by Bessie Head
But in spite of agreeing with Mma-Millipede his heart continued to feel peaceful. Perhaps he would have the courage to make children in such a world. For in this kind of lull from the inner torture of his life, he could think clearly. He was just an ordinary man and he wanted to stay that way all his life. None of the tinsel and glitter of the world attracted him but just what there was to live on and make do with in a village like Golema Mmidi. They were going to start shooting up everyone one day, and George Appleby-Smith would come to him and say, “I’m sorry but the government wants you to leave because you’re a security risk.”
And you wouldn’t know what they meant by that because Africa was your country and there was no place else where a black man would come into his own and eventually lift up his head with dignity. Perhaps the whole world would still pretend not to understand your state of mind.
“We’re morality,” they’ll say. “For God’s sake stop the slaughter, we’re on your side. We’re morality and we’re on your side.”
But in the meanwhile he walked back to a firelight in the Botswana bush with these unending tortures stilled for a bit. He hoped to find out something because there were too many riddles and ironies these days, even in the African bush. He understood a man like Gilbert perfectly, as though life never did anything haphazardly but prepared people for their friends and threw them together at the right moment for some more obscure purpose than building dams, tobacco co-operatives, and cattle feeding grounds. Maybe he would not survive with his ‘security risk’ status, but the world would not rid itself of African men. He would always be there, but not any longer as the white man’s joke, or his ‘mundt’ or his ‘kaffir’ or his ‘boy’.
Twelve
A week after Paulina Sebeso’s child had been found dead in the hut at the cattlepost, the village of Golema Mmidi awoke to a day such as they would never forget. Looking back, the people even wondered aloud as to how it had all begun with such an ordinary event as the sunrise. Most of the women were up and about at dawn these days as they now had husbands to attend to, and from every yard a smoke haze arose as they all prepared the early morning tea and porridge.
Paulina found she had to wear two faces these days, one for when she was in a crowd and one for when she was alone. When she was alone, she smiled to herself because she was happy and could not reconcile this happiness to the loss of her boy and all her cattle. Mma-Millipede would have said that it was one rare occasion when the Lord took away with one hand and gave with another because it was seldom that the Lord ever gave a woman a man like Makhaya. Of course, Makhaya still observed some African customs like just coming and staying with a woman without first marrying her and then being indefinite about the date of marriage which might take place even after two or three children had been born. But which African man really loved a woman the way they could all see that Gilbert loved Maria? By love a man stuck to one woman, but African men liked the woman who stayed up the hill and the one in the valley and the one in the next village, all in the same nice indiscriminate way. In this way Makhaya differed from all African men, so Paulina reasoned. He had a lot of funny things to say for himself too, not all of which she understood, but she would have fought anyone with blows who questioned her loyalty to Makhaya. So she made the tea with a gay, light heart and then set a pot near the fire for bathing water.
I’ll have to do this and that today, she said to herself, nodding her head as she ticked off the items and carefully poured the tea into the cups. Makhaya had told her not to slosh any of it on to the saucer. Even homes of mud huts must be run like a hotel, he said, with everything spick-and-span, and the small girl ought to be bathed from head to toe every night. Talk about a wonderful man who cared about all these small things? Not only that. The tobacco the women were to grow had been the talk of the village ever since the men had come back.
They had all been to the farm to stare in fascination at the tiny experimental plot of olive-green tobacco leaf. So, this was what their wives and sweethearts were up to now, they said to each other, flushed with pride, the same way the ancient hunters of history must have reacted when they came back from hunting trips and found their wives had cultivated the wheat and domesticated a few wild animals for their meat. Indeed what else was this small venture into tobacco growing but to arouse an interest in the men in the production of cash crops. The men would eventually have to take on the task of producing those acres and acres of tobacco. But first they would have to stay home. Could a twenty-eight-mile fence be erected for a cattle holding ground, Gilbert had asked? Of course, they said. And the men were prepared to pool their labour for the big job, but just right now they were sorting out how to keep alive what cattle they had left. This was problem number one until help arrived, three weeks from now, in the form of emergency rations and a spare borehole.
Paulina saw Gilbert walking into the yard now to fetch Makhaya so that they could go to the ranch. And Makhaya was still asleep even though she had awakened him fifteen minutes ago. He seemed to like getting up in a commotion of hurry. Paulina rushed about flustered and breathless for five minutes until the two men walked out of the yard. Then she bent down, poured the remainder of the bath into a basin, picked it up, and was about to enter the hut to wash when, to her amazement, she saw a silent figure crouched down near the entrance of her yard. It was one of Matenge’s servants.
“Good-day, friend,” she said apprehensively. “What do you need?”
The servant looked up, a sly grin on her servile face. “I am sent to bring you to court. The chief has a case.”
“I?” Paulina said, stupified. “But what have I done?”
Again there was that sly grin. This wretched creature in smelly rags and tatters was the last contact with mankind that Matenge had. He had been muttering and fuming to the servants for some days now, and the grinning was an arrogant pride of someone who is always kicked around yet needed by the master.
“Agh, leave me alone,” Paulina said impatiently, and walked into the hut.
But when she came out the servant was still there, crouched down, and she began to be afraid, wondering what she had done to offend Matenge. And all she could think of was that she had forgotten to report the death of her son to the chief. It was a custom but surely a court case could not be made out of forgetfulness? She even pulled the little girl about roughly as she dressed her for school, so nervous and unsettled did she feel. Also, today was the day when she and a group of women were to harvest the first batch of tobacco. They would soon join her in the yard. She turned to the servant, wanting to wait for her friends.
“I suppose the chief is offended because I forgot to report the death of my son?” she asked tentatively.
“I really don’t know,” the servant said, with that maddening grin.
Paulina decided that she would no longer speak to this dreadful person but she took her time, dishing up a plate of porridge for herself and her child, waiting for her friends. She liked company at all times, especially when there was trouble.
Just at this time too, the six old men who sat on the village council were receiving the message to attend court and, like Paulina, they were stunned and apprehensive. Matenge never called them unless it was to destroy an inhabitant of Golema Mmidi. He had never done one act of kindness towards the villagers, seeming to be placed there only for their torture. They gathered their tattered coats about them and shuffled towards the centre of the village.
Paulina’s friend stepped into the yard at that moment and straight away decided to accompany Paulina to the court case. Along the way they picked up Maria, then Dinorego, and Mma-Millipede. The news travelled swiftly from hut to hut, and men and women immediately set down their chores for the day and made their way to the village centre. They were even excited in a silent way as though they had known this day would arrive when they would all face their persecutor of many years.
They had been straining together in one direction for years, and Matenge had been straining in the o
pposite direction, always pulling them down. Because of this they had politely avoided him, but today they wanted to see his face when their cattle were dying while his cattle were safe, way up on the northern border where a river flowed the year round and the grass was good and salty and green. They wanted to see this man who had all the privileges, who had never known a day of starvation in this country of two years of good rain and seven years of drought. They wanted to know what his mood was like after these years of silence and mute disagreement. They wanted him to know they were not after his Chevrolet or big house. They would even tell him this with gentle smiles and pleasant gestures and reassure him that it was only their lives they wanted to set right and he must not stand in their way. He was there through their tolerance. They would even be able to tolerate ten thousand Matenges, but the disagreement between him and them was that he said no, no, no, to everything they wanted to do. But they were the people of Golema Mmidi to whom too many tyrants and unscrupulous men had said no, no, no, and people like the people of Golema Mmidi could not be hunted, hounded, banished, and persecuted forever and forever and forever. Were they to be driven to the vultures who now soared overhead in the blazing, dead-white sky? Very well then, the whole village, as one man, would go and die in the bush if that was all a tyrant wanted of them. If you said no, no, no, and kept your claws in a people’s heart, what else did you want but that they should all die? You were so unreasonable.
These thoughts ran through the minds of all the villagers as they hurried towards the home of Matenge. It wasn’t any longer Paulina Sebeso who was to be persecuted alone but the whole village of Golema Mmidi. Thus, when all the villagers suddenly found themselves meeting face to face at the village centre, they looked at each other and smiled and laughed with a load taken off their minds because they were at last of the same mind. Only three people were absent – Gilbert, Makhaya, and Pelotona, the permit man.
Matenge had not expected this. He stood in the shadow of his enclosed porch, watching the crowd. When they turned and walked towards the gate of his yard, he retreated indoors, in panic, running from window to window and door to door, barricading himself inside. The servants, observing his panic, crept like stricken shadows out of the backdoor and fled into the bush. He was left alone with his panic, in a dark, locked house. He walked to one of the windows and looked down into the yard. The villagers had all seated themselves on the ground, with their faces turned expectantly towards the house, waiting for him to come out. And they would wait and wait and wait now because this was the end of the road for them and Matenge. Big, slow tears rolled down the rutted grooves of his cheeks as he stood there, watching them.
Why did he cry? The greatest moments of his life had been when he had inflicted suffering on his fellow men. People were not people to him but things he kicked about, pawns to be used by him, to break, banish and destroy for his entertainment. That was the tradition in which he had grown up, and maybe he could not be blamed for taking full advantage of it. Most chiefs were half Matenge and half of the casual charm of his brother, and they lived on their own weird tightrope as fathers of the people. Half the time they turned on the charm, just in the nick of time to save themselves from damnation. But they were all an evil, cruel crowd.
Only Matenge had not known how to turn on the charm to save himself.
Was he crying now because, for the first time in his life, he was feeling what it must be like to face a tomorrow without any future? That was what those upturned faces meant. He would have to go away. They weren’t going to tolerate a man like him any longer because he would not give way nor understand that they needed co-operation from the man at the top to whom everyone had to go for permission to progress. The Matenges and Paramount Chief Sekotos did not have to lift up the spades and dig the earth. It cost them nothing to say yes, yes, yes, build your dam because we have no water in this country. But it gave them a deep and perverted joy to say no, no, no. The end of it was that Matenge had to barricade himself up, not because the villagers were about to rise up and tear him to shreds, but because he was an evil pervert and knew it. Only you could not understand why a man like that stood there crying like a forlorn and lonely child.
A flock of vultures gathered overhead, circling in the sky, eyeing the villagers with extreme interest and curiosity, so accustomed had they become to feasting on anything in sight, and it was the long, lazy, swooping flight of the vultures over the centre of the village that confirmed to the three men at the cattle ranch that something had gone seriously wrong in the village of Golema Mmidi. They had been waiting for the village men to come to the ranch. Cattle had to be trucked, rations distributed. But all that had faced them for a half an hour of waiting was this eerie silence. Then the flight of the vultures. Gilbert and Makhaya and the permit man looked at each other as much as to say: What now? Then they walked along the footpaths, passed the deserted huts with rising alarm. No Paulina. No Maria. And even the farm workers had left off their duties.
The three men got into the Land-Rover and drove to the village centre and right up to the gate of Matenge’s home. They climbed out a little uncertainly and stood near the gate. Everyone turned around but for a while no one spoke. And there was just this silent, shut-up house with the gleaming Chevrolet in the yard.
Even Dinorego failed to explain the situation, and once more the villagers turned their heads towards the house.
“What’s happening here, people?” Makhaya asked at last, in a loud, clear voice.
“We’re waiting for the chief to come out, son,” Dinorego replied, without turning around.
How long had this strange game been going on. Makhaya wondered? Without further thought, he began walking calmly towards the house. He climbed the steep flight of stairs and disappeared from the gaze of the villagers on the dark, enclosed porch. A moment later they heard a tremendous crash as Makhaya broke down the door. Then a long silence. The villagers all arose and also climbed the steep stairway. Those in the forefront stood looking silently for a while into the big dining room, not at the luxurious couches, carpets and high-backed kingly chair, but at the dead, still body hanging from a rafter. Makhaya had the phone in his hand and was talking to George Appleby-Smith.
“I can’t say for how long,” he was saying. “Must I cut the rope?”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” the inspector asked.
“I can’t say,” Makhaya faltered. “I’m not sure, except that he’s quite still.”
Makhaya paused and a twisted spasm of pain swept across his face. Could the man hang like that with all the villagers staring in?
“There’s been some trouble here today,” he continued on the phone. “I don’t know the details, but the whole village is here.”
“Okay, cut down the body. I’ll be there in about ten minutes,” and Makhaya heard the man at the other end slam down the phone.
In his office George Appleby-Smith stared sightlessly at the wall. Things always went this way in this goddam country. Every village was a hornets’ nest where someone had to be irrevocably got rid of. Someone had to go round the bend, die, or be driven out. Life was always extremes, harsh black and whites with no soft greys or in-betweens or compromises. He’d long seen Matenge was a crack but in this kind of goddam country where everyone was bullshitting around, the cracks and nuts and loose bolts had the upper hand. Even his good friend Paramount Chief Sekoto was a crack and nut and loose bolt. He smiled to himself. Today, after it was all over, he’d go and have a quiet beer in the railway pub – to a fellow whose guts he admired. He hadn’t thought Gilbert would stick it out to the end. He’d long expected him to become a loose bolt too, with all the nonsense that was going on in Golema Mmidi.
He picked up the phone, still smiling to himself. A moment later he heard the gay, bubbling voice of the Paramount Chief, “Hullo, hullo, George. How’s things?”
“Have you got a coffin, pal?”
“Ha, ha. Gracious me, George. Don’t tell me you want to die now. You’re
just a spring chicken.”
“It’s not me,” said that familiar, casual drawl. “It’s your brother Matenge. He’s gone and killed himself.”
There was an abrupt silence at the other end, and George could quite clearly see Chief Sekoto put on his funeral face. Chief Sekoto was a play actor on all occasions. He lived life with his face while his heart remained calm, empty, and serene.
“I’m very sorry to hear this news, George,” he said.
“So am I,” George said dryly.
“I’m coming right over with the coffin,” Chief Sekoto said. But he remained holding on to the phone in an absent-minded way. How many beasts would have to be slaughtered? How many relatives to insult by not sending a personal invitation to the funeral? How to squash the scandal of the suicide? Oh, oh, the mess and fuss and bother. The talk, talk, talk. He closed his eyes. Even in death his brother upset his digestion for the whole day. He put the phone down, dusted his hands, and waddled briskly out of the office, carefully adjusting his funeral face. Along the way to his home he met his secretary.
“Pule,” he said, in a sombre voice. “Please order a coffin. Put it in the truck. I’ll have to go to Golema Mmidi as brother has just died of a heart attack.”
He said this to several people, even the wife. Matenge had died of a heart attack. He wanted to create confusion. The people of Golema Mmidi would come up with their own story, but once there were two conflicting versions, people would doubt everything, even if they saw the rope around Matenge’s neck. And they would soon become bored. But a suicide, in a chief’s house? Oh, oh, oh. It would go down in history. Most of all, things had to go smoothly, quickly. Chief Sekoto had lots of practice too. He buried everyone – concubines, commoners, royal relatives, and foreigners. And he put his funeral face away one hour after the dust of the earth had enclosed the coffin. This time there was a heavy feeling in his heart. It wasn’t easy to dismiss the intense, dramatic face of his brother. As though it was a question mark before life. As though his brother had suffered because he had wanted more things than a man should desire for one life and then life itself had frustrated all these desires. As though his brother had been the helpless victim of terrible, private hungers. What else made a man do all the things his brother had done? And a great shadow of gloom clouded Chief Sekoto’s outlook that day. By the time he arrived in Golema Mmidi, he wasn’t play acting any more but was genuinely upset.