The cloth on her head is torn and soiled with mud. She has carried the water-pot from the well for a long time. The cloth helps her head not to crack. There are other things she still has to carry. Things she does not know because they are things of the heart. She will carry them silently as she has done before, resolute. She feels the pain sink its jaws into her all the time. But she seems to take it all in one blow without telling too many people. Her lips are too busy containing the pain to go shouting behind the hills and streams of the farm. Nobody will listen. Nobody is used to listening to her. She says one word and stares at me. Maybe she thinks I cannot breathe any more. She shakes her head, with her mouth wide open, and then spits on the moist dust. The rains have come, but they do not seem to spit enough. She will help them spit on Manyepo’s soil. Yes, this is Manyepo’s soil. Marita will be here all the time. She is part of Manyepo’s soil. She works it. She eats it. She breathes it. She feels it in her insides.

  ‘Marita, your heart is full of your son. It is full of nothing else except your son,’ I say.

  ‘What else can I fill it with? What else can I put into it?’

  ‘I do not know,’ I mumble. ‘But you are strong, very strong.’

  ‘… If I were strong, then I would fill my heart with something else.’ She winces before her face becomes a shadow to me. She seems to be talking with the soil, the grains of sand behind this ant-hill.

  2

  Janifa

  Now that the woman is dead, my heart swells. Marita, why did you insist on going alone? Don’t they say a journey is two people? You know I would have come with you, if only you had whispered into my ears. I would have run away with you to the city where they say it’s daylight from start to finish. Who knows, I would have helped you carry all those burdens of the heart which weighed so heavily on you. Burdens that ate into you like a sickness. Marita, the city is like the throat of a crocodile; it swallows both the dirty and the clean. Have you not heard how so many children run away to the city and then change their names until their own mothers cannot recognise the seeds of their own wombs? Was it not Maringa who brought the story of a girl who slept with her own father whom she had left a long time ago? But when the father followed her, he flowed with the desires of the city, sleeping with every woman who said ‘yes’, until he ended up like the hen which ate its own eggs. Imagine, Marita, a man being his own son-in-law, his own grandfather, paying the bride-wealth to himself. Imagine the shame, Marita.

  But Marita, you surprise me. Why did you choose to die like that? Why did you have to take the place of a pig, Marita? It is not good for a person to take the place of a pig. Did you not say that an eagle can never become a hen? Your own words, coming from those lips when the days you could smile were here. I have seen people’s hands shivering when they cut the throat of a pig. I have seen little children with naked bellies crowding to watch their parents cut the cock’s throat so that they eat good meat. But, Marita, do you not think that the children feel the knife in their own flesh as they stand there? Do you not think that shivering hands are feeling the pain in the man’s heart? Marita, it is not good for someone like you to take the place of a pig. This is the truth, Marita, when a sharp knife cuts through a living thing, Marita, I feel the pain too. How can I not? I do not know why, but this is what happens. But then you should not have died like that. You should have refused, refused just like that in the glare of the sun’s eyes.

  Marita, this place. Do you know what it is to listen to the many voices of the tractors roaring at the soil without you nearby? You were born here, Marita. But how could you now know what it was like to have shared this breath from the wind with you? To know that you smiled at the cowdung smoking fresh near the cows? to know that your heart shook too when thunder slapped my sides as I lay alone on the mat of my nights? to see your eyes glitter in answer to the singing of the birds running after each other in the sky? And you in front of me with the big water-pot sitting so well on your ruffled hair … ‘My child, let us walk fast, the rains are near. Can’t you see the birds flying in circles up there in the sky? What is that bird singing about? Hasn’t your mother told you these things? Hurry, child, when you see the ants moving in a long row like this, that is rain near us. The rains are just behind the hill. Ants are clever. They know when the rains are coming. But they are not proud like us. They tell us about the changes in the air so that we can plough our fields. Hurry, child. Never mind the water spilling on to your face. Do you not know that our ancestors said water should clean all other things since it was cleaner than anything they had ever known? It is only when water comes to the soil and meets people that it becomes dirty, carrying all sorts of things made by the hands of humans like you and me. Let us walk faster, child, there are many of my age-group who did not see this sun we see today because the rains did not allow them to do so. Shame on me, I must not mention such things when the clouds are already stretching their hands above us. Shame …’

