by Mia Couto
We begin to plan a few amusing escapades while she is scribbling the letter. Do you know what we are going to do? The two of us are going out and we are going to whistle as we walk down the street. For whistling is something that women are forbidden to do. That’s what people say in this land of yours: A woman who whistles is summoning witches. Well, Constança and I are going to whistle for witches.
I pray to God that you will come soon and in good health to be near this mother of yours, for you are now all I have left in this vale of tears. And I hope they have fed you well, for in my dreams you always appear very thin. Accept the thousand kisses I never gave you when I held you in my arms. From this, your loving mother.
I have transcribed this letter in its entirety because, more than just its content, I wanted to share with you just how much I both feared and yearned for this moment. It is not the gravity of the event that moves me. But it is a feeling of guilt. Not for having forgotten my family and my past. I am assailed by further guilt involving a secret about which I can only tell you, Lieutenant. In my locker at the Military College, I kept a photograph of someone I told everyone was my father. Except that it wasn’t. It was a career officer whose picture I cut out of an almanac. The image was false but my pride was real. In everybody’s eyes, I, like you, sir, was the inheritor of a noble family tradition. From lying so much and feeling the eyes of that unknown individual looking at me, I eventually forgot my real father’s face. I brought the photo of this unknown progenitor to Africa with me, and still have it in my sparse baggage. As you can see, sir, I am not lacking in an aristocratic past. I just invented that past for myself. Whether I hang it on the wall or keep it in my baggage, that other life of mine is, with all due respect, no less real than any other.
And I think that is all for now. Tomorrow, Imani will leave with her father to try to locate the place where they supposedly buried her brother Mwanatu. I hope what Santiago Mata told them is true. I hope they did bury him and that they find his grave. I even offered to accompany her, but neither Imani nor her father wanted my presence. Katini now does everything to prevent Imani and me from being together. He wants to prove to Bianca Vanzini that his promise to deliver his daughter up to her remains in force.
I made a remark to the priest on the insistence of the kaffirs in communicating with the dead as much as, or even more so, than with the living. Rudolfo explained what I already knew: The difference between the living and the dead lies purely in the extent of their presence. The dead man is cared for in order that he should never die. Whether one is above the ground or under it is no more than a minor detail. The soil of Africa is so full of life that all the dead want to remain buried. And I agree with him: In this part of the world, the earth isn’t a grave. It is just another home.
I confess that it was odd listening to such beliefs coming from the mouth of a priest. Then I recalled the inflammatory speeches of those who, in the name of the Homeland, sent me off to war. Successive generations, in the name of the sacred soil, have been hurled towards their deaths. I couldn’t resist proclaiming the following words: that I too had been taught to love a cemetery.
To have a homeland is something different, Father, I said.
The clergyman wanted to know what this was. I did not answer. I was busy thinking, more than anything else, about Imani. When she returns from her final farewell to her brother, we will travel together to the hospital at Manjacaze. Then we will go on to Lourenço Marques after my hands have been completely cured. Now that my father has died, my fate will be that of the angels: My arms will grow back again and I will have the same number of fingers that God gave me.
One of these days, I’ll answer my mother. And I shall announce that soon one of her other chairs will be occupied, with the arrival of her new daughter-in-law.
22
A LOCUST DECAPITATED
Such is the effect of hatred: not to recognize ourselves in those we despise.
—THE WORDS OF GRANDFATHER TSANGATELO
As evening fell and we finished our meal, Captain Santiago approached the great fig tree, where we had sought shelter. And he apologized for his previous behavior. He had been nervous, after weeks of traipsing around the bushlands in a fruitless search for the rebels Zixaxa and Mahazul. Ngungunyane had hidden them. According to him, in Africa they didn’t need thick forest to make someone invisible. People hid themselves within people.
That is why, the captain declared, it is necessary to kill hyenas and cats. And tigers, even though they don’t exist.
Santiago circled our table, catlike. No one spoke, no one raised their eyes. Countering our feelings of antipathy, the Italian woman pulled up a chair and invited the captain to join us. Dona Bianca didn’t understand that our silence was not a way of being absent. It was a prayer. In our silence, we were conversing with our dearly departed Mwanatu. Bianca Vanzini smiled at the Portuguese, and, pointing to the empty chair, said:
Sit down, Captain. My mother used to say, No one grows old sitting around the table.
The captain helped himself to a drink and remained silent, watching the clouds of insects fluttering around the oil lamps. I remembered our house at Nkokolani. The darkness was the same and from it emerged the same winged creatures, dazzled by the same lights. Here, however, there were so many that one could hear the crackling of bodies as they came into contact with the flames.
Have you ever eaten them, Father? Santiago asked. I’m told these locusts are good when grilled over a fire. I thought you, as a good pastor, would have shared your folks’ food.
The priest received this ironic comment with muttered curses. The captain asked him not to take it so seriously.
Don’t be like that, Santiago urged. At heart, we are all Portuguese and we are all in the same boat, waiting to be rescued by our cavalry.
No one here is waiting for a savior, the priest shot back. I’m a man of faith, but I can guarantee one thing: Here, even Christ would have thrown in the towel.
