The Sculptors of Mapungubwe

by Zakes Mda

  “Another woman after me will render me meaningless and powerless, Father.”

  “That’s precisely the point. She is not a wife. He hasn’t paid a single cow for her as bridewealth. A nice plump concubine will take Rendani’s mind from any idea of a fourth marriage, and you’ll therefore remain the youngest wife. A concubine is a mere diversion, a toy that some men need to pass time. This foreign woman serves your interests very well, my child.”

  Baba-Munene made sense.

  When Rendani visited her two nights later she broached the subject. He had been working very hard of late, what with his new responsibilities as a member of the Council of Elders in addition to being the Royal Sculptor. He needed to play sometimes and explore exotic delights. He needed a nice plump concubine just like the one her father had recently acquired. Rendani did not find the idea appealing, but just to make his junior wife happy he said he would consider it.

  “I have a gift for you,” said Baba-Munene a few days later when Rendani arrived early as usual for a Council meeting.

  It was, of course, the concubine. But he had not reckoned with Rendani’s wiliness. He knew at once that his father-in-law wanted to unload his burden onto him. He had suspected as much when Princess Dova spoke to him about acquiring a concubine.

  “I appreciate the gesture, Baba-Munene,” said Rendani. “I am grateful that you always think of me whenever there are good things to share. But you know that I cannot have that woman. She is a nduvho, and we all know that it bodes nothing but misfortune to pass a gift to another person.”

  In truth he knew that the concubine would derail his new scheme, a scheme that he had kept secret even from his most trusted confidante, his first wife. He wanted to marry Marubini. Chido was no longer part of his plans. He was going to use all his power, all his wealth, all his influence to get Marubini. Since the night of the Dance of the Virgins he had been mulling over the idea until it became an obsession. To own Marubini was to own the rain. To own the rain was to own power. Yes, one day Marubini’s rain would make him so powerful that the people would overthrow the weakened King and make him King of Mapungubwe instead. Marubini would give him the power of rain, and his father, now an ancestor, would be proud of him. Zwanga’s status among the ancestors would be elevated, for he would be the ancestor of a king. Zwanga would be for ever grateful to him and would regret that he had despised him when he was still walking among living men and that he had favoured Chata instead, even taking Chata’s monstrosity with him to his grave. For the first time ever Zwanga would be indebted to him. Marubini, therefore, would make him wield power both in the world of the dead and of the living and even of the unborn. This same Baba-Munene would be his servant if he married Marubini.

  It was good that Marubini was a naive girl who did not know that her body was a source of so much power.

  “I don’t think misfortune will bother either the giver or the receiver,” said Baba-Munene. “After all, she is a foreign woman. A foreign gift from foreign givers.”

  “In that case let’s give her to Chata,” said Rendani. “I think he is wild and unmanageable because he is womanless. Since he is so much of a ṅame – he doesn’t want to part with bridewealth and marry a proper woman – a concubine will be a good thing for him.”

  “You are always looking out for him even when he really does not deserve it,” said Baba-Munene shaking his head in appreciation and wonderment. “You are his true mukomana.”

  Baba-Munene sent the Royal Messenger to summon Chata to the Royal Court. Not only was he going to gift him with a concubine, he was also going to demand the payment of gold that had been ordered by the Royal Court, and of course a little bit more for the nduvho. Surely he could afford it now that he had his own mine in the land of the Karanga?

  “What if he refuses the gift?” asked Rendani.

  “I will not give him a choice in the matter. It is the King’s order that he should take the concubine.”

  “He has defied the King’s order to pay the gold.”

  “He claims that he has not defied it. He says he has no gold; he will pay when he has mined some.”

  “We know that he is lying. Everyone knows he has been hoarding all the gold he got from my father’s mine. I suspect he even took more than his share instead of the one-third he was entitled to.”

  “He cannot insult the King by refusing this gift. What man in his right mind would refuse a royal gift? Anyway, we know that Chata likes foreign things, perhaps because his mother was a foreigner. He is a man of mirrors and silk. He will love this foreign woman who is white like a ghost in the same way that he loved the yellow-coloured Khoikhoi woman until we weaned him of her.”

  The Royal Messenger returned with the news that Chata was not in Mapungubwe. He had left for his mine soon after the rainmaking festival. Ma Chirikure had no idea when he would be back; most likely it would be after at least one season.

  Baba-Munene felt insulted. He ordered the Royal Guard to storm Chata’s homestead and search for gold. It was unheard of in Mapungubwe to enter a man’s house without his permission. The ten soldiers who invaded were accompanied by the Chief Diviner and his two acolytes who used brooms to splash water mixed with aloe juice and some secret herbs to neutralise the spirits that guarded the homestead. And then they performed a small dance on the veranda asking the ancestors to forgive them for violating another man’s property. The Chief Diviner impressed on the ancestors that the man had insulted a living ancestor, namely the King.

  Ma Chirikure stood at the door and said no one would enter the house unless they killed her first. But she was only a slight old lady; a soldier lifted her up as if she were weightless and placed her on the footpath that separated Chata’s house from hers. She ran back to the veranda and started yelling at the King’s men. But they were already inside the house.

  One thing that struck everyone was that the house was much smaller inside than it was outside. The soldiers were careful not to touch anything. Besides two stools, grass mats, clay pots, ceramic bowls and some tanned hides of giraffes, zebras and gazelles there was nothing else in the room. There was no sign of any gold. They closed the door and left. Ma Chirikure was relieved that they had not found anything. Not that she knew anything about what could or could not be found. She never snooped. She had decided way back that whatever Chata was doing in that house was his own business.

  The small crowd that had begun to gather outside dispersed in disappointment.

  Ma Chirikure’s relief was short-lived. The next morning the ten members of the Royal Guard returned. They were accompanied by Baba-Munene and Rendani. This time Ma Chirikure did not try to show any resistance. One could not be defiant in front of the Younger Father of the Nation.

  A crowd soon gathered. There was a lot of pushing and shoving. Those at the back stretched their necks to see what evil could be hiding in Chata’s house.

  After surveying the scene inside the house Baba-Munene said, “You’re right; this is a house within a house.”

  Rendani could have kicked himself. He had been here before. A few years back. Before he was elevated to the position of Royal Sculptor. It never occurred to him that the inside of the house was about half the size of the outside.

  “We need to find the secret entrance to the rest of the house,” said Baba-Munene. “There must be a secret entrance somewhere.”

  They knocked on the wall with their fists but couldn’t hear any hollow sound.

  “You’ll have to break the wall,” said Baba-Munene.

  The men cringed in consternation. This was going too far, wasn’t it? It was bad enough that they had barged into another man’s house without his permission. But to break his wall?

  “I said break the wall,” repeated Baba-Munene.

  “The King has spoken,” said the men in unison.

  But they had not brought any crowbars. They hollered at the neighbou
rs who had gathered outside to provide crowbars and any tools that might be useful. In no time there was an assortment of tools.

  “Let’s break it from the outside,” said Rendani. “We don’t want to mess up his things.”

  The men walked around the house to the back, that is if you take the door of a cylindrical house as being the front. High up on the wall opposite the hozi granary they noticed a hole blackened by smoke; obviously it served as a chimney of sorts. The architecture at the back was quite different from that at the front. Here a space had been left gaping between the wall under the veranda and the roof thatch – a source of daylight.

  “This will be the right place,” said Baba-Munene pointing at the wall.

  It didn’t take much effort for the soldiers to bring the adobe wall down. There was indeed another room. It was not the mud kiln against the wall or the furnace hearth on the floor that left Baba-Munene, Rendani and the soldiers wide-eyed with astonishment, much as they were of a kind they had never seen before. It was not the number of metal and ceramic crucibles either. Nor was it the pile of elephant tusks against the wall. It was the Namaqua woman sitting under what at first the men mistook for a tree.

  She was made of gold and white ivory and was meticulously detailed right up to her grainy hair and the crow’s feet and the high cheek bones. Her smile was more like a sneer, with worn teeth peering out. She was wearing a tanned impala blanket, also in gold and ivory. She was not, however, the main feature of the piece, which in its entirety was the height of an average Mapungubwean man. What the onlookers first thought was a tree was in fact a tall sinewy woman, in fire-blackened ivory and gold. Her pose was that of a dancer, her arms stretched out in a graceful dance movement. That was what had initially given the impression of the branches of a tree. The dancer loomed over the Namaqua woman who squatted beneath the dancer with part of her body attached to the dancer’s leg. The dancer was not wearing any clothes, not even the back-and-front apron that dancers and young women in general wore. Grainy groin in all its glory. Another thing that struck the people was that the dancer had no head. Perhaps the magnificent chryselephantine sculpture was a work in progress.

  The men stood there, awestruck.

  The silence was broken by Rendani. He had a pained expression on his face; people thought he was crying. But no, he was laughing. It was painful laughter and none of the onlookers – who had now become gapers – joined him even though under normal circumstances laughter was reputed to be infectious. Though he did not say it, he was miffed because he, in his capacity as Royal Sculptor, had just created a gilded rhino for the King. It was the talk of the town because as usual it was a clear illustration of Rendani’s artistry. No one among the previous Royal Sculptors had ever created so real a rhino using a metal so difficult to manipulate at high temperatures. Bards created panegyrics about it and maidens composed songs. The rhino, and the gilded bowl and a gilded staff he had crafted earlier, silenced those who had been bad-mouthing him, saying that as Royal Sculptor he had not sculpted anything since his appointment and asking one another what good the Royal Sculptor was if he merely supervised and regulated the creativity of others in the kingdom. Now here was Chata, using the gold that everyone thought he was hoarding to create something much greater than Rendani’s famous rhino, not only from gold but from ivory as well.

  “I create for the King,” said Rendani finally. “For whom does Chata create? Is this not sacrilege?”

  “That’s an interesting point,” said Baba-Munene. “Let’s go consult with the sages of the land who may answer that question for us.”

  He assigned two soldiers to stand guard near the gaping hole in the wall and ordered that the curious spectators should not be allowed near the grotto, nor should they dare touch anything. At reasonable intervals the guards would be relieved by others so that at no time, day or night, would the grotto be unguarded. Then he led his delegation back to the top of the hill. But not before Rendani had thrown a long gaze at Marubini who was standing with her two friends in the group of gapers.

  “Sacrilege? What makes it sacrilege?” asked Marubini.

  “He had eyes only for you,” said Danai looking at Marubini accusingly.

  “How do you know he was looking at me? Chido is the one who was promised to him, not me.”

  “He was not looking at Chido,” insisted Danai. “He was looking at you.”

  Chido did not say anything but her wounded look spoke louder than any words.

  “If he was looking at me at all I didn’t invite his gaze.”

  When the crowd began to thin a little the three friends were able to approach the mouth of the grotto and to take a closer look at the sculpture.

  “I think Chata is a genius,” said Marubini. “The people of Mapungubwe with their dirty minds were accusing him of doing dirty things with the Khoikhoi woman. She was merely posing for him.”

  “You were one of them,” said Chido. “You said things about Chata and the yellow woman too.”

  “How do you know that they didn’t do things before she posed for him?” asked Danai, ever the sceptic. “See the look on her face?”

  “Or after,” added Chido.

  “Or after,” concurred Danai with a giggle.

  “He immortalises a Khoikhoi woman instead of creating to the glory of our King. That is why this is sacrilege,” said Chido.

  Marubini decided to shut her mouth. She was falling out with her friends for reasons that were beyond her control. She had tried to assure them that she had no designs of any kind on Rendani or any other man, but they didn’t seem to believe her. She did not want to lose the friendship of her age-mates and was prepared to do whatever it took to assure them of her sincerity.

  The three friends were silent for some time as they looked intently at the sculpture. The gapers, however, continued with their exclamations of amazement and disdain.

  “It is Marubini’s body,” shouted Chido all of a sudden.

  “It is Marubini’s naked body,” emphasised Danai. “Chata has sculpted Marubini’s nakedness in ivory and gold!”

  The eyes of the gapers turned on Marubini. And then on the work of art. And then on Marubini again.

  Chido and Danai were going too far with their bitterness towards her, thought Marubini. Although she was herself looking at the sculpture and she could see the dance pose which was similar to the dance pose of any good dancer in the kingdom, she saw nothing in the rest of the body that could be hers. Granted, she had never had the full view of her body that others had. She had gone to look at herself in the pool with the other maidens at dawn or in the late afternoon when the rays of the sun and the pinkness of the sky made the images more beautiful. But one couldn’t get a perfect image of one’s whole body at the pool, especially when some of the playful maidens threw pebbles in the water to make ripples that distorted the images. She had even looked at herself in Chata’s mirror that one time. But even there she saw only her face and not her whole body.

  The gapers surged closer to see Marubini’s body with their own eyes. The soldiers at the door threatened anyone who came too close with the lashing of his or her life, so the gapers moved back. But they all agreed that, yes, indeed it was Marubini’s naked body.

  This added a new dimension to the scandalous work.

  “Look at the dimples on the buttocks,” said Danai.

  The dimples. Marubini knew about the dimples. She liked feeling them with her fingers when she was in her bedding summoning stubborn sleep. The dimples. They were a source of amusement among her friends during those happy days when they frolicked naked in the river waiting for cloths and tanned animal hides to dry after washing them. Her friends made her self-conscious about them because they said they made her buttocks look like those of a baby, whereas her body was lean and sinewy like that of a hunter.

  “Look at everything else that should be covered in a maiden and
hidden from the eyes of the world.” Danai really wanted to rub it in.

  “How did Chata know your body to sculpt even private parts?” asked Chido.

  Marubini just stood there, dumbfounded.

  CHATA STOKED THE CLAY furnace with wood and cow-dung bricks dug from sites of ancient cattle enclosures. He preferred the kind of furnace he had at home which was a dugout hearth on the ground. It produced much higher temperatures within a shorter space of time. But it would not have been possible on this rocky terrain. He had therefore built a clay furnace. He shouldn’t complain, he thought, because it still did the job very well. He put gold dust in the crucible and gingerly placed it in the furnace using a long shovel. Once melted, he was going to shape the gold into beads and ingots, some of which he intended to take to Baba-Munene as part-payment of the fine. Chata knew that he would not be satisfied because he believed that he was hoarding a lot of gold. But it would be a start. He would promise to give him more gold every time he came to Mapungubwe until the Council of Elders was satisfied that he had met his commitment. He really could not give him more gold all at once because he also needed some for his unfinished creation.

  He was scraping off the ash pile in front of the furnace while waiting for the gold to melt when Chindori arrived with a scruffy young man. Chata’s heart skipped a beat because the boy was not one of the locals; he was sure that he had seen him in Mapungubwe. Even before he could utter a greeting Chata asked: “Who sent you? Is there something wrong at home?”

  “Ma Chirikure,” said the young man.

  “Is she well? Is she sick? What happened?”

  “There is nothing wrong with her health. She’s only sick with anxiety and fear.”

  The young man told him about the raid on his house and how his sculpture had been discovered. And the crowds that gathered every day to marvel at it.