The First Wife

by Paulina Chiziane

  “Tony, where are you going? Tony!”

  This recurring dream leaves me frantic. I’ve consulted witch doctors who’ve given me extraordinary accounts of love charms made by other women. They told me of other love affairs and other tragedies. I didn’t believe any of them. My neighbors tell me of mudjiwas, wives or husbands from another world who, in previous lives or incarnations, were our spouses, and have returned to reclaim their rights in the present life. My mother told me about this only once, and my father never spoke a word about it. I begin to panic. Tony, my dear husband, my beautiful man, can it be that you’ve got a mudjiwa? Or am I the one with a mudjiwa, and that’s why you no longer love me? My dearest Tony, there’s a woman who steals you away while you sleep. I am a faithful woman, believe me. I’m a virgin, I’m innocent, you are the only man in my life.

  “Tony, what’s happening?”

  “I’m going somewhere I can sleep in peace.”

  I want to beg him to stay. Ask him to forgive me for waking him. I want to show him how sorry I am for having offended him in his freedom. I manage to open my mouth and let out a muffled whisper. It’s too late. He rushes out of the house, jumps in his car, and disappears into the night.

  4

  Dear God, save me. Give me your advice. Protect me. Tell me what love is according to your doctrine. Dear God, in this world love doesn’t work like mathematics. It doesn’t operate in accordance with statistical or even supernatural formulae. Love, like the weather, is whimsical. One day it’s cold. The next hot, and the one after that, there’s wind and rain. In matters of love, one day’s solution is no use the next day. In my case, the advice of friends is of no use at all. My urgent desire to transform this love lures me dangerously toward paths I have never trodden before. I, a married woman for the last twenty-five years, mother of five children, an experienced woman, have been doing the rounds, sounding out all and sundry on the best way to keep my husband. My mother gives me lectures full of lamentation. My aged aunts repeat ancient litanies. Some of my friends tell me about potions made from vegetables. Others, made from animals. Yet others tell me of spiritual activities, with drums, candles, and prayers. Others even tell me of love therapies carried out in churches specializing in miracles. Others recommend consultations with university-trained psychologists, who provide sessions devoted to love. And yet others tell me of subterfuges. My head is full of advice, revelations, and secrets given me by women of all ages. My next-door neighbor insists on taking me to see her medicine man, but I preferred to enroll in a course run by an exceedingly famous love counselor who lives downtown in a hidden location. I’m going to have my first lesson today.

  I have a bath and get ready to go out. I try on a skirt but it won’t stay up, and slips to the floor. I go to the wardrobe and try on all my clothes, only to discover that I’ve grown thin. I won’t be able to avoid the gossips who’ll say I’ve lost weight because I’m jealous, all because of a man who doesn’t care for me at all. I walk over to the mirror and open my heart.

  “Tell me, mirror: Am I by any chance ugly? Am I by any chance more sour than a mandarin lime? Why does my husband leave me here to go and seek other women? What have the others got that I haven’t?”

  The mirror answers mutely and smiles.

  “Come on, answer me, mirror.”

  My mirror gives me a mischievous reply:

  “Ah! My fat friend!”

  “No! Don’t you think I’ve slimmed down a bit?”

  “Yes, you’re thinner.”

  “Thank God I didn’t need special teas or diets.”

  “See how good your husband is? The heartbreak he’s caused has worked wonders, and you’ve grown slimmer. Let’s hope this heartbreak eats away at you for another month. You’ll be more graceful than a film star. How good it would be if all fat women had husbands who broke their hearts.”

  I’m the one laughing now. This mirror’s crazy. My life is crazy enough as it is, and along comes this mirror to make me still crazier.

  “Oh, mirror of mine, what do you think of me? Do you think I should start all over again?”

  “Of course, start over. But before that, get a broom and sweep away all the trash you’ve got in your heart. Sweep away the madness you’ve got in your mind, sweep it all away, everything. Free yourself. Only then will you have the happiness you deserve.”

  “Tell me, dear mirror: Where did I go wrong? Will I one day be happy, with my husband surrounded by all these women?”

  “Think carefully, my friend: Are these other women to blame for the situation? Are men innocent?”

  I abandon the mirror, which is distracting me with useless thoughts.

  “Today, I’m going to the first lesson in love that I’ve ever had in my life.”

  I arrive for my class at exactly the right time. My love counselor is waiting for me, seated on a large velvet sofa. She greets me with a proud, self-assured, and sensuous tone of voice from the dizzy height of her throne. Cood borning. Velcome. Tank gyou por choossing dis school. She’s from the north, this love counselor is a Makua. I don’t laugh, but smile and return her greeting. Good morning and thank you for accepting me as your student.

