The First Wife

by Paulina Chiziane

  Our tradition is far better than Christian mourning. Why so many tears, so many candles, so many flowers, fasting, abstinence, if the dead person is dead, and life goes on? You can call me shameless. Call me all the ugly words you like. I’m a woman, and that’s it. I’m carrying out to the letter the tradition dictated by my husband’s family.

  After the funeral comes the dividing up of assets. They take whatever they can away with them: iceboxes, beds, crockery, furniture, curtains. They even fight over Tony’s socks and underpants. They’ve taken pictures, bathroom mats. They’ve left me with the walls and the ceiling, and have given me thirty days to leave the house. They’ve pillaged me, only me. They haven’t taken anything from the other wives. They tell the most incredible stories about them. They say they’re not true widows. They say they’re from the north and have a different culture. Northerners are united, and if you provoke one, you provoke the lot. The spirits of these Sena, Makua, and Makonde, apart from being powerful, are dangerous. To benefit from the status of being a widow, do you have to be stripped bare, without a penny to your name?

  32

  I can hear the buzz of voices out in my backyard. It’s Friday. The ceremony for the week after the funeral is being prepared. A group of women are making a huge fire. They’re putting green leaves into a huge pot. What are these witches doing here, don’t they ever sleep? It’s cold. Judging by the sky, it’s still early morning. Ever since the man died, these hags haven’t slept and never seem to get tired of whatever it is they’re up to. I return to my sleeping mat and go back to sleep.

  One of Tony’s aunts comes and pulls the sheet and blanket off me. I’m angry. Unprotected. Vulnerable.

  “What’s happened?”

  She doesn’t answer. She grabs my wrist and drags me up forcefully. I put on my bathrobe and rush to the bathroom. I sit on the toilet and have a pee. My nerves are getting the better of me. I go to the mirror to seek some comfort. They pull me out of there.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  No one answers me. They bring a huge pot containing an infusion, with thousands of leaves bobbing around in it.

  “What’s this for?”

  They ignore me. They pull my clothes off, almost ripping them. They cover me with a rough cotton blanket and submit me to a steam bath. I sweat. I burn. Oh God, they’re trying to flay me. My God, they’re going to disembowel me. They rub my whole body with herbs, as if I were a saucepan covered in soot. They’ve completed my bath.

  “Where are my clothes?”

  Silence. They cover me with a white sheet and haul me over to the bedroom next door. On the walls, there are green-colored drapes. There’s the whiff of incense. On the floor, there’s a carpet of fresh leaves, as if all the leaves in the world had fallen there. They tear the sheet off me, exit the room, and leave me there alone, in my birthday suit. Lord, what do they want from me? What harm have I done them? From deep inside me bursts a thunderous, explosive cry. With my hands cupped, I shield myself from the cold and shame.

  I raise my eyes, seeking the heavens. I pray. Dear God, watch over me. I’m a grain of sand on the sole of my Lord’s foot. Dear God, why did you put me here? Why are you indifferent to my suffering? I live in hope of a miracle from you, but you have never favored me with one, why? Think about it, dear God, I’ve never shamed you. I’ve never disobeyed you. What sort of punishment is this that has no end?

  My fate contains a myriad of supposed surprises that dance in front of my eyes like whimsical visions. I console myself. I’m not the only one. All the widows in this family have been through this.

  I feel something hot touch my shoulder. It’s a hand. An arm. I sense the smell of a man. A rope squeezes my waist. It’s the other arm embracing me, seizing me. The time for kutchinga has arrived, and tradition delivers me into the arms of the inheritor. Why didn’t they tell me it was today? Why all this secret, this surprise? I have no control over my existence. I have no desire, no shadow. If I refuse this act, they’ll take everything away, even my children, and I’ll be left empty-handed. Nothing in this world is mine and I don’t even belong to myself.

  He gives me a little kiss. A soft little kiss that ignites my whole body with its flame. His soft hands play the drum of my skin. I’m your drum, Levy, touch my soul, touch it. Oh! My God! I feel my body lighten. I feel a river of honey flowing through my mouth. My God! Paradise is inside my body. The fire is lit in my oven, I’m burning, I’m going crazy, I’m sinking. We plunge deep into the weightless waves. A sparkling shower of starfish falls over us. Flying fish lend us their wings and we fly into the very depths of the ocean. The land is a sad, distant place. I feel I’m about to die in this man’s arms. I want to die in this man’s arms.

  A fleeting moment of love? So be it! It’s better to be loved for a moment than to be despised for one’s whole life.

  33

  Tony comes home like a man defeated, a contrite deserter, a prodigal son. A wreck, a dead man. He looks around the empty house. With quick strides, he takes in all the rooms. He goes around several times. He is beset by the feeling that he is stepping through some unknown place, and not his home. The rooms seem to him like indoor football fields. In the other bedroom, he sees his children sitting on a sleeping mat like prisoners in a cell.

  “Rami, what’s happened here?”

  “Sit down,” I tell him, “so that the shock of it doesn’t knock you over.”

  “Where are all the chairs, the furniture, the beds?”

  I go to the yard and fetch an empty beer crate. I offer it to him.

  “Here’s a chair. Take a seat.”

  He sits on the crate, while I sit on the floor. We talk. I tell him all I can. Anxious, he wants to know everything. But I’m unable to tell such a long story all in one go. I skip some chapters of the story as I recall how things happened. He sits in silence for a long time, and there’s a hint of tears in his eyes. My God, today we’re going to witness a miracle, Tony’s going to cry on my shoulder for the very first time. But the tears recede, his eyes dry. Only his arms fall like petals separated by the wind. His body’s strength evaporates and flies invisibly up into the blue atmosphere. He crosses his arms over his waist like a safety belt for his plummeting body. It’s as if some magical hand were undressing him and a catheter were draining his blood, the air in his body, his soul, everything. He abandons his seat and sits down on the floor like an empty sack. One doesn’t need a sense of smell or even touch to gauge his affliction. It is cruelly visible.

  “I witnessed your death and went to your funeral,” I fulminate. “I wore heavy mourning clothes. Those cursed relatives of yours even shaved my head. I even had to go through the kutchinga, that sexual purification ceremony.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the absolute truth.”

  “When?”

  “A few hours ago, early this morning. I’ve been done, I’m newly purified.”

  He glances at his watch. It’s ten in the morning.

  “And who did it?”

  “It was Levy.”

  “Didn’t you react, or resist?”

  “How was I to do that? It’s our tradition, isn’t it? He didn’t mistreat me, don’t worry. In fact, he was very sweet and gentle. He’s a true gentleman, that brother of yours.”

  It gives me such pleasure to say this, and he feels the pain of a betrayed husband. There’s a burst of applause in my heart. I’m surprised at myself. I feel I’ve hardened in my attitudes. My desire for vengeance is stronger than anything else in this world.

  “You’re a strong woman, Rami. A woman of principles. You could have accepted everything short of kutchinga.”

  “You taught me to be obedient and submissive. I always obeyed you and your folks. Why should I be disobedient now? I couldn’t betray your memory.”

  “So what now?”

  “Ah, Tony! I’m thin, disfigured, finished. I’m bald. They shaved my head with a barber’s razor, as if I were a recluse. They stripped me of e
verything as if I were a criminal. On my shaved head they placed a crown of thorns. They sat me on a throne of thorns. A scepter of thorns. They cleared everything from the house and left me this mat of thorns.”

  At first, his voice was strong and contained a dragon’s flame. Fiery. Now his voice has lost its ring and he speaks in an undertone. He can’t seem to get his head around what this terrible world has offered him.

  “Rami, you knew it wasn’t me, you knew it.”

  “Yes, I knew. But who was going to listen to me? Has my voice ever been heard in this house? Did you ever once give me any authority to make a decision on even the most insignificant things in our life? What did you want me to do?”

  The man’s heart is shattering into a thousand pieces. Honor, dignity, vanity, are huge waves, among which he is foundering. He’s on the edge of a precipice. His soul is plunging into a deep ocean. He doesn’t know how to swim. He looks up at the sky, maybe seeking God. He turns his gaze to the horizon, riding the clouds like gulls in late springtime. The horizon is a distant rampart, where everything ends and everything begins. In the horizon he sees his own sad reflection. He becomes stiff and dry, like a dead man. There’s no movement, no gesture, there are no words. It’s a short flight when one’s wings are broken. For us mortals, the ground is the surest place, just as the sea is for fish. Life changes in a flash, just as death can take you in a trice. He shuts his eyes against the life that is causing him so many troubles, and waits for his energy to be reborn within him. He is both volcano and lava. An explosion. He is both ice and death. Arid soil. He is ashes, straw, dust. He is nothing.

  “And the other women?”

  “They’re completely bewildered, poor things. They’re beautiful young widows. They’re probably planning new love affairs. I’ve got Levy. Your brothers keep visiting them to offer their condolences. But they were luckier than I was and managed to keep what was theirs. The expropriation, the pillage, and all the other acts of barbarism, they were just for me.”

  My language is harder than a gust of hailstones. It whips. I speak without mincing my words. I want him to have a taste of his own poison once and for all. I want him to get a whiff of his own shit, and to recognize at long last the evil that envelops him.

  “Why on earth didn’t they leave things to the police? The police have very efficient means to identify people. Why didn’t they make use of them?”

  “I tried to alert your superiors, God knows how. They forbade me, they curtailed my movements, because it’s not well seen for a widow to be walking around out there.”

  “What they did to you was inhuman. What a murderous culture!”

  He becomes delirious. He says he never knew life was that bad, nor could he have imagined how much women suffered. He had always thought the social structure was harmonious and that traditions were good, but he now understood the cruelties of the system.

  “What future would you have had if I really had died? And what would have become of my children and their studies? I worked for so many years to build all this, and now I see it all destroyed because of a mistake. They could have taken everything, Rami, but they might at least have left a mattress for my children.”

  “Don’t condemn tradition, Tony.”

  “Rami, I’ve already been murdered by tradition. That’s why I’m going to assume the risk of challenging the world of men. I’ve just proved that within the human race, you women aren’t people, you’re mere exiles from life, condemned to live in the world’s margins.”

  Suffering carves out behavior patterns in proportion to its degree. It provides short flights and profound insights. It tears down pedestals, pulls people’s shoes off and forces them to tread on the dirt of the earth. It plucks out the peacock’s plumage and makes its body roll around in the mud and dust. Tony has donned the suit of his suffering and is crying like a child. His throat has shrunk, he speaks like the birds, imitating the sound of a flute. Ah, but how this voice and its song comfort me! I feel as if I’m falling in love all over again.

  He comes over to me for a hug. Furtively.

  “I’m a widow, Tony. And you are beyond the grave. I can’t be certain you are really you. You must be some evil shadow, a ghost, leave me alone, Tony.”

  Before, it was I who sought affection. And he would deny me. Now I’m the one refusing him, this love of ours is crazy, a game of cat and mouse. I wasted my whole life seeking this one instant, to have him nestling in my arms. Here he is before me. Defenseless. Mistreated. In need. I don’t want him anymore, I don’t want anything anymore, everything has died for me. He refuses to accept things. He pleads with me, grabs me, shakes me, takes me by force like a rapist in a deserted forest. I resist. I was getting prepared for a divorce, and now I’m a widow by mistake. He doesn’t give up. Now he’s talking to me of love. He reminds me of the moments of happiness we spent together. He talks of the problems we always had and for which I managed to forgive him. To love is to allow one’s heart to beat at the same rhythm as the other’s – that’s what I say. To advance together at the same speed. To view the horizon from the same perspective. Love is the two pans on a set of scales, each one lifting the other until the divine equilibrium is achieved.

  “You could have avoided this tragedy, my dear Rami!”

  “Tony, your voice always dictated what I should do. What I should think. You planned my present and my future. You gradually built me, grain by grain, my divine creator. But the walls you placed round me are made of straw, and the wind, the cold, and the rain pierce them. You built me up on foundations of sand that have crumbled away at the first serious test. You covered me with a roof of wind, of air, porous, permeable, defenseless. Now that you’ve been given up for dead, see for yourself what’s left of you.

  The birds swarm upward from a falling tree. The startled monkeys fall screaming. The snakes faint and then come round. The fruit is released and dispersed. The wind howls during death’s storm. After the alarm, silence follows. A mere minute of silence. The next stage is to gather up one’s belongings and leave for new patches of shade.

  “A man can be measured by the solid work he leaves behind, when death summons him. Look around you: What do you see? Ruins, desolation, sadness. You built your castle in the sands of the ocean, and it was destroyed by the tide, by the wind, by cats and mice, you’re a weak man, Tony darling, a wretched man.”

  Night falls and we stick to our own corners. Tony sits ruminating on his beer crate. The children and I sleep on sheets of newspaper, while the other wives sleep comfortably on their soft mattresses bought with my husband’s sweat. They sleep safe and sound whereas my children and I don’t even know how we’re going to have our tea when the sun comes up, without any cups, a stove, or a table. From the height of his cross Jesus of Nazareth forgave the world, wearing a crown of thorns. I’m at the top of the hill with my own crown of thorns, and I forgive all these miserable wretches for their malevolence toward me.

  He sits there quietly, as if he no longer wanted anything to do with this world. He suddenly looks tired, terribly tired. He has a drink. It revives him. All he wants to do is sleep. But he hasn’t got a bed. Not even a mattress. He thinks about buying one, but it’s too late. Ah, furniture shops should open at night to help in these emergencies. He gets up from his seat and puts his hands in his pockets. I look at him. He looks like a monument to impotence.

  I wake up early in the morning. The road is silent, for today is Saturday. I go to the living room to turn on the radio and listen to the day’s news. How angry I feel. The radio’s been pilfered as well. Tony sleeps like a cat, curled up on himself. He awakens. We look at each other. This morning, his trousers look loose, he’s lost weight. He’s got sunken eyes. He hasn’t slept, he’s been suffering. It pains him that he’s lost everything, but I know that the kutchinga pains him even more. He’s been replaced in every way. A murdered life. Trodden on. Hurt. Turned to pulp like that unknown man killed on the road. He greets me with the gentlest of voices and says
his headache is worse than being hit with a hammer.

  “I’ve ordered all those people who took part in this pillage to be arrested, including my own mother. They’ll have to answer in court for the acts of vandalism committed in my absence, Rami.”

  “And who’s going to arrest you? Morally, you are the instigator of this whole sequence of events.”

  “Me? How?”

  “The sun only leaves its marks on things that already exist. There’s no shade without an object. You were the main subject of this whole story.”

  “How can you accuse me like that?”

  “Ah, Tony, darling. You’re always adrift like a dinghy in a choppy sea. Every day you travel round the city. You sleep anywhere when the night comes, a woman here, a woman there, sowing babies wherever you go.”

  “You said you agreed with polygamy, Rami.”

  “In true polygamy, it’s not the man who imposes his desire to take another woman but the wives themselves who suggest a new marriage. The women aren’t raped and they live near one another. Marriages are prearranged, planned.”

  “I’ve made mistakes all my life. I tried to do things my way. I was looking for life, and got lost.”

  I go back to the bedroom and pack the few possessions we still have. I rouse my children and we all take our leave of Tony in a line.

  “Where are you going at this hour of the day?”

  “To Levy’s house. He’s the husband widowhood has conferred on me. I slept with him and enjoyed it.”