by Mia Couto
Now let’s pray for those who died, my brother urged.
I looked at Mwanatu as if I no longer knew him. Something must die in order for us to reveal ourselves reborn and integral. My weak, doltish brother now reemerged as a calm, eloquent man.
Returning from his feverish ravings, the sergeant took his young sentry in a leisurely embrace. Then, in a fraternal tone, he advised him:
Take that uniform off, Mwanatu. It could be dangerous. You could be taken for a Portuguese soldier.
I am a Portuguese soldier. I’m not going to abandon my weapon, and he pointed to the rifle leaning by the entrance to the church.
Did you bring that from Nkokolani? the sergeant asked. Why on earth did you do that? That weapon doesn’t work. It never did.
Yes, it does. Who said it doesn’t work?
My father held out his arm and helped me to my feet. It was only then that I noticed the tears streaming down my face. Wipe that face of yours, my father ordered. Crying in a church shows a lack of respect. Then he addressed my brother:
If the VaNguni have already buried our dead, you know what you’ve got to do. Dig them up and proceed according to our traditions.
I shall do that, Father.
We knew how the VaNguni treated those they had defeated. They were to be humiliated even in death. They buried us, the VaChopi, just as they did with slaves: They would wrap them in a mat and throw them into a common grave. The bottom of this anonymous hole was covered with other slaves in their death throes, legs broken. On top of this heap of dead and dying, they threw earth which, in the end, they stamped on persistently, to leave no indication that the soil there had been disturbed. This was how they proceeded. And there was a purpose to it: Without a grave, they made sure that the slaves left no recollection. Otherwise the living memory of the dead would haunt their masters forever.
And what shall I do with Mother? Mwanatu asked.
With Mother? I asked, astonished.
If they killed her, where shall I bury her?
Mother had died months before. I didn’t correct him. At that moment, reality was of little importance. And our father, Katini Nsambe, seemed to share my reaction when he solemnly declared:
If they killed her, I am the one who will bury her. Leave that task for when I get there.
* * *
Mwanatu was sitting polishing his boots. This was the last of his tasks before departure. He looked at me lingeringly and commented that, seen against the sunlight, I reminded him of our mother.
It wasn’t the first time Mwanatu had confused me. He was inventing this likeness to protect himself from his inexplicable fears. The greatest of these fears was an old one. When he was little, he was scared I would go away. When I read him stories, he, overcome by a sudden fit, shouted for me to stop.
I never told you why, Mwanatu commented, putting his boots down. I was scared you would disappear into the book and never come back.
Didn’t you enjoy the stories?
Stories always have an end.
It might be a nice ending.
But it was always an outcome, he commented. Then the vast silence of leave-taking gripped us, that full stop that ends all stories we never tell.
I’ve got a favor to ask you, sister. Let me take your shoelaces. I’ll give you mine.
I agreed. I slowly undid my laces, ignoring the strangeness of his request. When, at last, we completed the exchange, Mwanatu declared:
Now you’ll show me the way, sister.
Then we joined the others in order that we should all go down together to where the boat was moored. Mwanatu went in front. I followed in his footprints as if no one had ever passed that way before.
* * *
On the little wooden jetty, as Mwanatu and I hugged each other, my voice failed me. Farewell is never a word. It is a bridge built of silence. The dugout disappeared around the bend in the river, swallowed by the dusk. I stayed on the bank waving, wrapped in a sudden shiver of cold.
And then everyone began to walk back to Sana Benene. I remained on the landing stage with the sergeant. For the first time, I took the initiative:
Come with me, Germano.
In silence, we waded into the tepid waters of the Inharrime. I told him I wanted a river to weep in. He hugged me clumsily and my shoulders shuddered, insecure but happy. Then the Portuguese suggested that we plunge into the river and remain underwater until we could no longer hold our breath. And that was what we did. When our lungs were bursting, we both returned to the surface. The Portuguese murmured: Now kiss me. I hesitated. A drop of water glimmered on the lips of the Portuguese. Our lips touched.
This is what the first kiss should be like, Germano said.
It was a kiss of hope and despair, as if each of us sought in the other a last breath of air.
This is what the first kiss should be like, he repeated.
The first?
All kisses. All kisses are the first.
19
SERGEANT GERMANO DE MELO’S FIFTH LETTER
There is an old legend in Goa that tells the story of an island and a boat. A fisherman was wrecked and sought refuge on a desert island. There he remained for years, shrouded in a permanent mist that robbed him of his horizon. One day, he realized that there was in fact no island. He was living on a boat. He hadn’t noticed it before because he was blind. So blind that he hadn’t even noticed he’d stopped seeing. Some time later, the fisherman was bitten by a gigantic fish. Then he realized that the boat where he was living was, in fact, the remains of one at the bottom of the sea. He discovered that he wasn’t just blind. He was dead.
That was what was happening to us. We were dead in our exile in the African interior.
—A TALE TOLD BY FATHER RUDOLFO
Sana Benene, October 2, 1895
Dear Lieutenant Ayres de Ornelas,
For over two months now I have been stranded in the place, which, as the priest says, isn’t a place at all. Bianca announced that she cannot take it anymore, and that she is going to leave at the first opportunity. I am also sick of it, tired. Yet I do not want to leave Sana Benene. Imani’s sweet company holds me here. I cannot say that I have completely given up on my dream of returning to Portugal, the gift you so generously promised me, sir. I am divided. And these letters constitute the bridge between my conflicting desires.
Maybe this is why something strange and new is happening to me. Whenever I sit down in front of my papers, I find myself making the sign of the cross before writing. As if writing were a temple in which I found shelter from my inner demons. Do not therefore worry about answering me, sir. To write is an intransitive verb, my way of praying. And whoever prays knows there is no answer.
I spoke to Imani, sir, about your promise to take me back to Portugal as soon as you gained your promotion. She wanted to know what I had replied. I told her the truth. That I had first said yes, and then no. At first, Imani’s reaction was surprising. Whispering, her lips brushing my ear, she asked: Don’t you want to go back home? I replied that, for me, home no longer existed. For that reason, there was no going back. Then she added that if my love was strong, I should devise a solution that would enable her to travel as well.
My heart was stifled by an age-old suspicion. Without mincing my words, I asked her if her love for me was greater than her desire to escape. The girl smiled and answered evasively that those two desires were one and the same. Then she walked off, smiling to herself, leaving me with a doubt, the uncertainty I have already told you about. Am I being used so that Imani can get away from her native land? Is her surrender to me, along with all the dreams she had given me, merely make-believe? I can guess your answer, but would prefer that you keep it to yourself. I shall preserve my beliefs and passions intact. I learned from Bianca that love is a fire. When it’s good, you come out of it singed.
I shall disobey you because of love, whether or not that love is false or true: I shall go to the Swiss hospital in spite of your wish that I should not, sir. That
is what I shall do. And I am already aching from an anticipated yearning for the people who became the family that I never had. When I told Father Rudolfo about my nostalgia, he wrinkled his nose. And he said he no longer believed in love, yearning, or unselfish surrender. He didn’t believe in anyone, even less so since he had made my acquaintance. Offended, I asked him to explain.
I read the letters you left scattered around in your room, the priest revealed. And then, his arms folded inside his sleeves, he asked: Is there nothing you want to confess to me?
I was still recovering from the shock of the priest’s revelation when he took from the sleeve of his cassock something that I assumed at first to be a crucifix. Only afterwards did I realize it was a pistol. I raised my arms while Rudolfo contemplated the heavens and spoke:
God gave me this weapon. Even the Creator knew that words were not enough in lands that were so full of dangers and transgressions.
You can’t have read my mail! I still dared to exclaim.
With his finger on the trigger, he twirled the gun clumsily around while he reminded me of our correspondence.
You revealed secrets about this parish, you denigrated people whose only concern was to look after your welfare. You even got to the point of suggesting that the Portuguese should keep a watch on Bibliana. You should be ashamed. That woman gave you back the hands you now want to stab her with?
I confess, sir, that I have never felt greater grief. And the priest didn’t stop there:
Your boss asks you to find the rebels. Do we call rebels those who fight us in order that we shouldn’t steal their land? Have you never asked yourself whether that is not the precise reason why we are here: to steal these peoples’ land?
These peoples’ land was stolen a long time ago.
The priest didn’t seem to have heard me. For he kept gazing upward while upbraiding me sarcastically:
Now you can certainly tell your friend the lieutenant that there are weapons in this church.
All of a sudden, he tossed the pistol into my arms.
Keep it, he advised me. You had better be armed, because here everyone wants to kill you. And if they let you go on living, it’s because they need you to help them kill others like you.
I got up and as I was about to walk away, I realized I didn’t want to go anywhere. I fell helplessly to my knees, and cried my eyes out on that red sand. I cried as I had never cried before.
I found succor at last in Father Rudolfo’s words. During his entire priesthood in Mozambique, he had witnessed incidents of such atrocity that one would need a whole new language to describe them. He had seen blood flowing down the swords of the Europeans. He had seen blood being wiped from the spears of tribes massacring other tribes.
Our attire is of no use, he concluded sadly. Let us throw away our cassock and uniform.
Then he invited me to sit down again. He had a memory he wanted to share with me. He recalled that a long time before, when he still celebrated mass, a Portuguese soldier passed through Sana Benene and sought confession. But the man was not forthcoming, and with a furtive look merely said, I don’t know. And he shook his head as if trying to escape from bad thoughts. Then he got up and went to the door, avoiding any eye contact with the parish priest of Sana Benene. As he left, his face fell, and he muttered: I don’t know how many I killed, I lost count. With their heads hung, the priest and the penitent remained without moving, incapable of looking at each other or exchanging a word. When we lose count of how many we have killed, there is no longer any sin, no longer any God. The soldier tried to cross himself but halted mid-gesture as if he had given up. The moment he turned the corner, a shot was heard. That was the first time Rudolfo saw the young soldier’s eyes. After that, the priest never again had the courage to receive anyone’s confession.
That was what had happened. And perhaps somewhere in the priest’s soul it was still happening. That was that, and he slapped his hands on his knees, bringing that particular story to a close.
Fortunately, God has brought us other gifts by way of compensation, Rudolfo declared. Take my Bibliana’s body, have you had a good look at Bibliana?
I cautiously avoided an answer. The priest challenged me: Let me ask you, my friend, to take an imaginary journey with me. First, I should picture an attack on a village. In the midst of this imagined scenario a woman, in panic, was attempting to escape from the fury of the attackers. At the height of her despair, the only refuge this woman could find was in a burning hut. By turning herself into a flaming torch, she escaped her assailants.
The priest was, of course, talking about Bibliana. Underneath her old clothes, her body was all burnt, a large area of her skin was lifeless, like a lizard’s scales. This was the expression he used while he rubbed his fingers together as if the words were burning his hands.
The priest got up at last, and an odor of decay seeped from his vestments. Noticing my wry expression, he explained his grubbiness, saying he did not have water to wash with. For it was the inside of him that was rotting away: He was made of two halves that did not fit easily together. In India, he had been taught from birth to recognize the caste of the untouchables. The filth that he carried in his soul had now become a contagious illness. He had turned into an untouchable himself.
They say we are surrounded by enemies. But it is not the presence of others that threatens us. It is our own absence. That is what Father Rudolfo most lamented: the nonexistence of our authorities. He had traveled the vastness of the African interior from end to end, and all he had seen was a vast emptiness. Throughout these bushlands, the only people who in fact governed here were Gungunhane’s indunas. Apart from anything else, these kaffir agents of authority were the only ones who collected taxes. And it was they who received foreign emissaries. It was to these native authorities that Portuguese officials—such as the intendant, Counselor José d’Almeida—directed their requests for mining concessions. The Portuguese presence was so nonexistent that the intendant addressed Gungunhane as “Your Majesty.” For his part, the African king called the Portuguese “chickens” or “white Shangaan.”