  She invites me to sit down opposite her. We look at each other. We weigh each other up. She’s almost my age. Tall. Sturdy. Fat even. Fatter than I am. The flesh of her backside fills the sofa, spilling over like a hoard of treasure. She stretches her arms out along the back of the sofa to give her armpits an airing, completely at ease with herself. In matters of love, she’s up there on high. I envy her. She knows all about love. She must have experienced everything, tried it all, and knows all there is to know. She can distinguish between a happy woman and a frustrated woman at a mere glance. She wears a huge, golden yellow tunic. On her head, she wears a turban that has been placed there artistically like a queen’s crown. She wears gold, a lot of gold. She looks like the Queen of Sheba – the books reveal a Queen of Sheba that’s skinny and without curves, a body in the European taste, but African queens are fat, for they are as well nourished with love as they are with food.

  We begin the class with a few trivialities: we talk about the weather, our children, Christmas, which is near. This woman has a magnetic aura about her that I find attractive. She is a monument to triumph over love. She must be one of those women who attract love and kill all men who approach them with desire. And she talks like someone singing. She moves like someone dancing. She breathes like someone sighing, dear God, everything about her is love. I’m prettier than she is, but she has something alluring that I don’t have.

  Then we begin to focus on the first serious question. She asks me about my problems. I look down and don’t answer. It’s humiliating to talk to a stranger about intimate things. It’s as if I were delivering myself to a priest in the confession box in order for him to absolve me of my sins as if he had none himself. This woman wants to console others in their pain as if she could console herself in her own pain.

  “My friend,” she convinces me, “if love had a price, I guarantee that each of us would buy it in bulk, to use and to keep in our grain-store. In matters of love, there’s no shame. Rich people and poor people seek me out every day. And the richest are those who seek me the most. They’re rich in terms of money, but poor in love. Love doesn’t have a price.”

  In spite of her words, I don’t answer. So we continue our small talk. We talk about traditions and cultures. And she tells me stories of love from the Makua. Love and wooing in her village. Rites of passage.

  “How did you prepare for your marriage?”

  “I began my trousseau when I was fifteen,” I explain. “I embroidered doilies. I made coverlets and tablecloths in crochet. Tablecloths with embroidery in flower stitch, chicken-foot stitch, cross-stitch, Yugoslavian stitch, chain stitch. I did a course in cookery and knitting.”

  “I was raised in the country and wasn’t acquainted with things like embroidery and trousseaus. Tell me, how did you prepare yourself on the eve of your mar
riage?”

  “I had classes at church with the priests and nuns. I lit a lot of candles and said a lot of prayers.”

  “And what did your family teach you?”

  “They talked to me about obedience, about motherhood.”

  “And what about sexual love?”

  “No one told me anything about that.”

  “Then you’re not a woman,” she tells me disdainfully. “You’re still a child. How can you be happy in marriage if a life lived together is based on love and sex, and no one ever taught you anything about the subject?”

  I look at her in surprise. Suddenly, I recall that famous assertion – no one is born a woman, you become one. Where was it that I first heard that pronouncement?

  “I went through the first rites of passage from adolescence to young adulthood. I went through the second rites between being betrothed and being married. During the rites of adolescence, they treated my skin with musiro paste. During the rites of my betrothal, they treated my skin with honey.”

  “Honey on your skin?”

  “Yes, pure honey without any other mixture. It makes the skin smoother than the shell of an egg. They smothered my body with it a few days before my marriage.”

  We spend some time comparing the cultural habits of the north and the south. We talk about the taboos surrounding menstruation that prevent a woman from taking part in public life throughout the country, from north to south. About taboos surrounding eggs, which women cannot eat so that they won’t have bald children and so that they won’t behave like egg-laying hens as they give birth. About the myths that turn young girls into domestic servants and turn men away from the pestle, the fire, and the kitchen in order not to catch sexual diseases such as sterility and impotence. About the table manners that oblige women to serve their husbands the best pieces of meat, while they make do with the bones, feet, wings, and neck. The myths that blame women for all of nature’s disasters. When it doesn’t rain, it’s their fault. When there are floods, it’s their fault. When there are plagues and illnesses, it’s the fault of those who sat down on the pestle, or who aborted in secret, who ate an egg or the gizzard of some chicken, who went out into the fields when they were having a period.

  Women in the south think those in the north are free and easy, and deceitful. Northern women think those in the south are feeble and frigid. In some regions of the north, the man says: My dear friend, to honor our friendship and to strengthen our ties of kinship, sleep with my wife tonight. In the south, the man says: Woman is my cattle, my fortune. She must be led to pasture with a cane. In the north, women adorn themselves like flowers, make themselves beautiful, look after themselves. In the north, a woman is a source of light and should be the source of the world. In the north, women are light and can fly. Their harmonious voices utter sounds that are sweeter and gentler than birdsong. In the south, women wear sad, gloomy colors. Their expression is forever angry, tired, and they shout when they speak as if they were imitating the crash of thunder. They tie a scarf round their head with neither skill nor beauty, as if they were securing a bundle of firewood. They wear clothes because they can’t go around naked. They dress without taste. With no elegance. No skill. Their body is merely for reproduction.

