The First Wife

by Paulina Chiziane

  “Would you be capable of leaving Mauá? And the children you have?”

  “Rami, I never had time to look at you, to feel you, let alone appreciate the world that lies within you. I must have turned into a horrible creature before your eyes.”

  I suddenly feel a need to get out of there, to get away from that lying voice and breathe some fresh air. Ah, dear God, the man I fell in love with has a double, triple personality, and lies nonstop!”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “We have five children, we’ve been married for twenty years, you’re my wife and I’m your husband, but I’ve spent most of the time away from you.”

  From on high, he spills his load of sweet nothings like a fertilizer, I feel it. What type of a reaction is he trying to produce in me?

  “Tell me, Tony, why do you want to deceive women and leave them saddled with your children? What did you want from them?”

  “Nothing serious, I admit. It was pride, pride purely and simply. Having a woman here, a son there, feeds any male’s vanity. I’m not the only one. A lot of men do that.”

  He plunges his hands into my breasts and destroys my heart as if he were uprooting a plant from the soil. I feel an immense pain, he’s killing me, I’m dying, how often do I get killed every day in this home, I who am the first wife?

  “Don’t blame me, Rami. I’m not the one who invented the world and its traditions. Long before I was born, men were like this.”

  How right he is, my God! This situation was born out of the belly of the past, and women have been fish on the slab at the market stall forever: a kilo of this, two kilos of that, I’ll take this one, I’ll leave that one, I like this one, I’ll take that now, I’ll pay for that now, I’ll use that one now, now I’ll bake it, now I’ll eat it.

  “It was your idea to bring all these women together, Rami. You surprised me. You exceeded my expectations. You led the whole flock with incredible skill. I would only have used them and abandoned them without so much as thinking of the consequences. From street vendors, you managed to transform them into entrepreneurs.”

  “Tony, dear, you got tired of me and fell for them. You got tired of them and now you’re coming back to me. Soon, you’ll get tired of me again. I don’t believe in you.”

  “The country is full of single mothers. Their case won’t be either unique or the last of its kind.”

  I burn with terror and anger at the message being rubbed into me like pepper into an open wound. I feel my whole body ablaze, I feel heat and thirst, and yet why? There’s nothing extraordinary in his affirmation, indeed anything other than that would come as a surprise.

  “What makes you think your decision will please me?”

  “I know, Rami, I know you’ve always wanted me by your side and at peace. You embarked on this polygamy thing just to have me near you, I know.”

  I feel enraged. I grab a wooden spoon to give him a good beating and chase him away from there, but he seizes my arm in midair. Ah, how I wish I had a wolf’s teeth to chew his tongue off and condemn him to eternal silence! I feel like smashing him over the head with a huge cooking pot and shutting him up for good. All my gestures are arrows fired in indignation. I’m surprised by myself. I’m not an aggressive person. I could assault all the men in the world, but not my Tony. He’s sacrosanct, he’s the father of my kids.

  “Calm down, woman, calm down.” He tries to placate me. “There’s no need to get so angry. I’m being sincere, let me confess. I came to ask your forgiveness. I don’t know how I was capable of abandoning such a beautiful woman, such a …”

  “Shut that mouth of yours, Tony!”

  He begins to talk feverishly. He hisses words of love and lays bare his monstrous character. He’s completely unaware of the flames he’s tossing in my path. Nor does he see the pain I feel when he fills my ears with lewd confidences.

  “Where has this sudden inspiration come from?”

  “From life. I saw the futility of all the things I was doing. I thought I was a man with wings and I sought my treasure on the wrong map. I was on the verge of death because of illnesses brought on by ill-managed love. Rami, I turned your life into a hell, but forgive me, Rami, I’m your husband.”

  He’s knocking on the door to my heart, poor little soul, but my heart no longer exists, it’s been eaten away by woodworm. He’s knocking on the door to my soul, but my soul lives high up, in a stone fortress. All I’ve got is this kutchingered body that he rejects. Ah, my love, my sweet tragedy! Maybe I’ll forgive you some other day, but not today.

  “I think of you so much, Rami.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Tony.”

  “I’m not exaggerating, no, that doctor listened to my story and advised me to control my passion so as not to suffer from love’s illnesses.”

  I’m infuriated and answer ill-humoredly:

  “Ah, I’ve got it. You’re here to protect yourself from love’s illnesses. Go on, get out of here, go and look after your women, off you go!”

  “Don’t talk to me about the other women, Rami. They attached themselves to me because they wanted money. Now they’ve got their own businesses, they no longer respect me. One can’t trust women.”

  “They don’t respect you? How?”

  “They don’t kneel when they’re serving me, like they used to, and they don’t massage my feet when I take my shoes off. Lately, it’s the houseboy who opens the door for me, because they’re never at home. All they think about is their business ventures and they say they’ve got too much to do.”

  He gets up from his chair. He hugs me and gives me an affectionate caress, like someone rubbing a stone to produce a spark. My body is cold. It’s marble, it’s asbestos, it doesn’t catch fire.

  “Let go of me and, once and for all, go and see your women. I’m the one who doesn’t love you anymore.”