I shall not take up any more of your time, sir. This account is already long and exhaustive. And I tell you all these things to show you how indifferent I have become to all these heated debates. I do not care who is in charge. For I am governed by other forces. The only law I obey is called love. It goes by the name of Imani Nsambe.
I do not know whether I shall be able to maintain this correspondence. The tiny stock of ink I found in the sacristy is running out. At Nkokolani, the only request I had for visitors was that they should bring me new pots of ink. Who can I ask now? I thought of using water. Writing with water? you may ask, sir, believing me to be still in the throes of some feverish hallucination. The truth is that the water at Sana Benene is so dirty that my handwriting would be easy to read. But yesterday the problem was solved when Imani brought me a pot of liquid of undefined hue, but which looked like some form of scarlet dye. She asked me to keep it a secret, but I cannot resist telling you: These letters have been written with an infusion of leaves and bark to which Imani told me she had added her own blood. In reality, what you are reading, sir, is the blood of a black woman.
20
THE WANDERING SHADOWS OF SANTIAGO MATA
Having reached its zenith, the kingdom of the VaNguni is on the point of collapsing completely. Nor could it be otherwise. This is the history of all dynasties founded on crime and terror. But in spite of everything, I am fond of Ngungunyane; in spite of his cruelty, I cannot but feel attached to him.
—GEORGES LIENGME, SWISS DOCTOR
We awoke to the sound of gunfire. We quickly crowded under the protective roof of the church. The priest placated us:
They must be Portuguese soldiers. They are killing heads of cattle.
In the beginning, Portuguese soldiers would even trade food for clothes. Now they would point their rifles at the owners of herds of cattle and tell them to choose between life and deat
h.
It was strange that the Portuguese used the term “heads of cattle.” For we also call slaves tinhloko, which means “heads.” Stranger still was my getting used to the notion that the VaNguni had less regard for a human being than for an ox.
The priest’s explanation allayed our fears. If they were Portuguese soldiers, there would be no danger. And we were beginning to disperse when a young boy with a startled expression rushed up with the news that one of those Portuguese boats, a blockhouse, had attacked the dugout in which Mwanatu was traveling. All the occupants had been killed. My brother’s corpse was floating in the waters of the Inharrime.
Terrible though it was, I was hardly surprised by the news. I felt the same shiver run through me as when we had passed the nwamulambu, on our own journey up the river. My eyes clouded over, but I knew that my brother had sought this end. It wasn’t the dead of Nkokolani that Mwanatu was going to bury. He wanted to feel the embrace of those who had already departed.
My self-control contrasted with the emotional reaction of my companions. My father wandered aimlessly around the yard like a blind man facing the heavens. After a while, he paused, leaned against the trunk of a tree, and sobbed out loud. Father Rudolfo tore off his cassock and threw it to the ground. Dressed only in his drawers, he stamped on it and kicked it. The sergeant forgot his physical discomfort and used what was left of his hands to conceal his tears from the others. Bianca, the Italian woman, asked us to gather together and pray. Attracted by our lamentations, Bibliana abandoned the kitchen and came over to the yard to comfort us.
This was when we heard, first, the sound of footsteps on the march, and then an order given in Portuguese:
Stay where you are!
A group of three white and six black Portuguese soldiers emerged from the trees. They had the arrogant bearing of those who own the world. Leading them was a captain, who identified himself as Santiago Mata. They had just disembarked from the blockhouse and immediately admitted that it was they who had fired on Mwanatu’s dugout. They had confused the boat and assumed its crew to be VaNguni fugitives. In the face of Rudolfo’s desperate protest, the captain argued:
