The First Wife

by Paulina Chiziane

  I feel sick. My flesh creeps. I regret this. I’m not going to allow myself to fall into the grip of a madman. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folk who believe in this type of thing. A mole’s fat? What would such a soup taste like? This town’s full of these fortune peddlers whose stories hold the balance between what’s real and what’s fantasy. They put incredible beliefs into people’s heads that are then the cause of misunderstanding between friends, family, and even colleagues at work. Some of these individuals reduce people to penury. They want money. Money from the outset to greet the spirits and read one’s fate. Money for a chicken to be sacrificed, money for sacred cloth and roots. Money to pay for their services. Money again to ask the spirit if the work has been carried out well or if it will deliver success. Money here, money there, money everywhere. These days, there are even Christians who give priests money by way of payment for divine miracles. This medicine man won’t be getting any money from me.

  I close my eyes. Memories of some good times begin to take shape in my mind. I hear my Tony’s voice singing love ballads just for me. My arms weaving caresses, his lips moistening each cell of my body. The two of us, hand in hand, strolling through mountainous ravines. I open my eyes, and I am faced with the bitterness of reality. Silences. Memories. Yearnings for a body whose soul has left for other universes. I see myself at the dead of night, feeling the walls, the sheets, empty, my lips humid from so many tears kissing the air that meanders through the shadows of the night. Convulsions, the ashes of a love that has become extinguished and can no longer be ignited.

  I think. I’ve run out of chances, I can no longer hold on to my husband with food, affection, fantasies. He’s a shrewd butterfly. Beyond capture. My case requires magic. Only magic can save my marriage.

  There are miracles in this world, to be sure. I once witnessed an extraordinary case. A thief entered a shop. He robbed it. When he was about to leave, he suddenly grew fat and couldn’t get through the door. When he drew away from the door, he grew thin, when he drew near, he grew fat. In despair, he smashed the huge display window, which was about three meters wide. He tried to get through it, but he grew even fatter than the shop window. All of a sudden, he went crazy and cried like a child, until the shop owner came to free him. This is a true story, I saw it. What I didn’t see was the man growing fat. I saw the thief in fetters, the broken display window, and the bag of stolen goods.

  I can accept magic, but not the mole soup. If he eats it, he’ll come and kiss my lips with that frightful smell. Without having eaten, I’ll end up eating through the kiss. And what if he forces me to eat from his dish? What if he gives a bit to the children? No, I don’t want anything to do with this witchcraft, I prefer tattoos.

  The seer’s wife does me a tattoo in a secret place, and for a good price. She cuts my skin with a brand-new razor blade – to avoid the possibility of HIV – and then rubs me with a pomade that burns like pepper but that has the appearance of cow dung. I’m scared: What if I pick up tetanus?

  For days after that, I ask God not to let Tony appear before my tattoo has dried up. The damned tattoo has given me a fever, it’s got infected and is bleeding. I panic and go back to the wizard’s house. He gives me a potion designed to produce a scar. I take it and it produces more bleeding that just won’t stop.

  Then my Tony turns up. And he’s in a good mood, dear God! He wants to stay, inspired by love. I feel tense. The tattoo still hasn’t scarred. While Tony speaks sweet nothings, my tongue turns into a sword, a dagger. I realize I’m shouting hysterically. He has no alternative but to go to the bedroom, get his hat and coat, and disappear into the night.

  Oh, Lord! This wizard has wrecked my one chance. His cursed tattoo has scared my prey off. How unlucky I am! What a disastrous, ill-fated woman I am! Oh, how I want to die!

  8

  I’m that woman who has a mirror for company in her cold bedroom. Who dreams about what isn’t there. Who tries to hold on to time and the wind. All I have to smile about is the past, the present is for weeping. I’m no use to anyone. People look at me as if I were a failed woman. What future can I hope for? My husband has become a tourist in his own home. Changes occur quickly in this home. The women increase. Children are born. A monogamous family has become polygamous. Unity has been smashed into a thousand pieces, Tony has multiplied. My friends ask after Tony only to tease me. The more fatalistic among them try to convince me that love has had its time.

  I’ve been to the furthest horizon in search of my lost love. I’ve done all I could. I’ve spent sleepless days, despairing nights, while my love gets ever more remote. I began to secretly frequent a sect devoted to miracles. I had myself baptized in the River Jordan – which was in fact the beach of the Costa do Sol, near Maputo. In this sect’s miracles, even the sea can be turned into a river. I bathed in corn flour. In popcorn. In the blood of magic chickens. I released white doves to bring me back my lost love from the four corners of the world. Nothing! I became a member of the congregation of John Malanga, a miraculous prophet born in the Shona lands of Mozambique or Zimbabwe, I’m not quite sure which, but he was famous for miracles to restore health, wealth, and love. I fulfilled the sect’s commandments, not to eat duck, or rabbit, or pork, or any other palmipede. Once again, I had myself baptized in the River Jordan – this time it really was a river, the River Matola – my body was immersed in the waters of the river, while milk was poured over my head – cow’s milk, which they called the milk of the holy lamb of God – in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I dressed correctly, wearing the sacred colors of red and white for more than six months. I rummaged around for ghosts. I followed my man’s tracks, which was easy, because with each step he took, he produced a child. I went looking for Julieta, his second woman, and found a wild animal who gave me a princely beating and sank her talons in my neck. She did to me what an animal of the wild does to its prey: I was easy meat. I calmed her display of hysterics. She took it out on me for all her sleepless nights. She’s got five kids and is expecting a sixth. She’s given my Tony many more children than I have, his wife in name. I went to see Luísa. She defended herself with all the valor of an ancient gladiator, and we got ourselves locked up like a pair of lionesses in a police cell. He’s trapped her in his roots. She’s got two children he occasionally supports when he’s in the mood. She has to use a lot of initiative to feed her children, to conjure up flour to bake her bread. This woman hasn’t got a job. I went to see Saly, the fourth woman. She also gave me a beating and told me: Yours is what you carry with you, in your belly, in your stomach. Yours is what you’ve eaten. This man gives me what is his. As long as he remains with me, he’s mine, while he’s with you, he’s yours. And she told me: I’m poor. No father, no job, no money, no husband. If I hadn’t stolen your husband, I’d have neither children nor any life whatsoever. My existence would be barren like a desert. The love he gives me is almost nothing, but it’s enough to make me blossom. He’s given me these two little ones. He’s given me a few moments of happiness that I’ve stored in the archive of my memory. I tell everyone I’m married and have a husband on one day a month. And I’m happy. There are women who don’t even have one day of love during their whole lives. I went to see the fifth woman, Mauá. She’s still a child. A wildflower born in the gardens of the north of my country. She’s the woman Tony loves the most. Was I jealous of her? No. I can’t be jealous of a flower, or of a butterfly on the wind. The girl can’t be more than nineteen. How could I settle scores with a creature the same age as my third daughter? I’ve been involved in brawls, scandalous acts, witchcraft, schools for seduction. What is it that I’ve gained from love? Nothing! Only problems, just problems. And while I get all hot and bothered, my husband just goes on behaving in the same old way. He’s like an eel in muddied waters, I’ll never be able to get my hands on him.

  What do women want, hanging around just one man? We all fear solitude and that’s why we put up with what is intolerable. It’s said that ther
e are many women – according to the statistics and men themselves – and few men. To tell you the truth – and paraphrasing Lu, the third woman – there are enough men. Men with power and money, these are the ones that are few. In the history of our country, no woman died a virgin for lack of men. For all these women, Tony is a job, a source of income.

  The world thinks women are self-seeking. And aren’t men, as well? Any man demands one basic attribute of a woman: beauty. Women demand another attribute of men: money. What’s the difference? Are men the only ones who have a right to make demands and women not?

  Out in the countryside, the only man to attract a pretty woman is one who has a powerful transistor radio, so that he can play her sweet music to lull them on the nights they make love. The one with the guile to possess a bicycle can have all the women in the world. It must be romantic to ride round the world on a bicycle, a prince and princess on their princely mount, traveling the world on their majestic steed.

  Even in the Bible, woman is no good. The saints, in their time-honored preaching, say woman is worth nothing, woman is an animal who feeds on evil, she is the butt of all arguments, quarrels, and injustice. It’s true. If we can be exchanged, sold, tortured, killed, enslaved, corralled into harems like cattle, it’s because we’re not needed. But if we’re not needed, why is it that God put us in the world? And this God, if he exists, why does he allow us to suffer in such a way? The worst of it is that God doesn’t appear to have any wife. If he was married, the goddess, his wife, would intercede on our behalf. Through her, we would ask to be blessed with a life based on harmony. But the goddess must exist, I keep thinking. She must be as invisible as all of us. No doubt her space is limited to the celestial kitchen.

  If she did exist, we would have someone to whom we could direct our prayers, so we would say: Our Mother who art in Heaven, blessed be thy name. Give us thy kingdom – of women, of course – give us thy benevolence, we don’t want any more violence. Let our prayers be answered, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us our daily peace and forgive us our trespasses – gossip, malice, busybodying, vanity, envy – as we forgive our husbands, lovers, boyfriends, companions and other relations I can’t name, that trespass against us with their tyranny, betrayals, immorality, drunkenness, insults … Lead us not into temptation to imitate their madness – drinking, mistreating, stealing, expelling, marrying and divorcing, raping, enslaving, buying, using, abusing, and let us not die at the hands of these tyrants – but deliver us from evil, amen. We could surely use a heavenly mother, without a doubt.

  I have just learned life’s lesson. The story of one sole love, an everlasting love? Nonsense! That’s a song for poets. Love is unleashed from the breast and runs out of control like a rock rolling toward a precipice. To have only one love in life? Baloney! Only women, forever stupid, swallow that story. Men love every day. Every time the sun comes up, off they go in search of new passions, new emotions, while we wait forever more for a love that’s gone old and feeble. All men are polygamous. Man is a species of human with various hearts, one for every woman.

  I’m not giving up this fight. I shall pursue my Tony to the furthest reaches of eternity. I shall pursue him as far as where time dwells. One day, I’ll find him again, I swear. I’ll catch him even if it’s my last act in life.

  9

  I’m going to visit Aunt Maria, and she’ll tell me stories of polygamy. She first married when she was ten. Her marriage had been arranged before she was even born. Her father had a debt, he couldn’t pay his taxes, and so he told the tax collector: My wife is pregnant, if she gives birth to a girl, I’ll give her to you as payment. And that’s how it was. At the age of ten, she became the twenty-fifth wife of a king. She had a prince in her belly. A royal guard fell madly in love with her, and she had two children by him. As if that wasn’t enough, she’s now got two husbands, both of whom live under one roof.

  “How did you manage to live in a home with twenty-five wives, Aunty?”

  The old woman offers me a look of infinite tenderness.

  “My girl, life is a never-ending process of sharing. We share the air and the sun, we share the rain and the wind. We share the hoe, the sickle, the seeds. We share peace and the pipe. To share a man isn’t a crime. Occasionally, it’s necessary to share a woman, when a husband is sterile and needs to harvest the semen of a brother.

  “Were you happy, Aunty?”

  “I was still a young shoot, my eyes still reflected the sun and the moon. I hadn’t yet learned the meaning of bitterness. We were a huge flock of women waiting to be covered. We gave birth to babies who flew over the grass like fireflies, loose stars lighting up the darkness of the savannah. I met the king in fact when I was thirteen.”

  “A queen in a harem, Aunty?” I ask, horrified, imagining the harems from the Tales of the Arabian Nights, with all their restrictions, their eunuchs and suchlike.

  “In our world there were no harems,” she explained. “They were true families, where there was social equality and democracy. Each wife had her house, her children, and her property. We had our organ of government – the assembly of the king’s wives – where we would discuss the division of chores, decide who would cook the sovereign’s morning pap, who would prepare his baths and rub his feet, cut his nails, massage his back, shave him, comb him, and provide other cares. We would take part in drawing up His Majesty’s matrimonial rotation, which consisted of a night for each wife, but everything conducted on a strictly equal basis. And he fulfilled this duty to the letter. He had to give proof of statesmanship, be a good model for the family. If the king was imprudent enough to favor one wife in particular, he had to face criticism at meetings with his advisers and elders. As for me, the king had me whenever he wanted, but no one ever mentioned the matter. My status was never questioned. All the wives surrendered to my charm. I was a great lady, you know?”

  I note great pride and vanity in her tone of voice. I can’t understand the reason for such happiness, in a home with more than twenty spouses, without any rights or freedom whatsoever.

  “Were you all happy there?”

  “We were free. We had a lot of freedom. The ladies didn’t lack for anything at all. They didn’t even lack affection. No one ate vegetables in that house: only meat. We didn’t drink water: only milk. Women grew fat like elephants. The earth was our mother, and not such a stepmother as it is today.”

  “Even so, why so many wives and so many children?”

  Aunt Maria looks at me and smiles.

  “Every age has its history,” she says. “Prosperity is measured by the number of properties. Virility by the number of wives and children. A great patriarch must have various heads under his command. When one holds power, one needs somewhere to exercise it, isn’t that so? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, were polygamous, weren’t they? Our old kings also were, and still are. What harm does that do? In the Bible, only Adam wasn’t polygamous. In our house, the ladies produced children and gave the kingdom an image of prosperity. If the king had difficulties, he would resort to conjugal and reproductive assistants, who were recruited among the most handsome, robust, and intelligent men in the kingdom. A king has to display the air of virility, he has to be a man over all men.

  I laugh out loud. A kingdom is the center of human reproduction, and the king is the reproductive commander-in-chief.

  “How many times a year did a king get married?”

  “As many times as he needed to. Two, three, four.”

  “He spent his time in wedding celebrations.”

  “Not at all,” she explains, “the king didn’t have time for such trivialities. The people who organized everything were his ministers, governors, advisers, who would choose the bride, negotiate the marriage, pay the bride price, and see to all those types of things. The new bride’s reception in the royal palace was arranged by his previous ladies. I was received by his twenty-fourth wife, as I was the twenty-fifth and last. That day, the king was sitting in a corner, having a beer and playing cards
with his friends. He didn’t even look at me. All these marriages were contracts, political alliances between the different ethnic groups within the kingdom, except in my case, as I was given to him to pay my father’s debts. I never felt married to that man, who was old enough to be my grandfather.

  “Ah, but Aunty! Kings shared their spouses with their assistants.”

  “No. A wife who was passed over to an assistant never again returned to the royal bed, which was good because she regained her freedom and could go off gallivanting. She could even bring any children she bore into the royal domains. In a polygamous home, there are no illegitimate children. Those born to the assistants couldn’t inherit the throne. The first lady, the nkosikazi, she was sacrosanct. No man could touch her under pain of death. She was the only wife who could guarantee the royal lineage. When I got married, the king was already a granddad.”

  “What was the king’s bed like?”

  “The bed? No one entered the king’s bedroom except for his first lady. Like a doctor, the king made house calls.”

  “Aunty, if you were never in the king’s bed, then you were never queen.”

  “I was a queen, my dear, I was a queen! Wherever I walked, all the other women would make way for me. There aren’t many women in the world who could boast of such merit.”

  “Aunty, what was the king like?”

  “The king?” She talks with passion. “He was a man like no other. Tall. Lean. A white beard. Intelligent. He was powerful. Very powerful. He was venerated like a god. He ate green vegetables and drank milk. He was an affable person but he was also stern. Once he had one of his wives put to death because she had tried to poison him. The queen, the first lady, was a kind of commander of all the womenfolk. She was very beautiful and distinguished, the first lady! Proud and distant. An embittered woman, and gossips speculated that she was skinny because she was jealous. She was like that, no curves in front, no curves at the back, as flat as a board, which made her the target of scorn in the eyes of any Bantu man, who loves to let his hands wander into the undulating labyrinths of a well-endowed woman. She was like a little bird inside a cage, I remember. She seemed more prisoner than prima donna. The king held her in great respect. Nowadays, I think her deep sadness came from the lack of love shown her. It’s painful sleeping alone when you know your husband is out there!”