Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  His talk with Lundi, and the brandy they drank during it, had stilled all Sukude’s fears. He was seized by the conviction that it was not he, but his hated mother-in-law, who had dishonoured the Ancestors. This summoned a powerful resurgence of the determination that had been building in him for many months: to have his own way.

  He stood and splashed his face with fresh water. He always woke with an erection, and this morning was no different. He saw Zandi asleep by the pigsty. She was not as beautiful as her sister, but her thighs were large. He had a vision of himself between them, and this vision excited him, and more blood flowed to his cock.

  He glanced from her to the closed hut where Ntsina and Bela were. A bolt of genius struck him. There was no goatskin on display. And no goatskin could mean only one thing: no consummation.

  —

  INDEED, NO CONSUMMATION had taken place. While their guests jested and drank, time in the bridal hut had stretched to a delicious eternity. Bela lit a fire and threw on it sprays of lavender and a sweet-smelling plant that was known to heighten desire. She warmed water and when it was the temperature of human blood she took her red blankets and dipped them in it and began to cleanse her husband’s body of the rock paste Luvo had so assiduously smeared over it. It was a wife’s duty to wash her husband, and the combination of duty with erotic pleasure was intoxicating. She began at his neck, working downwards across his shoulders with their sinewy indentations, down his smooth, hard chest towards the trail of hair, stiffened and white, that ran from his belly button. As she rubbed the paste away she released Ntsina’s smell and drank it deeply.

  In the cleaning of his body it was necessary to remove his blankets, and when the moment for this came Bela stood back, examining him in the light thrown by the lantern. She was delighted with what she saw, and Ntsina was pleased that she was pleased. Their mutual admiration heightened the tenderness of the moment, and the anticipation of what was to come. Ntsina’s cock stood straight up, throbbing with the pumping of his heart. It extended to his navel. Bela had never before seen an erect penis, and it was fascinating to her. She was taken by an instinctive desire to do something she had never before contemplated, and which no one had ever described to her. She sank to her knees and put the head of Ntsina’s cock into her mouth. She wanted to taste him, having smelt him. And the saltiness, the heat, the smell of it made her wet enough to think with anticipation, rather than fear, of Ntsina’s cock going where her mother had shown her it must go.

  The look on her husband’s face made Bela feel well contented with the married state. She continued to wash him, returning now and again to the intimate parts of his body. In her happiness, a tremor of conscience called to mind her older sister, who would perhaps never know what she, a married woman, now knew. And then she stood again, and for the first time they kissed, Ntsina tasting himself on his wife’s tongue, holding her tight to him, feeling the yieldings of her rounded body, so much more graceful than the stick-thin white ladies with no bottoms he had seen in Johannesburg and King William’s Town. At length she stood back from him and said: “We must be kind to Zandi.”

  “I will serve with my life all those whom you love,” said Ntsina.

  He leaned to kiss her as a fist slammed on the door, and they heard the shout of his father, soon taken up by other men: “WHERE IS THE GOATSKIN?”

  It made them laugh, for it showed how tardy they had been with each other; and for the first time they noticed the glimmerings of day around the edges of the door. They had been at weddings before where crowds of drunken guests hurried the bridal couple through their paces, demanding the bloodied goatskin that is the proof of marital union and the bride’s virginity. They ignored the shouts as they grew louder, and more men joined them, the sleeping guests woken by the commotion. They did not hear the recklessness in the crowd, the mad impulsive energy of a large group bonded by beer. They were too lost in the luxuries of the moment to hear a note of violence intrude into the good cheer. For Sukude had seen his chance, and brandy made him ruthless.

  It is an accepted truth according to the Law that a father may show his son how to be a man, if the youth does not bring his wife to the love mat in good time. This law was seldom invoked, for there were not many young men in Gwadana who could not work out what to do with a woman.

  “Where is the goatskin?!” Sukude cried. He cried three times, for the Law says that a son must be given three warnings. And when no goatskin appeared, and the door to the hut did not open, he hurled his weight against it, spurred by the cheers of the watching men.

