The Fury and Cries of Women

by Angèle Rawiri

  Sweat was dripping from Emilienne’s armpits and thighs. The banging thump her heart was making resounded like a drum in her eardrums. Joseph’s voice was now striking her ears like a threat coming at her from afar.

  “Do you understand why I disappear from home for weeks at a time? I am attempting to assume my fatherly role. For some time now, I’ve been thinking about bringing them home with me, here, so that we could all be together. Their mother would not object. She would see them when she wished.”

  “Stop! Stop, I beg you.”

  EMILIENNE WENT OUT, dressed in her transparent nightgown, her hair tousled, and barefoot. She opened the door to the kitchen and rushed into the muggy warmth of the night. Incapable of controlling her panic-stricken steps, she walked in circles around the yard before planting herself in front of the lighted doorway around which little insects buzzed. On top of the iron gate white and blue lizards blithely chased each other. Emilienne rested her head on the gate’s ice-cold edge. Mosquitos rushed to attack her. Insensitive to their bites, the young woman closed her eyes. Her thoughts, caught in a spiral, were a jumble inside her head.

  “Nine years! So that makes ten, eleven years he has been with her! Eleven years that I’ve been sharing him with some stranger who managed the feat of giving him the children that I have been incapable of having. How could I have been so naïve as to believe his clever lies: ‘Listen, darling, my minister worked very late, and you know how he doesn’t tolerate it when his staff leaves the office before him.’ Or even: ‘I had to prepare a file for tomorrow’s council of ministers.’ And I, like an idiot, believed these lies. Better still, I was proud of having a husband who, contrary to what most of the civil servants did, showed an excellent professional work ethic. For ten, eleven years, he has been cheating on me, only a few years after our daughter’s birth, before I had even wanted a second child. So it’s been all those years that my husband has no longer belonged to me, that his body has not carried the exclusive scent of our intimacy. Where did he meet her? Where did they make love for the first time? On the rug in his office after he’d ordered his secretary to tell his visitors he was in a meeting? or in a hotel room under a fake name—hadn’t he already done that with me in Paris? Undoubtedly, they’d passed for husband and wife, an amorous couple that needed to spice up their monotonous life a little.”

  Emilienne shook her head weakly to shoo away the mosquitos buzzing in her ears, and also to get rid of the film reel running before her eyes, bathed in this poignant sadness. The mosquitos dispersed and came back in greater numbers to suck her blood. Her teeth chattered. She half opened her eyes. The lights from the streetlamps and those of her garden went out. It was just one of the general blackouts that occurred at least once a week throughout Olamba’s neighborhoods. She closed her eyes again so that she didn’t have to stare into the dark nothingness.

  “For eleven years he caressed, moaned, and curled up in the arms of this woman. I am his wife, but it is she who gets the most of him. How many times had she rocked to the sound of his soft whispers and been swept away when she heard his deafening moans as he surrendered completely to the pleasures of their lovemaking? How many times had he uttered her name before collapsing into her arms? I am his wife, yet I have not had this privilege.”

  Emilienne sobbed. She banged her head rhythmically against the iron bars of the gate. The rhythm accelerated, and she continued. Her skull hurt, but she did not stop. The sweltering heat of this nightmarish night crept up her nostrils. Suffocating, she brought her trembling hand to her heart before collapsing onto the concrete path. As if in a bad dream, she continued talking to herself:

  “He had to have loved her to have two children with her and to still be with her today. Even if I am still his wife, he is connected to her for life. Although I am his wife, another came by and knew how to get him and how to keep him, and he just tiptoed away from me. Two beautiful children, he says, that he would like to see me raise so that he can cry out to the world at the top of his lungs, boasting about his domination, his victory, and his virility; my submission and my weakness. Does he think I am that stupid, that I would live my humiliation openly?”

  As if this inner cry were a command coming from her brain, Emilienne opened her eyes. The night was lit up again. She got up, exhausted, and staggered toward the house. An owl beating its wings landed a few steps away from her. Emilienne trembled and tried to walk more quickly. Her heavy body refused to obey the commands of her bursting brain. After one last effort, she collapsed on the steps leading to the terrace.

  At that very moment, Roxanne let out a bark from the other side of the gate and woke up the watchman snoring in the garage. He opened the gate for him. The animal headed toward the young woman at a gallop. The watchman, who had just noticed his boss sprawled out across the steps, in turn, hurried to help her. When he leaned over her, Roxanne was desperately licking her mistress’s inanimate body.

  “WHAT AM I doing here? I must no longer be myself. What kind of normal woman would behave as I am now, after her husband had revealed bluntly to her the existence of two children he had had with another, and dared to suggest that she raise them!?”

  Seated next to her, Eva followed with sustained attention the cadenced movements of the dancers under the effect of the hallucinogenic powder. As they sang, they nodded gently and wiggled their hips to the rhythm of the tom-toms. Draped in red fabric, the head turbaned in a fabric of the same color and adorned with red feathers, a female initiate about fifteen years old let out an animal cry and then collapsed onto the dusty ground. Two of her fellow dancers exited the circle and led her with them to the exterior courtyard.

  This vigil had been organized for the initiation rites of the young wife of an important personality—she too was struck with infertility.

  Seated in the center of the guardhouse, the young woman wore a piece of a pagne over her chest. On each side of her braided head, just above the ears, was planted a red parrot feather. Her face was painted with white and red kaolin. The dancers, whose average age was thirty, formed a circle around the young woman. The “matron,” a middle-aged woman, solid and supple, exuded her authority as she approached the chair upholstered in red fabric placed behind the patient. Agile, and with an impenetrable gaze, the dancers lined up along the guardhouse, at the other end of which burned an imposing indigenous torch made from the resin of a local wood. Its multicolored, sparkling flame licked the darkness then illuminated the solemn faces of the two immobile young people who closed off the two rows.

  As the male and female dancers murmured a soft, melancholy chant, the matron shook her little bell and started singing a more rhythmic chant. Voices rose up. Drugged by the bark of the hallucinogenic wood, the patient stomped her feet on her stool. The haggard gaze on her ghostlike face fixed on the frightening statue attached to the center pole of the guardhouse. When the chanting and the tom-toms raised their sound, the “matron” shook the little bell again in her patient’s ears. The latter became even more agitated, twisting in all directions. Her arms, like the wings of a bird, seemed to detach themselves from her body and flapped through the air. Her feet appeared to be revolving around themselves. At the moment her limbs gave in to a relentless struggle, the young woman found herself suspended in air, her body hunched up, before landing on her two knees. Her family, the numerous guests, and the curious people seated against the wall let out cries of joy. Unmoved, her husband followed her every movement. From time to time, he lifted one foot, moved his head, or pulled at his beard.

  After having pierced the depths of the night and transmitted their messages to the spirits, the chanting returned languorously to reassure the audience and to die in the flame of the torch. Other chanting grew louder. A boy dressed in palm fronds ran up to extinguish the torch. The chanting reached its climax. The tom-toms rolled in the air. The wood fire in the outer courtyard, enveloped in this delirious ambience, crackled. The flames licked the darkness, and as daylight came, danced, twisted, and sp
un in a continual, incessant movement, then, one after the other, evaporated into the air.

  A long procession of women, led by the patient, immediately followed by the matron, chanted as they headed outdoors toward a shelter made of branches a few feet from the fire. The patient sat down on another stool inside the sacred shelter. Inside the guard circle, the torch was relit.

  As the women bustled around the new initiate, the men began to dance. The youngest of them, his torso nude, executed two perilous acrobatic movements then fell back on his frail legs amidst his fellow dancers. One of the tom-tom drummers left his place and joined him. Another woman, barely over thirty and in city attire, got up suddenly, shaken by strong tremors. She swiveled on that spot for a two good minutes then fell flat onto the hard earth. When she got up, she was hunched over and walked with slow steps like an old woman weighed down by her years. The dancers dispersed.

  “Good evening,” she cried out with a quavering voice from beyond the grave.

  Inhabited by an aged spirit from elsewhere, the body of the young woman shrank even more. She circled the audience staggering. Her arms shriveled and her fingers curled, her face deeply grooved with wrinkles and her mouth twisted into a grimace, the old lady in her thundered:

  “I have come to warn you about the evil spirit that is lingering among you. He inhabits the body of a man who wants to sabotage this vigil. May this person rise and leave before I expose his secrets to everyone.”

  She made another round around the guard circle, threatening the audience with her red eyes.

  Apprehensive looks by the people seated crisscrossed the room. Frightened children clung to their mothers. The chanting and the tom-toms went silent. A long, horrible whistling sound came from nowhere. The guard circle vibrated. Enraged, the possessed spirit lifted the torch out of the ground and headed with the hesitant steps of her advanced age toward a man of about fifty, who took to his heels, passed swiftly behind the guard circle, and disappeared into the night.

  Indignant cries burst forth. Some men set out in pursuit of him.

  “Follow attentively everything that is said from here on,” Eva whispered in her sister’s ear.

  AFTER SHE’D awoken from her blackout the previous evening, Emilienne had gone to her sister’s very early in the morning to ask her to accompany her to the seer’s house for a consultation. After a brief explanation, Eva, revolted by what she had heard, grumbled as she threw on a clean dress:

  “Such a bastard. And you are just finding out about it now. He will hear it from me, that one. In that case, I’m bringing you to Mama Mbira.

  “Do you think she will be able to tell me who this woman is?”

  “In an instant. You’ll see. She’s very good. If her business is still open, she will ask us to join in the vigil she leads on Saturdays. She will also tell you what to do to unlock your womb. Whatever you hear tonight, don’t do anything stupid, which means don’t leave your husband. Do everything you can to get better. Have you made an appointment with the hypnotist?”

  “I’ll call him Monday morning. Don’t forget it was only yesterday that Dr. Pascal mentioned it to me.”

  “You have to fight on all fronts.”

  SO THEY LEFT Eva’s after she’d told her eldest daughter to watch her brothers and sisters. After they’d driven for about an hour in the car, they took a bumpy fork off the main road. Four years ago, Eva had gone down this same stretch of road determined to win back her unfaithful husband. The witch had prepared a concoction for her in a tall flask, filled halfway with eau de cologne, a mixture of leaves, and tree bark that had the power to make her husband forget his multiple romantic flings. Before putting on this specially prepared perfume, she had to wash twice daily with water mixed with other leaves, so that she could wash her body and her spirit.

  Eva was not disappointed. Her husband broke off with his mistresses only a few days after she’d begun the treatment. She realized it when he came home every evening and on the weekends, and he had not ceased paying attention to his wife and children since. Today, she seemed happy. Emilienne, who had mocked her sister for the primitive way she’d chosen to sort out her personal problems, was not laughing this morning as she went to her sister for her help in solving her own.

  Luckily for both sisters, the old healer tirelessly continued organizing her vigils and healing men and women who had been struck down with illness. Tonight, Emilienne was finally going to know not only the identity of her rival but also her husband’s intentions.

  AFTER THE JOYOUS cries had taken place in the courtyard, the women came back, chanting and gyrating inside the circle. Emilienne smiled sadly at this spectacle she was seeing for the first time. If certain employees of hers could see her in this strange place, they would be shocked. She was herself stunned by the path of her existence that had led her here.

  Since the death of her daughter, she had been driven by events she no longer controlled. She had become a puppet on a string. Would she once more find the serenity to ward off certain blows? Could the answers she was waiting for tonight change her behavior and help her get out of this trap, her life with her husband? Would she, like all these women, have to dance for the rest of her life and forever be part of their group?

  While the acrobatics multiplied to the rhythm of the chants and tom-toms, the “matron’s” husband, made up with white kaolin and rigged out in a sort of raffia skirt, went into a trance. His step was quick, his eyes burned with a thousand fires, and he ran in the direction of the two sisters, then stopped in front of Emilienne, who jumped. The sorcerer turned around in place. In one hand he held the torch and with the other he shook his little bell briskly. The beatings of the tom-toms became more muted, and then stopped suddenly. After several seemingly interminable seconds, the tom-toms resounded again through the air. This time, they spoke a language only the sorcerer could interpret. The rumblings were alternately dull and threatening. They were halting, piercing, and solemn. With a frantic movement of his head, the sorcerer commanded silence. The air filled with a menacing silence. From his abdomen then came a nearly inaudible voice.

  “Your situation, my child, is not an easy one. If you want to know everything about your husband and your rival, come back to be initiated next Saturday. You will see many things yourself as if in a mirror.”

  Eva, gesticulating in her chair, interrupted him:

  “Can’t you describe her rival to her? It’s very important. Can you and your wife treat her?”

  “No, she will see for herself when she eats the powder. She will be cured. And you are pregnant.”

  Just as Emilienne was about to interject, a reedy voice began singing a chant.

  “Let’s leave,” she ordered her sister as she got up.

  “You’re crazy! We can’t leave now—that’s not how it works.”

  “Stay if you like; I am leaving.”

  “Wait a minute; I’m going to say good-bye to the matron. I’ll also have to tell her to prepare for your ceremony and ask her for the list of everything we’ll need to buy for your initiation.”

  “You’re joking, Eva! Do you think I’m going to set foot in this place again? If you want to make him happy, tell him that I’m going to think about it.”

  Once in the car, Eva let her anger explode.

  “What is wrong with you? Couldn’t you wait at least a little while before getting up? That woman works miracles. I’m convinced they didn’t want to reveal certain things to you in front of all those people. Besides, they can cure you and get you back together with Joseph.”

  “No, thanks. Do you honestly believe that I am going to start fetishizing to make my husband love me when I hadn’t taken that route from the start when he was actually interested in me?”

  “Nobody is asking you to cast a spell on your husband. It will suffice for you first to release him from the hold of this mysterious woman—I think she is under the protection of occult powers, otherwise you would have at least known who she was long ago. The second t
hing you need to do is to wash your body and finally protect yourself. Don’t be blind on that point! Almost every woman in this country ends up consulting a healer at one time or another so that she can break the evil spell cast by her in-laws, her rivals, or even her own family. Why don’t you want to use the same weapons so that you can once again find the joys of motherhood and take back what belongs to you? You will not be punished for things that are owed you and that others are trying to take from you.”

  “Listen, Eva, don’t insist. In fact, is it true that you’re pregnant?”

  “I’m three weeks late. I’ve decided not to keep the child—that’s why I haven’t said anything to you about it. If there is someone who must have them, it’s you.”

  “Have you gone out of your mind? Whatever you do, don’t abort it. Don’t refuse the children God gives you, please. I am very happy for you, you know. Don’t deprive me of the immense joy of cuddling with that child. After all, he will also be a little bit mine.”

  They looked at each other and smiled tenderly.