The First Wife

by Paulina Chiziane

  “Rami!”

  “Yes, Tony.”

  “You are the main culprit for all my suffering.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you feel sorry for me?”

  “Sorry for you?”

  I look at him with pity. His is a heart freezing over in the midst of flames. And he’s asking for someone else’s warmth in order not to be transformed into a statue of ice by love’s fire.

  “I know you came to help me. Well, help me. Take my hand before I fall. Let me lean my pain against your shoulder.”

  He’s in the middle of a rough sea and can’t weather the waves. He’s sinking, moribund. I give him my shoulder to lean on. A woman is the tree trunk to which the victims of all shipwrecks cling for survival. A woman is nature’s cycle. Perfect. Complete. In summer, she provides the leafy shade where great warriors may rest their weariness. In winter, her body gives off a vast warmth that covers the whole land. In springtime, she is the flower of all colors that lends joy to nature. In autumn, she is the seed that lies concealed, proclaiming future springtimes. The heart of the whole universe palpitates in a woman’s womb. Every woman is earth, trodden on, dug over, sown with seed. Wounded by feet trampling on her, blows, punches, kicks. Fertilized. Unfertilized. A woman is our first home. Our final home. In a married couple, the man always dies first, so that the woman can cast the last shovelful of soil and the last flower on her beloved’s grave. A woman is as strong as the rocks on Mount Vumba. As soft as meadowland grass. As giving and fertile as the black soil of the Zambezi Valley. Benevolent as a field of corn. As poisonous as the lava of Mount Etna. As lofty as Mount Kilimanjaro. As unsettling and treacherous as the mists of the Sahara. She is the prophetess of eternity, capable of revealing the past, present, and future, when excavated good and deep by the sorcerous hands of a good archaeologist.

  “Rami!”

  “Yes, Tony.”

  “I’m crying, can’t you see? In front of you I can weep openly. You’ve always been present at the moments when I’ve gone off the rails. You’ve always put up with my acts of madness. You’re more than a wife. You’re a friend. Would that all men had a wife like you. Devoted. Trustworthy. I’m a lucky man. I know I give you cause for bitterness, but what do you expect? Who’s going to give you cause for bitterness unless it’s me, your husband?”

  “Yes, dearest Tony. Only you can crown me queen of thorns and of pain, because you’re my man.”

  My answer is couched in resentment. Being a man is to be raised on high by the sacrifice of five spouses. One’s gone and there are four of us left. But he doesn’t want four. Four is a base line, it’s a square, it’s flat, it’s a tabula rasa. He would rather have five. Five is a pyramid. It’s space, It’s the ability to look down on the earth from the height of a flight toward the horizon.

  I take his arm and drag him along with me, and he is so weak that he obeys my every command. I get in the driver’s seat of his blue car. I know how miserable he’s feeling, I know men and their thoughts. They can’t abide the idea of being abandoned. I know some who became impotent, who went mad or ended up alcoholics, just because they were cuckolded on a whim. Women are stronger, they overcome desertion with greater courage. They’re exchanged each day. Betrayed. Seduced. Abandoned with babies in their arms. Bought. Beaten each day, but they resist. They put up with the magic jackknife and the chastity belts when the man goes off to war or on some adventure. When they get old, they’re whipped by their own sons, and accused of witchcraft. And they pray and thank God for each of their torments. That’s why they use any excuse for singing and dancing. Those who sing, send their troubles packing.

  We women engender existence, but we ourselves don’t exist. We bear life, but we don’t live. We bear children, but we aren’t born ourselves. Some days ago, I met a woman from the interior of the province of Zambezia. She’s got five children, all of whom have grown up. The eldest, a slim and elegant mulatto, is the product of the Portuguese, who raped her during the colonial war. The second, a black, strong and graceful like a warrior, is the fruit of another rape by the freedom fighters in the same colonial war. The third, another mulatto, as cute as a cat, is the product of the white Rhodesian commandos who pillaged the area in order to destroy the bases of the Zimbabwe freedom fighters. The fourth is from the rebels who waged the civil war in the interior of the country. The first and second were the result of rape, but for the third and fourth, she gave herself of her own free will, because she felt she was a specialist in rape. The fifth son is from a man she slept with out of love, for the first time.

  This woman bore the history of all her country’s wars in her womb. But she sings and laughs. She tells her story to anyone who passes, tears in her eyes and a smile on her lips, as she affirms: My four sons, without a father or a name, are children of the gods of fire, children of history, born from the power of a force armed with machine guns. My happiness was to have borne only men, she says, for none of them will experience the pain of rape.

  38

  It’s two o’clock in the morning, and today is Saturday. I’ve got insomnia, I can’t sleep. I’m scared of sleeping in case I dream. I’ve had ghastly nightmares. It’s almost as if the here and the beyond combined together in a great circle of light and shade when human beings slept. Tony’s beside me, and today he isn’t snoring. His sleep is as translucent as a gentle breeze. His soul is out there yonder but his body is over here, moving to the rhythm of a nightmare’s dance. He’s moving his arms like wings in a squid’s flight. I sniff around in Tony’s dream world. There’s a smell of roasting. It smells of a man burning. He’s in the inferno and turning this way and that in the waltz of despair. He sweats. He shouts Lu’s name. I’m alarmed. Men’s dreams are a mystery.

  He shouts and wakes up.

  “Rami, what time is it?”

  “Two in the morning.”

  “It’s today that Lu’s getting married, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re going to the wedding, aren’t you?”

  “If you allow me, I’ll go, but if you don’t want me to go, I’ll stay.”

  “Go. Go with me and help me to stop this marriage.”

  “Stop?”

  “Yes. Go and shout at the top of your voice that Lu has a husband who loves her, she’s got two children and a home, that she’s leaving a man to his loneliness, waiting for her, that she’s married …”

  “Married?”

  “Well, bride-priced.”

  “The bride price is a custom, a tradition, it has no application in law.”

  “I know.”

  “So, what then?”

  “I’m a good man, Rami, I don’t deserve such treachery. I can even understand that Lu might be passionately in love. Passion is a fantasy, it’s a passing thing. Rami, tell me: Is it that I don’t look after you all? Don’t I give you all you want? There are men with ten wives and I’ve just got five. I’ve always given you your food, paid all your expenses punctually, I visit each of you devotedly, what more do you need?”

  That’s exactly what polygamous love is about. To have a man in your arms while he yearns for another. You wash the gentleman, darn his socks and underpants, polish the heels of his shoes, pamper him, make him smell nice, so that he can look good in front of other women. Loving a polygamist is to chew pain by way of nourishment, to fill your belly by swallowing your saliva. Loving a polygamist is an endless wait. Endless despair.

  Tony is revealing the whole of himself to me. I nose around his open wounds. There’s a smell of pain, there’s a smell of love, there’s a smell of fresh blood. I hear a crack coming from his chest. His heart clatters like a sheet of glass hit by a stone. I suddenly think of my mother. I think of my aunt, whose life ended inside a wild animal’s stomach all because of a chicken’s gizzard. How many times have I been the target of an attack in this home, I who am the first wife? I have to put up with this sort of thing every day, but I still can’t get used to it. The invo
cation to my rivals prickles my spirit like pins in some voodoo session.

  “Rami, help me hire a gunman to shoot my monstrous enemy to death. Help me find some magic to stop this marriage, some thunderbolt that will send him to kingdom come at the church door.”

  His speech takes on a horrific, superstitious tone. This unloved man starts planning incredible acts of revenge, howling on a moonlit night. There are no words capable of consoling an abandoned man. Ah, Tony, my scorned little crybaby. Despairing, selfish, yelling his blackmail threats in order to get his milk and pap. I’m sadly surprised. He’s just proved he loves Lu more than he does me.

  “You women know a lot about magic. Find me a really powerful thunderwitch.”

  “I don’t know any.”

  “Yes, you do, Rami, of course you do. You just don’t want to help me. You’re from the south, you were born among the Ronga. You’re from Matutuíne, you were born on the banks of the River Maputo.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Well then? The thunderwitches are your aunts.”

  “I don’t have any aunts with such powers.”

  “Rami, I beg you: Speak to your relatives and order three thunderbolts. Just three.”

  “Three?!”

  “Yes. To wipe out the invader. One for the head, the other for the heart, and the strongest of all for his private parts.”

  “But?! …”

  “Think about it, Rami, think hard. I’m going to lose a wife, and you are going to lose your best friend, your closest confidante, I know you’re very fond of her, Rami.”

  “Yes, I like her.”

  She gave my Tony pleasure, but she was a friend and a sister to me. I’ll no longer be able to enjoy that smile, that laugh of hers, so often. She was the spiritual flame from which I lit my candle. I’ll no longer have that mirror, which reflected the image of what I was, of what I am not and will never be again. Lu’s departure pains me, but we need to lose in order to gain. From now on, I’ll have one less rival to share him with, and the waiting time in the conjugal rota will be one week less. If I lost Tony’s love, it wasn’t because of Lu. The one who took my husband away was Ju. That’s why I’m so fond of Lu, because it was she who avenged my jealousy. And then she lent me Vito, who rendered me a service out of pity, giving a loving hand to an unloved woman in need. Thinking about it, Ju is much less of a rival. Lu is so powerful that she’s taken the breath of life away from us. Ever since Lu arrived on the scene, we’ve been buried in Tony’s heart.

  “So, Rami, are you going to help me or not?”

  Poor Tony. He believes women are devoid of reason, living purely on their emotions, incapable of any kind of revolution, who can be calmed in their weeping with a toffee, a promise, and who can be made to shut up with a good spanking.

  “Rami, how can a woman leave a man like me? She can go and marry this man, but she won’t find a better man than me in this world. I picked her out of the gutter and gave her a sumptuous home, I made a lady of her. How can she betray me?”

  I feel like laughing. I feel like crying. I feel like doing something else that I can’t even explain. Yesterday he spoke words of love to me that were honeyed. His lips close to my ear, he sang me beautiful songs. He seduced me. He inspired me. He drove me wild. Now he speaks words of love to me that are seasoned with bile. He’s destroying me. Mistreating me. Driving me wild.

  “I’m a good man, Rami, there are worse men than me. Everything I do, I do well. Having many women is a right that both tradition and nature confer on me. I’ve never mistreated Lu, I’ve beaten her occasionally, only to show her how much I love her. I’ve also beaten you sometimes, but you are here, you haven’t abandoned me to go and live somewhere else. My mother was often given a hiding by my father, but she never abandoned her home. Women of a previous age are better than the ones you get nowadays, who take fright at the mere sight of a whip.”

  “You’re right, Tony, women nowadays just have no sense at all. Why don’t you go and marry my grandmother?”

  He raises his voice as high as the clouds. It stays there. My God, what are the neighbors going to think of us? But his voice can’t withstand the lofty heights and plummets down vertiginously, defeated by the force of gravity. He gets out of bed and walks over to the window. He says he feels both hot and cold. He says he feels a tingling throughout his body. He says he’s short of breath and the pain is killing him. He lets out a shout. A sigh. And he repeats his speech.

  “Rami, get me a thunderwitch and order three thunderbolts, help me, before I die!”

  His great body collapses like a tree cut down by a hurricane. He plunges into a world without sun or moon. He forgets his pain, he forgets Lu, he forgets betrayal and marriage. He forgets everything. He forgets himself. He escapes to another world. I stop crying. Thinking. Feeling. I jump out of bed in a flash. I bend over him and place my ear next to Tony’s chest. His heart is humming in a whisper like a guitar being played quietly. I really am going to be a widow, I don’t want to be a widow anymore, help me! I die at every one of my Tony’s deaths. I don’t want any more mourning, gravestones, I don’t want to be kutchingered again.

  Beto, João, Sandra, Lulu, all leave their bedrooms and help me carry their father out to the blue car. I defy death and the highway. I defy the silence of night. While I drive, I pray. Dear God, bring my Tony back to life!