  In her own hut, sleeping fitfully, Nosakhe heard the cries. They intruded on her sleep like the bellowing of a demon; and when she woke she was at first annoyed by the drunkenness of her guests. She had taken off her headdress of white beads, the sacred emblem of a sangoma, and afterwards she would sorely repent not putting it on again before venturing outside. It meant that she was bareheaded, her power much reduced, when she emerged to see her grandson hurled from his hut into a group of drunk men, who held him down, only laughing harder as he struggled.

  Inside the hut, Bela said: “I see you, my new father.”

  “Keep him back!” cried Sukude. And he closed the door.

  Seeing the fear in Bela’s eyes, Sukude’s sense of grievance knew no bounds. He had not imagined this scene in this way—for her to be afraid of him! It made him angry with her, angry with his mother-in-law who had summoned his son home. He lifted his leopard-skin kaross and exposed himself. His cock was as thick as a young puff adder, and it was filling with blood. The horror in Bela’s eyes inflamed him.

  “I am your father. Obey me. Lie down.”

  But Bela would not lie down, and he wasted precious seconds while he chased her round the hut, for she was not drunk, and far defter than he. But a hut is not a large space, and its door was barred from the outside, and finally he had her, and he pushed her onto the love mat. She fell and cried out. Even in this extreme moment, she remembered her promise to obey the orders of her new father. But she would not obey these orders, and it took all the weight of Sukude’s hefty body to prise apart her thighs while he kept one hand at her throat, holding her down.

  He rammed his cock into her with no preliminaries. She was so ready for mating that it slid in more easily than he remembered with Ntsina’s mother, who had always complained of his size. He felt the hymen burst and thrust deeper, the pain on Bela’s beautiful face heightening the urgency of the moment. He thrust and thrust, and when he came it was as if the desire of years drained from him. The world faded. His body began to float. He flooded her. And then he collapsed on her, his face on the breast he had so long dreamed of licking.

  He was spent. But she was not. She screamed and kicked and scratched, and he hardly had the energy to defend himself, for the little death that follows ejaculation united with the brandy in his bloodstream to render him weak.

  Finally he gathered himself. He hit her, hard, across the head. In the momentary silence he stood and adjusted his kaross. He wished to say something superb, but words failed him. Knowledge of coming consequences settled uneasily on him, for the noises beyond the door had grown wilder and he heard his mother-in-law’s voice. His artful arguments began to shimmer, then fell away as lightly as mist. For a moment he wished he might never have to leave this hut, and in the end it was not he who opened the door but his son, from the other side.

  Ntsina saw at once that he was too late. He hurled himself at his father, and the watching men grew silent. Then Nosakhe was upon them. It was she who instructed her grandson to stop, and when he did not it was she who told the men to hold him—for it is a grave crime for a son to kill his father.

  Ntsina was dragged from the hut. He was as strong as fifteen men in this state of wildness, but there were more than fifteen men to hold him. He saw Bela’s eyes, and then the door was closed. There was nowhere to keep him but Sukude’s hut, and he was carried there, screaming and writhing. The sound woke Piet Barol, who had been dreaming
heavily. He went to his door, rubbing his eyes and feeling happy, invigorated for the new day—for he had drunk a quantity of water before retiring, and this kept his hangover at bay. He was in time to see Ntsina being carried, arms flailing, to the hut by the cliff, and when its door was locked the most fearful racket emanated from within. The noise roused Luvo, too. He was in time to see Ntsina’s incarceration, but when Piet found him and asked what was going on, he did not know.

  The yard was full of guests, but their laughter was gone. The brandy had made a joke of something that was not a joke, and many of the men who had played a part in the drama were slinking away down the escarpment, bent on the creation of alibis. Nosakhe ran inside for her headdress, for the situation might well call for spells, and the efficacy of these was much reduced without her proper regalia. This meant that she did not see the door of the bridal hut open.

  Bela stood at it, quite naked.

