What pains in death is falsity. Death exists only during a brief exchange of absences. In some other being, death will be reborn. Our pain is not knowing how to be immortal.
Maybe, Germano said, I lost my mother more than you lost yours.
The sergeant hugged me graciously. He had just arrived at our house. He wanted to repeat his condolences on the day when we were remembering our mother. I was alone in the backyard when, mournful, he presented himself.
I don’t know whether I want to see you.
It was as if he weren’t listening to me, his hands resting on my shoulders. For a second, I had my doubts: were those hands so weightless, or were they the wings of an angel? What happened next left no room for doubt. The Portuguese gave me a lingering hug. Never before had I been held with such conviction. I allowed myself to remain in his embrace, more still than a stone. In a mere instant, every one of my fifteen years nestled in that man’s arms. I was puzzled by the sergeant’s stillness, as if he had suddenly ceased to exist. However, his hands gradually loosened, and they began to descend, mapping my back and navigating my thighs. I was so far away that I didn’t react. When I tried to protest, I couldn’t find my voice. With a vigorous push, I removed the foreigner from me. At that instant, I was a bullet, a bullet capable of piercing the wings of that angel. His eyes fixed on the ground, he withdrew, so fragile that I almost called him back.
That night, I went to bed early, hoping sleep would visit me as gently as a caress. But such a visit was not to be. Instead, I dreamed there was a huge fire that set the night ablaze. Mother danced barefoot over the flames while Father played a marimba. Every time he touched a key, a bat flew up from the marimba and fluttered above our heads. At one point, mother took a burning coal in her hands, raised it to her mouth, and swallowed it whole. And, with her tongue reddened and her lips burning, she shouted to her husband: Fire doesn’t hurt me. My body knows no pain. And know this: I never felt anything when you beat me.
Katini continued playing, as if he hadn’t heard her. And she wheeled around the fire and the marimba. Her face raised high, her voice brimming with pride, she proclaimed: Now I’m really dancing, husband. Now I can dance, and not just when you tell me to.
Later, she got tired, and, sweating and shaking, she snuggled up to me. I wiped off her perspiration and gave her some water to drink. Then I told her that every morning Father would leave a little tobacco and flour next to the tree where she had hanged herself. And he would stay there for hours, his eyes unfocused on anything.
I know, daughter. Your father has never kept me company so much.
Then I confessed my inner misgivings. I told her about the Portuguese sergeant who caused me simultaneously such disgust and such fascination. How could I love a man who had so betrayed us?
Do you want a man who doesn’t lie to you or betray you? You’ll die single, my dear daughter.
* * *
Early next morning, I threw the clothes I was wearing on the floor, and tied a simple capulana around my perspiring body. I set off for the garrison, fleet of foot. I found the Portuguese, stripped to the waist, cuddling his old pet hen. Surprised and embarrassed, Germano rushed into the house to make himself respectable. I blocked his path, and the soldier collided with me. Then I whispered voluptuously:
Hold me, Sergeant. Hold me tight.
The man was struck dumb and petrified. After a moment, he looked around in a panic to see whether anyone was looking. Please, girl …
In silence, I took his hand and led him inside. His steps were those of a blind man, and, maybe because of that, he hadn’t noticed that I had let my capulana slip to the floor. When he saw I was naked, he quivered uncontrollably.
Sergeant, I want to be a woman, I said, my lips next to his sweating face.
I expected him to fondle me. But the soldier was paralyzed, looking left and right in despair.
I’m a marimba, I murmured in his ear. Men who play me will hear music they’ve never listened to before.
I can’t, Imani. I’m not alone.
A shadow glided across the floor. At first, there was nothing more than the swish of a skirt. Then, out of the half-light, a white woman appeared, her fair hair hanging loosely over her shoulders. The vision made me feel dizzy, as if I had been given a hefty push. Then I realized: never before had I seen a woman of another race. The whites I had known had all been men. In shame, I wrapped my capulana around myself again. But as I walked toward the door, I was stopped by the visitor. She was tall and pale, like the plaster figure of the Virgin Mary that adorned the ancient church by the seashore. Her dress brushing the floor made her seem taller still.
Who’s this? she asked, addressing the Portuguese.