What a devil of a thing for a man of the cloth to say!
When you arrived, did you see some poles with fishing nets hanging from them down by the landing stage? Rudolfo Fernandes asked.
Until some time ago, there were human heads stuck on the ends of these poles. This was what the priest recalled in unhurried detail. They stayed there for days on end, exposed to the heat and flies as if they had been born like that, detached from the body and the life to which they had belonged.
Were they blacks or whites? Santiago asked.
Guess, Captain, guess.
It wasn’t me, my dear father, don’t blame me. He paused for a moment and then continued. And while we’re at it, between you and me, it’s much more comfortable for a dead man to have his head stuck on a pole than to have his body hanging on a cross.
Blinking hard, the captain laughed. But we all saw the fear his laughter concealed. Never again, the priest assured him, would the place be free of the smell of putrefaction that had poisoned it.
Santiago got up to walk over to one of the lamps. He seemed oblivious to the cloud of locusts flickering around his face.
So they want to find Zixaxa and Mahazul in order to punish them? Well, I think they should be given a reward. If it weren’t for the rebellion of those kaffirs, our army would still be away with the fairies.
Do you know what I would like? Bianca cut in, with a timid, conciliatory smile. I would like to live like this all the time, with all these soldiers here, but without there being a war at all.
In that case you’re in the right place at the right time, my dear lady! Santiago volunteered. The thing about wars is that there’s always a problem with them, Dona Bianca: To wage them, one needs an enemy. And we, thanks to that bunch of crooks in Lisbon, have an internal enemy that is much bigger than the one out there …
Everyone else said they didn’t want a conflict. As for Santiago, he prayed for a fight that would engulf all that sleaze and corruption. Father Rudolfo retorted:
No war has a b
ig enough mouth to swallow so much corruption. Wars are carpets, he added. All the dirty dealings of the powerful are swept under them.
* * *
We were preparing to retire to our quarters when we surprised Santiago Mata kneeling in prayer, his head almost touching the ground. When he saw us, he hunched his shoulders, embarrassed. Then he asked us to gather around him. He placed his hat on the ground and, lifting its brim, covered some locusts. Next, he scratched out a map in the sand with its compass points. A large circle showed Lourenço Marques; another farther up was Inhambane; and in the middle, a smaller circle represented Mandhlakazi. Then, sliding two fingers between the ground and the brim of his hat, he pulled out a first insect, to which he gave the name of António Enes. He placed it on Lourenço Marques, while addressing us:
What’s this creature doing? he asked, as he tore off its head. And he answered: He’s not doing anything. Or rather, he writes reports for others who don’t do anything.
With another locust struggling between his fingers, he proclaimed:
This one here is the commander of the Northern Column. It’s that faggot Colonel Galhardo. What’s this locust up to? Before giving his answer, Santiago pulled off the insect’s legs one by one. This is what’s happening, the scum isn’t moving. He’s scared stiff. He picked up his hat, shook the dust from it, and shooed away the remaining insects. Then he clicked his heels as if he were ordering us to disperse. But at that point a praying mantis landed on his gaiters. And as of one, we all rushed forward to protect the creature. The priest explained:
Not this one, Captain! This is an envoy of God.
Santiago Mata retorted with irony:
Then it must be Mouzinho, it must be him at the head of the column coming up from the south.
The mention of Mouzinho de Albuquerque brought a glint to Bianca’s eyes, and she begged him enthusiastically to describe this dashing dragoon, this prince she had been dreaming about for so long. Santiago Mata did not need to be asked twice—but he did not say who Mouzinho was; he limited himself to what Mouzinho was not. For instance, Captain Mouzinho was not like the other officers who proliferated in this part of the world, fat-necked and big-bellied. His gaunt, angular face stood out among the crowd. His demeanor, as he was mounted on his horse, was that of an angel of fire.
You would like him, dear lady.
You have no idea how much I like him already. But you, sir, are no less a man than this prince.
Then Santiago continued with his description of the cavalry officer. Apart from all these attributes of his, this great Portuguese was no novice in colonial affairs. Mouzinho had already been in Mozambique four years before as a district governor. And he was not like the others, who reconciled themselves with the widespread apathy. He asked to be exonerated from his post because he could not take the politics of “the slower the better.” He himself, Santiago Mata, had been contracted directly by him for an armed intervention which, as Mouzinho put it, could not be undertaken by the army.
So you were a mercenary, then, Rudolfo cut in.
There are terms we should avoid, my dear father. Let us say I was a member of a volunteer force that was directed to attack the encampments of Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company.
And Ngungunyane? I dared to ask, going against the flow of the conversation.
The captain gazed at me, perplexed. I was a young black woman. How did I dare to speak in that meeting? I changed the pronunciation and said the name in the way the Portuguese did: Gungunhane.
Do you know Gungunhane, sir? I persevered.
He replied that he did, but he didn’t feel like talking about that at the moment. Partly, he added, because it wasn’t the blacks who were the real enemy, with all due respect to those assembled here. The real adversary, according to Mata, was inside the fortress. And it was António Enes, the Portuguese Royal Commissioner.
Do you know what Mouzinho calls António Enes? Well, he calls him “Tsungo Khongolo,” which is the term that the blacks of Inhambane use to designate whites who think themselves important. This António Enes is the big chief of that band of parasitic locusts.
The discussion went on into the night. My father gradually slumped over the table, looking ever more closely at a glass of wine that had not been emptied. Bianca seemed to be nodding off, and only the sergeant was still following the dispute between Santiago and Rudolfo. According to Father Rudolfo, it wasn’t Mouzinho who would capture Ngungunyane. It was the blacks who would deliver him on a silver platter. The people who heaped praise on him today would stab him in the back tomorrow. And the priest concluded:
The emperor’s capture won’t be a feat of courage, but the product of betrayal.
The captain feigned not to hear, and said this to the sergeant:
They’ve been tending your injuries the kaffir way. Do you know the best cure? It’s called a machine gun.
It was with this cure that the Portuguese were going to blow away Ngungunyane’s warriors. It was a pity the sergeant was disabled. And the captain, still addressing Germano in the same defiant tone, added:
If you hadn’t been crippled, you’d come with us and sniff the gunpowder. There isn’t a better drug, my friend. We sniff it once and we’re addicted.
23
SERGEANT GERMANO DE MELO’S SEVENTH LETTER
What is said of our cruelty
is not so much that we kill
but that we prevent people from living.
—THE WORDS OF FATHER RUDOLFO
Sana Benene, October 12, 1895
Dear Lieutenant Ayres de Ornelas,
I do not know, sir, what I can say in answer to my mother. What does one say to a mother when one loses a father? What is there to say when that father never existed? There are some who say distance causes sentiments to fade. It is not true. Far from home, everything is born anew. And there are pains that I do not want born again.
What my mother hopes I will say is that I shall soon return. I do not know, though, what my fate may be. As I have already said, I do not want to return without Imani. And if my homeland is still the way I left it, then the only thing that would make me return would be my mother. Who knows whether I can’t arrange for her to come to Africa and enable her to find herself again as a mother and grandmother of the children I shall have with Imani?
However, for me, sir, all skies are cloudy and nebulous. For if Portugal does not appear auspicious, the same somber doubts begin to form when I think of making my life in Africa. What will I do in these backlands, in a war that will continue even after it seems to have finished? Parading before me, I see Father Rudolfo, who has forgotten about God; Captain Santiago, who has forgotten about the army; Counselor Almeida, who runs his affairs as if he himself were Portugal. I see all this and I ask myself what other choice I have but to become like them. Or whether, in spite of the circumstances, I can become the father I never had myself.
I imagine you do not want to waste your time with these trivial digressions. Nevertheless, I cannot resist telling you of a fantasy that I constantly relive. In the dream, I see myself as clearly as if it is really happening, following the course of the River Inharrime on foot from its mouth to its source. I am making the journey with the sole purpose of bringing a gift for the emperor Gungunhane. This is how things are done in Africa: Gifts are brought for the great chiefs. For days on end, I carry in my arms an enormous jellyfish, whose watery body scintillates under the burning sun. I hurry because I want to deliver the animal alive and still moving its gelatinous tentacles. I am aware of the terror the Negro has of creatures from the sea. My intention is that the almighty Vátua ruler will not survive the surprise and will surrender in the face of this fearsome creature. With the aid of this gift, at once deadly and delicate, I shall defeat the greatest enemy of Portugal without arms or bloodshed. It is this patriotic purpose that causes me to march for days and days, aware of the advance of turbulent waves behind me, flooding the African hinterlands with an endless ocean.
When I kneel at the emperor’s feet, I realize that the medusa’s venom has dissolved my hands. My fingers flop to the ground along with the jellyfish’s tentacles. The monarch smiles disdainfully, and orders me to collect my bits and pieces and return to the ocean. He tells me to enjoy myself while I am awaited. I reply that no one is waiting for me. Then the king of Gaza makes the following declaration: Someone is always waiting for you even though you don’t know it. The sea is vast, one enters and leaves it without having to ask for authorization. There is no law nor lord in all that immensity. That is why I hate the ocean and curse all its creatures. Those are Gungunhane’s words, words that invariably bring my dream to a close.
Forgive me, sir, for these garbled confessions. But if my soul is already weakened, I am also taking leave of my body now. I repeat what I have already mentioned to you, namely that I shall not present myself at Chicomo, in spite of the risk of punishment. I shall go to Manjacaze with Imani, and await the judgment of the Swiss doctor. Later, I shall tell you what happens. It will be a miracle if the remains of what were my hands are ever any use to me again. In order to treat me, Georges Liengme, the missionary and doctor, will have to resort to God rather than to science.
24
ONE TEAR, DOUBLE SADNESS
The world is a river. It is born and dies all the time.
—THE WORDS OF CHIKAZI MAKWAKWA
Monotony increases time’s girth. It was enough to have the company, however unwelcome, of Captain Santiago Mata, for that day to pass by more speedily. The first night, birds could be heard and people were already bidding each other good night when the captain decided to call Bianca Vanzini to one side. I heard the soldier’s honeyed voice:
