any children she may choose to have. But to those who, by God and Nature’s command, are born to a man from whom nothing is expected.
You might wonder, sir, what children we would have. How would we introduce them to their Portuguese relatives? The person who gave me the answer was not Imani, but Bibliana, who proclaimed with the certainty of a prophet: What does the skin color of those who are born matter? Gungunhane will have white Portuguese grandchildren and the Portuguese will have African grandchildren! To seek to hinder this inclination is like trying to stop the wind with a sieve. Time, my son, Time is a great blender of seeds.
For all these reasons, the first thing I shall do in the morning is to ask for a mass to be said so that God, from whom I have distanced myself, may guide me and help me to recover from my fevers. The church at Sana Benene may be small, solitary, and decrepit. Its priest may be a deviant. But a church, wherever it is, is a little piece of home. Even I, who am not a practicing worshipper, find in the peace and quiet of churches the place where my original soul is born again.
18
A MASS WITHOUT A VERB
You will live forever with these thick scars. But the truth is this: Scars protect far more than the skin. Were I to be reborn, I would ask to come into the world covered in scars from head to foot
—THE WORDS OF FATHER RUDOLFO SPEAKING TO SERGEANT GERMANO DE MELO
The sergeant’s voice was barely audible as he stood in front of the priest, who was sweeping the floor of the church. Even I, who was holding him, had to lean forward to hear what he was asking. When Father Rudolf
o eventually understood him, he could not contain his astonishment:
A mass?
The priest looked closely at the sergeant as if not recognizing him. He hadn’t been asked for prayers for years. He stopped sweeping and leaned the broom against the wall with such care that it seemed as if he were positioning a buttress. And then he gazed in rapture at the clouds of dust that still floated in the musty air of the church. This was the only reason why he swept the temple: in order to see the rays of light flickering in the building. They are my windowpanes and they are alive, he thought.
Father, did you not hear my request? Germano insisted.
Some natives are fascinated when they look at the windows, the priest thought. They’ve never seen a pane of glass. They are captivated by something that can be touched without seeing it, this vertical water, this pure transparency. Rudolfo had been born in a modern city, and had become used to glass windows from an early age. However, the first time he really saw a sheet of glass was when he watched the rain trickling down the windowpane one day. And now the sergeant’s words were trickling down the pane of his inattention.
Father Rudolfo? Can you hear me? I’m asking you to pray for me, Father, the soldier repeated.
My son, after all you have been through, do you still think God is alive?
The priest turned his back and was on the point of leaving, when I threw myself onto my knees before him and begged:
If you won’t pray for Germano, then ask God to allow me to do it.
Surprised, the priest took a deep breath and then bade me help him. I still clearly recalled the times when, as a child, I helped in the rituals of the mass. And so I did what I had done before: I took a missal from the sacristy, a bell, a metal cup, and a bottle of wine. I helped the priest up onto the pulpit overlooking the altar, a task he fulfilled as if he were scaling the steepest slope. Leaning over me, he whispered that the person who normally used this for conducting services was Bibliana. The crowds who, every Sunday, filled the building, came only to attend the black priestess’s cult.
Once up on the platform, the priest’s eyes roamed around the empty space. He still remembered the first time Bibliana contemplated Christ nailed to his cross. She seemed concerned, and remarked: He should have got married, that man Jesus, just look at how thin he is. Then Bibliana’s gaze lingered on the feet of the crucified man. It was in his feet that the Son of God began to shed his race and assume the kinship of the meek.
I rang the little bell, more to summon Rudolfo back to reality than to begin the mass. With his back to me, the priest waited for the echo of the bell to cease before raising his arms before Christ on the cross. He remained like this for some time without uttering a word. Until he turned around and faced the sergeant, who was waiting on his knees, with a puzzled look:
A mass?
Yes, please, Father …
Let me ask you, my son: Didn’t Bibliana alleviate your pain?
The sergeant’s despair must have eventually convinced the priest, who opened the missal and leafed through it slowly, from back to front and from beginning to end. Until, with an extravagant gesture, he put the book down on the lectern. He looked up at the pigeons flapping up in the roof and sighed as he declared:
Not a psalm or a prayer. I’m not going to read anything. And he concluded in a tired voice: Life must be read through the scars, like those scars you now carry on your body and in your soul. If I were to be reborn, I would want to enter the world covered in scars.
On hearing these words, the sergeant burst into tears. The priest descended from his pulpit in order to comfort him:
Are you unhappy because you’ve lost your hands? It wasn’t just now that you lost them. You lost your body the moment you arrived in Africa.
On days of infernal heat, Rudolfo continued, it is not we who sweat through the pores in our skin. It’s the devil. Was the sergeant not recognizable from the smell emanating from him? And why not? Because the sweat wasn’t his, that sulfurous odor didn’t belong to him. It didn’t belong to him or to anyone else. There hadn’t been anyone inside the soldier for a long time now. In this way, the less body we have, the lighter the death we’ll have to face. Do you understand, my son? Bewildered, the poor sergeant didn’t understand a word. But no matter how obscure all this seemed to him, it came laden with a kind of divine allure. The Portuguese nodded his head respectfully.
There was, however, no need to feel depressed. While all this might have the resemblance of misfortune, it had its benign aspect as well, the priest declared by way of a conclusion. He should think of the obvious advantages: He would be released from his military service. And he would be sent back to Portugal without his uniform and the obligation to kill.
Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what any soldier dreams of? To go home?
I don’t know, Father. I’ve been so confused, the sergeant replied, holding back his tears.
What for Rudolfo was a word of comfort sounded to me like a punishment. The thought of Germano returning to Portugal hurt like a dagger thrust to my chest. To return is a strange verb. One who returns does so because he is awaited. And the sergeant did not have anyone waiting for him on the other side of the ocean.
I don’t know what I want anymore, Germano added. I want Imani, I want my hands, I want to return, I want to stay.
With all these doubts of his, it was essential that his evacuation to the garrison at Chicomo should be avoided at all costs. If Germano turned up there, at the military post, damaged and debilitated, he would be transferred immediately to Lourenço Marques. And from there they would repatriate him to Lisbon, far away from me. This was what I argued with heart and soul before the hesitant sergeant. The priest calmed me down:
We’re not going to send him to the garrison at Chicomo. He will be safer at the Swiss hospital. There are no Portuguese there.
Even Bibliana considered this the best course of action. Although noticeably better, Germano de Melo was still assailed by fever and delirium. The sorceress had done as much as she could. The patient bore with him spirits from across the ocean.
Send the patient to those who pray, Bibliana declared.
Throughout the region, the Swiss Protestants were known as “those who pray.” Local folk listened to their singing in large, tuneful choruses during Sunday services. According to Bibliana, the great energy of those sonorous voices can be explained by the fact that whites only worship one god. In their songs, they are comforting their god condemned to eternal solitude. And it is out of shame that they close their eyes when they sing his praise. So that God isn’t revealed to them as being fragile and wanting.
* * *
There was an additional reason for hastening Germano de Melo’s departure from Sana Benene. The priest mentioned it as he tore a page from the missal in order to roll a cigarette. It was not tobacco that he was preparing, but mbangue leaves and seeds, which he smoked without any remorse, arguing that it was God who had sown this miraculous plant.
The first puffs flooded the church with a sweet, intoxicating aroma. With a voice masked by coughing, the priest declared:
There are soldiers coming …
I sighed resignedly. There were too many soldiers there already. There were nothing but soldiers in those bushlands: blacks, whites, children and the elderly, the living and the dead, all of them carrying weapons. The priest guessed my silent doubts and explained:
They are our soldiers, the Portuguese. They arrive tomorrow, led by Santiago Mata, a man devoid of a human soul.
Then he held out the weed for the sergeant, who refused the offer energetically, raising his truncated arms as if a revolver were being pointed at him. The priest smiled indulgently. And he spluttered rather more than he spoke as he said:
Tomorrow, you’d better hide in the sacristy. Your superiors are going to want to take you to Chicomo.
* * *
My brother Mwanatu looked like a ghost when he appeared at the door of the church. He was excited, his eyes
seeming bigger than his face. Before coming in, he did a kind of military salute and then, standing before the altar, he did the sign of the cross over his stomach. After this, he opened and closed his mouth without producing any sound whatsoever. The priest scolded him impatiently:
For God’s sake, Mwanatu, you don’t even cross yourself correctly!
Father, my brother stammered, I want to say you something …
It’s not “say you something.” It’s “tell you something” …
Our father joined us, approaching from the rear of the building. Dragging his feet, he walked up to his son and examined his face with the curiosity of an eagle. He was obliged to wait until my brother managed to articulate a word.
Sergeant, something terrible has happened, Mwanatu eventually announced. Nkokolani no longer exists. They killed everyone, they burned everything.
The shock of this news caused me to collapse on the stone paving of the church. During the long silence that ensued, I lay on the floor as if searching for some earthly remnant of reality. I crumbled flakes of paint between my fingers that had fallen from the wall. To everyone’s surprise, Mwanatu spoke again in a voice that was firm and serene:
I’m going there.
Where? my father, Katini Nsambe, asked.
I’m going to Nkokolani to bury our dead.
You are a man, but I am your father. I’m the last of the Nsambes. I’m the one who must go and lay the land to rest.
However, Mwanatu had everything planned. He had spoken to some fishermen who were waiting for him down at the landing stage. He had a bag, packed and ready, at the door. Our father could go later. Father Rudolfo would get a place for him in another boat.
