The Sculptors of Mapungubwe

by Zakes Mda

  While Marubini was standing there pondering these matters and Chata was showing a fascinated Chenayi his tools of the trade, things were happening in the neighbourhood. A delegation of Rendani’s uncles and other close male relatives was driving a fattened ox to Marubini’s home. They presented the beast to Marubini’s father to put him at ease so that he would be well disposed towards them and their mission. She did not know that her marriage was being negotiated as she walked away from the grotto to the house of Chido’s grandmother where the old lady was teaching the maidens the art of spinning cotton on a spindle into yarn and then weaving it into muslin.

  When she returned home in the afternoon she was surprised to be met by ululations from an aunt she had not seen in a while since she lived in a village a day’s journey from the town where she, her husband and her co-wives farmed cotton. Perhaps, thought Marubini, she had brought her some cotton for her cloth-making lessons. But why was she greeting her with ululations?

  “You have done well, our daughter, you have done well,” the aunt kept repeating as she pranced around Marubini waving a broom.

  Marubini learnt from her excited mother of the visitors from the top of the hill who had come to ask for her hand in marriage. The negotiations had gone well and soon the cattle for dzekiso or bridewealth – perhaps even some gold since Rendani was known to own a gold mine – would be paid and the marriage would be solemnised with appropriate rituals. Soon their beautiful Marubini would honour them by being a wife of one of the respected nobles, and the family would have a relative on top of the hill.

  “I am not going to marry Rendani,” said Marubini.

  Her mother and aunt recoiled in shock and surprise.

  “Did I hear right?” asked her mother.

  “No one asked if I wanted to marry Rendani or not. I don’t. I hate him.”

  This was unheard of. A maiden was never asked whether or not she wanted to marry any particular man. It was between her family and the suitor. She had no say in the matter. It was not her business. Where did this girl get the effrontery to question decisions made by her elders on such an important matter as her marriage? Her aunt blamed the modern days where children had lost all respect for custom and tradition and for their elders. Her mother said even in these modern days it was unheard of for any girl to utter the kind of disrespectful nonsense that Marubini had just uttered. She sat on the mat and wailed, asking the ancestors what she had done wrong to deserve a child like this.

  “You’re lucky your father is not here – he’s visiting friends to boast about this marriage – otherwise he’d give you a hiding you’d remember long after you and Rendani have produced a brood of children,” said the mother, sobbing and sniffling and then wailing again.

  “Look, look what you’ve done to my brother’s wife,” said the aunt. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “It’s because they now call her the Rain Dancer,” said the mother between sobs. “She has become so arrogant that she thinks she can say anything she likes to the adults.”

  “Any girl would feel honoured,” said the aunt. “Rendani is the Royal Sculptor. He is a notable and a grandee of the town. This is your opportunity to live the life of a lady on top of the hill. This is your chance to elevate your family to the high society of Mapungubwe. And you want to throw it out of the door just like that?”

  “She’s an ungrateful child.”

  Marubini felt guilty for doing this to her family. But she did not want to marry Rendani. She didn’t want to come between Chido and her high hopes. She did not want Rendani. Not just Rendani. She did not want any man. She wanted to dance the dance of the animals and of the rivers and of the birds. Once she was married she would not be able to dance such dances. She would be expected to perform only the staid and dignified dances of married women.

  She sat on the adobe stoep and wept softly.

  News does not sleep on the road, as Mapungubweans used to say. In no time the whole neighbourhood knew of what they called the betrothal, even though strictly speaking it was only the first step towards wedlock; a number of ceremonies and rituals were yet to be performed to make it that. Some congratulated Marubini, the daughter of a poor hunter, for catching such a big fish. Others condemned her for stealing Rendani from Chido. That was why she danced like one possessed by evil spirits that day of the rainmaking festival; it was all to attract Rendani’s attention and to impress him.

  Chido and Danai accused her of witchcraft. And they did so to her face. She was drawing water from a spring among the boulders at the foot of the hill when Danai and Chido confronted her. They also had clay pots which suggested that they had come to draw water, but Marubini knew that they had come because they saw her. There were other girls and young women there too because the fountain was the place to pass idle time and hear the latest gossip.

  “So, Marubini, it is Chata on this side and Rendani on the other?” said Danai. “Two men all to yourself!”

  Chido didn’t say anything. She just stood with an aggrieved look, arms akimbo.

  “You know, Danai, I’m tired of your insults,” said Marubini, gearing for a fight.

  “Oh, you’re going to fight me now, witch? You’re not satisfied that you used your witchcraft medicine to steal Chido’s man, and you used it on that idiot Chata who is creating your nakedness. Now you’re going to use it on me too?”

  The other young women surrounded them hoping something more entertaining would develop. They were cheering Danai and egging her on to throw a punch or two to teach the arrogant witch a lesson. Marubini panned her eyes around the circle and saw women and girls she knew very well. They had laughed with her and she regarded them as her broader circle of friends, Chido and Danai being her closest ones. Yet none of them were on her side. She was an outcast but didn’t understand why. They were eager for some blood sport. But Marubini was not prepared to give them the pleasure. She pushed her way out of the circle. Although her clay pot was third in line to draw water she grabbed it, placed it on her head and walked away. She could not balance it properly because it was empty and therefore very light. Also she was so angry that her gait was unsteady on the rocky terrain. The pot fell and shattered into many shards. The young women laughed. She could hear Danai’s distinct guffaws and Chido’s delicate giggles as she ran home with tears in her eyes.