  We reach the hospital in a minute or two and Tony is placed on a stretcher as if he were a corpse. We hurry down a long corridor, too long for the tiredness I feel. Heartrending sighs from the dying upset my spirit with their depressing melody. Everywhere, there are broken, weakened people, like petals that have become detached by the strength of the wind.

  We go into a consulting room. There’s the doctor, smiling.

  “What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

  I explain.

  “Doctor, the things he’s been saying, the mad stories he’s been telling, doctor, the bite on the arm, the sudden fevers, doctor, that beautiful woman, the marriage that’s going to take place, doctor, all the hysterics, the shouting, doctor, the nightmares, the foaming at the mouth, doctor, the sweating, the shortage of breath, doctor, my Tony, the pain in my heart, doctor, my rivals, we are five wives, doctor, the one he desires most, his favorite, doctor, if my Tony dies again, I’m going to be kutching …”

  At this point, Tony comes to his senses and attacks me with all his strength.

  “Shut that mouth of yours! How can you talk about my private life to all and sundry if I haven’t given you leave to do so? As your husband, I refuse to let you behave like some fishwife. You’re a woman, and you should stick to your place, because when it comes to my health, I’m the one who looks after that.”

  I’m indignant. I’m the one who tore through the early hours. I’m the one who defied the wind, cleared the clouds away, and chased off the storm. Now he comes back to life and casts me into the dirt. This Tony takes the sunlight away from me slowly and deliberately, and throws bundles of darkness on top of me, one sheaf at a time. There’s a huge fire in the air that only I can feel. Memory mingles with tears that flow like gusts of wind. In a flash, I remember an old woman pushing her dying husband on a trolley. Barefoot, her heels cracked because, during the whole of her life, the soil had beaten the soles of her feet relentlessly. She was an old woman dressed in rags. Without a smile or any shape to her. A tree bearing soured fruit. An old woman who seemed to know all the secrets of a desert crossing. Who had drunk all the bitter flavors of the universe and survived all manner of poisons. Her soul stolen from her, she was like a ghost wandering the horizons of this world. That old lady abandoned her equally old husband right here, in this same consulting room, in front of this same doctor. I remember her words. I repeat them.

  “Doctor, I’ve put up with this man my whole life. If he doesn’t want me to speak, then let him die!”

  I left the doctor’s surgery like a gust of wind. All I wanted was to get out into the street. All I wanted
was some fresh air. All I wanted was a bit of freedom from life’s disappointments. From my past, or from some other dimension, I hear a voice calling me: Rami, come back here, Rami, don’t leave me, Rami, listen to me, Rami, obey me, Ramiiii! …

  Three in the morning. I get home and enjoy some restorative beauty sleep. I wake up at seven. I phone my dressmaker and ask her to iron my clothes so I can get dressed at nine. I call Mauá to get my skin seen to, and she sends over her best makeup artist. I take a foam bath. The makeup girl gets to work on my skin. First, there’s a manicure and pedicure session. Then comes the mask, and she starts putting the cosmetics on: the base, rice powder, rouge, mascaras, shadows, and other products I’ve never heard of before. I go to the mirror and am ecstatic. I’m like a bird in full plumage. I sigh. I want to be the most beautiful of all the guests. I want to be the bearer of all the colors of nature. Today, I want to be blue like the ocean. I want to be the horizon where tired eyes can seek inspiration and those in despair can find repose. I want to be the sea into which all rivers flow.

  My dressmaker arrives and helps me on with that sky blue suit of mine. I go over to the mirror again and feel dazzling. I turn this way and that in front of the mirror, and there’s no doubt about it. I’m going to be the most beautiful guest at Lu’s wedding. I can’t even believe it’s me I’m seeing. But it is me, reborn thanks to the cosmetics industry. Today, a man is going to covet me, for sure. Today, I’m going to kill the most distinguished gentleman with desire. The sun won’t go down without someone loving me in silence. I call a taxi to take me to the church, for I’m not in the right mind to drive. Before going out, I phone the doctor.

  “Doctor, how’s my Tony?”