  She stood so long that all murmurs ceased. Again she was the focus of all eyes, but this time she did not see them. She did not see her mother, emerging from a distant hut, or her sister, with her father, hurrying across the grass. She was conscious only of the call of the morning birds, drawing her towards the cliffs. Blood was running down her leg in a ticklish trickle. The lure of the cliffs acted strongly on her, for no woman would survive a fall onto those rocks. But within Bela was a strong instinctive horror of death, and as she stepped from the hut onto the Zinis’ lawn, she knew it was not death she chose.

  The birds called. The sun seared the mist and exposed the sea. Nosakhe stood ready to do battle with the Goddess of Evil, but the look on Bela’s face stilled even her.

  With absolute dignity, Bela walked across the grass. The guests stood aside for her. She held all who watched in a spell more powerful than the one she had cast the day before, as a glamorous bride. She crossed the lawn, leaving a trail of red that caught the light. “She is going to the kraal.” Luvo dug his fingers tight into Piet’s arm.

  He was right.

  Bela reached the gate of her in-laws’ kraal, the kraal she must not enter until her first son had had his twelfth moon. She was at once numb and throbbing with life. Though later people would say that she was mad, and she herself would wonder, Bela Zini was not mad.

  She was angry.

  She walked into the kraal.

  The birds sang as before. The goats bleated. But nothing in the history of Gwadana Village would ever be the same.

  7

  Many portents had shown Nosakhe Zini that a battle between things seen and unseen was nearing its climax. She who was accustomed to certainty felt only confusion. Her brain was soggy with it. Her memories of the men who had held her grandson were hazy, made hazy by Atamaraka, who is known for protecting her servants while she has need of them. She could hear his frenzied shouts from his father’s locked hut. She gave orders for Sukude to be held too, but these were not obeyed.

  And now Sukude saw and took his chance.

  “You have offended the ancestors by interfering in the ways of men.” He was not used to speaking up to his mother-in-law, and the very act of it gave him courage. “They were seven hours alone, and he did not sex her, the boy you took from me, whom you have raised as weak willed as a woman.”

  The remaining guests watched, fascinated by the overthrow of an established order. Sukude, seeing that he held their attention, warmed to his theme. The fear that had seeped into him in the moments after spending in Bela evaporated. “It is a father’s duty to teach his son. For years and years you have kept him from a father’s teaching.” As he spoke a genuine sorrow welled in him, for it had cost him dearly, in the moons before, to see his own son, flesh of his own flesh, choose the shelter of another when the thunder growled. “Three times I asked for the goatskin, three times it was not shown. For the honour of our clan, I mounted her.”

  Standing by the door to the kitchen hut, translating for Piet Barol, Luvo was stirred to his core by what he heard. The Rankes had been too tactful ever to suggest that the original occupants of the continent were savages, but the notion was so commonly accepted among the authors of the books that stocked their library that it had seeped, unbidden, into Luvo’s consciousness. Now he felt it amply confirmed. “This is what comes of not knowing God!” he whispered to Piet, and Piet nodded, thinking quickly.

  Nosakhe looked at Sukude. The Law he had invoked, though rarely used, and meant for quite another set of circumstances, remained the Law. He had indeed asked thrice for the bloodied goatskin, and Ntsina had not provided it. Her first thought was for her grandson, who would most certainly do his father an injury if he could. Were this to happen without a council of Elders finding Sukude guilty of any crime, Ntsina himself would face death. The thought was unbearable. So was the fact that her kraal, blessed by the Great Founder himself, had been defiled by Bela’s entry into it.

  “We must summon the Chief,” said Lundi. And this cry was taken up by the crowd, who sent a swift boy running down the hill.

  “It is time to liberate our friend,” said Piet.

  —

  THE CRASHES from Sukude’s hut had quieted, replaced by a despairing silence. The yard was empty, the remains of the feast abandoned where the guests had been when the drama first unfolded. Piet and Luvo went to Sukude’s hut.

  “We are coming for you,” called Piet.

