Confession of the Lioness
But while I am carried down the river, another sentiment takes hold of me. I’m not going to meet the hunter. Rather, I’m fleeing from him. Why am I running away from the only person who might have loved me? I don’t know how to answer. My mother often says that water makes the stones round in the same way that women shape the souls of men. It could have been like that with me. But it wasn’t. There was no love, no man, no soul. What happened was that with the passing of time, I lost all hope. And when someone stops having hopes, it’s because they’ve stopped living. So that’s why I’m running away: I fear being devoured. Not by the anxiety that dwells deep within me. Devoured by the emptiness of not loving. Devoured by the desire to be loved.
* * *
The skiff arrives, at last, at a pool of clear water. This pool is considered a sacred spot, which only witch doctors dare visit. In the village, it is said that it’s here that the water makes its nest. The older folk call this place lyali wakati, the “egg of time.” The peace and quiet of this paradise ought to mollify me, but it doesn’t. Because I realize that the skiff is stuck, and despite all my efforts, I can’t move on. There’s no sign of a current, no sign of an eddy. But the skiff is stuck fast on the bed of the River Lideia. It must be fulfilling the age-old rule: Small places have a wide reach. No matter how hard we try to leave, we never get away. What a cursed land, so devoid of sky that we even have to exhume the clouds, was what Grandfather Adjiru would complain. And that’s how I now execrate my native land.
A tremor shakes me, my heart leaps up through my throat when, standing up in my unsteady skiff, I sense a hidden presence on the riverbank. Although I’m a woman, I have inherited the hunter’s instinct that runs through my family. I know of shadows that move among shadows, I know of smells and signs that no one else knows about. And now I’m certain: There’s an animal on the riverbank! There’s a creature creeping furtively through the foliage next to the water.
And suddenly, there it is: a lioness! She’s come down to drink from the calm water on that part of the riverbank. She contemplates me without fear or excitement. As if she had been waiting for me for a long time, she raises her head and pierces me with her inquisitive gaze. There is no tension in her behavior. It might be said that she recognizes me. More than this: The lioness greets me with a sisterly respect. We linger in this mutual contemplation and, gradually, a sense of spiritual harmony takes hold of me.
Having slaked her thirst, the lioness stretches as if she wanted a second body to emerge from her own. Then she slowly withdraws, her tail swaying like a furry pendulum, each step caressing the earth’s surface. I smile with uncontained pride. They are all convinced that it is male lions who are threatening the village. It’s not. It’s this lioness, delicate and feminine as a dancer, majestic and sublime as a goddess, it’s this lioness that has spread such terror through the neighborhood. Powerful men, warriors equipped with sophisticated weapons: All of them have prostrated themselves, enslaved by fear, vanquished by their own impotence.
Once again, the lioness fixes her gaze upon me, and then turns in a circle before disappearing. Something that I shall never be able to describe suddenly robs me of my good judgment and a shout bursts from my breast:
Sister! My sister!
In despair, my fists grasp the oars in an attempt to propel the skiff toward the shore:
Silência! Uminha! Igualita!
The names of my dead sisters reverberate through that mysterious setting. I shiver from head to foot: I had just challenged the sacred precepts that forbade me from uttering the names of the dead. Attracted by their summons, the deceased may reappear in the world. Perhaps that was my secret wish. A desperate urge causes me to disobey the rule once more:
It’s me, sister, it’s me, Mariamar!
I then realize how absurd my situation is: I, who had never raised my voice, was now shouting for someone who could not hear. They’re right, the people who point a finger at me: I’m mad, I’ve lost control of myself. And I burst into tears, as if I were suddenly aware of how little I cried when I was born. Adjiru was right: Sadness isn’t crying. Sadness is having no one to cry for.
Don’t leave me, please, take me with you.
