“This southern culture never ceases to amaze me!” Mauá concludes. “For us, love and pleasure are extremely important. When one of these elements is absent, we change partners. Why suffer?”
“I wanted to have more children. I did all I could to avoid joining different family names in one womb. I was scared of being called a prostitute. A poor wretch. A witch. A stealer of husbands. Our society doesn’t accept a woman with children from different fathers, and different surnames.”
“Ah, you southern women!” Saly says, smiling sarcastically. “It’s not a weakness to have children by different fathers. On the contrary, a woman in that position has given and received a lot of love. She’s experienced. She was lucky enough to be desired by many men, and life is made up of trial and error. You fail here, but get things right there, what’s the big deal?”
“It’s a moral issue, Saly.”
“Moral!” Lu exclaims harshly. “A morality that obliges you to hatch a viper’s eggs. Just look at what morality did to you. You’re a ghost. Your life is a living hell. The man turned you into nothing more than a machine for reproduction, and you accepted the pact. Your situation is really serious. In your place, I would have abandoned this man long ago.”
“No, that’s out of the question.”
“Our society in the north is more humane,” Mauá explains. A woman has a right to happiness and to life. We live with a man as long as he makes us happy. If we’re here, it’s because a state of harmony still exists. If our love comes to an end one day, we leave in search of other worlds, with the same freedom that men enjoy.”
The northern women are unanimous in their criticism. In the south, society is full of women yearning for the past. Insane. Ghosts. In the south, women are exiled in their own world, doomed to die without knowing what love and life are. In the south, women are downcast, more enslaved. They walk with their heads bowed. Unsure of themselves. They know nothing of the delights of living. They don’t look after themselves physically, they don’t have massages or paint themselves to make their faces more joyful. We are happier up in the north. We dress extravagantly, in bright colors. We paint ourselves, we look after ourselves, we adorn ourselves. We tread the ground confidently. The men give us presents, woe betide them if they don’t have a present to give us. When it’s time to get married, the man comes to make his home in the wife’s house, and when love is over, it’s he who leaves. In the north, women are more beautiful. In the north, no one enslaves anyone else, because all men and women are children of the same God. But be careful, in the north, man is God as well. Not an oppressive god but a friendly god, a god you can confide in, a god who is a companion.
“Tony lost his vigor,” Lu says accusingly. “He wore you down, made you grow old, and now he wants a change of scenery? He can’t leave you like this. You managed to hold on to him. Thanks to you, we learned how to share and we succeeded in controlling his movements. We made progress. We invested our efforts in useful, productive things. We even managed to start businesses, and now we live well. Think of us, Rami.”
“I can foresee a life of dispute, conflict, and intrigue,” Saly confesses. “We’re going to spend our time running from hole to hole, trying to catch the same mouse. Then there’ll be confrontations and tears.”
“Rami, think carefully,” Lu shouts. “Divorce is for adolescents, young people.”
“You’re going to sign your divorce papers after twenty years of marriage just to satisfy Tony’s whim? Or because of us? This home is yours, we’re the ones who invaded it. Do you want to hand us the victory? We’re not your friends at all, what each of us wants is to take your place. Are you going to risk losing everything just for us? Do something, Rami!” Ju warns me.
Lu has well and truly touched a sore point. I’m speechless. I cry. Men are like that. They change women as if they were changing shirts. I’ve had twenty years of love and struggle just to end up like grains of salt being dissolved.
“I’ve used up all my weapons, I’ve lost the battle. Give me some suggestions. Tell me what I can do to get around this problem.”
“Tell me something, Rami,” Lu asks, “what do you do to hold on to Tony?”
“What do I do? Nothing!”
“Oh, I don’t understand you.”
“I’m the one who doesn’t understand.”
“Rami, you know very well what I’m talking about. Have you never made him a little love potion or something?”
“No, never.”
“I can’t believe it. I sometimes season his food with ground salamander or cobwebs. I choose those potions that make the body more ardent. He can’t resist me, you all know this only too well.”
“I rub my sexual parts with mosses, rues, and nettles that grow next to gravestones in the cemeteries,” Saly says. “I know he doesn’t care for me so much now, but when he remembers me, he gets so excited he can’t sleep and comes rushing over to see me even in the middle of the night.”
“I’ve got magic throughout my body,” Mauá fires back. “When we make love, I wrap myself round him, hold him tight, cover him, and he sleeps like a child. I started having lessons in love when I was eight. Of all of you, Eve’s my only true rival. We were initiated in the same school. We’ve got the same skills in love. It’s a struggle between equals, with the same weapons. None of you counts for anything, you lie at my feet.
“I never did any of that,” Ju confesses, “never! It’s not in my nature.”
“It’s a pity,” the others say, “love is an art, a job, a business. In any business, you have to make investments. How do you expect to be loved if you don’t invest in it? And you, Rami? What investment have you made to make your love work?”
“I,” Saly chips in again, “light a cheroot at midnight and fill the house with smoke. Then I grab a broom and start sweeping the house. As I sweep, I invoke Tony’s name. I enter the world of dreams. Wherever he is, he answers me with a sigh. He shouts out my name. And he dashes off to find me. You can say whether I’m lying or not. How many times has he woken up from his nightmares in your beds, shouting Saly, Saly, how many times?”
Saly’s confession brings me back to reality. I remember. Countless times, Tony would wake up and vanish from the house in a flash, defying all the dangers of darkness, as if he were responding to a summons by the devil. I’d never for once imagined that this was the effect of some love spell. Oh, how sad! The idea of holding a man by means of magic is delightful. But can these women be happy knowing that the love they receive is the result of magic? What taste can love induced by magic possibly have? Does it taste of honey or of falseness? I once tried witchcraft. Nothing happened and just as well. I’m one of those who believe in pure love, true love, everlasting love.
“Rami,” Lu confesses, “do you remember the times Tony was with you and couldn’t do anything? It was I who was closing him up. I put a cork in him. I bottled him. I occupied his entire memory. Whether he was with you or with Ju, when the time came, he couldn’t get it up. He would back away. Grow cold. He’d abandon you and hurry over to me, where he would get his satisfaction.”
There was no doubt that she was telling the truth. Her confession was utterly malicious and filled me with loathing, with anger. I began to understand everything. Tony’s escapes, his betrayals, his lies. He wasn’t acting of his own free will, he was the victim of a carefully prepared trap.
“You northern women only think about sex,” I say, my voice laden with resentment.
“Who doesn’t think about sex in this world?” Lu says. “When a child is born, it’s down there we look, and we shout: It’s a boy. Thank you, God, for this gift. Or we mumble: It’s a girl. Another one, my God, how unlucky I am! Only after this do we look at the face and the rest of the body.”
Back comes Mauá: “You southerners don’t worry about important things. You make love in the European manner. You focus all your energy on kissing the mouth, as if a kiss were worth anything. You say we only think about sex? How many sou
thern men have left their homes for good? You call us backward. All you have in your heads are books. You’ve got money and glitter. But you haven’t got spirit. You’ve got good schools, jobs, luxury houses. What’s the point of all that if you don’t know the color of love? What’s the point of traveling to the moon if you’ve never traveled inside yourself? Have you ever made a journey inside you, Rami? Never, it’s obvious from the pain you have in your face. Paradise is within us, Rami. Happiness lies within us. You southerners aren’t yet women, you’re children. Reproductive creatures, that’s all. That’s why men abandon you left, right, and center. Your married lives together are devoid of magic. That’s why, no sooner had you declared independence, you shouted: Down with the initiation rites. What did you think you were doing?”
In this group, the unpretentious women are myself and Ju. There’s no artifice in either of us. We are just as life brought us into the world. That’s why we’re despised. I didn’t know that everything was played for when it came to matters of love. I always thought that love resided only in one’s heart. Now I understand. Love is a major enterprise. I always believed in natural love. Platonic love. But in questions of love, all manner of tactics are valued. The men who pass through these schools know how to love. Know how to please. Know how to sail a boat deep into their own interior.
“Rami, you should send your daughters to a school to prepare them for initiation.”
“No, never.”
“Why?”
“I want to preserve my daughters’ virginity.”
“Oh, Rami, virginity is a primitive state. A state of childhood. Man doesn’t need virginity, but perfect love. Teach your girls the good things they have. Prepare them so that no man will despise them.”
“I don’t have the courage.”
“You northerners should abolish these schools,” Ju bursts out.
“Abolish them?” Mauá objects. “No, never! What is a woman who has never been through sexual initiation? A child, who knows nothing of life’s contours and curves.”
“Rami, you have a good heart,” Saly challenges me. “But your body is still a child’s. You’re a virgin in spite of your five children. But there’s still time for you to get to know the world.”
“What would you advise, then?”
“Get what we call your squid, your labia, elongated. That’s a good start. It’s a practice that many people criticize out of ignorance, and it produces more solutions than problems.”
“At my age?”
“It can be done at any age. You can’t go on like this. You can’t resign yourself to living and dying without knowing love.”
“I’ve loved, I still love, I was loved long before you came into being.”
“To love involves embarking on a journey into your inner being, and you’ve never done that. Rami, who doesn’t like sleeping on a foam mattress? Who doesn’t like to lie down on a satin bedspread or a fine linen sheet? If you don’t get your labia fixed, the ground is hard. It’s the same as sleeping on a mat, on a camp bed, without the least bit of comfort.”
My God, it must be true. My northern neighbor’s daughters go to a school for sexual initiation. They like it.
“It’s not your fault,” Saly remarks. “You people in the south allowed yourselves to be colonized by those folk from Europe and their priests who were hostile to our practices. But what’s that kiss worth compared to what we have inside us? Then they brought in pornography and all its silliness just to deceive the inept and entertain imbeciles.”
I surrender to these countrywomen, who are such experts in sex, and who view the twists and turns of life in sexual terms.
“Any man is a child in our arms. He transmigrates. He forgets life and death, because a woman’s body is eternity.”
“Don’t exaggerate, Mauá,” I shout to try to shut her up.
“Ask Tony, if you want it confirmed. I sometimes tell him: If you don’t bring me what I want, I’ll go on strike when it comes to sex. You’ll have to go hungry. I’ll close my doors for your journey in time. He gets flustered and does everything to please me. Rami, you’ve got to believe it. Any man is a slave in the hands of a woman who knows how to love.”
“If I was a man, I wouldn’t be a witness to all this adversity. I curse the time God made me a woman,” I burst out.
“I bless the hour God made me a woman,” Mauá says. “Women were made for love and not to suffer. I can eat without working, because Tony gives me everything I want, because he’s my slave.”
I find this revelation painful. My husband is sucked dry by women amphibians. Women with scales. Squid women. Octopus women. They came from the sea and live on dry land, my God, they’ve destroyed me, wrecked my marriage. They’ve defeated me. I’m done for. Now I understand why initiation rituals were fought against, but then maintained in secret, they survived for centuries as secret societies. A man who goes through this type of education knows how to love. A woman who is schooled in this enchants, bedazzles, is vibrant in the way she lives.
“You southern women are big. Strong. Good for work,” Mauá concludes almost insultingly. “You’ve got a big pelvic area and huge hips, ideal for childbearing. Your hands are good for chopping firewood and scrubbing the floor. But when it comes to being companions in bed, you’re not so good. You break the bed frame, crush the mattress springs, you sweat a lot and ruin the sheets. We northern women, we’re refined, petite, good for love and for bed. That’s why we’re queens, and men are our slaves.”
“For these same reasons, I’m going to follow my own path.”
“Rami, please, put up a fight!”
“I’m too old for such things. You appeared during the course of my journey to throw flowers in my path. Goodbye, look after my dear Tony.”
“Don’t say goodbye, Rami.”
“Fight, Rami. Fight for your love.”
“I’m tired.”
Oh, Rami! You’ll only hold on to a man if you’ve got claws. Your body’s as smooth as a catfish. You don’t even have a tattoo. Your body doesn’t graze. It doesn’t scrape. It doesn’t rub. It doesn’t leave any marks. That’s why men leave you.”
“Are you saying I should go and have my body tattooed?”
“Tattoos are sticky, they glue, they hold,” Lu admits.
“We’ve got tattoos on the most important bits of our bodies. Look, mine are so big, they’re the size of nuts. I’ve got them in places where he puts his hands. By the oven door. On top of the oven. Internal tattoos to thicken the corrugations inside the oven. A man who gets as far as these never forgets,” Saly explains.
“Do some tattoos, Rami, just one or two little ones, at least in those places where he’s going to put his arms or rest his head,” Mauá advises.
“You can even get your squid seen to,” Lu suggests.
“I’m old.”
“Love has no age. It’s very easy. It’ll just hurt on the first day, and after that you’ll feel a pleasure to beat all pleasures. Use stones to clean the waters and reduce the internal dimensions. Use herbs, teas, salts. Use manioc seed oil to elongate and give your body shape. I’ll give you an acid solution to use in small quantities. Castor oil. Almond oil.”
I cover my face with my hands to hide my tears. All I want is to get out of there and not to have to listen to any more of this strange conversation. I want to send them all packing and be alone. But I can’t. It’s the first time each of them has spoken so openly about their stratagems in love. I want to hear more. I want to know everything to better understand this cancer that’s killing me.
“In life’s story, only men don’t grow old,” I say to contribute some light relief to this painful conversation. “Man is the tree of life. We are the leaves. We fall so that others may be born. The time has come for me to fall, goodbye, my friends.”
“We are friends for always,” Lu says, her eyes brimming with tears. “We four are the reason for the pain you are now feeling.”
“If it wasn’t you bringing m
e down, it would be others. Women’s lives are a hellish cycle.”
“What a pity!” Ju speaks tearfully. “The five of us managed to mold this clay to make its sculpture more solid every day. You’re going to withdraw your support. What will become of us when we’re alone?”
I go to the bathroom and feel myself underneath. No scales. No squid. No octopus tentacles. Only a broken shell where the wind passes, songless and without echo. An insipid shell, with a taste of water that doesn’t quench one’s thirst. Through here five heads passed, three sons and two daughters, and through them, I’ve affirmed myself in the history of the world, but for northerners I’m still a child, I’ve never embarked on a journey into myself. Mauá boasts she’s got a bunch of labia capable of wrapping themselves around a man like a diaper. Mad! She and her magic can go to hell.
24
I go out into the street humming a tune of disappointment. Women are a world of magic and silence. People say they talk a lot. That may be true. They say they talk too much. Maybe. But they speak of futile, insignificant things. They know how to preserve their true world deep within themselves. Women are a world of silence and secrecy.
The language of the belly is the most expressive, because it can be read in the multiplication of life. The language of hands and arms is also visible. When you hold a newborn baby. When you hold a bouquet of flowers on the day you get married. When you hold a wreath of arum lilies at the funeral of your loved one. And the language of the heart? An invisible diamond rampart. The silence of the grave. An impenetrable absence.
And the language of …? If it … could be spoken, what message would it give us? It would surely intone beautiful poems of pain and yearning. It would sing songs of love and desertion. Of violence. Of violation. Of castration. Of manipulation. It would tell us why it sheds tears of blood in every cycle of life. It would tell us the story of its first time. In the marital bed. In the bush. Under the cashew trees. On the backseat of a car. In the director’s office. On the beach. In the most incredible places on the planet.
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