Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

  * * *

  —

  She is frightened of Khartoum. Can sense in it a violence she knows only too well, the violence of extreme poverty and the violence of profit, that unsparing combination. The city is dirty, overrun with cockroaches and locusts that fly into passersby, its cats are skinny and as fierce as desert dogs, people work and die in its streets, relieve themselves against its mud walls, slaves keep the great treadmill turning, the air quivers with panic, the Mahdi’s name circulates like a whip crack, the padrone speaks English with the other ambassadors, late-night smoke-filled meetings, Bakhita hears these men’s voices, hoarse with weariness and anger, something is slipping through their fingers and they do not want to let it go. The British have taken control of the country and administer it with the arrogance of those who have never lost. Neither their victories nor their pride. The padrone is not so gentle now, has become persnickety and obsessive as if losing confidence. His wife’s letters are more frequent, “imploring,” Anna says, she can read and does not deny herself this privilege when she cleans the master’s office.

  “Come home soon, she writes him. Subito!”

  “She speaks to her husband like that?” Bakhita asks.

  “Of course. She’s Italian.”

  “The Turks are like that too.”

  “In any case, I think the padrone will go home. He’ll go back. I can tell.”

  “Back? To El Obeid?”

  “To Italy!”

  * * *

  —

  Of course, at first she thinks it is not for her, Italy is not for her. It is a word used by other people, those with skin as white as a plucked chicken, those who have dreams and brag about their good fortune. She is used to seeing masters on edge and impatient, and knows that Anna is right, the padrone will leave. He anticipated this, wanted her to go home to her village, not end up begging in Khartoum’s insalubrious streets. But given her ignorance, her inability to name her family, she knows what will become of her when the consul leaves. In a backstreet or a palace, she knows what will be wanted of her. She will go back to where she came from, to violence and shame. And with no premeditation, she reaches the decision one day: No one will ever take her white tunic from her now. Ever. She is in the washhouse, washing sheets and tablecloths, the heavy cotton fabrics the Italians so like, the water is icy, and she is watching her hands rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. She is carried away by the movement, it is like a chant, in time with her thoughts. All of a sudden, she springs to her feet, knocks over the basin of warm embers, wipes her hands on her apron, and runs to the padrone’s office. She prostrates herself at his feet, he does not like her doing this but she does it because she would not have the audacity to beg him on her feet, face-to-face with him.

  “Take me with you…Padrone…”

  He does not even understand, thinks she wants to go home, thinks her a little stupid because she does not speak his language well and because, despite his goodness, he views these Negroes as simple submissive animals. And he likes animals. He is a nonviolent man. Cannot bear to have people prostrating themselves at his feet, it is physical, visceral, he cannot abide it, he makes her stand up and tells her that he has run out of time to look for her village, he is preparing to leave, to return to Italy. She is standing facing him now.

  “Take me with you, padrone,” she says again, still not looking at him.

  He likes her very much but apart from a little boy whom he has promised as a gift to some dear friends, he will not be burdening himself with any slaves, even Anna will have to wait until he sends the money for her journey home. He has already started selling the last of his slaves to private owners, or freeing them, and on top of these dealings, he divides his time between the telegraph office, the newspapers, meetings, and packing cases. With the peculiar bitterness of leaving defeated. He asks Bakhita to bring him some coffee.

  * * *

  —

  She is overcome by her longing to leave Sudan. Tries to work even harder, thinks the padrone will notice, the way she washes the floors, polishes his shoes, irons the tablecloths, but very soon realizes he has noticed nothing. He is busy. She knows what he is feeling. He no longer sees what is going on around him, he is preparing to leave and can think of nothing else. He will set off for Suakin by camel, travel through the desert for several days, then will cross the sea on a huge steamboat, that precious ally of those who trade in the insignificant creatures called slaves. Bakhita thinks she is significant, though. The earth and sky told her so. One night she is in the slave quarters lying on her mat, and the moon is so full and bright it lights up her mat. She reaches her hands into this shaft of light, a brightness with all the beauty of surprise, of something exceptional, while everyone around her sleeps. She is alone with this moonlight that has woken her, and when morning comes, laden with clouds, she notices that the day is strangely darker than that moonlit night. She considers this during her day’s work, what she saw that the others did not see, she helps carry trunks, pack bags, hears the hoarse calls of the camels the padrone has just bought. She hears him talking to the camel driver, does not understand what he is saying, he is speaking an unfamiliar Arabic…She comes out of the house and into the yard. Does not prostrate herself. Does not apologize. Hardly even lowers her eyes. Dares to be a slave girl standing between two men: the camel driver and her master. In her clumsy Italian she explains to the master that he will have to hobble the camels every night, animals must never be allowed to roam free at night.

  “I have already traveled by camel,” she says. “I can help. Take me with you, padrone.”

  “So you think you’re indispensable now?”

  “Camels can die, you know, padrone. They fall down and die. You think they don’t need water but they fall down and die.”

  “I’ll take care of the camels, don’t you worry.”

  She can feel her face blazing with emotion, her body shaking with restrained energy.

