They sat him on the long wooden bench, supporting him shoulder to shoulder. Adjiru walked over to the priest and addressed him in a tone that mingled entreaty with threats:
This is the house of God, no one can die here. Do you hear me, Father Amoroso?
Let us pray, my son, let us pray.
The Kapitamoros yelled their prayers, and for sure no one had ever prayed with such aplomb before an altar. The booming voices of those demented brothers were intimidating: The gods had better watch out in case there wasn’t a miracle.
At first we could still hear our wounded relative babbling. What he was asking for, however, was the exact opposite of what his brothers wanted: He was praying for his Creator to allow him to depart, tired as he was of suffering. What then happened was proof that God doesn’t listen to those who shout loudest. Vicente Kapitamoro breathed his last without anyone noticing, his devoted fingers intertwined, his head slumped over his knees.
This incident proved a blow to Adjiru’s faith. From then on, he no longer went to mass. He stopped at the entrance to the church and asked his brothers to go in and pray in his name. Let them pretend they were him, let them borrow his name and his soul, that’s what he asked.
We’re alike. God won’t notice.
Unhappy, Father Amoroso reflected on the situation. He was disappointed by Kapitamoro’s attitude. However, he couldn’t confront such an eminent figure in the village. He waited for time to bring him inspiration. And time brought peace. Gradually Kulumani resumed the life it seemed to have lost forever. The wounds of history healed, and broken affiliations were reforged. The missionary thought it would be good to make use of the wave of reconciliations and requested Adjiru to meet him in the churchyard so as to remind him of his sacred duties.
Tomorrow I shall say a mass for your brother Vicente’s soul.
My dear sir, with all due respect, I shall not go.
And why won’t you come?
I’ll go to the matanga, our own ceremony for the dead.
And how will you explain yourself before God?
I’ll explain myself before Nungu, our God. With all due respect.
For years he had been criticized for frequenting the mission and converting to Catholicism, and, in the words of Kulumani folk, for having become a vamissau. In his own defense, he had argued: The others have the drum dance, I have the Bible. In the beginning, Adjiru still had a reason for his apparent conversion: to entrust the drums to the hands of God, and make the sacred book dance. That was why he taught me the art of dancing. Now, however, any purpose had long been abandoned.
Appealing to divine inspiration, Amoroso picked off a long rosary of arguments. The hand of God, he said, is a sightless guide. What this hand seeks is that we should be the masters of our journey. But journeys last as long as a star. By the time we see them, they have long ceased to exist.
All this is just words. What hand of God sends us on a journey to war, Mr. Amoroso?
Why do you call me Mister? Why don’t you address me as Father anymore?
You live shut away in your own world. Look what’s happening out there. And you’ll see that sometimes the gods die in wars …
How can you dare to say such a thing in the house of God?
I’m the one who built this church. I and my brothers. We started building it when we were still slaves.
He paused, measured his words, and in the end burst out, without any rancor, as if he were among friends:
At the time, we should have thrown the church into the river.
Holy Mother of God!
Standing as tall as he could, his voice trembling with emotion, everything in the priest contrasted with my grandfather’s tranquillity:
Do you want to see a miracle, Adjiru? Well, look at your granddaughter, and turning to me, he ordered, Show him, Mariamar, show him …
I got up and walked toward Adjiru. My legs swayed, but my steps were firm. Grandfather didn’t seem surprised.
Mariamar can walk again, I’m very happy. But let me ask you this: Have you taught her to kick, Reverend Father?
Kick? Is that something one teaches a girl?
Of course, Father. Precisely because she’s a girl, she ought to learn to punch, bite, kick …
Those aren’t the words of a believer. Here, we teach people to love one’s nearest and dearest.
It’s from one’s nearest and dearest that we most need to defend ourselves.
He got up and walked around me, his hands tapping his chest as if it were a drum, and he began to wave his arms. Grandfather knew that we were forbidden to dance by the priest.
Can you still dance, Mariamar? Now, then, show me you still know how to kick up some dust.
Amoroso’s watchful gaze didn’t allow me to sway my hips. I tried one or two clumsy steps around the room and, without waiting, Grandfather raised his arm to put an end to the performance. In a dry tone, he ordered:
Go and pack your bag, because I’m coming to fetch you tomorrow.
The following day, he returned with a small wheelbarrow. I reminded him that I could walk on my own two feet, but he pointed uncompromisingly at the rough-and-ready vehicle and asked:
Do you know what day it is today, my dear?
Today?
You’re sixteen today. You’ve got a right to be carried.
Seated in my little carriage, I crossed the village, listening to the missionary’s frantic cries behind me:
Mariamar can walk, it’s God’s miracle, it’s a miracle! She’s being wheeled along, but she can walk perfectly. Come and see, for it’s a miracle!
I gazed around me, astonished. I hadn’t been outside the mission for months. Kulumani was unrecognizable. With the end of war, people had returned to the village. My family had also settled back in our old house. And there seemed to be more inhabitants than ever. A crowd of hawkers filled the road that led to Palma.
