The Sword and the Spear

by Mia Couto

  * * *

  The ocean had been saved. Ngungunyane had survived. But many of her sons had died by poisoning.

  I spent so many sleepless nights waiting for them to bring me the news, Impibekezane confessed.

  I told her I didn’t understand. She explained that she had taken part in the decision to poison them.

  Let me speak, she defended herself when she saw my look of utter disgust. Don’t judge me before you have listened to me.

  Those sons of hers were going to die anyway. They would end up losing their lives in a long, slow process of carnage. They would be riddled with bullets, stabbed, cut to pieces. But it was always a mother’s blood that the soil absorbed. She had lived through the bitter experience of the succession wars between her husband Muzila and her brother-in-law Mawewe. They were years of hatred and bloodletting. She wanted anything but those barbaric acts to be repeated endlessly and for no reason. It was hardly her fault. She wished she had played a greater part in it. But the choice had been made long before she came along, and was far beyond her powers. They would always kill those of their own blood. The only prerogative she had was to choose who would survive.

  That’s why you shouldn’t look at me like this, she concluded severely. Ask your European friends how they chose their kings, ask them how much poison flowed at their royal banquets.

  It was Sanches de Miranda, the Mafambatcheca, who had told her. The history of the whites, according to him, was no more unsullied than that of the Africans.

  Early tomorrow morning we’ll go to Sana Benene, the queen decreed. You will go there, my daughter, to bid your folk farewell. And you will fetch your shoes.

  That night I found it hard to get to sleep. They put me in a hut where half a dozen other so-called little wives slept. When they saw me enter, they huddled together in a corner. I could see their venomous eyes even in the dark. I was haunted by sleeplessness until morning broke. By the time the first rays of sunlight burst through, I had already decided to tear my own past up by the roots. I was facing the same cruel decision that had tortured Queen Impibekezane so harshly. I had to choose who would survive within me.

  38

  EIGHTH LETTER FROM LIEUTENANT AYRES DE ORNELAS

  The memory of a distant homeland

  Timeless but forgotten and we unsure

  Whether foregone in the past or future.

  —SOPHIA DE MELLO BREYNER ANDRESEN

  Manjacaze, November 9, 1895

  Dear Sergeant Germano de Melo,

  I have been scribbling this letter for some days now. I began writing it from where I had written to you so many times before: the sad and gloomy Manjacaze. The place was the same. Everything else had changed. I have returned to my military duties, I have returned to myself. I give thanks to the heavens that we have at last broken off the talks that we held right here with the king of the Vátuas. The negotiations were a hoax, an endless delay in implementing decisions. Did the man want war? Well, he was going to get war, and to a degree that he had never imagined. The battles at Marracuene and Magul were just a prelude to an odyssey that would be inscribed in the annals of our history.

  My merits were naturally acknowledged at last and, as I have already told you, I was included in the organization of the military offensive that took place at Coolela. It is a pity that you, my dear sergeant, are so far away, at the Chicomo garrison. For you would have experienced the same pride I felt as I watched the parade of our military might. First came a battalion of nine hundred troops of the line recently arrived from Europe. These were followed by other infantry and artillery battalions. They brought with them ten field guns and two machine guns. Munitions for the infantry amounted to two million cartridges. A military parade of these dimensions had never been seen before in our African domains. This unique spectacle was witnessed by thousands of loyal kaffirs (how do we know who is loyal in these remote parts of the world?), and the parade reached its climax with the arrival of the cavalry squadron commanded by the famous Mouzinho de Albuquerque. It is true that the horses are few, badly trained, and scrawny. But the appearance of our dragoons caused a wave of excitement among the rabble. The kaffirs ran alongside the horses with puerile enthusiasm and those who were already adults gained the eyes and laughter of children.

  All this accumulation of war matériel was transported two weeks ago to the lagoon at Belele, where we established a provisional base. It is going to be carnage! That is what I thought as I inspected our weaponry.

  But weaponry is not enough to initiate a battle. What we lacked was an enemy. Colonel Galhardo followed Caldas Xavier’s instructions to the letter. The secret was for us only to take the initiative once the enemy had switched from defense to attack. In the words of Mouzinho de Albuquerque, when Caldas Xavier conceived this tactic, he was inspired by the arts of the seductress. She flutters around the man she has chosen, waiting for him to eventually take the initiative. Ever mordant, ever quick-witted, our dear Mouzinho de Albuquerque!

  The fact is that the enemy didn’t appear for days. But once again, the wisdom of Colonel Galhardo prevailed. It would be foolish to leave our encampment and march under the intense rain that lashed us every day. It would be even more foolish, indeed it would be a strategic error, to advance through flooded thickets bursting with enemy forces.

  Galhardo was right. But it was a bitter decision to have to carry out. Once again, our troops were at a standstill, victims of the weight of our war matériel. As the days passed, I began to feel less enthusiastic about the splendid quality of our artillery. We were equipped with sword and cannon. It would be better if we benefited from the lightness of the spear.

  In order to raise the men’s spirits, Colonel Galhardo ordered two columns to advance on enemy territory. We were only giving the appearance of ignoring Caldas Xavier’s instructions. For our platoons did not engage with military targets. What we did was to attack and destroy villages. Our intention was not to kill civilians but to seize livestock and food supplies. And by doing this, we calmed our spirits and raised our morale. Until one sun-filled morning we decided to move our forces toward the lagoon at Coolela. It would be better to suffer the nightmare of advancing our heavy war matériel than to watch it rot away in the marshes where we had camped. On this sunlit morning, the Portuguese flag fluttered over the shimmering heathland and the bugles sounded in defiance of the African deities.

  After a day’s march, we camped at the top of a dune looking out over the Maguanhana lagoon. We adopted the usual square formation, protected in its entirety by a barrier of barbed wire.

  I was designated to go and carry out some reconnaissance of the area. Guess who was chosen to accompany me? No less than your friend Captain Santiago Mata. We rode out on our horses under a burning sun. Barely fifteen minutes had passed when we caught sight of the village and birthplace of Impibekezane, Gungunhane’s mother. Conscious that I was in an area that was too exposed, I ordered us to return immediately to the camp. The captain promptly refused. And he confronted me with an arrogant demeanor: As far as he was concerned, we had not carried out a sufficiently detailed exploration.

  What’s this, Lieutenant? Are we strolling around the Rossio Square looking at shopwindows?

  These were his exact words. No one has ever been so rude to me before. And I made sure the captain knew it. When we returned to the base, Santiago apologized, ashamed that he had been so discourteous.

  Early the following morning, we only left behind the baggage that might slow us down. Two prisoners we took along the way confirmed that the headman was in his garrison (which the Vátuas call a kraal), with a large contingent of troops. We were going over the final details of our plan, after having taken our place once more among the body of troops preparing for battle, when some dozen auxiliaries rushed towards us shouting that enemy soldiers were approaching:

  Hi fikile Nyimpi ya Ngungunyane! they yelled. Gungunhane’s troops are here.

  Suddenly, as if by magic, the hordes of Vátuas appeared, tho
usands of them, running with short, rapid steps and venting angry, rhythmic shouts. It was such a vast throng that the glint of their spears blinded us momentarily. These intimidating hordes gathered in a kind of crescent formation extending for more than a kilometer. Suddenly, we lost sight of our auxiliaries. They were rooted to the ground, terrified by the Vátua show of force. And even Xiperenyane’s soldiers had been swallowed up by the thick elephant grass. We were all that remained, we Europeans and Angolans, confined in our tiny square. That four-sided human shape was a spider’s web about to face a typhoon.

  Then that whole devilish multitude of fanatics advanced upon us like some terrifying tidal wave. Although most of the kaffirs were armed with spears and shields, a fair proportion of them held rifles which, luckily for us, they fired chaotically. Arrows rained down on our position and it seemed as if a cloud had darkened the African skies once and for all. A few moments later, our field guns boomed and the assailants retreated. This retreat only lasted a few minutes. Or was it hours? How does one count time when death is the only clock? I know that those terrible squadrons that call themselves Buffalos and Crocodiles turned and advanced upon us once again. They crossed the waterlogged areas that surrounded us, their feet so caked with mud that they seemed to be advancing shod in boots, just as we were. That vision confirmed my own fears: Those men were not warriors, but were issuing from the earth itself.

  The gunfire was so intense and the smoke so thick that no marksman could choose his target with any certainty. They fired against shadows and what they thought they saw turned out to be other shadows spinning through the mist before sinking into the ground. And so, for a moment, our soldiers perhaps thought of themselves as floating patches of fog, smoke amid the general smoke. And what we call courage may have been no more than a fiction of this temporary delirium.

  The battle lasted little more than half an hour. Just as had happened at Magul, it was the machine guns that dictated the outcome of the confrontation. With the same wonder I feel when I hear my heart beat, I can still remember the efficiency of the machine gun, this formidable instrument of modern warfare which cuts the enemy troops down at a rate of five hundred rounds a minute. The VaNguni hosts, who totaled some twelve thousand troops, fled in disarray.

  We did not celebrate immediately. After a moment of disbelief, the sound of cheering resounded and hats were thrown into the air. It had been such an unlikely victory that we thought it had resolved the entire war. And we rejoiced so vigorously that at first we forgot to mourn our losses.

  In the center of our square, Mouzinho de Albuquerque could be seen. There he was, as rigid as a statue. He remained as he had been throughout the combat: stock-still, on foot, in the thick of it, bullets whistling past him. At his feet lay his horse, covered in blood.

  Once the euphoria of victory had died down, it was time to take stock: Some ten white soldiers had died, and there were about thirty wounded. And when everyone had joined together in military formation to honor the fallen for the last time, I have to confess to a moment of weakness. I walked away to stand next to a cart so as not to see or be seen. But I could not get away from the sounds of the improvised funeral ceremony.

  In the absence of a chaplain, it was Colonel Galhardo in person who called for a prayer. And it was then, as I looked around, listening to my comrades in the distance honoring the dead, that I saw Captain Santiago Mata hiding under a cart. Perhaps he was hiding there for the same reasons as before, when he had soiled his uniform, who knows?

  I lingered on the description of this episode because at that moment I asked myself how sure we can be of the loyalty of our own comrades in arms. But there was no time for further misgivings.

  As always, there was much urgency in organizing our withdrawal from those wastelands, and Colonel Galhardo issued speedy instructions for us to march back to Chicomo.

  Turn back? What we should do is advance on Manjacaze, protested Captain Mouzinho.

  In the face of such opposition, all the colonel could do was to explain himself. There was no point in besmirching our brilliant triumph with a mistake, no matter how insignificant that might be. Did we know who had been in command of Gungunhane’s forces? His own son Godido, and his uncle Queto. Our action at Coolela was not only a military victory. It was a slap in the face for the king of Gaza himself.

  All this is not enough, Colonel. Wars are not won with slaps in the face.

  That is my final word on the matter. We return to the garrison. I don’t want to take risks.

  Mouzinho muttered between his teeth. Maybe Galhardo heard his final comment: I don’t know how one can command without taking risks.

  39

  A ROOF COLLAPSING UPON THE WORLD

  Only when you learn to love fear will you be a good wife.

  —THE WORDS OF QUEEN IMPIBEKEZANE

  We arrived at Sana Benene as evening was falling, and we headed for the church. There we found Father Rudolfo praying in front of the altar. Father Rudolfo felt a cloud of dust falling upon his shoulders. He peered up into the church’s beams and saw luminous flakes dancing through the air as if there had been a silent explosion high up there. Termites had been corroding the timber for ages, without him noticing. Placing his trust in the roof’s overall appearance, Rudolfo believed himself to be protected by eternity. To all who visited the church, the priest proudly showed off the robustness of the roof, in contrast to the decrepit walls and furnishings. It is the ceiling that makes a temple sacred.

  Now, however, the roof had begun to cave in. The beams were so hollow that they fell without warning, noiselessly, weightlessly. The timbers turned to dust in the air so that by the time they hit the floor, they had no substance at all. This was what enabled Father Rudolfo to survive. The doves escaped, flying out into the open air. But the bedazzled owls, blinded by the light that suddenly flooded through the large holes at the top of the building, flapped around the priest, who made a dash for the yard outside, hurriedly closing the doors behind him in the vain hope that the birds would not abandon the building. Having lost their habitual perches, the birds would have to find new places to land. It was too late. The birds of prey were already hovering over other roofs in search of new shelter.

  People are going to die, Rudolfo said with a sigh.

  But there was no one left at Sana Benene. Recovering from his fright, Rudolfo sat down and looked at the decapitated church. Then he got up and went down to the river carrying a bucket. It had rained intensely for two weeks, and the River Inharrime had almost burst its banks. Out of precaution, the priest avoided passing the landing stage. The timber might be as rotten as the roof beams. Kneeling on a rock and busy collecting water, Rudolfo Fernandes didn’t notice me, the queen, and a small retinue of people approaching along the path that he had just trodden.

  Curiously, the priest burst into tears when he recognized me. And it was in tears that he accompanied me to the dwellings. I imagined the worst. The queen indicated that she would wait for me down by the river. In the meantime, her bodyguard would buy fresh fish from any fisherman who might chance to pass that way.

  Where is Bibliana? I asked apprehensively, the moment we reached the church.

  Bibliana has gone. They’ve all gone. There’s no longer anyone left at Sana Benene, and he pointed at what was left of the church roof. Everything has collapsed, Imani.

  Where has Bibliana gone?

  She’s gone to the north. She went to the mouth of the River Save, to the place where they buried her brother. And there’s no point in your waiting for her. She won’t come back. Then he asked: Why did you want to speak to her?

  I want to be a black woman, Father.

  Are you crazy?

  I raised my hand to indicate gently but firmly that it was my turn to speak. I wanted to be initiated into my traditions. I wanted to be reborn into my language, my beliefs. I wanted to be protected by my ancestors, to speak to my dead, my mother and my brothers. I was tired of being different and of being viewed with a mixt
ure of envy and disdain. I was sick of hearing people say that I spoke Portuguese “without an accent.” What tired me most, however, was having no one with whom to laugh or cry.

  But what about the sergeant? Rudolfo wanted to know.

  I don’t know, Father. I’m scared of a love that asks so much of me. And apart from that, I don’t know where he is, I don’t know whether I shall see him again.

  I imagined the priest’s infinite sadness. He too might never meet Bibliana again. When I tried to console him, his reaction surprised me:

  Sadness? The fact is that I’m relieved, my daughter.

  I did not understand, it was impossible to understand. All that devoted love, all that self-denial, all that had suddenly disappeared? That was what I wanted to know. Rudolfo pointed at the church and said:

  It wasn’t time that destroyed the roof. It was the war.

  Did they attack the church?

  It was another war. It was the termites. Those cursed creatures have their own soldiers. And do you know why these soldiers are so efficient? Because they’re blind. Pray that your sweetheart never becomes a real soldier.

  I haven’t heard from Germano for a long time, Father. I was told he was at the garrison at Chicomo.

  Do you want to write to him? I can get you a messenger by tomorrow.

  I did not know what to answer. I confessed that I had come to see Bibliana. The priest replied:

  Even if she were here, she would be unable to see you, my daughter.

  The sorceress had fallen ill from a particular form of blindness. She saw through the eyes of the gods. And she was so sure of what she saw that the priest began to fear her. In her last days there, hundreds of wounded and refugees from the war had arrived at Sana Benene. And there were so many that the sorceress had taken it upon herself to put the world together again. Blacks, whites, men and women, slaves and the powerful, all were at fault. And she was the justice maker chosen by the God of the whites and the African gods. This is what Bibliana proclaimed before a terrified priest, who was unable to imagine an army commanded by the woman with whom he had shared his bed for years.