  When a man from the south sees a woman from the north, he goes crazy. Because she’s beautiful, a mthiana orera, polished. Because she knows how to love, she knows how to smile, and to please. When a northern woman sees a man from the south, she goes crazy because he’s strong and he’s got money. A northern man also loves a southern woman because he’s servile. A woman from the south loves a northern man because he’s gentler, more sensitive, and doesn’t mistreat her physically. A southern woman is a saver, she doesn’t spend any money, and buys just one new dress a year. The northern woman spends a lot on lace, cloth, gold, creams, because she needs to be permanently beautiful. It’s the story of never-ending envy. The north admiring the south, the south admiring the north. It has a logical explanation. A popular saying claims that one’s neighbor’s wife is always better than one’s own.

  “Did you attend rites of initiation?” the counselor asks.

  “No,” I explain, “my father is an out-and-out Christian, and apart from that the colonial regime was much stronger in the south than in the north.”

  “So that means no one spoke to you about anything before you came of age?”

  “I attended other schools,” I explain.

  “I’m talking about the schools of love and of life.”

  “I never attended any of those.”

  “You really are a child then. You’re not yet a woman.”

  “So what do you learn in those rituals that make you feel more womanly than we do?”

  “Many things: We learn about love, seduction, motherhood, society. We teach the basic philosophies of how to live together in harmony. How can you expect to have a happy home if you haven’t been given the basic lessons in love and sex? Upon your initiation, you learn to get to know the treasure that lies within you. The purple flower that multiplies into innumerable petals, producing all the beneficial qualities that exist in the universe. The initiation rites enable you to live with a smile. You learn to acquaint yourself with anatomy and all the stars that gravitate within you. You learn the rhythm of all the heartbeats deep inside you.”

  “People only have one heart.”

  “Women have two. A main one and a secondary one. Sometimes she has three, when she has a child in her womb.”

  “Are these rituals really so important?”

  “Without them, you’re as light as the wind. You’re the one who travels far without first traveling deep inside your own self. You can’t get married, for no one will accept you. And if he accepts you, he’ll abandon you straightaway. You can never attend a funeral, much less approach a dead body, because you are immature. Nor can you be present at a birth. You can’t make the arrangements for a wedding. That’s because you are impure. Because you’re nothing, only an eternal child.”

  I’m left feeling a little uneasy. This woman says I’m not a woman. What is it she knows that I don’t know? I conceal my indignation and speak. I tell her some of Tony’s history, his infidelities, his concubines, and all my lonely nights.

  The conversation makes me more and more angry, and I begin to talk about all the things that hurt me so that she may understand. I tell her I always fulfilled my role as a wife: I’ve washed his underpants, darned his socks, stitched the buttons back on his shirts. When he leaves the house all fine and dandy, someone turns up and takes him away, all of him, leaving me with just his underpants to wash. Why can’t she take him away completely, once and for all?

  “Don’t blame the other women for your failure. Just like you, they were conquered and answered their bodily call. A man’s desires are God’s desires. No one can deny them.”

  I take a good look at this woman. She’s mad. She’s a complete charlatan. She’s the hook, ready to fish up the money from people like me who are at their wits’ end.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The solution is to make him only have eyes for you and not look at others.”

  “How? Am I supposed to deprive him of his eyesight?”

  “Why not? Life is all about sharing. We share a blanket on a cold day. We share our warmth with a dying man in the hour of his peril. Why can’t we share a husband? We lend money, food, and clothing. Sometimes we even give our life to save someone. Don’t you think it’s easier to lend a husband or a wife out than it is to sacrifice one’s life?”

  Cultures are invisible frontiers constructing the fortress of the world. In some regions of northern Mozambique, love is shared. One shares one’s wife with a friend, with a trusted visitor, with one’s brother in circumcision. A wife is water that is offered the traveler, the visitor. Making love is a footprint in the ocean’s sandy shore that the waves erase. But it leaves its mark. One family alone may be a mosaic of skin colors and races depending on the type of visitors the f
amily receives, because woman represents fertility. That’s why in many regions, children receive the mother’s family name. In human reproduction, only the mother is a certainty. In the south, the situation is completely different. A husband only gives his wife to his brother in circumcision when he’s infertile.

  In primitive practices, solidarity is shown by sharing one’s bread, blanket, and semen. I’m a modern woman. I prefer to give my life and blood to whoever needs it. I can give everything, but not my man. He’s neither bread nor cake. I’m not sharing him, I’m selfish.

  I embark on a voyage through time. Harems with two thousand wives. Rulers with forty women. Wives betrothed before they’re even born. Social contracts. Alliances. Women bought and sold. Marriages of convenience. Daughters sold to increase their parents’ wealth or to pay gambling debts. Sex slaves. Married off at the age of twelve. My memory extends to the beginning of all beginnings. In the Bantu paradise, God created an Adam. Various Eves. And a harem. Whoever wrote the Bible omitted certain facts about the genesis of polygamy. The Bantus should rewrite their Bible.

  We talk about male initiation. I tell her my Tony never attended any school for initiation, at which point she declares:

  “Your husband is also not a man, but merely a child.”

  “A child, my Tony? That’s not possible. How can you dare dismiss my husband like that?”

  She explains the first lesson of male initiation to me: