“Rami, we’ve got to do something. They’re going to kill each other.”
“Calm down, Mauá, they’re not going to kill each other.”
“This argument is getting really violent.”
“You only hit what you are making. A hammer hits a nail. Metal against stone. A spade against the sand. Don’t be scared.”
“This argument is going too far,” Saly complains.
“All the better. Far is the horizon, the frontier beyond which we cannot see. Every pilgrim wants to travel far. We also want to travel far, isn’t that so, Saly? This is a fight among roosters, with winners and losers, but no one is going to die.”
My brother-in-law’s power of argument is beginning to wane. He starts lamenting. He says it’s the fault of that shameless Tony, whose lust for love takes no notice of the north or the south. That he loves women from all parts of the country as if he could be a true husband of the nation. He says Tony’s loves know no boundaries, no races, no ethnic groups or region, much less religion.
There’s a skirmish between north and south, south versus north, in which a fistful of sand is thrown at the problems of the moment. In the fields, the corn has been burned by the sun and children are crying from hunger. The father has lost his job. The eldest son has got AIDS and is falling to pieces, a strip at a time, like a centipede’s body. The youngest daughter has taken up with a white foreigner, was made pregnant, and the white has left for home. Up in the north, the River Zambezi has overflowed, killing lizards, grass, ants, and people. It dragged crocodiles with it from its riverbed, and these lie hidden in the pestilence of mud, feeding on children. Here in the south, the young use drugs, don’t attend school, rape women, and steal cars. Some of the rabid men in this room were soldiers who helped liberate the whole country but have no home, much less a piece of land on which to build one. They live under a tree and make liquor, which they drink in order to forget, while they trade their daughters for sex and sell marijuana.
Whether from the north or the south, each one wants to reach higher and be the first to touch the sky’s navel. Each one wants to be a heron, a falcon, or an albatross, in order to reach the top of the hill more quickly, where they’ll still find a bunch of bananas hanging and a chicken roasting on the world’s brazier.
29
Ju and I are summoned to a new family meeting. The northerners are left out. Everyone turns on me to unleash their fury.
“Rami, you have to take responsibility for what happened with Tony. It was your fault that he lost his life.”
I say yes.
“He began to get himself other women and ended up a polygamist because you didn’t satisfy him. Because you never had his food ready and your bed was always cold. Because you’re haughty and unfeeling. Because you didn’t know how to love or to get on with someone.”
I say yes.
“You’re the one who’s the witch, Rami. If it weren’t for your obsession with bringing the wives together, none of this would have happened. The five of you joined forces and produced negative vibrations in this house.”
I say yes.
“The spell was yours. You killed him to avoid a divorce, and so you could inherit the dead man’s assets.”
I say yes.
“You killed our brother like a cat and seasoned him with garlic.”
I say yes.
“We went to a medicine man, a good one. He blames you. He says you went looking for revenge, without being aware that it was death you were buying.”
I say yes.
It’s the women who do the talking. And how they talk! They spit out their pain, their barbs, their resentment, their frustrations. I don’t swallow the torrent of dirt they serve me in their chalices of fire. I take a swig of mineral water and spit it out in their faces. I get a slap on the cheek. I turn the other poisoned cheek, whoever slaps this one will die.
They tell me that all the traditions of death must be fulfilled to the letter. We must return to our roots. They want to turn back the clock, and they flounder around as if blindfolded, for they don’t know the way back. Time merely returns to me, whom they cut up into slices like a cream cake at a birthday party.
Now they are talking about kutchinga, the tradition whereby a widow has sex with her husband’s brother for the purpose of sexual purification. My brothers-in-law, the candidates for this sacred act, look at me with eyes that gleam like crystal. There’s a whiff of eroticism in the air. Growing expectation. Who will be the lucky one? Who will inherit all Tony’s wives? I’m startled. Disgusted. My skin is covered in sweat and fear. My heart beats with endless surprise. Kutchinga! I shall be allotted to any one of them. And all of them are readying themselves to have me. The wall is hard and cold. It supports me. The surface of the ground is hard, it provides security. It supports me. But these people are so mischievous, so cruel … I ask any God for any help He can provide. No one comes to my aid, neither God nor the saints.
Kutchinga is all about cleansing one’s grief with kisses of honey. It’s about launching a widow into her new life little more than a week after the death. Kutchinga is a stamp, the sign of ownership. A woman’s bride price is paid in money and cattle. She’s property. Whoever invests in her expects something in return, the investment needs to pay. All of a sudden, I ask myself a crazy question: Does a woman ever groan with pleasure during the act of kutchinga? But not everything is bad. Something positive has emerged out of this disaster. With the shortage of men that we are all told about, it’s good to know that my widowhood guarantees me someone else, even if only occasionally. It’s comforting to know that there’s some shoulder to lean on without my having to walk the streets selling my steadily waning attractions. Incest? No, it’s not incest, just kutchinga. It’s only incest if the same blood flows through our veins.
30
Eve has come to pay me a visit. She introduced herself and pulled me into a corner. Her conversation doesn’t have anything to do with deaths or mourning. I’m surprised. I take the opportunity to find out what it is that got my Tony so hooked. I look at her appreciatively. Her mouth is a fresh cashew fruit, ripe and crimson, plucked from the divine cashew plantation. Her smile is more sparkling than a diamond. Her voice is like birdsong, it releases white doves, pearls, droplets of gold into the air. Her skin is smoother than polished glass. How beautiful she is, my God! I feel a wave of sisterhood for her, such a magical attraction that it’s like love at first sight. We exchange confidentialities like old friends, like twin sisters.
“I’m Eve, you don’t know me. I’m a friend of Tony’s. Who told you Tony had died? And how did he die? Who identified him?”
Her questions are incisive, like a scalpel incision during an operation. I tremble. I look down and don’t reply. I don’t know what to answer, I don’t have anything to give her by way of a reply.
“Forgive me, Rami, but I don’t believe one single bit of this story. This dead man they’re about to bury died in the morning. On the evening of that same day, Tony left for Paris on vacation. I took him to the airport myself. He didn’t say goodbye to you for reasons that shouldn’t concern us right now. I did the check-in for him. I saw him board the plane. He arrived and phoned me the following morning. Can someone be both dead and alive at the same time?”
I take a deep breath. Her revelation has the effect of extracting the fatal bullet that has lodged in my breast. She takes my hand. She transmits the heat of her body to me. In her gesture, she holds my entire soul together. I relax.
“I don’t want to get involved in this story, Rami, but the truth is that I can’t ignore it completely.”
In Eve’s eyes, there is the suggestion of a couple of tears, threatening to break through the dam and flow freely down her light-skinned face. If they fall, they’ll wreck her makeup, she’ll become all smudged, ugly, dear God, do something to stop such a disaster.
“Why this interest? Tell me.”
“I’ve got my reasons. First of all, it was I who suggested to Ton
y he should go on this journey, in order to see a doctor about that problem he has with his knee. I saw to everything, from his flight bookings to his hotels, and his appointments with a specialist. When we were all set, along he comes with another woman in his luggage for a honeymoon trip. A woman called Gaby. Second, I wasn’t aware he had so many women. I only knew Mauá, who he convinced me was his only legitimate spouse. I found out he was lying. I was really hurt.”
More tears run down my cheeks from their limitless source. She tries to dry my flowing river with her bare hands. Those hands feel so smooth on my skin, like flakes of cotton. Those hands transmit warmth like the wings of a hen covering her chicks. An ocean of tenderness washes over me. She places her dainty arm round my shoulders. She gives me a hug. I smell her perfume. Tony is right to be head over heels in love with her. Lord, how nice she is!
Now she’s telling me about my rivals. After being insulted at the family meeting, Lu, Saly, and Mauá had turned up on her doorstep, furious, to tell her of Tony’s death and to make demands. They told her: The man you once loved was ours. It’s not fair that we should be alone in having to grieve. They demanded that she should join them in mourning. As she’d been taken by surprise, she didn’t know what to say. They gave her a list of options, and she chose what seemed the most reasonable: to cover the catering needs of those folk who have come to eat and weep.
“I’ve brought a basket full of food. You southerners make the most of your grief to fill your bellies.”
“Forgive them. They left here having been treated like dirt, chased away like chickens, and went to your house to let off steam. And where are you from, Eve?”
“I’m from Palma, up in the northern tip of the country, on the coast, a place no one talks about. I’m Makonde.”
“Ah!”
“I want to emphasize that Tony and I were just friends. There were no commitments.”
“Thank you!”
“Rami, I’ve brought travel documents that prove what really happened. You’ve got all the proof you need. You can tell them to cease their madness.”
“I need to think.”
“Come on, call the police. If you want, I’ll hire a lawyer to put an end to this farce.”
“It won’t help. Tony’s chief of police, you know that only too well. I suggested to my brothers-in-law that there should be a more serious, more technical investigation and identification. They invoked tradition and religious practice, and told me to shut up. They want to do everything their way. Just look at what they did to me.”
I take off my headscarf and show her my shaven head.
“They did this because I’m a widow. Because it’s tradition. They bathed me in a variety of oils and grease that smell like shit. They shut me in a room full of incense and other strange smells that made my sinusitis even worse. They cut my skin with razors and rubbed peppery pomades into my wounds, to what effect I have no idea.”
“They’ve shaved your head, Rami. There’s worse to come.”
“Let them get on with it.”
“These Shangaan traditionally banish a widow and her children from her home.”
“Let them banish me. Besides, I’m not a widow.”
“They’ll do this thing they call kutchinga on you.”
“Let them do it. In fact, I’m really in need of a bit of love. I even know who it’s going to be with.”
“Who?”
“Look at the men sitting over there. Do you see the one with the distinguished air about him?”
“The one with the blue shirt?”
“That’s the one.”
“My God!”
“Has he scared you?”
“Quite the opposite, he’s inspired me. He’s a jewel of a man, that one. If all that beauty were translated into shares on the stock market, I’d buy them all, I swear. If he was being auctioned, I’d put in the highest bid, just to have him to myself for a night of love. If I could, I’d even buy the ground he trod. You’ll have a good time, congratulations, Rami!”
“Well, that Adonis is going to be mine for the kutchinga ceremony. It won’t be for long, but he’ll be mine. I can’t wait. The day can’t come fast enough!”
I hide my face behind my veil to conceal my laugh. I pretend to moan and weep. Eve imitates me.
“So how will Tony react to this whole story?”
I tell her all the bitterness of my marriage, the conjugal rota, the orgy of vengeance, the request for a divorce that never happened, and she can’t believe what she’s hearing.
“Tony’s a madman,” Eve bursts out.
“He deserves to be well punished.”
“I agree. He’s got to learn the biggest lesson of his life.”
“It’s a good opportunity.”
“I’m on your side. This lunatic must be taught a lesson.”
Eve says goodbye and leaves me alone with my sadness. I follow her with my gaze. Eve, my lovely rival. Who brought me the dawn in the petal of a flower, who killed my pain, who, in the palm of her cupped hand, brought me the truth surrounding this whole ridiculous story. I return to my post as widow to assume the proper role of a woman. A woman is a solitary being in the crowd’s great surge forward. A woman is the collective pain covering the world. She is past, present, and future, the security of a place and the great unknown joined by the same scream. Every step you take there’s a woman prepared to give herself, to give life to life. In every instant there’s a woman spreading herself like the wind, fertilizing the fields in order to transform the planet into a lacy bassinet.
I think about my situation. This is the price paid for so many years of dedication. I’m a good woman. I was always good as a girl. Good girls are the ones who are most hunted, married, and shut away in their homes like treasure. They live in a box, without light or air, between love and submission. Bad girls are rejected and left free. They fly anywhere they feel like going, like butterflies. They lend nature the color of their wings and breathe the fresh air of the fields, between love and freedom. There are no half-measures in a woman’s life: treasure and submission, or butterfly and freedom.
31
The day of the funeral has arrived. The other four widows are here with me. They’re all dressed in black. But their clothes are lighter than mine. These perverse people have hurled all the black colors in the world against my body. Black satin and lace gloves – just imagine that in all this heat – black stockings, black earrings and necklace, a long black dress with long sleeves, a black headscarf, a black shawl, black shoes. All that remained for them to do was to paint my body really black, to complete the black of my race. The clothes I’m wearing I had made by the best dressmaker in the city, and I’m extraordinarily beautiful in my mourning outfit, really beautiful. All I want is for everybody to remember me when they recall this day.
The funeral cortege reminds me of a wedding procession. There’s a priest, the scent of perfumes, flowers, veils, hymns. I’m the bride, the presiding queen at this party. The line of people resembles a procession of ants transporting crumbs of bread into the ground. The crowd tramples the surface of the earth like galloping horses.
The whole performance is better than I had expected. There are a lot of women weeping. There are only five of us widows. Who are these wailing women bursting my eardrums with their wild screeching? Tony’s girlfriends or mistresses? A cemetery is a place where no pain of any description lies hidden, and they scream as loud as they like, to release the pain from their own bodies. A cemetery is the final home. A happy home. I also weep, elegantly and in silence. I weep for those who weep for the loss that doesn’t exist.
It’s late, the sun takes its leave, smiling. I’m lost among shadows. Shadows that rise and fall to the sun’s rhythm each day. The fatal hour has arrived. The coffin is lowered into the bowels of the earth, this fisher of bodies with invisible tentacles. Neither words nor prayers can stop the final flight. There’s a pact between pain and silence. Between murmurs and tears. The image of the decease
d reflects one’s destiny, one’s fate. We are all mortal. Death is the ripened fruit freeing itself from the tree to follow its own path. I think about true widowhood. In this life, all is transient. Love. Kisses. A melodious voice speaking of passion. The strong arms rocking one like no one else. The fights. The repressed desires. The misunderstandings. That dead man who is being lowered into the ground liberates me from deep anguish. I don’t want to know about anything else in this life. A blanket of bitter memories invades my mind like a swarm of fireflies. I feel the vastness of night embracing my soul and I lean my body against the horizon’s walls. Tony’s now dead, in the body of this stranger. I never want to see him again, it’s all over as far as I’m concerned. He destroyed all that I saw and admired in him. He didn’t accept the limits on his freedom. In the name of love, he mixed pleasure and pain. Like a lot of men, he didn’t understand that love is an enterprise that requires competent management and maintenance. It’s an enterprise with losses that are difficult to absorb, such as this misunderstanding, these tears, these heartaches, this grief. The whole world will view him according to the portrait he has fashioned of himself. A man full of life who turned himself into a corpse. Dear God, have mercy on my Tony. Have mercy on all men who commit the most heinous crimes in the name of a tradition or a culture, such as my mother’s brother-in-law, who sent his wife to her death because of a chicken gizzard. Dear God, forgive that tyrannical king who condemned Princess Vuyazi to the inferno of the skies, far from the warmth of the dead in this earthly paradise, round the fire of her ancestors. Amen!
The crowd projects their loud cries toward the heavens. It’s an ocean of despair. Whoever the dead man is, he’s had a worthy funeral, with tears that weren’t for him. I remain serene, I shed just one solitary tear in order not to spoil my image. I look over at Levy with hungry eyes. He is going to be my sexual purifier, the decision was taken and he grabbed the chance with delight. Not long now, and I’ll be in his arms for the kutchinga ceremony. I’ll be a widow for just one week. I’m a bit older than him, but I get the feeling he’s going to give me a lot of love, because in spite of my age and girth, I’m very sweet and charming. In a week’s time, I shall undress. I shall dance the niketche for his eyes alone, while his legitimate spouse stands outside, consumed by jealousy. I shall ask Mauá to teach me the steps for this dance. Ah, I can’t wait! I hope to God Tony only comes home after the act has been consummated.
The First Wife Page 19