  “Don’t think like that. You’re my security, my safe harbor. No matter how much wandering I do, this is my home. It’s by your side that I want to die.”

  Men are predators of air and wind. They fly around the world and only come home when their wings are broken. They expect their women to behave like rocks, even when they’re buffeted by a huge whirlwind. Just take Tony. He asks me to open my arms and welcome him, he wants to return to the old dance down in the deepest branches of my nerves. Love is a murmur from one heart to the other. A palm and the breeze in the same waltz, a bee and pollen in the same honeycomb. Manioc and the oven in the same heat. Ah, Tony, our souls no longer sway to the same rhythm!

  “At this hour, you should be having breakfast with Saly. What are you doing here?”

  “She left very early, leaving me in bed. She says she’s got to go and get some merchandise, goodness knows where.”

  “So you were frightened of being on your own and ran to mummy’s arms.”

  “Why are you so hostile toward me, Rami, why?”

  I feel like asking him: Who made me desire kisses other than yours? I who was a virgin and pure. My dreams were as white as the clouds floating through the sky, but they became dark and swollen as if a tornado were brewing. I also feel like asking: Who made me a bed of thorns and forced me to sleep in it? Who dressed my crimson heart in mourning? Who served me vinegar and bile and made my eyes weep? Who turned me into the widow of a husband who was still alive? Who obliged me to cohabit with rivals, like sisters?

  “Oh, Rami, I’m your man.”

  I suddenly remember my maternal grandfather. When he got drunk, he would take his leave of his friends like this: Ah, my wife, my drum! I’m going home to play my drum. So that she may shed the tears I feel. So that she may provide blood for my wound, my anguish. So that she may lay to rest the anger I feel in my soul. So that she may enliven the sadness in my being by unleashing the lullaby of her weeping. Don’t you beat your wife? Beat her, hit her, so that you can join in the dance of life. Beat her in your anguish, your pain, your joy, beat her, hit her. And when she screams, the sigh you give is orgasmic: Ah, my wi
fe, my drum!

  “Go and see Mauá, go on. She’s your passion.”

  “That one’s a mystery at the moment. I suggested we have another child and she turned up her nose. All she thinks about is her beauty products, and her endless stream of clients. She’s thought up ways of working on the weekend, she does hairdressing and makeup at people’s homes for special occasions, weddings, baptisms, and all those women’s things.”

  “You’ve got Ju, she loves your company.”

  “Ah, Rami, that one’s turned out the worst of all of them. She’s devoted to her work in a way I would never have imagined. And, my God, is she efficient! She’s got a whole army of employees, fifteen of them. She spends her time shouting orders and she even shouts at me now. She doesn’t even make me frothy coffee like she used to.”

  “You must understand, Tony, it’s her work.”

  “It’s not nice having to seek an audience with my own wives. I have to make an appointment timed to the very minute in order to enjoy their company. And what’s worse, my children follow their mothers’ example, they don’t care about me. From having it all, I now have nothing. My wives fly off like birds out of an open cage, and I’m left looking on in alarm, while these women, whose wings I tied, after all know how to fly. Yesterday, they were selling things on the street corner. Today, they’re businesswomen and no longer respect me.”

  “Now I understand. You want to die here because there’s no more room for you over there. My love, the solution to your problem lies in a new marriage. You’ve got to buy yourself another woman.”

  “Don’t even mention it, I don’t want any more women. If I could turn the clock back …”

  “Turn the clock back? That’s a useless, thoroughly exhausting notion. The sun that sinks doesn’t come back. That story about the eternal return is nonsense. You can go back, of course, in some other incarnation, but you never go back to being exactly the same. You can even reincarnate as a monkey, a little bird, a tree. Did you never hear about a man reincarnating as a woman?”

  I walk out of the kitchen and leave the house, abandoning Tony to wallow in the memory of something that never got as far as being built. I take a deep breath. I want to feel particles of air falling over my breast and to bury my pain in the deepest part of the ocean. I want to fall asleep on the banks of the river and let the melody of the fish comfort my tears. I want to walk barefoot over the loose sand, like a wildcat. Love a man? Never again! I shall get myself a man who will love me. I shall be someone’s second wife, just as Lu suggested. Never again the first. I want to be everything: the wind, a fish, a drop of water, a white cloud, anything else but a woman. I want to be a free spirit, to lean on the windowsill and watch the rain falling. To be a ghost and sit, invisible, on the top of a mountain to see the sun rising. I want to be a grain of sand in the wind and to dance my niketche to the sound of the flutes of all the breezes.

  41

  I’ve summoned my rivals to an urgent meeting in order to discuss our Tony. I’ve told them of his sinister plans to abandon them all and live only with me. They didn’t reply. They laughed. They knew that old song. Tony’s magic words, his trap and his bait, they told me.

  “I never heard that one,” I say.

  “How would you hear it if you’re the first wife?” Saly explains.

  “He would always tell me: I’m going to leave Rami,” Ju declares. “I’ve heard that song millions of times over the last nineteen years or so. He told me that he felt less of a man when he was with you. That you weren’t a good cook. He would tell me your bed was cold. That, because you were fat, you didn’t hurry to carry out his orders. That you’re like a tank, hard to control, and that’s why he was going to divorce you to be with me.”