  “Bring my weapon,” Ntsina shouted from within. But the door, unlike all other doors of Gwadana, was made of steel, not wood; and the padlock that usually closed it from the inside was attached on the outside, and staunch it was.

  “Where is the key?”

  “With my father.”

  “Is there not a spare inside?”

  “If there is, I cannot find it.”

  Piet looked at the hut with a carpenter’s eye. The beams protruded over the wall at intervals. It had not been built as a fortress. “Let us find the scythe,” he said.

  They found the scythe at the back of the pigsty, and Piet fetched two brandy crates and climbed them. With a great thwack he sent the scythe through the roof and Ntsina saw daylight.

  “I must find my wife,” said Ntsina, ripping the thatch away and hauling himself through the gap.

  —

  IN THE CHIEF’S HOMESTEAD, a crisis of a different kind had been reached. Since the day of Noni’s birth, when Nosakhe had both passed and postponed a sentence of death on her daughter, the attitude of Noni’s mother to Nosakhe Zini had been one part Gratitude, two parts Fear, and seven parts Hate. The hate hung heavy upon her, for she was a gentle woman. It grew with every moon that passed without Noni displaying the gift of Farsight, and with Nosakhe’s rejection of every promising glimmer of it.

  Nosakhe’s refusal to lift forever the threat of a violent death, despite superb evidence that Farsight had come at last, destroyed the last of the Gratitude she felt towards her. Now there was only Fear and Hate, and the greatest of these was Hate.

  She had kept her husband up all night, first begging him to take a stand against the sangoma; then screaming at him, as dawn broke. The Chief’s domestic life was a peaceful one, as a rule, and his wives took an old-fashioned view of masculine authority and rarely told him what to do. He considered his wife’s demands just, but he had also made a promise to uphold and defend the settlement that was the Great Founder’s legacy, and he could not act against the Founder’s granddaughter without violating that sacred bond. No satisfactory conclusion had been reached, and no one had slept, and his stomach felt quite vinegary from all the brandy he had drunk, when a boy ran through the gate and told them that doings that required the judgement of a great Chief had taken place at the top of the cliffs.

  The very phrase set the Chief on edge, for he knew that he was not a great Chief. He liked people to get along. He did not enjoy deciding disputes, because he was too inclined to see things from many different points of view. He had never sentenced anyone to death. “You say Bela walked into the Zinis’ kraal?” he asked, astonished—for it was
well known that Bela was the best-brought-up young woman in Gwadana.

  “Before all eyes,” said the child.

  The Chief could not imagine, as he climbed the hill, dreading what he would find at the top, what might make a girl like Bela enter her husband’s kraal. He had never heard of such a thing, much less seen something so outrageous. Having been told that her family had taken her away, he sent the boy to their homestead to enquire for their well-being. He did his best to leave Noni’s mother behind, but her fellow wives supported her and all of them made their way up the steep path they had descended just before dawn.

  At the top of the hill they were met by Lundi, whose complicity in Sukude’s actions had given him a strong interest in the outcome of the Chief’s deliberations. His briefing horrified the Chief, who asked his Ancestors to guide him as he passed through the gate and into the remnants of the feast.

  In the time it took to summon the authorities, Sukude, seeing himself unchallenged, found his confidence. For years the Law had been his mother-in-law’s domain, and he had never once objected to her interpretation. Now he saw that he had the power to bend precedent too, and by the time he stated his case before his Chief, he had established the justice of his actions firmly in his own mind. His son had been lured from him as a boy, deprived of the teachings only a man can give. He, Sukude, had given way, perhaps wrongly, out of respect for the Great Founder, whose granddaughter Nosakhe was. Weakened by this woman, the boy had failed to learn the ways of a man, which had left him unable to perform the duties of a man on his wedding night—even with a bride as beautiful as Bela. He, a caring father, had waited until daylight, and still there was no goatskin. He had asked three times for the goatskin, and three times Ntsina had failed to produce it. And so he, as the senior male Zini, had cemented Bela’s union with his clan in a manner hallowed by ancient custom.