This? Oh, this is a … a girl who runs errands for me.
I can see what sort of errands …
Don’t make me laugh, Bianca …
The intruder circled me, examining my body as only a man might do.
Don’t think you’re getting out of here just like that, she told me severely. Sit down; I’ll be back in a minute!
She disappeared down the hall, leaving behind her a trace of a sweet fragrance. His shoulders hunched, the Portuguese whispered to me that she was an Italian friend who had arrived from Lourenço Marques. Her name was Bianca Vanzini Marini. Everyone called her the “white woman with the hands of gold.”
Call her Dona Bianca, he advised me.
The visitor returned, bringing a dagger partially wrapped in a cloth. I shuddered, terrified. I was about to end my days there because of jealousy.
Don’t hurt me, I implored in a voice that was almost inaudible.
The Italian woman pulled up a stool and sat down behind my chair. She began to unwrap the dagger and told me to sit up straight while her fingers felt my neck. I began to weep, my soul emptied. Those minutes seemed endless. Then, slowly, the visitor began to smooth my hair. Suddenly, a metal comb emerged from the cloth. I smiled, relieved: what I had imagined to be a deadly knife was, after all, a harmless object.
The white woman murmured in a strange accent, Let’s fix this beautiful hair.
No one had ever praised my hair before. On the contrary, my father thought I should wear a headscarf to hide the sin of my curly hair.
While she was combing me, the foreigner said: Your mother hanged herself from a tree. I came to Africa to die.
She got to her feet so she could work better. Her fingers were busy plaiting the mass of my frizzy hair. But as I was still in doubt, my neck remained tense while she went on talking.
I’m going to tell you my story. That’s why I’m combing your hair. I learned from black women that there’s no better way to make conversation.
The Italian woman certainly had a point. Men observe women making braids and think they are just taking care of their beauty. But they are sweetening the passage of time.
* * *
The first time Dona Bianca came to Mozambique, she got pregnant, and her husband fled in the direction of South Africa, or so people said. She returned to Italy to have the child, but her son died right after he was born. There was only one way to face up to her loss, and that was by committing suicide.
I wasn’t brave enough to put an end to it all. I didn’t have your mother’s nobility of spirit.
Then she remembered there was one place in the world where one dies easily and quickly: Lourenço Marques. That would be a good place to die. The end would come without any drama, without her having to make a decision: the heat, the pestilence, the fevers, the dirty, muddy streets, all would conspire to bring about her demise without any one of them being the sole cause.
And so she returned to Africa in order to die. In the house where she found lodgings, she discovered an album containing photographs of well-known Portuguese military figures. One of these was of an attractive man whose uniform endowed him with manly elegance, but whose face betrayed a strangely melancholic air. It was Mouzinho de Albuquerque. In no more than a fleeting moment, the Italian woman detected death in the captain’s gaze. In his eyes, she saw the same tragic destiny that she was seeking so hard for herself. She was told the handsome captain would be sailing for Mozambique. I shall await that day, she said to herself with a sigh. Surprisingly, this man—whom she had only known through a faded photograph—gave her back her will to live.
I have set my hopes on meeting him during the course of his journey—so as to restore to him the life that he gave me.
In Lourenço Marques, Bianca did a bit of everything. She worked as a milliner, a seamstress, a trader in liquor. And when she had nothing left to sell, she sold herself. But it was in gambling that she gained her fortune. She accumulated enough money to stop working, and she set off on that journey to Inhambane, where she was going to visit the Fornasini, who were Italians like herself.
When Bianca finished her story, a long sigh of relief ran through my body. The Italian woman was not Germano’s spouse; she was there quite simply as a traveler. And I sank into the torpor that her pale hands had induced.
* * *
Away from the barracks, disorder had become general chaos. The unearthed arms created a sense that Nkokolani was being besieged from the bowels of the earth. And there was talk of curses, vengeance, and wizardry. Fear is the most powerful of generals. From the belly of its autocratic leader, there now appeared soldiers, eagerly awaiting the voice of command.
That afternoon, while Dona Bianca was combing my hair, the village’s inhabitants assembled in the main square. There were requests for a chidilo, a great blood sacrifice, a celebration directed at all ancestral entities. They chose the men who would visit the highest terrain, the top of the dunes overlooking the ocean. These lands lay beyond the first line of fortifications designed to protect the village. Next to these khokholos, they would slaughter a goat and speak to the spirits of the “lords of the land.”
Over there, there will be no hiding place for arms, Aunt Rosi assured them. There no one can dig a hole, for that is where the founding fathers of our land are buried.
Musisi walked by his wife’s side at the head of a huge, panicking crowd. Armed with the old Martini-Henry, which had escaped burial, the sepoy Mwanatu marched on one of the flanks. And he saw that everyone, without exception, was carrying a weapon: cutlasses, knives, javelins, bows and arrows, pistols, muskets. Alarmed, Mwanatu asked, Why are all of us armed? It looks as if we’re going to war …
No one answered. And the sepoy began to hang back, as if doubting the wisdom of such a demonstration. That was when he noticed our father at the rear of the procession. Mwanatu had never imagined that Katini Nsambe would join such a noisy horde of people. He greeted his progenitor with a timid gesture.
As he began to walk more quickly, so as to get away from the arresting sight of his father, he saw Uncle Musisi approaching and, out of breath, asking him anxiously, Were you ordered to bury all the weapons?
Without pausing in his march, Mwanatu nodded. It was my dead mother who told me to, he said.
In that case, we’ll have to eliminate the weapons belonging to the Portuguese as well, his uncle commented.
* * *
In military formation, the villagers’ caravan crossed the river and entered the bush on the other bank. The clouds on that day were so low that the warriors had to stoop to preserve their frame.
Farther ahead, the men paused at the entrance to a copse. Before digging a hole, they tied a piece of white cloth to the trunk of a mafura tree and spilled a few drops of liquor on the white sand. In this way, the dead knew they were being remembered.
Then they rose as one and, to the rhythm of a virile chant, began to scratch away at the ground. From the entrails of the earth they gradually uncovered a ghastly sight: a vast arms dump gleamed in the sunlight and caused the terrified men to throw their picks and shovels aside and step back. Holding her arms wide, Aunt Rosi hurriedly invoked the ancestors and begged them for protection against vengeance and witchcraft.
After their initial shock, the men peered into the hole. They saw an accumulation and variety of weapons of war never seen before: cannons, machine guns, all manner of rifles and munition, most of them still in rotting wooden crates.
Uncle Musisi climbed up onto a termite mound and surveyed the crowd haughtily. His hoarse voice hovered over the silence:
It is sad what is happening to us, my brothers. Are we scared of the strangers who have come to dominate us from afar? Well, let us fear ourselves more, for we are losing our very souls.
This was when my father stepped out from the throng and faced Musisi.
Brother-in-law, the people want peace.
They want peace? Then leave these hiding places in peace. If the earth is brimming with arms, so much the better. Rifles give greater sustenance than hoes …
Let us return to Nkokolani, my brothers …
Nkokolani doesn’t belong to us anymore.
My brother …
Never call me brother again, for you are the white men’s brother …
My father bowed his head but didn’t withdraw—he had something else to say. And he declared in a loud voice:
I have an explanation for all that is happening.
His explanation was simple: The earth is a womb. That which nestles within it must be born and multiply. And when weapons were deposited in the ground, the earth thought they were seeds and caused these materials to germinate and proliferate as if they were plants. That is what Katini Nsambe said, perched precariously on the trunk of a fallen tree.
The earth is in a state of confusion, my brothers, he added. I have journeyed through its interior, and I know what I’m talking about. Did the dead woman say we should bury all the arms? Well, then, let’s unbury them.
Without waiting for the reaction of those listening to him, Father got down from his improvised platform and vanished into the crowd. Uncle savored his adversary’s retreat and waited for silence to spread. Only then did he speak once more, to demonstrate that the last word belonged to him.
Listen to my orders: No one is to open another hole. And no one is to take any weapon out of the pits that you opened up willy-nilly around here.
He, Musisi, was the only one in whom the ancestors had any faith. The dead had complained to him how forgotten and defenseless they felt. And they begged him not to leave them unarmed.
We must leave them with the weapons, Musisi continued. That is what they ask: these pits must be filled in with everything in them, do you hear?
Those present looked down at the ground with modesty and respect. Without anyone’s noticing him, my brother Mwanatu walked past the crowd to stand next to the termite mound. That was when everyone realized that Musisi’s nephew was now his bodyguard.
When the next war comes, the dead will be my only army. Do you people want this?
And, as of one voice, everyone answered no. Standing upright, Uncle raised his arm as if it were a flag and declared: Then, my brothers, let us go to the Portuguese garrison and take all the weapons stored there. We should take control of those weapons. If they won’t defend us, we shall have to do it ourselves.
* * *
When they got back to the village, the men were held back by the womenfolk who had packed into the square. A babble of protesting voices pervaded this other throng. A fat woman was the first to complain:
There’s no land left for us to sow. We’re going to leave; if not we’ll die.
The arms that have been planted are so many that the rain and the river are full of rust, another woman added.
And what’s worse, a third woman yelled, we can’t even die anymore. Where would they bury us?
So the divine message, according to them, was very clear: There was nothing left but to emigrate. There are places where people have had to abandon their homeland. In Nkokolani, it was the land that had abandoned its people.
Uncle Musisi, who had listened to all this in silence, started pushing away the women in front of him while shouting encouragement to the men marching with him: Are we women? Are we going to allow ourselves to be held up by all this weeping, all these words that seek to bend our will? Forward, my brothers, let us march on the barracks and let us redeem the arms that are ours by right.
* * *
Sergeant Germano de Melo looked in the direction of the square to confirm the greatest terror any European could feel: the sight of thousands of armed blacks emerging from the ground like dark ants, and advancing with the fury of a sudden storm. This was what was erupting in front of his blue eyes, suddenly turned green with fear. The hordes were still far away, but he hurried to erect his defenses. He ran to the obsolete armory to fetch the only weapon that was still working: a machine gun, with a couple of cartridge belts. He barricaded the doors with heavy crates of bullets and did the same to the windows.
Then he ran back to the house. He was puzzled to see the door open and got a fright when he saw me, Imani, and the Italian woman in the living room, looking outside through the wooden shutters.
Have you seen what’s coming? I’m done for.
I came to warn you, I explained.
Well, you came too late. Now God alone can defend me. Wait here for me—don’t move. I’m going in there to get the Bible …
He dashed into his bedroom, almost treading on the chicken, and I even heard the thud of his body hitting the ground. I went to help. The sergeant had stumbled over a goat that was wandering around the house. On all fours, the Portuguese came face-to-face with the animal’s snout. It was then that he noticed a white paste seeping from the goat’s mouth. Germano forced open the creature’s jaws to reveal the crushed remains of the book in his cupped hands.
It’s the Bible, he lamented. The goddamned goat ate the Bible.
It had been chewed up. More than just chewed, it had been pulped. The divine word, that word he had been looking for so urgently, had been chomped by a goat. I looked on the floor for anything that might remain of the Sacred Scripture, while Germano hurried to look out of the window. I managed to salvage a few pages and presented them to him, before his feverish gaze.
This was left, I announced apprehensively.
Soaked sheets of paper fell to the floor. The soldier got as far as touching them with his fingertips, but then he jumped up and kicked the goat outside. Right there, by the door to the house, he fired a shot at the animal that blew its head away. A horn was hurled violently into the room and rolled across the floor as if it were alive.
The sergeant then busied himself setting up by the window the machine gun that he had taken from the armory. Keep away from here, both of you; go into the bedroom, he ordered, with a voice that was unrecognizable. I ignored the order. I noticed how the Portuguese was aiming at the raucous, approaching throng with his weapon, already loaded and ready. And I saw that my brother Mwanatu was at the head of the crowd. I screamed: Sergeant! Don’t do it!
He didn’t answer, but turned the barrel toward me, and his look betrayed his intention. He would fire at me if I distracted him from his fanatical objectives. From the wall, I took down the Martini-Henry, which had been hanging there the whole time. When I called his name again, the sergeant had already taken the first shot. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. Then his look turned to one of disbelief. He barely had time to shield his face with his hands, and when the gun went off, my body was thrown back and I was deafened by the explosion.