The call echoes through the forest, and for a second I seem to hear other voices clamoring for Silência. But the vegetation closes in on itself, thick and unmoving. In the place where the lioness has just drunk, there’s now a red stain rapidly spreading across the surface of the water. Suddenly the whole river has turned red, and I am drifting in blood. The same blood that, every time I dreamed of giving birth, would flow out between my thighs, the same blood that is now flowing in the current. My grandfather, Adjiru Kapitamoro, was right: This river was born from his hands, just as I was born from his attachment to me. And at this point, I understand: More than the land, my prison was my grandfather Adjiru. It was he who had brought the skiff to a standstill and held me back in the Lideia’s sacred pool.
Grandfather, I plead. Please let me continue downstream.
I curl up in the bottom of the skiff, I lie there seeking the sleep of those who are not yet born. Then, all of a sudden, another skiff penetrates the silence and, to my alarm, approaches me like some furtive crocodile. It can only be Adjiru coming to rescue me. With a tight throat, I call out:
Grandfather?
The two craft are now alongside each other and a figure leans over me to tie a rope round the oarlocks of my boat. The light is behind this intruder, and all I can see is a dark silhouette. Not wanting to waste time, I point to the shore and declare:
She was there! The lioness was there. Let’s follow her, Grandfather, she can’t have got far.
Sit up, Mariamar.
I am startled: It’s not Adjiru. It’s Maliqueto Próprio, the village’s solitary hangman. Without uttering a word, he starts dragging me back toward Kulumani. Halfway, he ships his oars and stares fixedly at me until the abandoned boat begins to glide away downstream at the whim of the current.
You owe me something, Mariamar. Have you forgotten? This is a good place to pay me your debt.
He starts taking off his clothes, while crawling toward me, slithering and slobbering. Funnily enough, I’m not scared of him. To my own surprise, I advance toward Maliqueto, my hackles raised, screaming, spitting, and scratching. Between alarmed and astonished, the policeman retreats and looks with horror at the deep gashes I’ve inflicted on his arms.
You great bitch, were you trying to kill me?
He pulls his shirt up over his shoulders in order to hide his wounds and hurriedly resumes the journey back to Kulumani. As he rows, he keeps repeating under his breath:
She’s crazy, the hag’s completely crazy.
On the shore, Florindo Makwala, the administrator, and my father, Genito Mpepe, are waiting. In anticipation, I start shouting, although my voice is thickened by the tension:
I saw it, I saw it! It was the lioness, Father! And it was real. I didn’t make it up.
You’re lying. Don’t come to me with stories, because I’m going to punish you.
I saw it, Father. A lioness at the pool. I’m sure as sure can be.
Maliqueto, contradicting me for the sake of it, insists that there was nothing to see there. And even if I had seen it, how could I be sure it was a female? In this area, male lions are small and almost without a mane.
The district officer steps forward with care so as not to get his shoes wet, and, keeping himself at a distance, instructs my father:
I don’t want any contact between this girl and the delegation.
She’ll be kept at home, rest assured, Comrade Chief. I’ll tie her up in the yard.
I want her kept well away from the visitors. And what’s happened to you, Maliqueto? Are you bleeding?
I hurt myself with the ropes, Chief. And now, with your permission, can I say something, Chief?
Go ahead.
Your daughter was wrong in the head, Comrade Mpepe, but now she’s scary. How did she dare visit that sacred pla
ce all by herself?
You’re right, Maliqueto. Don’t you know what they did to Tandi, who went where she wasn’t supposed to go?
The three men busy themselves with securing the boat. Sitting on the riverbank, I realize how similar the skiff is to a coffin. The bulging belly, the same journey toward timelessness. The river didn’t take me to my destination. But the journey led me to someone who had become separated from me: the lioness, the sister I missed so much.
The Hunter’s Diary
TWO
The Journey
My butterfly net is held aloft, and I merely wait for the butterfly to prompt me through its withdrawals and its hesitations. How happy I would be if I could dissolve into light and air, merely in my quest to get close and dominate it. The old law of the hunt plants itself between me and my prey: the more I try and obey the animal with all my being, the more I transform myself in body and soul into a butterfly. The nearer I get to fulfilling my hunter’s desire, the more this butterfly gains human form and volition. In the end, it is as if this capture were the price I have to pay in order to regain my human existence … Returning from the hunt, the spirit of the doomed creature takes possession of the hunter.
—FROM “BUTTERFLY HUNT,” BY WALTER BENJAMIN
I’ve never liked airports. So full of people, so full of no one. I prefer train stations, where there’s enough time for tears and waving handkerchiefs. Trains set off sluggishly, with a sigh, regretting their departure. But a plane has a haste that’s inhuman. And my mother’s story loses any meaning when I watch planes hurtling into the air. Not everything, after all, is so slow in the endless firmament. I’m at Maputo International Airport, certain that I’m nowhere at all. Someone speaking in English brings me back to earth.
This is the writer. He’s going to be your travel companion.
The writer is a white man, short, with beard and glasses. He’s a well-known intellectual, and various people stop to ask him for his autograph. He gets up to shake my hand.
I’m Gustavo. Gustavo Regalo.
He seems to like his own name. He is waiting for me to show recognition. But I pretend he’s a complete stranger.
I’m going to write a report on the hunting expedition. I’m under contract to the same company as you.
I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. And the lions will be pleased to know that their deaths warrant a report.
This is my first hunt. I have to say, without meaning any offense, that I’m against it.
Against what?
Against hunting. All the more so when it’s hunting lions.
Your problem, my writer friend, is that you’ve never seen a lion.
What do you mean by that?
You’ve seen lions in photos of safaris, but you don’t know what a lion is. A lion only really reveals himself in territory where he’s lord and king. Join me in the bush and you’ll know what a lion is.
* * *
Four hours in a plane, seated next to the writer, are enough to gauge the abyss that separates us. With his intellectual airs, his notepad at the ready, his inability to keep quiet: In short, the writer irritates me. Judging by the way he looks at me, I realize that the reverse is also true. Something about him reminds me of Roland and the way my brother used to contemplate me. As if he were accusing me.
* * *
A feather is heavy; a bird is also heavy. The lightest knows how to fly. So goes my late mother, Dona Martina’s saying. Well, as far as I’m concerned, both lightnesses are heavy, and my sleep never turns into nocturnal flight. A constant state of alertness makes me enter and leave sleep like a drunkard, makes me come and go like a shipwrecked sailor. It’s a legacy of that fateful night when Roland shot my father. Insomnia brings back unwelcome memories; sleeping washes away memories I wanted to keep. Sleep is my illness, my madness.
* * *
During the journey, I feel an overwhelming lethargy. I pretend to be asleep in order to then pretend I’m woken up by the tearing of a sheet of paper. Gustavo apologizes, smiling timidly:
I’m going to write my girlfriend a letter. In the old style. A fake letter just to distract myself, to distract myself from missing her.
A fake letter? Is there any letter that isn’t a fake? I remember the love letters that my father would dictate to my mother. It was a late evening ritual, when one could hear the frogs croaking in the nearby ponds. We were blacks and mulattoes who had been demoted to blacks. We were restricted to the edge of the area, there where rains and illness accumulated. Martina Bullseye, my mother, would beautify herself for these writing sessions, for they were the only time when she would receive compliments from her man. It was only at such moments that he behaved in a mild, almost submissive manner, as if he were asking for forgiveness. Sitting motionless, bent over the paper, my mother looked like some aged canvas. Next to her, Roland scribbled endless pieces of homework. At that moment, he was even older than our own mother. Even today I can remember my father’s voice vividly, as he dictated, enunciating every syllable:
My darling Henry, my beloved husband, one and only love of my life … Are you writing this down, Martina?
He would dictate long letters that were always the same. In doing so, he would roll his words with slow deliberation, as if he were drunk. What a difficult relationship Father had with words! I inherited that problematic relationship with the written word, in contrast to Roland, for whom letters were a game with which to play. Maybe that’s why I’m irritated by the fluency with which my traveling companion keeps scribbling line after line. Or who knows, perhaps what perturbs me is that I don’t have anyone to write a love letter to.
* * *
The writer has finished his imaginary letter, and folds the paper carefully so as to slip it into an envelope. He zips open his briefcase and places it inside, among various other envelopes. The letter may be a fake, but the performance is a convincing one. And, once again, I’m assailed by a memory. Far from us, Henry Bullseye would complete the same ritual: He would invariably place the letter in an envelope, lick the flap and stick it down, and put it in his travel bag. He would take those letters on his lengthy hunting expeditions. He also carried with him a blurred photograph of Martina.
It’s like that so that others can see it, but can’t look too hard.
He was a jealous man, old Henry! In fact his jealousy became a reason for bloodletting and tragedy.
* * *
Through the window of the plane, the last signs of daylight dissolve among the clouds. I recall my mother’s fable condemning the Sun for its petulance and the way I, maybe because of this story, always feel myself awakening as darkness begins to fall. I belong to neither day nor night. Sunset was the time when I would return home, exhausted from my endless games in those backyards that opened up like a vast savanna where my imagination hunted its prey. Roland would look at me, jealous of my intimacy with the world. Roland belonged to the house. I belonged to the street.
Mother, please don’t make me have a bath yet. Let me stay dirty for just a bit longer.
The sweat and dust that covered me prolonged the rapture of my forests invented in the back gardens of the neighborhood. As my father was almost always absent, Martina Bullseye was able to exercise her mother’s complacency with sovereign freedom. What came as a relief to us seemed to weigh heavily on her heart. During those long periods of solitude, our mother would continue to fulfill the ritual of those commissioned letters: She would put on her most elegant dress—in fact, the only dress she possessed—and pretend to listen to the absent Henry Bullseye’s dictation. She performed the act of writing with such devotion that we could clearly hear our father’s slow drawl echoing down the hallway.
* * *
Why are we going so fast?
The writer doesn’t answer. Ever since the plane landed in Pemba, we have begun a long journey by road to Palma, the district capital. We can look forward to a nine-hour drive along poorly maintained sandy roads.
There are four people in th
e all-terrain vehicle: in front, myself and Gustavo, the writer; in the back, Florindo Makwala, the district administrator, and his outsized spouse, Dona Naftalinda. The First Lady, as the administrator insists on calling her, justifies her name: She is so heavy that the vehicle has developed a dangerous list on the side where she is sitting.
Gustavo is the driver. I chose to remain free to watch the bush that lines the road. For the last two hours, the scenery has been no more than a monotonous procession of scrawny, bare trees, devoid of foliage.
Why such speed? I ask again.
The question has become an order. Gustavo needs to be aware of who is leading this expedition. We are two opposites. The writer is white and short. I’m a mulatto and tall. The writer shoots his mouth off and looks at people right in the eye. On the contrary, the human eye robs me of my soul; the more human the gaze, the more of an animal I become.
Is there still far to go? Gustavo asks, mumbling so low that no one hears him.
At last, the man complies: The car slows down while I give him a smile of unconcealed scorn. I glance over at the rear seat.
Are you asleep, Dona Naftalinda?
Her silence is in concert with the surrounding countryside: It’s as if the world were yet to be born. Inside the car, the hush is even heavier. I know that silence and the way, on very hot days, it sinks into us. It begins by inhibiting our very desire to talk. Later, we’ve even forgotten what it was we wanted to say. Before long, even the act of breathing becomes a waste of energy.
Archie’s right, drive more slowly, Dona Naftalinda complains. The road’s in a shocking state, and we’re being thrown around in the back.