At home, only Silência rejoiced in my return. My mother was sifting rice and looked up unenthusiastically. I was the one who spoke after a long silence:
Grandfather says it’s my birthday today.
Grandfather invents calendars. That’s why he hasn’t died yet.
Whatever the day, it’s good to be back. To be back now that we’ve got peace …
Without averting her gaze from her sifting, Hanifa Assulua mumbled in an undertone. I was talking of peace? What peace?
Maybe for them, the men, she said. Because we women still wake up every morning to a timeworn, endless war.
Hanifa Assulua was in no doubt as to the condition of women in Kulumani. We awoke in the early morning like sleep-deprived soldiers and we got through the day as if life were our enemy. We would come home at night without anyone to comfort us over the battles that we had to face. Mother recited this litany of complaints in one breath, as if it were something she had been waiting a long time to say.
That’s why you should have left all this talk about peace back at the mission, dear daughter. During the time you lived there, we had to survive here.
She was accusing me. As if I were the one to blame for her solitude and the unhappiness of all the women. I retreated down the hall with the small steps of a prisoner returning to her cell.
The Hunter’s Diary
FOUR
Rituals and Ambushes
Where men can be gods, animals can be men.
—THE WRITER’S NOTEBOOKS
Hanifa comes to call me in the middle of the night. She is so terrified that I rush off after her without changing clothes. With a long nightgown hiding my knees, I look like a clumsy ghost.
The lions have reached my house.
They’d been prowling around the village ever since nightfall. Hanifa had heard them in the distance.
I didn’t hear anything, I confess.
The woman has no doubts. There are three of them and they’re making for the village. We wouldn’t hear them again. The closer they get, the more careful they become. I pick up my gun and step out into the g
arden, gauging the darkness and the silence. Hanifa follows me. The writer, gripped by terror, brings up the rear. In no time at all, we are standing in the Mpepes’ yard.
Don’t switch on your flashlight, sir, the woman whispers to the writer.
So how am I going to see where I’m going? Gustavo asks.
Be quiet, the pair of you! And you, Hanifa, go and get Genito immediately! I order.
He’s sleeping.
Suddenly Hanifa points at some bushes which are stirring and urges me:
Fire, it’s the lions! Fire!
My forefinger on the trigger grows taut. In the arch of bone and nerve lies the decision of the gods: whether or not to extinguish a life in a bolt of lightning. But in this case, my quivering finger hesitates. It’s a lucky delay: A figure emerges from the shadows, hands raised like a drunken scarecrow.
Don’t shoot, it’s me, Genito!
The tracker had gone to buy some liquor in the nearby village. He raises the bottle as proof.
Now go inside, Hanifa. You know I don’t want you out here at night.
Your wife went to call us, the writer explains, because she seemed to think there were lions in the neighborhood.
The tracker looks at the bush from which he has just emerged. He shakes his head, raises the bottle to his lips, and takes a generous swig. He makes sure his wife has gone back into the house. He sits down on the ground and invites us to drink with him. Neither of us accepts. We stand there looking at the stars until Genito breaks the silence.
Hanifa knew it was me. She knew I was on my way home.
I don’t understand, says Gustavo.
Do you know what happened here? It was an ambush. Hanifa wants to kill me.
Don’t be so absurd …
She thinks I’m guilty of terrible things.
What things?
Our things. You know something? There’s no law here, no government, and even God only visits us occasionally.
* * *
When I get back to my room, I remove the cartridges from the chamber of my rifle and repeatedly press the trigger. I’m still trembling slightly, but in general my body obeys me immediately. As always, I take time to reconcile myself to sleep. Staring fixedly at the ceiling, I once again picture my last visit to the psychiatric hospital. I can’t get Roland’s farewell out of my mind—his long hands gain wings and flutter blindly around the room. I spend some time like this. As they say in Kulumani, night only ends when the owls fall silent. Without the presence of these birds, night loses its ceiling. And there are those who, without even being aware, scare these birds of omen away. We have these owl chasers to thank for every new break of day. There at the other end of this remoteness, Roland’s hands shape each of my sleepless nights.
* * *
First thing in the morning, the administrator bursts hurriedly and furtively into our living quarters as if he were being chased by lions. He glances at the street before shutting the door, wipes his forehead with a handkerchief, and then collapses on the black imitation leather sofa.
My wife mustn’t see me here. She’s becoming impossible, that woman!
The man is quick to explain himself. He feared we might have got a false impression of what had come out of the meeting in the shitala. What had been evident from the meeting was envy. The cancer of our society, as he put it. It was precisely this cancer that had led to the recent dismissal of one of his aides in the administration. The career of a veteran official of the party, one Simon Mutapa, had been summarily destroyed.
Don’t you want to put the ventilation on? I’ve got the generator connected up, and the company delivered more fuel …
He points over in our direction at a noisy fan. We stand there for some time glancing at each other, waiting for the administrator to catch his breath. Then, once again, he sets off talking, and explains that, prior to our arrival, the people had invented guilty parties for tragic occurrences.
They blamed Simon Mutapa for this curse of the lions.
