The Sculptors of Mapungubwe

by Zakes Mda

  Chata suspected that it was all Rendani’s doing. Baba-Munene as the Younger Father, he reasoned, would respect the culture of the kingdom which dictated that no man, not even a thief, dared enter another man’s house without his permission for fear of angering the homeowner’s guardian spirits. Now daggers were drawn. He, Chata, would fight back on his own terms.

  He packed his bag and rode his quagga to Mapungubwe. His assistants, Chindori and Batsirai, would be in charge of his mine from then on. He would have the same arrangement with them that he had had with Zwanga. They would mine on their own behalf as long as they gave one-third of the yield to him and divided the rest among themselves and the other workers, and also paid tribute to the Karanga chiefs. The two assistants would take turns to deliver his share of the gold to him in Mapungubwe, once after every two full moons, and it was on those visits that he would get reports on the progress of the mine and the growth of the mining village.

  It took Chata many days to reach Mapungubwe. Even as he rode through the entrance of the southern zimbabwes he could hear strains of a solemn song coming from the direction of his house.

  Ma Chirikure was sitting on the veranda near the door and as soon as she saw him riding slowly on his tired quagga, which was also laden with a tanned leather bag of his possessions, she sprang up and ran wailing to him.

  “They are refusing to leave! They have taken over and won’t leave!”

  Chata did not know what she was talking about. He dismounted and embraced Ma Chirikure. Together they walked towards the house while the quagga followed. Leaving his bag on the quagga while it waited in front of the door, he followed Ma Chirikure past his hozi to the back of the house. A crowd had gathered and was singing songs of divination, but the people weren’t dancing as would have been the case at a divination ritual.

  “They call themselves the Community of Gapers,” said Ma Chirikure.

  The Gapers ignored Chata as he walked towards the gaping hole which did indeed look like a grotto. Two soldiers were standing on either side of the entrance, holding long spears and shields. They stopped from entering him with their shields.

  “This is his house! This is Chata!” shouted Ma Chirikure.

  The song of divination stopped as people muttered and murmured among themselves.

  “We know him,” said one soldier. “But we were not told to allow him into the house.”

  He did not argue with the soldiers. He stood there for a while looking at his sculpture.

  The song of the Gapers resumed as he mounted his quagga. He felt sorry for the animal because it had not rested after the long journey. But it was urgent that he spoke with Rendani and maybe Baba-Munene about the violation of his property. Ma Chirikure took his bag into the house as the quagga began a gentle trot. Just then Chata saw a young woman running towards him. It was Marubini.

  “You’re back,” she said. “They said you would not come back.”

  Chata did not know what she was talking about. He just stared at her, waiting for her to elaborate.

  “The people. The prophets of the Community of Gapers. They have turned your house into a shrine.”

  He couldn’t tell whether she thought this development was or was not a good thing.

  “Mapungubwe is my home. Where did they think I would go?”

  But that was not what Marubini was concerned about.

  “Is it true, Chata? Is it true that it’s my body you’ve sculpted?”

  Chata laughed and said, “Did somebody notice that? How would they know that?”

  “Tell them it’s not me, Chata. I am getting insults from the whole town because they think you’ve seen my nakedness. Tell them it’s not me.”

  Chata was enjoying her distress and kept on laughing.

  “It’s no laughing matter, Chatambudza. Announce that it’s not me.”

  “I’d be lying if I did.”

  “Where did you see me? Did you spy on me?”

  “In my dreams. Only in my dreams. I told you that you dance a cappella in a pool of yellowness.”

  “I don’t want to be in your dreams, Chata.”

  She was almost crying.

  “I can’t help it, Marubini. I don’t control my dreams.”

  At this he nudged the quagga with his heels and it cantered away, leaving her standing there helpless.

  “You, Chata, you’ll see rock rabbits migrating,” she yelled after him. That’s what people in Mapungubwe said when they were angry with you and were threatening that something serious was bound to befall you.

  Chata rode to the top of the hill, choosing a pass that was more suited to a mounted quagga since it was used for cows and mounted oxen, rather than the rock steps that people climbed. Passers-by looked at him curiously.

  He rode straight to Rendani’s homestead and was surprised to see two quaggas tethered in front of his main house. Chata chuckled to himself. His mukomana couldn’t but have quagga as well. And not one but two. The children playing outside told him that their father was at Baba-Munene’s compound. Chata repaired there.

  The Council of Elders was in full session debating what they referred to as “the Chatambudza problem” under the baobab tree when they saw Chata himself approaching at the entrance of the palisade. “He can’t come here unless we summon him,” said Baba-Munene. Rendani stood up immediately and hurried to him; Chata stopped right there and waited.

  “You know that as a commoner you can’t approach the sacred baobab unless you’ve been summoned by Baba-Munene,” said Rendani in a low voice.

  “My house has been broken into; no, it’s been demolished. Do I need to wait to be summoned to find out why you did it?”

  “Why I did it?”

  “You and your father-in-law.”

  Rendani looked into his eyes and shook his head sadly.

  “You do me wrong, mukomana,” he said. “I was totally against the raid. I opposed everything they did there, but Baba-Munene insisted it was the King’s order. No one goes against the word of our sacred King.”

  “They say you were there, Rendi,” said Chata.

  “Yes, I was there only to make sure that your property was protected. I can assure you, because of me no one touched anything; not even your mirror. I made sure of that. That’s why they left everything as they found it.”

  “Except the hole in the wall.”

  “I even asked that the place be guarded by soldiers day and night.”

  “Soldiers who won’t allow me into my house.”

  “I am going to send the Royal Messenger right away to order them to let you have free access to your house.”

  “What about the hole in the wall?”

  “We’re trying to figure out how to deal with the matter. What complicates things is that now people gather there every day and seem to find your work fascinating. We don’t want to deprive them of the pleasure by rebuilding.”

  “It is my house,” said Chata, almost shouting with anger. “Where am I supposed to stay?”

  The elders raised their heads and looked at the two men anxiously.

  “Shhhh . . . you’re making the elders nervous,” whispered Rendani.

  He explained that at that very moment they were trying to solve “the Chatambudza problem”. They could easily drive the crowds away with whips but it was not as simple as that. The whole thing had taken on religious overtones, with the crowds now calling themselves the Community of Gapers. Many elders thought that they should be left alone. They were all from the community of old residents and therefore their schism was of no consequence since they had never really been integrated into the more sophisticated institutions that the new residents brought with them to the hill of the jackal. This might be a good diversion for them. But the diviners and sundry religious leaders did not look kindly on any schism. It was causing nothing but turmoil in the ranks of the
sacred classes. If only Chata had not given the impression that he was hoarding gold this would not have happened.

  “So, now it is my fault that you invaded my house and broke its walls down, exposing my creation to the world? It is my fault that you have now created a situation that is beyond your control?”

  “You must admit that everyone believed you were hoarding gold. Not just the Council of Elders, but the whole town.”

  “And I told you I wasn’t.”

  “You didn’t tell us what you were doing with all the gold you were getting from my father’s mine.”

  “Do any of the carvers and sculptors and smithies announce to the world every time they are working on something?”

  “They make tools, implements and weapons of war. When they create works of art they create to the glory of the King. To whose glory have you created that work?”

  Chata thought it was useless to argue with the man. This squabble was not destined to get anywhere. He shook his head and walked away.

  “Chata, wait,” said Rendani rushing after him.

  He caught up with him just outside the entrance of the stone wall.

  “Is it true what they say, mukomana, that it is Marubini that you sculpted?”

  “I have heard that too. I merely moulded someone from my dreams.”

  “Then you must stop the rumours. Announce to everyone that it is not Marubini.”

  “Why? What interest do you have in Marubini?”

  “I’m going to marry her.”

  This was news to Chata and he couldn’t hide his shock.

  “You’re going to marry every maiden in this town? You’re going to marry Chido, and now you’re going to marry Marubini?”

  “Chido is yesterday’s news. I had not even asked for her hand in marriage. People like you just jumped to that conclusion. I am going to marry Marubini, so please stop creating her.”

  “It’s the Rain Dancer that I have created,” said Chata abruptly as he walked to his quagga which was grazing on the scanty patches of grass a few steps away.

  “Another thing, Chatambudza, where did you learn to shape things that look like real life?” Rendani called after him. “When we were growing up we all laughed at you because you could only carve or mould grotesque creatures that existed only in your head. Where did you learn to create people who look like people?”

  Chata did not answer. He mounted his quagga and rode away.

  MOONS HAD PASSED AND seasons changed. The soldiers that had been posted by Baba-Munene had long departed. Chata sat in the grotto and worked relentlessly on his chryselephantine Rain Dancer every day. Even on those days that he went hunting because Ma Chirikure told him that the dried venison was finished, he worked on the sculpture before or soon after the hunt. He built himself a platform of rocks and stood on it as he worked on the face. The Gapers continued to come on certain days and at what appeared to be random times. Chata never got to know how they determined when to assemble to sing their songs of divination and when to attend to the general business of living – tending their fields and cooking for their children. When the Gapers were not there neighbourhood children came and played their silly games in front of the grotto. Often parents would hear children say, “We are going to watch Chata create,” and off they went to his compound. At first Ma Chirikure would shoo them away, but Chata asked her to let them be. The voices of children gave him even greater inspiration. This was a new Chata, Ma Chirikure observed to herself. The old Chata had no patience with children, especially if they dared play in the clearing in front of his house. He used to yell obscenities at them and hurl the nearest missile he could find in their direction.

  Most times he did not hear the Gapers and their hymns or the children and their screeches. His mind was focused on the sculpture. When problems of the world began to occupy his mind he danced himself into a trance, thus dancing them out of his head and replacing them with creatures from the dimension of the dead and the unborn. Only after that was he able to sculpt again. Often he created in a reverie.

  Sometimes Marubini sneaked in among the crowd and furtively observed the creation. She came without her friends because the tension between them had mounted. They still met on some days at Danai’s home where her mother was teaching the girls the finer art of pottery, at the quarry where they mined clay, at Chido’s grandmother’s house where Marubini had recently joined cloth-making lessons, and at the river where they bathed and washed their aprons, karosses and cloths. And at every one of these places snide remarks were aimed like the poisoned arrows of the !Kung.

  Some of the girls’ nasty remarks centred on Chata’s Rain Dancer. The name had caught on, confirming the suspicion that it was based on Marubini’s body. Since the last time when she had danced until it rained some of the townsfolk had taken to calling her the Rain Dancer, which embarrassed her no end. She didn’t want the rain to be attributed to her. She had danced and it had rained. Was that not what the ceremony was about – the rainmaking festival? Didn’t troupes from the various age-groups dance? Didn’t Chata as well? So why then should the rain be attributed to her? Instinctively she was rebelling against deification because she knew that it would imprison her.

  Marubini watched the face develop slowly and hoped that it would not resemble hers. If he created her face it would confirm beyond any doubt that she was Chata’s Rain Dancer. She would no longer be able to claim that the secret parts that allegedly looked like hers were a coincidence and Chata was not privy to them. If Chata moulded her face she would wring his neck like that of a guineafowl and then run away from Mapungubwe, never to return.

