I know the Europeans’ ploy. First they send traders and missionaries; then ambassadors; then guns. They might as well begin with the guns.
—EMPEROR TEWODROS II OF ETHIOPIA
I was summoned to the door. A stranger had brought something for me and wanted to give it to me personally. He had come from afar, from lands that have a name only in other tongues. I peeped at the door, suspicious and undecided. A family’s generosity is measured by the way it welcomes guests. But it is also true that, where we come from, no man turns up at another person’s house in order to speak to an unmarried woman. Good manners dictate that he approach her parents and wait as long as necessary for his intentions to be established. But we Nsambe were different, less attached to tradition. For this reason, I agreed to go to open the door. A man of a certain age waved a sheaf of papers and, in a hoarse voice, announced:
These are letters I’ve brought from the mines.
We don’t know anybody in the mines.
Yes, you do.
Who?
You remember only too well.
The papers were all crumpled, and so dirty that the words were illegible. In spite of this, the messenger’s stubby fingers straightened the sheets of paper with a woman’s delicate touch. I was confused by a flurry of doubts: Was Grandfather really alive? And had he written those letters, he who couldn’t read a word?
Tsangatelo dictated them, I wrote them down, the messenger confirmed, as if he were reading my thoughts.
I recognized him. He was the same miner who, many years before, had brought us news of Grandfather. At the outset, I had been assailed by a suspicion. I was now certain that this man was his companion, his tchipa, who looked after him down in the depths of the earth.
If I was unable to decipher the handwriting, I was also unable to understand a word the stranger said. Specks of something that looked like soot flew out of his mouth and stuck to his lower lip, which drooped under the weight of his blackened saliva. Grandfather’s emissary coughed more than he spoke.
Eventually, the visitor made himself understood. Old Tsangatelo was asking us to tell my mother that she would never again see the ocean. None of us in Nkokolani would return to our lands on the coast. The tchipa repeated the prophecy with certainty: We never return, no one ever returns.
I examined the messenger’s face and realized that he was harboring secrets and maybe even answers to some of our old questions.
I’m not going to ask you your name. But I would like you to help us understand what made Grandfather stay so far away from the ocean.
Tsangatelo taught me one should never say anything to anyone who may be unable to forget.
It’s not for me. It’s for my mother’s sake, so that she may not suffer the illusion of one day returning.
I’ll tell you the story, the messenger said.
* * *
It all began one magnificent morning during the rainy season of 1882. Up until then, Tsangatelo had never seen a white man. The first European he had ever seen appeared mounted on a horse, which was an animal unknown to him. The horse was white, much paler than the rider. Horse and rider combined to form one silhouette, so that Grandfather thought they were one creature. And it was with horror that he watched the man try to separate himself from his lower half. When the rider dismounted, Tsangatelo Nsambe heard flesh tear and bones splinter. He shut his eyes in order not to see blood pouring as if from the neck of a chicken. A question addressed to him in Portuguese brought him back to reality:
Are you the man they call Tsangatelo? Are you the pombeiro in this region?
Grandfather didn’t speak a word of Portuguese. He guessed more than he actually discerned what the foreigner was asking, and nodded in answer to the first question. But neither he nor anyone else in the village understood the word pombeiro. The term had been brought from Angola and designated the traders who organized expeditions into the African interior.
I am Tsangatelo Nsambe, son of Zulumeri, who is the son of Masakula, the son of Mindwane, who is the son of …
The Portuguese raised his arm to halt this interminable introduction. In truth, there was scarcely an interruption: as he progressed through the list of his ancestors, the tone of Grandfather’s voice grew ever lower. He didn’t want to make himself too conspicuous, always a fatal risk in such a tiny, poverty-stricken environment. His care proved fruitless. Within a few seconds, a whole sea of people surrounded the visitor. Fearful of being swallowed up by the crowd, the foreigner climbed back onto his saddle. He wanted to be viewed from below, as if he were a god: against the light, his silhouette standing out against the sky. From high up on his horse, the Portuguese cast a condescending, haughty glance around him, as if he were thinking: So many folk here, but not a single person.
Along with the rider, there were two more Portuguese, also on horseback. The animals were diverse, different in color and in size. But the whites were all the same: their faces shielded by their wide-brimmed hats, their mustaches long and turned up, and their eyes restless and furtive. One of them, the shortest, said something in a kind of hybrid tongue that, with some effort and creativity, Tsangatelo Nsambe translated as follows: We need your services.
Grandfather was the owner of caravans of porters. It was he who organized the transport of cargo over long distances. In those days, there were no roads. The only tracks were those made by travelers’ feet. The porters were the highway, the railroads, the sea, and the rivers. For centuries, the produce of wretchedness and fortune, glory and betrayal, was carried on their backs.
Tsangatelo was hardly popular for the way he treated his porters. Countless times, he had ordered those who were tired or sick to be beheaded, on the grounds that they were indolent. He himself told the story of a woman who, tied by ropes to other women, insisted on carrying in her arms a baby who had died of hunger days before. He had to order her killed. It was not done out of malice, Tsangatelo defended himself. She was a bad example to the others. These people are rascals, he would say. Life has taught them to lie, to feign grief and sickness.
It was therefore natural that Tsangatelo Nsambe should be hated for all those years of mistreatment. But the greatest hatred derived from the fact that he had become prominent, richer and more lordly than anyone else in the village. In a poverty-stricken place, it is a crime to stop being poor. In our village, wealth is never born unsullied.
A feeling of apprehension ran through Tsangatelo when he sat down with the Portuguese who spoke the hybrid language. It was a first meeting, a “mouth opener,” as we call it here. The foreigners merely wanted to announce their arrival and organize a formal business meeting for the following day.
That night, Grandfather found it difficult to sleep. He was on his guard: elsewhere, the transport-and-porterage business had been usurped by white and mixed-race traders. For that reason, he rose early and got himself prepared to make an impression on the Portuguese delegation. He did not want them to take him for a worthless peasant. He asked his elder brother to lend him European clothes. All his brother had was a jacket and a pair of spectacles he had found at the entrance to the village. Wearing the jacket over a skirt made of cowhide, and with the glasses perched on the end of his nose, Tsangatelo appeared, vain and full of self-confidence. Let there be no doubt: nobody in the entire region provided better services than he did.
And what’s more, I only pay the porters who manage to complete the whole journey.
But he didn’t pay in money. He paid in slaves that were captured along the way. That’s life, he was wont to philosophize: Those who are someone’s property today will be the owners of others tomorrow. All of us in this world are descendants of slaves or of the slave owners.
The Portuguese took a huge pistol out of his holster, and the gleam of metal blinded Tsangatelo. He looked down and pretended to shake his callused feet. Waving the gun as if it were a fan, the European said: The cargo we shall be consigning to you is highly sensitive.
I’ve carried a lot of ivory for both the Portuguese and the English. My caravans go as far as Inhambane, and even farther, to Lourenço Marques.
This time it’s different. I’ll be frank with you: it’s arms.
Grandfather rolled down the sleeves of his coat, which had ridden up as far as his elbows. He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and shook his capulana to clean it of some imaginary dust. Then, for the first time, he looked the European squarely in the eyes. You bosses are from elsewhere. The only distance you know is that of the ocean. On land, distance can have a huge advantage.
And what might that advantage be?
Distance may offer a thousand ways to escape. But it’s the biggest prison there is. No porter dares to flee.
Very well, let’s get to the matter in hand. Are you willing to transport these arms?
Where are the arms coming from, and where are they going?
Someone will bring them from Lourenço Marques to the River Limpopo. From there, you will transport them as far as Chicomo.
As he returned to his house, Grandfather was beset by a strange feeling. Arms, he thought, don’t move from place to place. They have always been where they are today. They are born and reborn like weeds, for no reason and without intention.
* * *
Tsangatelo went home along the beach. Darkness had fallen, and the paths through the bush were full of danger. His wife was awaiting him in the front yard; she listened in silence to the account of his meeting with the Portuguese.
Arms? she wondered.
She remained silent for a time. She contemplated the sea, which is a way of not looking at anything. Then she got up, her hands on her lower back, as if to counterbalance her body. With the serenity of one harboring a great certainty, she declared: Learn this, husband: a weapon cannot be regarded as business. If you accept this assignment, I shall leave this house, I shall run away from this village. And you’ll never see me again.
But these weapons, wife, are for expelling our enemies.
When these enemies leave us, the rifles won’t go to sleep. And we shall be massacred by the same arms we carry across our shoulders.
I don’t know why I told you about it. I’ve got my business activities—they’re men’s things.
His wife’s objections made Grandfather uneasy and disturbed his night’s sleep. The following morning, having slept badly and woken up even worse, Tsangatelo saw one of his porters standing outside the door. At his feet was a bundle of ivory and animal pelts. The man bowed respectfully, and took advantage of being bent over to place his hands under the bundle. When he raised his load, something happened that Tsangatelo was never able to describe: along with the bundle, he lifted all the ground around it. As if it were a towel, the surrounding earth was raised, and a cloud of dust hung suspended in the air. All around the porter, a bottomless abyss opened up. With apparent ease, the man hoisted the surrounding terrain above him. Then he deposited the world on his head. Without moving, his feet straddling this suddenly created island, the slave issued his warning: No one will ever walk again! The caravans have died, they have died forever.
The owner of the porters, the powerful Tsangatelo, shook from his head to his feet. He was the target of a curse. Somewhere, in some unknown pot, his sinister fate was being cooked.
That very same day, Grandfather Tsangatelo decided to leave the village by the seashore. This is the reason, concealed from us for years, why we had abandoned the place where we had once been happy.
* * *
Tsangatelo’s messenger made off without even leaving a footprint in the smooth sand around our house. I was supposed to go and tell my mother the news brought to us from the depths of the earth. But I didn’t. I stayed at home the whole day, respecting the leisurely pace at which messages travel through our homeland. I would speak to my mother the following day.
But I didn’t do so. For, in the early hours, we received news of a ghostly creature who had invaded the village, dashing frantically along the streets. This bogeyman—this txigono, as we call them—pillaged houses and broke into corrals, leaving behind a vast trail of panic and chaos.
In an instant, it was our turn to witness the truth of these rumors: a monstrous figure broke into our backyard after vaulting the fence, and spread terror among the women and children.
At a first glance, it looked like the ugliest, most terrifying of wild animals. But then I detected a certain familiarity. Monsters are all the more frightening the more they resemble a human figure. Such was the case with this apparition. On the txigono’s head swayed three ostrich feathers, on a kind of bonnet made of animal skins and tied behind by a ribbon, which made the head look all the more bulky. Around his neck, he wore a dark cowhide strip we call a tinkosho. His legs, belly, and arms were adorned with leather ribbons. Around his waist, he had tied the skin of a wildcat. At first, he bellowed more like an animal than a person. But little by little, we noticed he was shouting in Xizulu, the language of the occupiers. And our fears intensified with that realization.
Once they had recovered from their surprise, some of the men plucked up courage and jumped on him, overcoming him by force. They were already mistreating him when my father interfered: Let’s see who this miserable wretch is.
They stripped him of his ornamental disguise. I don’t know whether I was surprised: the person hiding behind that mask was none other than my brother Dubula. I helped him up from the ground while my father went about getting our furious neighbors off the premises. Eventually, when we were on our own, Katini gazed at his son at length, and then asked: Why?
Dubula, who was busy gathering up the adornments that had scattered across the ground, did not reply.
Why did you dress like that? my father once again pressed him.
I didn’t dress like a warrior. I am an Nguni warrior.
Have you gone mad?
I’ve never been more lucid.
Our father spun around, his hands clutching his head. What would Germano de Melo say when he found out that someone from our family had made such a sad exhibition of himself?
Mother knelt in front of her son and put her hand on his head before gently pleading: Leave, before your uncle gets here. If my brother sees you dressed up like that, he’ll drive a spear through you.
I came here precisely for my uncle to see me.
Are you trying to challenge him?
On the contrary, I’m doing this out of respect for him.
I don’t understand, son.
Uncle Musisi is the only man in this family. I’m proud to have him as an enemy. I hope to face him one day in hand-to-hand combat.
* * *
A brother is our other half. But Dubula was more than a half of me. He was me in another body. Although he was my brother and our mother’s favorite son, life had removed him from our home. My dear elder brother belonged to that minority who viewed the Nguni presence sympathetically. For him, the biggest enemy, and the one upon whom we should all concentrate our fury, whether now or in the future, was Portuguese dominion.
Before the invasions, we were not aware of Dubula’s devotion to the VaNguni. We would see him scale the highest hill in the early evening. It was a dune stripped of vegetation, white enough to hurt one’s eyes as one looked at it. Up there on its crest, which faced south, he sat there, vigilant. The village believed he was looking out for the VaNguni. But it wasn’t fear that moved him. It was a desire to see them arrive.
Later, I would climb the path to give him a shake and insist he return home.
This can’t go on, Dubula. We want you to come back and ask for your father’s forgiveness.
He never answered. He was waiting for the barbarians as if he were waiting for himself. He wanted to be invaded. He wanted to be conquered, occupied from head to foot, to the point of forgetting who he had been before the invasion.
Better Ngungunyane than any Portuguese.
And he would explain: The Nguni monarch was an emperor who no longer had an empire; the whites were an empire without an emperor. The emperor is finished when he dies; an empire installs itself inside our head and remains alive even after it has disappeared. We needed to defend ourselves from hell rather than from the devil.
Time after time, we begged Dubula to step back from his avowed sympathy for the occupier. Uncle Musisi would never accept his ranting and raving. My dear father, by now at the end of his rope, pressed him by asking: And what if the VaNguni emerge winners at the end of this war? What difference will it make to us?
If the VaNguni win, I shall always be able to be someone. What people will we be if the Portuguese win?
We should look, he said, at the example of Maguiguane, Ngungunyane’s military chief. He wasn’t an Nguni, but he had been accepted and promoted. And he challenged us further: In the Portuguese army, was there a single black commander? Thousands of blacks had died fighting on the Portuguese side. Had we ever seen any tribute, any reward, given to the Africans who had fallen? Only our brother Mwanatu, who was retarded from birth, believed he had gained the respect of whites. My brother Dubula said all this with such passion.
When a father and a son argue over something, the true reason for their dispute is inevitably different, a quarrel that is older than words. I already knew the outcome of the arguments from both sides. And it was always my father who brought the issue to a close, saying: As far as I’m concerned, the color of the snake doesn’t matter. The poison that kills us is always the same.
* * *
On the eve of the decisive battle, which would be fought on the plains of Madzimuyni, the warrior Xiperenyane visited our village. His bearing filled everyone with confidence. The Chopi commander benefited from the support of the Portuguese. However, he appeared not to need protectors. The son and successor of Binguane was supremely confident of his own power.
All the villages in the area had furnished men to swell Xiperenyane’s army, which would face the VaNguni. Every family except for mine was busy with preparations for the great showdown.
On the night before, my father invited his brother-in-law Musisi to smoke mbangue together with him. “Smoking together” was the term used for any situation supposed to mark the end of a disagreement. But Father didn’t smoke. Only Musisi inhaled the soothing smoke and retained it in his chest. My old father limited himself to occasionally cleaning the horn that served as a pipe. Every time he bent over, he would complain with a wince: The ground is getting lower and lower.
They allowed time to billow out before broaching the real subject of their meeting. My father was the one to reveal himself first: Today I’m going to unearth my javelin.
He filled his hand with sand and blew firmly onto his closed fist, to show that he was making a pledge.
I don’t understand, Musisi commented. What are you going to unearth?
Tomorrow I’m going with you to the battlefield.
Did you have a drink before smoking?
I’ve made up my mind: tomorrow I’m going to fight the vultures.
Musisi replied with a burst of laughter. The invitation to the smoking ceremony was supposed to signal harmony, but it could not have produced greater discord. As he left, Uncle took care not to look back. He was defending himself against an ill omen.
Musisi’s scorn merely reinforced my old father’s decision. During the evening, he presented himself to his wife solemnly and fully armed. I was mistaken; I have no more illusions, he declared. And he added somberly: Tomorrow I shall be a soldier, I shall go with your brother.
Chikazi dropped the rice she was sifting. Her husband’s announcement caused her spirit to sink, a grain among the grains of rice. And she became even more worried when her husband dragged a sleeping mat out into the yard. He was going to spend the night out in the open to show how determined he was to wage war. On the eve of battle, a warrior sleeps far from his beloved.
* * *
That night, the square was filled with men and boys. Musisi climbed up on an old tree trunk and addressed the crowd:
What do you think, my brothers? Do we wait for the Portuguese?
A vibrant no echoed through the village. Then, once again, Uncle made the gathering pulsate: Do we wait for the Portuguese, who never turn up?
He was talking about the Portuguese, but he was referring to my father, Katini Nsambe, who was nowhere to be seen. The Portuguese army had received orders not to intervene. Lying drowsily in his bed, my father was obeying the orders of alcohol, of which he had consumed a copious amount.
The local nyanga, or witch doctor, took my uncle’s place on the improvised platform in order to spread his powerful message. In a tone of voice that recalled song rather than speech, he assured those men that they could advance without fear, for the remedies he had prescribed inoculated them against the enemy weapons.
And the throng moved off in a disorganized march, singing and whooping raucously. Seeing those folk spreading out along the road, I thought how much we resemble our enemies.
* * *
When our men came back, it was clear that they weren’t soldiers. They were peasants and fishermen, totally unprepared for warfare. At heart, they were no more soldiers than Mwanatu was a sentry. It didn’t matter who they were; in that ragged procession, they bore with them the sadness and shame of defeat. They passed through the square, their heads bowed, their spears dragging along the ground. My father stood beside me, witnessing this depressing scene. I had never before seen his eyes so devoid of life. Katini pretended he could see and feigned tears.
The vanquished disappeared into the shadows of their homes. All of them had returned, except for Dubula.
* * *
Two days passed without news of my elder brother. We knew he had set off for the battle of Madzimuyni and that he had joined the ranks of the aggressors. But no more was known. On the days that followed, no one spoke of his absence, but a dark cloud hung over our house.
On the third day, Chikazi decided to visit her brother. I went with her, without being asked. She didn’t get as far as sitting down in Musisi’s yard. Her anxious hands crossed and uncrossed on her breast, and then she cast them forward as if she wanted to hurl them along with her accusing words: Dubula hasn’t returned yet. Musisi, you killed my son.
Who told you that?
I was told in a dream. We are brother and sister; we are visited by the same ancestors.
I didn’t see Dubula. I didn’t see him either before or after the battle.
You didn’t see him because in war my son became someone else. You killed him, Musisi. So listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you: you’re never going to have a peaceful night’s sleep again.
* * *
That same morning, I made my way alone to the cursed lowlands of Madzimuyni, which had already become known as “the plain of the dead.” I wanted to look for my brother, in the vague hope he might still be alive. As I was walking away from the village, some country folk accosted me, bewildered:
Where are you going? This path is closed off.
When I told them where I was going, a shudder of alarm ran through their gaze. And they pleaded with me not to go any farther. Faced with my determination, they shook their heads and hurried away from me, as one does with lepers or the insane.
Before setting off along the vaguest of tracks, I found myself screaming: Are you frightened of me? Well, you should be. For I am leaving as a woman, and I shall return as a ghost.
I started unhurriedly to descend the slope that led to the plain. As I progressed, I ruminated. My brother had joined the battle in the certainty that he knew his enemy. In my case, it was the other way around: I did not know who to hate. I had no one to die for. Which also meant that I did not know who to love. And I envied him for having found a reason to die, after losing the meaning of life.
Dubula and I were united in the fear we inspired in others. People were frightened of him because he was so disobedient. Men and women feared me. Men feared me because I was a woman. Married women feared me because I was young and beautiful: I could be what they had once been. Single women envied me for belonging to the world of the whites: I was what they could never be.
Absorbed in these thoughts, I did not realize that I had arrived at the scene of the tragedy. I took off my sandals before stepping onto the battlefield, as if I were entering some stranger’s house. I crossed the field among corpses, groans, and death rattles. There were so many dead that for a few moments I was unable to see. I was blind, unable to move or even to volunteer a gesture. Amid so many bodies, only mine existed. When I regained my sight, I noticed that my feet were red. It was then that I realized that all the soil was bleeding, as if some subterranean belly had been torn open.
* * *
The cruelty of a war isn’t measured by the number of graves in a cemetery. It is measured by the number of bodies denied burial. This is what I thought while I picked my way between dismembered people, jackals, and scavenging birds.
The greatest wound war can inflict is making us search for the bodies of those we love. Who would have said I’d be one of those women, condemned to journey through life amid ashes and ruins?
While I moved forward across the wilderness, I called out my brother’s name, in the vain hope that he might answer.
Dubula!
* * *
The corpses looked as if they had been sown by some drunken god: scattered erratically, but here and there in sudden heaps. Had someone brought them there? Or had they, in some final, gregarious urge, dragged themselves toward a particular place, fearful that death might come upon them while they were alone and defenseless?
And once again, my cry wafted over this desolate terrain:
Dubula, my brother!
Suddenly, I heard someone answering. In front of me, a warrior, still in full military regalia, twisted and groaned. He was lying on his back, his face concealed behind his war mask, and he appeared to be very badly wounded. He kept repeating in a lugubrious tone: Sister? I’m here, sister. Help me!
At first, I thought his voice strange—he had been so badly injured that even his voice had become distorted. From under the plumes covering his face, he murmured: I’m here, sister!
My tears hampered my vision. I uttered the most senseless question: Dubula, are you alive?
I got no other answer than the sound of my own sobbing. The person I was looking for was there. Maybe it was too late to save him, but at least Dubula would come back home in the company of someone who loved him. And I thought of my mother’s happiness when she saw us staggering home, each supporting the other as if we were one and the same shadow.
Come, dear brother. I’ll help you.
I avoided looking him in the face. In the eyes of the dying, we see our own death. When I touched his hands, I was assailed by a sudden doubt. Those weren’t my brother’s hands. That young man was someone else, who, in his death throes, took me for a relative. I got to my feet and walked around the body, ready to leave. It was then that the dying man whispered: I knew you would come. That’s why I waited …
With some effort, I helped him up. I offered him my support to walk, and together, arm in arm like a pair of newlyweds, we set off toward the village.
Come, brother. Let’s go home.
The soldier took a couple of steps and then fell on top of me. A gush of blood soaked my body, and his arms lost all their strength. Even so, I managed to raise that lifeless weight again and crept forward with great difficulty until the youth collapsed once more, defenseless, on his final stretch of ground. Kneeling, I tidied his clothes, just as I always did with my brother when, overcome by drink, he lay down to sleep at the entrance to the house.
That was when I was aware of a noise. Someone was approaching. At first, it was no more than a shape. It was wearing a black cape, which gave it the appearance of a bird of prey. When it got nearer, I realized it was one of those miserable wretches who make a living off the spoils of war. He skipped among the bodies with the ridiculous prance of a vulture. On his back, he carried a gunnysack full of clothes and weapons. In the weakest of voices, I begged him: Help me, please!
He came up to me as if I were just one more piece of war booty to swell his already bulging sack. I stepped back, alarmed. Then, the man asked: Where are you from? I’ve never seen you before.
I’m from here.
Are you reaping a harvest as well? I haven’t seen such a good one for many a year, praise be to the gods.
In my silence the man recognized the strongest expression of disapproval. His raised arm was the black wing of a bird of prey.
I only steal from the dead to save them from being robbed by their own families. Those jackals will be here before long … And you, what are you doing here?
I’m looking for someone. A brother.
I’m not referring to this cemetery here. I’m asking why you are in Nkokolani.
The man had the smell of a creature of the wild, and when he came near, his breath was like that of a hyena. He bent over the body that lay in my arms and spat before speaking. That man no longer contains a person.
He was about to walk off when he thought better of it, and, dragging his sack noisily behind him, he circled me for a while before asking, What’s your name?
Me? I don’t have a name, I replied.
It was as if I’d dealt him a blow. He let go of his sack, and its contents rolled out onto the ground. He advanced toward me, his arm raised. Never say that again. Do you want to know how to really kill someone? You don’t need to slit his throat or stick a knife in his heart. All you have to do is steal his name. That’s what kills the living and the dead. That, my girl, is why you must never again say you don’t have a name.
As he crouched down to put the stolen objects back in his gunnysack, he went on talking quietly, almost as if it were a family confession. He told me he could teach me the skills required of his occupation, a craft in which there was always plenty of work. He said he had already robbed the graves of whites in cemeteries in Inhambane and Lourenço Marques. And he had noticed that Europeans write the names of those they had buried on a stone. It’s their way of resuscitating them, he said.
Was the one you’re looking for a military chief?
No, he was a soldier like anyone else.
So much the better for him. Do you know what Ngungunyane does with the bodies of his most powerful enemies? He cuts out their hearts and backbones and grinds them into a powder, which he then feeds to his soldiers. That’s how they eat up our strength.
And off he went, humming to himself and dragging his dusty gunnysack behind him. His gentle voice contrasted with his sinister figure. I waited for him to disappear, and then I removed my own clothes to cover the lifeless body of the man who, for a moment, had been my brother. I left him there lying on his stomach, without a grave or gravestone, but covered out of respect for the Creator.
I entered the village stark naked, and it was as if I had come to the wrong place. Nkokolani was deserted. More than deserted, it gave the impression of never having been lived in. I screamed, I wept, I ranted and raved.
Little by little, the women began to rush toward me. Why are you screaming, daughter? they asked. I didn’t know how to answer. Most of the time, we shout in order not to listen to ourselves. Why are you crying so much? they asked again. And, once again, they received no reply. When you return from the dead, you have no words.
Let’s take you home.
That is what war does: People never come home again. The home that was once ours—that home dies, no one was ever born there. And there’s no bed, no womb, there isn’t even a ruin to anchor our memories in some ground.
* * *
The following day, I decided to visit the witch doctor who had blessed the troops and promised to protect their bodies against bullets. His house was situated on a bend in the river, where no one else dared to live.
The nyanga was seated next to a fire that was still lit. That was where he had cooked the medicine he had given my brother to drink. I picked up a handful of still-burning ashes with the intention of throwing them at the witch doctor’s face. My desire was to burn his eyes, to blind him for good. But I stood there, gestureless, the ashes burning my hands.
It wasn’t my fault, the man defended himself. When your brother left here, his body no longer had substance, he said.
Perhaps that was true. Maybe Dubula was an angel, and a bullet had torn through his wings. That is how heavenly beings fall to the ground. To emphasize what he was saying, the witch doctor, barefoot, kicked up a cloud of ashes. Then he forced me to spread my fingers to let the embers slip through.
Can’t you feel the burning? he asked.
I walked off without saying goodbye and wandered along the banks of the Inharrime. At a certain point, I waded into its sluggish waters and allowed myself to be carried along, facedown, like a dead leaf. Rain washes the dead. The river washes the living.
While I floated in the slow current, I realized that it wasn’t enough to leave Nkokolani. I wanted to escape from life itself. Grandma Layeluane had died in the heavenly fire. Grandpa Tsangatelo had disappeared into the depths of the earth. I would dissolve in the water’s embrace.
Dubula! I called.
A dark shape appeared on the riverbank and waved at me casually. In gesture and dress, he was the man who, but a short time before, had been scavenging on the field of battle. But it wasn’t him. It was the blind villager who was approaching, sniffing his way along like a dog. He asked me to keep talking to him so that he could locate me. I told him who I was. And he waved his arms in an empty embrace: Come back to dry land, Imani. The river is a place to be born.
When he felt my body, he pulled me by the arms as if he were rescuing me. How did you know I was here? I asked. And he replied that mine was a noisy sadness, and that I walked like Tsangatelo in the mines: my fingers scratching the soil in search of a way out.
Your way out is this river, girl. There’s no other road. And take your father with you. For old Katini is as blind as I am.
In a world of gunfire and death, my father had ears only for music. I should take him away, the blind man pleaded.