Rumors were spread around the village that the Mutapa family had invisible powers. It was in Simon’s house that lions were made. Logical explanation had been of little use, just as a commission of inquiry sent by the provincial administration had been of little use. Mutapa opened up his house and his private life in order to prove his innocence. They had searched his home, his garden, his work place. They hadn’t found any mintela, any material that might have been used to create a lion. But they were adamant that he was the fabricator of lions.
So what do these mintela consist of? the writer wants to know.
In the old days, mintela were merely roots, the bark of trees, bones. Nowadays magic artifacts include the waste products of modern urban life: acid from car batteries, old cell phone casings, computer keyboards.
There must have been a reason for so much suspicion, Gustavo insists.
There was only one basis for their suspicion: The Mutapas had accumulated wealth. For any one of us, the assets of that particular official were sparse, almost invisible. A few acres of sugarcane, one or two banana trees, and a still, where his daughters produced lipa. But for the villagers, his affluence was vast and without explanation. In a place where no one can be anything, Simon Mutapa ended up getting noticed. His neighbors were outraged. And neighbors are like medicine: They’re very good, but only turn up when there’s an illness. Accused of “making” lions, Simon was beaten and threatened with death. The following day, he and his family hit the road and disappeared.
* * *
Naftalinda Makwala visits us at the end of the day to warn us that something is being prepared in the village. We should be watchful, and we shouldn’t leave the house or expose ourselves. We should keep an eye open without being seen.
If you go out, you risk death!
What’s happening? the writer asks anxiously, lifting the corner of the curtain in the window.
Senhor Gustavo? Come away from there! You mustn’t look!
The First Lady calls me over to a corner and places herself in front of me, pressing her generous buttocks against my body. From that window, we could look out over the square in front of us.
The men are arriving. Stand here, right by me, she says.
The ritual that precedes a collective hunt, the kuyola liu, is about to begin. The square is getting ready to receive the two dozen men who will set out on the hunt for lions in the early hours of the morning. How I wished I could be there to take part in the ritual! Naftalinda understands my disappointment:
You are like me, a woman: We’re excluded. Let’s keep each other company. Isn’t it nice here, in this little patch of shadow?
Shadow? The inside of the house is shrouded in darkness. Outside, the last vestiges of the day are being extinguished. The ritual has been summoned as an emergency. The heads of families, the sons of the soil, want to be the ones to chase away the threat that hangs over the village. They don’t want to concede to me, a stranger, the honor of conducting this battle against such powerful, invisible forces.
The menfolk of Kulumani have come together, along with a few others from neighboring villages. Each one is carrying a bow, a shotgun, a cutlass, or a net. They’ve brought with them food and water, carried in bottles and haversacks. They gather in the open space around the shitala and there doesn’t seem to be any set agenda for the event, no hierarchy among them. They shoo away the dogs that are beginning to get excited with all the activity. A young boy tries to join the group, but is quickly turned away. He hasn’t undergone the rituals of initiation. Gradually, as if in response to some hidden master of ceremonies, chants begin to be heard, and the first timid dance steps are tried. Naftalinda can’t resist joining in and her buttocks begin to sway, pressing ever more tightly against me. My head spins and I’m almost thrown off balance. What if the administrator were to catch me in this sultry dance with his wife? Suddenly one of the dancers exclaims:
Tuke kulumba!
It’s the call for action. Then, as if carried forward by so
me invisible wave, the men stamp their feet rhythmically on the ground, and a cloud of dust envelops their bodies.
Now they’ve kicked up the dust! the First Lady whispers, her face next to mine.
Now, she says, all I feel is anger, I can’t watch any more of this. And she retreats to the back of the house, joining Hanifa, who is preparing a meal.
* * *
Suddenly Makwala the administrator crosses the square. He is accompanied by the policeman. He shouts as he stirs up the dust:
What’s going on here? Is this a demonstration? Did you get the necessary authorization?
I take advantage of the First Lady’s absence and furtively escape from the house, disobeying the strict instructions to keep myself hidden and shut away. The writer follows me, his camera slung over his shoulder. We join Florindo Makwala in the middle of the square. The villagers stop their ceremony and observe us silently, full of hostility. It’s clear by the way they look at us: We are intruders, we are desecrating the occasion. The writer immediately realizes that taking photographs is out of the question. And one word in Shimakonde is enough to bring the administrator to heel, rendering him unable to ask any further questions.
One of the hunters leaves the group and comes over to me to take a bullet from the cartridge belt that I wear across my chest. He examines the projectile, turning it over in his fingers. Then he asks:
Do you know who made it?
Who made the bullet?
Yes.
It’s impossible to know …
The man smiles arrogantly. Then he raises his spear to the level of his face and, looking straight into my eyes, proclaims:
I know who made my weapon.
Then he dances away from us in a series of acrobatic pirouettes, at each turn touching the ground with the tips of his fingers. He picks up a stone the size of a fist and raises it above his head, this time laying down a challenge to the administrator Makwala. He addresses him in Shimakonde, while the policeman translates for me:
You can sell all of this, the sky, the earth, the waters. You can sell us. But the spirits don’t talk to money.