  As Chata continued his work unabated it became clear to the spectators that in fact his Rain Dancer was not all solid gold or solid ivory as people had thought. Yes, some parts were solid gold, for instance the necklace, the bracelets and the anklets that the dancer wore. The grainy hair on the head of the Namaqua woman and on the dancer’s crotch was solid gold as well. Most of the body, however, including the face that Chata was working on at that moment, was made of wood that he carved into a frame. He then covered it with sheets of gold leaf. It was painstaking work, melting gold dust in a crucible in the dugout furnace and then climbing the platform to cover parts of the frame before the gold cooled down. He attached carved ivory on some parts of the wooden frame. For instance, the kaross of the Namaqua woman was made of ivory slabs. The black body of the dancer was made of fire-blackened ivory, but the neck and arms were gold. As she furtively observed, Marubini wondered whether the face would be blackened ivory or gold. At the moment Chata was still carving it in wood. It had better be gold if it was her image at all.

  Chata didn’t seem to be in a hurry to finish. He hoped that the spectators’ patience, especially the Gapers’, would wear out and he would be left in peace to continue with his life as before. But to his surprise, and indeed to his consternation, he missed the Gapers on those days they did not come. He hated himself for missing this intrusion in his life. He did not hate himself for missing Marubini when she did not come. Her absences were more frequent than the Gapers’. But when she did come and he was not in a trance he pretended that he did not know she was there. She believed he did not know.

  One day Chata was woken from his usual reverie by the children’s chant: “Chenayi Chenayi with twisted eyes . . . Chenayi Chenayi walks like a crab.” He knew that the children of the town were torturing the slow-headed boy. He stepped down from his platform of rocks and dashed out of the grotto. There were the children rolling the boy in the midden, pinching his buttocks and tickling him under his armpits. His eyeballs bulged with fear like an animal that was being slaughtered. A girl was trying to undo his loin covering and he was holding on to it for dear life.

  “We want to see what Chenayi Chenayi is hiding,” said the girl.

  “Chenayi Chenayi, show us the wiggly little worm unless you’re a girl,” chanted the children.
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  “Hey, you silly children, leave that boy alone,” yelled Chata.

  At the same time Marubini was slinking towards the grotto. She heard Chata admonish the children. At first they ignored him. Or perhaps they didn’t hear him in their excitement. He yelled once more and threatened them with the whipping of their lives if they didn’t leave the boy alone. He walked towards them and they ran off helter-skelter, laughing. He helped the boy up.

  “I hope they didn’t hurt you,” he said.

  The boy didn’t respond. He was still scared. Of Chata this time. Chata assured the boy that he wasn’t going to eat him; he ate only juicy guineafowl and the wild buck, but never boys. Chenayi missed the joke. But Marubini did not. She laughed nervously. She was calling his attention to her, but he merely raised his eyes in her direction and returned his interest to the boy. He led him by the hand to his grotto.

  Marubini stood there for a while, astonished at what she had just seen. This was a new Chata. A Chata who was kind to others. It was not the selfish Chata she had seen many times sitting on the veranda admiring himself in the mirror, enjoying the spectacle of the children tormenting Chenayi, and even defending them when Marubini scolded them for being cruel. This was not the Chata who was reputed throughout the town, throughout the kingdom even, to be a man who was too much in love with his own self. Something must have happened to bring about this drastic change. Marubini suspected the sculpture. The Rain Dancer. Perhaps as he created it, it created him as well, making him into a much softer person, a gentler and compassionate human being. Yes, that must be it. Art creates you as you create it. It was this chryselephantine sculpture that made him soar in the dance of the creatures of the wild on that rainmaking festival day, which in turn inspired Marubini to be the Rain Dancer.

  She liked this new Chata, although she was fighting hard not to like him. After all, this was the Chata who had just ignored her. It was also the Chata who had shamed her by sculpting her nakedness. The Chata who must have spied on her to sculpt it in a manner that those who knew her had declared was accurate. She could understand why they did not believe her denials. Part of the sculpture was an exact portrayal of the Khoikhoi woman; understandably accurate because she sat for him the entire time that people thought they were doing naughty things. By the same token, there was no way he could have made such an accurate portrayal of her body if it had not been exposed to him in a close and personal manner. She refused to believe that she posed for him in his dreams.