  “He said the same thing to me about you and Ju,” says Saly.

  “He said the same thing to me about Rami, Ju, Lu, and Saly,” Mauá concludes. “What he said to me about you, Rami, was more serious. He told me you were like a blank sheet, as flat as a prairie without any curves, dangly bits, or flesh to get a grip on. A dried-up tree trunk. A smooth fish he couldn’t hold, slippery yet static. A creature that breathes but doesn’t sigh. A heavy bulk that trundles by. A bird’s feather that leaves no mark. A bit of salt water that isn’t enough to moisten the face.”

  “Is that so?”

  I drink a bitter glass of nothingness. I choke.

  “What?”

  I don’t know where I find the strength to smile. I’m indignant. He uses my name in order to charm his mermaids when his mouth is devoid of poetry. Sitting with his friends over a few drinks, he teaches them all the tricks and ploys to hunt women, like some champion of love, and they all chuckle at our expense. Ah, but what an ugly thing a lying man is. How wicked my Tony is, what a liar! He serves us all a dish of love, seasoned with untruths. Ah, Tony darling, you incorrigible liar!

  Suddenly, I begin to weep all the tears in the world. Dear Lord, why did you make me a woman? A woman has a serpent’s tongue, which is why she carries the weight of the world on her back. A woman is bile, she is the mysterious creator of all the evils of the universe. A woman is someone you need, but whom you don’t need at all, which is why when she dies, people shed a couple of tears and say with a sigh: Rest in peace, dear lady. Lay your afflictions and your tiredness to rest in the bosom of the earth. Sleep in peace. A woman is an eternal problem that has no solution. She’s an imperfect project. She’s made up of curves. There isn’t a straight line in her, she can’t straighten up. Is she surreal? No. Is she abstract? Also no. Is she Gothic? Yes, she is. She’s got arches, domes, ogives. She’s soft, she’s weak, she’s as obstinate as water that drips so much, it ends up making a hole. A woman talks a lot, and she talks too much. That’s why she’s silence, she’s a grave, she lives at the bottom of a well, the endless abyss. Just look at her. She’s greedy, a glutton. No sooner had she been made than she asked for a fat juicy apple and a nice big yam for her oven, for her stove. You can see she’s got the allure of a good cook. That’s why God showed her his butt straight after she’d been created. She’s defective, which is why she’s eternally seeking some concrete form. With hairpieces. Lace. Silks. Fashions. High-heeled shoes. Hairstyles. Massages. Lipstick and jewelry. Hardly has she learned to breathe fresh air than she rushes off to rituals of initiation so as to cover her body in tattoos and acquire the scales of a fish, so escaping the slipperiness of a catfish. She learns to lengthen her genitals every day, like someone milking a cow’s udders. All this to gain the shape of a squid. Of an octopus. Of a turkey’s beak and transform herself into a fearsome man eater. In a woman, there’s no end to her blood. If it’s not menstruation, it’s childbirth, aggression piercing her heart like a thorn. In spite of this, she gives blood to save the dying and she produces the blood of her children, her grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren who will, one day, be born. A woman is as sturdy as a haystack and weeps over the merest straw.

  A man is the one for whom all the bells toll. He’s the one for whom all voices are raised, when death takes him: He was so good, how he’ll be missed, my God! A man is the cause of the sadness borne by widows. Because he’s a concrete being. Perfect. Soaring. The one who is forever sought, but never found. Every man is a success. Every man is a sun. He’s a star, who speaks through silence and lives eternally. His whole being was constructed with the geometrical measurements of sanctity. He’s made of straight lines. He is a tireless arrow piercing all the curves in the universe in order to straighten the world’s paths. He’s an animal threatened with extinction, but who merits preservation, who dies by the thousands on the field of battle because he can’t control his greed for love, ambition, and power. Everything is his right: to kill, to love, to summon, to possess. He is the perfect monument. His image grows in the direction of the sun. Like the statue of Zeus, he has his feet planted at opposite ends of the world’s diameter, which is why everything has to pass between his legs. Ships. The fresh water of rivers. The multitudes, cars, trucks. And a
ll the women in the world.

  My rivals console me and I stop crying.

  “Rami, don’t cry. All men are like that.”

  I calm down. All this man Tony does is confuse me, drive me to distraction. I thought I knew all of him, but the truth is I don’t know him at all. Never before had I imagined hearing such cruel things said about me. One day, he’s in love, the next day, he’s out of love. One day, your ears hear one thing, the next day, another woman’s ears hear something else. Occasionally, he sings the same song to all his women. The love he shows us is served up seasoned with lies, just as fish is served up with rice.

  I regain my self-control and again assume the leadership of our conjugal parliament.

  “What shall we do now, girls?”

  “I haven’t got time to cater to all his whims,” says Saly.

  “Nor me,” says Ju.

  “Me neither,” says Mauá.

  “The best solution is to suggest to Tony that he take a new wife,” I propose. “What do the others think?”

  There’s a moment’s silence.