  “Take me with you, padrone.”

  “But, my poor Bakhita, what on earth would you do in Suakin? Do you know what Suakin is?”

  “Take me home with you, padrone, to Italy.”

  He roars with laughter, waves her away, and turns back to the camel driver with a skyward glance to prove his clemency. He could have been outraged by this audacity but was not. He is a good man.

  * * *

  —

  Bakhita will make her plea three times. She feels within her the same warm luminous hand that saved her on the night she escaped with Binah, and she understands that this is exactly the same, she must flee, she must run and not look back. This is a different walk, a different crossing, imploring the master and persuading him. She wants to live. Feels such strength within her, she, Bakhita, tidy and clothed like a free young woman, and she emancipates herself, grants herself this, this dignity. The padrone will leave the next day, at nightfall, to avoid the heat. She has seen the little boy, promised as a present, his name is Indir, and he is as frightened as a young caged animal. He asks for nothing, simply watches, sucks his thumb when he thinks no one is looking, and cries sometimes when he hears men shouting. He is slender and graceful, will make a handsome gift, the padrone must owe a great deal to the friend he has in mind.

  She is already losing some of her assurance as she walks the corridors toward the padrone’s office. Her heart beats hard, even in her ears, her blood thumps, the world around her muffled by it, she shakes as she makes her way closer to him, her right leg slightly lame, as it always is in tense moments, the pain in her thigh stirs and she is short of breath, beautiful and gracile as she is, she sometimes has the slow halting gait she will have in old age, as if invisible chains are resurfacing. She is out of breath when she comes into the room.

  “I know about looking after children,” she says with no preamble. “Little children.”

  He looks up, astonished, and studies her for a moment, she really is pretty,
very pretty, the poor girl.

  “I know, Bakhita, I know.”

  He says this and goes back to his work, stowing tiny flags in a box of ebony and mother-of-pearl. Like a nostalgic child who regrets growing up.

  “He is a fine gift.”

  He turns to her again. Is she still here! That deep voice of hers, he can never get used to it, it sometimes startles him and he has to smother his laughter.

  “Indir will make a fine gift. Fragile to cross the desert.”

  This time he bursts out laughing, she’s cunning as a fox.

  “No, Bakhita, I won’t take you with me! You know about the desert and camels and little boys, yes, you know a lot of things. But not the cost of a crossing on a steamboat. It’s very, very expensive. More expensive than a slave. Do you understand?”

  He says this too quickly, she does not catch it all. Except the laugh. And the look in his eyes. That says no. And she does not prostrate herself but crumbles. Collapses at his feet and sobs, incapable of restraining herself, her sobs wrack her body as if she were being beaten, tears derived from so many years of suffering endured that she cannot hold them back, does not even think to but simply sobs, loses all hope, all her resolutions, she is good for nothing, no good to anyone, she exhausts herself sobbing, wishes she could die of it.

  The consul hates women crying, so a slave girl crying! He backs away. Goes over to the window and watches her. Her body is shaking, and the neck of her tunic reveals a shoulder. He sees the long scar shuddering as she sobs. A sinuous, beautifully executed design. And he is suddenly devastated by this aesthetic torture.

  “All right,” he says.

  She does not hear him, she weeps and chokes on her own tears. He comes over to her. He shyly covers her shoulder, makes her look up, looks her in the eye, and says, “All right, yes to Italy.”

  Like any upheaval, it is a deliverance and a source of suffering. A life change that happens in a few seconds. She is to leave. She is to live in the country of white dreams and soft sunshine. In a place where villages are not set on fire. And children grow up where they were born. It takes her breath away. It is almost unfair such a place exists. It is unfair but so good. She will never save Kishmet. It is too late now. Will never console her mother. Must accept this betrayal. She is saving herself, and herself alone. She is trapped between warring emotions but carries within her the certainty that she is right. She is leaving. Tearing herself away from everything she knows, everything she hopes to see again, tearing herself away from the possibility of ever remembering the name her father offered up to the moon. She talks to her twin, asks her to protect their birth, to carry that part of her, the part that is free and connected to their ancestors. Through her twin, she is not betraying herself. She is leaving Sudan. And staying here. Still integral to their land. Their traditions. Their language. She will always live here. She asks her twin to speak her name as often as she can. Let it ring out everywhere. In the wind and the water, let it fly and come to rest on stones, fields, peaceable animals. She gathers up some red soil and puts it in a handkerchief. For the first time in her life she packs her things. And she knows the padrone will not leave her to die in the desert. Will not abandon her to the vultures if she is sick, and she feels borne on the shoulders of invincibility.

  And she is responsible for Indir. Indir who does not know she has him to thank for this journey. Indir who knows nothing. Who understands no Italian or Arabic or Turkish, who follows Bakhita around like a miserable little dog. She wonders where he is from. There are so many motherless children. Where are the childless mothers, she never sees them. They have sung the song of separation which never does any good, and they are heard no more, they go mad in silence. Indir has big gentle eyes with very long lashes, and he is trusting, with all the sorrow of knowing he will not rebel. Bakhita can see this. This little boy will never grow nasty or mad. He harbors within him the secret of violence, and expects nothing. He does not look like a master’s child, his skin is a dark black, his lips full, Bakhita smooths her hand over his head, feels small bumps, and he blinks quickly when she touches him, stiffening slightly and smiling apologetically. Bakhita decides that he must be worth a great deal to have been chosen to leave with the master. Khartoum is one of the major castration centers. And the child has about him the strange gentleness and suffering that, she knows, will always be invisible to others. He will grow into a man with childhood memories that can never be shared. A man with no descendants.

  * * *

  —

  Callisto Legnani was the last European to cross the desert before the fall of Khartoum on January 26, 1885. Four of them set out: Legnani, Bakhita, Indir, and Augusto Michieli, a friend of the consul’s who knew Sudan well having traded there for many years. His wife was meant to have joined him, but never did. She is fragile, and sad, weighed down by a hidden, buried sadness. Deep inside Augusto Michieli is a form of defeat that does not dent his lust for life or his enterprise. Away from his wife, he feels like a young man. By her side, he is afraid of sorrow and anxious about everything, he is a hundred years old.

  * * *

  —

  The consul is pleased with himself for taking Bakhita, sure his wife will be delighted to have an extra servant in her service, and Bakhita is remarkably practical for her age. Perched on her camel, with little Indir huddled against her, she has the assurance of a mother. She comforts him, protects him from mosquitoes, horseflies, the sand, thirst, and the sun; in the evenings she throws a handful of millet flour into boiling water and stirs it with a stick, feeding them off a smattering of nothing. The two donkeys they have with them are laden with bags, provisions, and gifts. They plod through the heat, maddened by horseflies, at nightfall Bakhita covers their bleeding necks with ashes. They bray so loudly in the night the consul is afraid they will alert jackals. Bakhita pats their foreheads, twists their ears. They immediately stop. She gestures to little Indir to do the same. The child twists the donkeys’ ears, and throws his head back to laugh, surprising himself with the pleasure of it. The camels bite each other at night and pick fights. Their jaws can be heard grinding, chewing the cud, as if the darkness itself were grinding at something. The padrone asks Bakhita to help him hobble them so they don’t stray in search of food. She shakes as she runs the leather strap between one hind leg and one front leg, the constant clinking of the hobbles stops her sleeping at night. And yet she likes these desert nights full of threats. Likes the violence of nature that drives men and animals closer together. Likes this dangerous connection, the fragility of their lives. The country is walking. Fleeing. And yet slowness is the rhythm of survival. An implacable country, a plundered land. In the oases through which they travel, she sees slaves cultivating palm trees, picking dates, shoring up irrigation channels. They are stooped figures. Whether they are here or somewhere else, in fields, salt mines, gold mines, or gem mines, they are all stooped. Men broken in two. Their chests down near their knees. Their bare feet as tough as old leather. Their souls trapped. Their hearts bled dry. They are taunted. Accused of having no will to rebel, no dignity. They are said to be lazy, they have to be beaten if they are to work, otherwise they would make the most of having bed and board without even thanking their masters. In those desert nights, with little Indir asleep against her, Bakhita listens to the two Italians snoring like their donkeys. Is not sure whether to laugh or cry. It could be so straightforward living together. And it always feels like a revenge. She wants to say asfa, but has no idea to whom she would say it.

  * * *

  —

  They covered more than five hundred miles between Khartoum and Suakin. Everything she saw, she saw for the first time. She crossed the Nile and loved its impassive power, the red water in the setting sun, moonbeams striping the night sky, the endless play of passing hours, all those hours on that life-giving water. She realized that no man, no king, pasha, sultan, governor, military or religious leader, no man held Sudan in
his power. This was the master. She would have liked the consul to gather the four of them on the banks of the river and say a few words, but he would surely have refused to approach the water’s edge because of the crocodiles and the hippopotamuses whose blood-curdling cries terrified him. So she asked him to trace in the sand the journey from Taweisha to El Obeid, El Obeid to Khartoum, and Khartoum to the shores of the Red Sea, including a depiction of the great river. She often thought of the map in his desk drawer, and wished she understood. The consul drew long lines in the sand, they went on and on, such thin lines that meant nothing, and those days of walking felt abstract and diminished.

  “Do you understand, Bakhita?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you understand?”

  “I was very young.”

  He thinks the girl doesn’t understand a thing, for sure, and wonders whether he’s doing her a disservice taking her to Italy. He looks at her, she has taken Indir in her arms and is rocking him gently, she’s spoiling the child, loving him like that is no way to prepare him for the life he’ll have. The consul struggles to understand her, she is both docile and thoughtful, with an infallible yet somehow elusive presence. If she were not so obliging and hardworking, he would criticize her dreaminess. His wife will train her better than he can.

  * * *

  —

  And then one day the Red Sea, like an invasion, a sudden definitive relief, opening up to everything unknown. Bakhita discovers the sea with Indir’s hand in hers and feels the same age as him. The age at which to stand facing the ocean for the first time.