  The first thing she said when she found her mother kneading sorghum dough was: “Mother, I will marry Rendani.” And she threw herself in her arms. She didn’t care that her back was all smeared with the soft dough.

  “Of course you’ll marry Rendani, my child. It was just the jitters talking.”

  “What did she say?” asked the aunt, rushing into the house.

  “She’s going to marry Rendani.”

  “As if it was up to her in the first place! I knew she was going to come to her senses. She wouldn’t dare disgrace my brother’s family. She wouldn’t dare allow such a good marriage to escape her clutches. She is a good girl at heart.”

  because news does not sleep on the road, Chata heard that very afternoon that Rendani was going to marry Marubini and that the girls had fought over Rendani at the fountain. As in most cases, the bearer of the tidings was Ma Chirikure.

  “This Rendani,” said Chata, “he wants everything for himself.”

  “Go fight for her if you want her,” said Ma Chirikure.

  “Want who? I don’t want anybody.”

  “You created her image.”

  “It is not Marubini I’ve created. It is the dancer of my dreams. The Rain Dancer.”

  Ma Chirikure did not understand the meaning of it all. Everyone knew that he had shaped Marubini in all her femaleness. And since the great rain that followed her dance everyone knew that Marubini was the Rain Dancer. But Chata didn’t seem to associate the two: his dancing sculpture with a Khoikhoi woman under it was the Rain Dancer and Marubini was Marubini.
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  “She may marry Rendani if that’s what she wants,” he added. “They deserve each other.”

  Then he chipped away furiously at the wooden face of the sculpture. Ma Chirikure feared that he would make a mistake and his chisel would go astray.

  She felt very sorry for him. It all became clear to her. Chata had never married because he had dedicated himself to his art; he was married to the dancer of his dreams. All those years he had locked himself in his house he was painstakingly actualising his dreams; he was consummating his marriage. “What a pity,” Ma Chirikure murmured to herself but loud enough for him to hear. “Marubini would have been the ideal woman for him.”

  “Once and for all, I have no interest in Marubini,” said Chata.

  “Because you’re satisfied only with her image. Your mother would have loved flesh-and-blood grandchildren.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “She’s here. They are always here with us, those who leave us.”

  He did not want to argue. He wanted to be left alone to work on his Rain Dancer. Ma Chirikure stood there for a while. He pretended he was not aware of her presence and focused on carving the fine lines of the chin. She shook her head, shrugged her shoulders and exited. It was strange to walk out of the grotto and not find any of the Gapers or hangers-on outside. It was like that sometimes. A few moments of silence and emptiness. Neither Chata nor Ma Chirikure had established what determined them. Nor did they have any clue why sometimes there would be a flurry of activity with children watching him work and then getting bored and playing their games near the midden, or the Community of Gapers singing their hymns and making dire divinations, or both. There was no rhyme or rhythm to the comings and goings of these groups – at least none that Chata or Ma Chirikure could divine.

  The next day Chata took a break from his Rain Dancer and went to the top of the hill. He wanted to talk to Rendani, to understand what exactly he was up to, playing cruel games with the maidens of his neighbourhood, and what his true intentions were with Marubini. He went to his compound, stood at the door of his house and called his name. There was no response so he left for Baba-Munene’s compound hoping to find his mukomana there. He knew that he spent a lot of his time with his father-in-law even when there were no meetings of the Council of Elders. Chata suspected that he was worming his way right into the very heart of the Royal Homestead and therefore into the very heart of power.

  Before Chata could reach the entrance of the palisade a boy came running after him.

  “Baba Chata,” said the boy. “Mmawe wants to see you.”

  He wondered aloud who his mother was and why she wanted to see him, but he followed the boy back to the compound, to the house of one of Rendani’s wives. He stood at the door and announced himself. A voice requested him to enter. There was Princess Dova sitting on a grass mat in front of the hearth with dying embers. She was chewing a snack of roasted millet in a dainty ceramic bowl. Even in the dim light Chata could see that she was quite plump, as all well-fed princesses should be, with ample flesh hanging in rolls on her stomach and under her arms. The room was tastefully decorated with skins of zebras and giraffes on the walls, and with pottery and imported ceramic bowls on the adobe ledges. Chata felt uncomfortable standing there in a lady’s room, but she remained seated and didn’t seem to be bothered.

  “The children told me you were in the neighbourhood,” said Princess Dova. “I’d asked them to watch out for you and let me know when you’re here.”

  “What could the Princess want to talk to me about?”

  “How are things between you and Marubini?”

  Ah, Marubini! He knew that Rendani’s junior wife would not be pleased about the intended marriage. She would not want to lose her status as the youngest and therefore most pampered wife. He knew immediately that she wanted to use him to foil the marriage. She was an ally. He, too, did not want this marriage to happen, for Marubini’s sake if not for his, but he had not known how to stop it. The best he had thought he could do was talk to Rendani.

  “There has never been anything between Marubini and me.”

  “You’re creating her in ivory and gold.”

  “I’m creating the dancer of my dreams.”

  “She’s the woman for you and you’re going to let Rendani take her away from you?”

  “If Rendani wants to marry her and her parents say yes there is nothing I can do about it. There is nothing she can do about it either.”

  “Where I come from men fight for the women they love,” said the Princess.

  “But you’re from here, Princess Dova.”

  “Exactly. In Mapungubwe men fight for the women they love.”

  “We have not established that I love her.”

  All along Princess Dova just sat there, looking him straight in the eye, chewing loudly on the millet, not showing any emotion. Now she burst into laughter. It was a mocking kind of laughter and it made Chata angry.

  “You don’t know me, Princess Dova. You don’t know anything about me except for the palace gossip.”

  “You’re only deceiving yourself, Chatambudza.”

  “You can do something to stop the marriage. You are his wife. He has to get your permission before he marries anyone.”

  She had withheld her permission, she told him. But the other two wives who were senior to her were keen on this marriage. They were already making grandiose plans for it even though none of the betrothal rituals had been performed and no dzekiso or bridewealth had been paid. So far she was the lone voice against the marriage because even her father didn’t seem to see anything wrong with it. “You can’t stop a man from marrying when he wants to marry,” Baba-Munene had told her. Her own mother told her she would get over it soon enough; she could not change the age-old tradition of her people. With her mother, of course, there was a tinge of I-told-you-so. When Rendani had asked for Princess Dova’s hand in marriage a few years back her mother had objected. Her daughter was of royal blood and could have done well marrying one of the bachelor patricians on the hill and become the first wife. She would then rule supreme over all she surveyed in the household. But no one listened to her objections. Princess Dova and Baba-Munene were captivated by the swaggering Rendani who was a great carver and blacksmith and whose father owned a lucrative gold mine. She was going to be the youngest wife and therefore the most favoured of the lot. After all, the man had promised the Princess privately that he would not take another wife after her.

  Princess Dova had reminded Rendani of that promise when he first mooted the idea of marrying Chido. But he told her he had been young and foolish when he made the promise. As a man of substance, power and influence he had to marry more wives. How would the people of Mapungubwe respect him with only three wives?

  “You know what they want to do to you?” asked Princess Dova. “They want to saddle you with the ghostly concubine.”

  “That’s an old story,” said Chata. “They tried and I dismissed the idea outright.”

  “Well, they are not done with you yet. They are hatching a new plot.”

  When the Swahilis had last been in Mapungubwe they had expressed their displeasure when they discovered that their gift had not been used and had been kept in isolation and fed as if she was being fattened for slaughter. They threatened war if she was not being appreciated and utilised in the proper manner. It was Chata’s turn to burst out in laughter.

  “What power do they have to wage war?” he said. “They are only merchants.”

  “The Council of Elders takes any threat of war seriously.”

  “I didn’t know you had this keen interest in matters of state,” said Chata, still laughing.

  “I am a princess; I grew up surrounded by matters of state.”

  “It is just an empty threat. That’s how these merchants operate.”

  “The elders say some of these powerful merchan
ts have a lot of influence at the royal courts of their countries. You should know that, Baba Chata, you have travelled in their countries.”

  Chata suspected that the traders wanted to extort something from Mapungubwe. Most likely rhino horns. He remembered his conversations with Hamisi wa Babu when they were crossing the Zanj seas in his dhow. He had told him how aggrieved the Swahili traders were that they could not get rhino horns from a region where the animal roamed in the wild in plentiful numbers. It did not make any sense to him that the pagan beliefs of Mapungubwe protected the animal as some kind of sacred totem. He pooh-poohed the whole idea of totems, especially for an animal like the rhino that could make Mapungubwe wealthy since its horn was in great demand in Arabia and in China. The rhinos of Mapungubwe, the merchant had said, were a waste of good resources and an affront to the human race.

  “Whether it’s an empty threat or not, the ghostly woman cannot just sit there unused,” said Princess Dova. “Think how insulted she feels.”

  “Why do they think that is my problem?”

  “You’re the only wifeless man they know who can maintain her in the style to which she is accustomed. Also you have been to her land, so you’d know what to do with her.”

  Chata could see Rendani’s hand in this plot. But how were they going to foist the woman on him if he didn’t want her? He was grateful that Princess Dova had made him aware of the plot; he would be prepared to fight it if and when they sprang it on him.

  He didn’t see Rendani that day.

  As he walked down the hill he ruminated on his conversation with Princess Dova. He had never spoken to the woman before, except to exchange a greeting if she happened to be outside when he visited Rendani. She was interested in him only for her own selfish ends and had treated him with disdain all the time he had stood there talking to her. She had not offered him a seat or a calabash of beer or fermented porridge or even the roasted millet she was chewing with relish – hospitality that was accorded visitors as a matter of course.