  Marita, you are the one who told me that the earth breathed, so I should not put dirt all over the place. The trees, the rocks, the soil, you said they once talked like people, they ran races and gave each other prizes. How I imagined the baobab running clumsily across the plains, with grass and the little trees laughing at the big belly of the baobab heaving up and down. Now that you are dead, Marita, who will tell me stories of lizards courting the girl in the next village, and tortoises going hunting for elephant and buffalo? The whole forest was full of things talking to each other when you were alive, Marita. But all I have to do now is to stare at the sky with your wounded face in my heart. Yes, I feel the warmth of the cowdung on my feet, but can that remove wells of tears that come out of my eyes every day? Why did you go alone, Marita? Did you not say that your own father once said the city was full of lions? Then how could you go to the forest of lions alone, without someone to warn you that a lion was coming from this forest or that, another eye to see the back which you cannot see with two eyes? Marita, listen to Manyepo shouting at the other women who have not finished weeding their daily portion. The words you used to say were that the women will one day break their backs weeding the fields of the white man. Things are still as they were when your feet walked here, Marita. These women will not have any back to use for playing with their husbands, you used to say, Marita. But you used to tell Manyepo that work with no rest was not good for the body, Marita. Now I do not know who will tell Manyepo those few things you used to tell him about us. The men are all castrated, you used to say. They cannot lift up their heads against one man who uses the baas boy as his whip.

  … You women over there, stop gossiping about the latest love potions and get on with the work. You were not brought here to share your gossip with baas Manyepo. He brought you here to work. If you are too old to work, then say so and baas will get someone to take your place. Do not smile at me as if I am your husband. As for that woman with a terrorist for a son, she will one day feel the harshness of my arm, I tell you. You came here to look for work on your own and if you think baas persuades anybody to keep you here, you are dreaming. Baas knows all the things you do which you think your terrorist son will help you with. If you think you came here to fill the baas’s forests with shit, then I tell you one day you will eat that shit yourself. That’s why your husband wants baas to chase you from this farm. You must thank me for persuading baas to keep you for another few seasons …

  But those are the insults you would not stand, Marita … What is the white man’s loin-cloth saying today? Has the white man wetted his loin-cloth so much that it has the courage to drip its wetness on us? Go away and listen to your baas’s insults. Do you think we are stones to work without resting? If the white man has given you part of his poisonous drink, you must drink it bit by bit until the time you know how to control it. If you want us to control your drink for you, then we will tell you the words we tell to our small children when they wet their sleeping places … Marita, you were once fire itself, pure fire that ate into the heart of those who thought they were made of stone. You had to be that, Marita, otherwise you and my mother would not have had time to sleep in your own blankets working without rest for Manyepo. You see, Manyepo is another one with things in his head … My boy, hini wena enza rapo masimu kamina? Fucking stealing my mealie-cobs, and minabulala muntu lapa munyesikati … But Manyepo, how can we steal your maize when we did not cut the lot while we were weeding? You must learn to be thankful, Manyepo. To give us a tin of beans is good, Manyepo, but look at what you eat. The cook in your own house is as fat as a baobab from eating the left-overs. What about what you eat yourself? It must be food even God has not known how it smells. Manyepo, why don’t you look at your dogs and our dogs? Your dogs are fat as hippos while ours are blown away by the wind. If you want to know how well someone is living, just look at his dog. Then you wouldn’t come here and say bad things about us who work to give you a good life, Manyepo …

  Then your husband, Marita, would be called to Manyepo’s house to be scolded like a child. And he would come back to you and spit in your eyes.

  … Woman, since when have you become a man? If you are a witch, the white man is not afraid of witches. You will be dismissed here and not a calf will miss you. If you are dismissed, let me tell you that you will go alone. I am not going back to that reserve where dogs and people eat from one plate. The reserves are not even good for donkeys to live in. Now, if you go around shitting in people’s wells, you must remember that the day they catch you, you will have to look for another village to settle in. Never mind all the work you do here, Manyepo will see to it that you are trimmed of those feathers which you boast of. Do you think all these people who shut their mouths in front of Manyepo are mere shadows of their fathers’ children? They know who gives them their daily bread, I tell you. You must learn to shut your mouth if you still want to continue filling your belly with Manyepo’s beans, that’s all. Have your parents not told you that you must not quarrel with the midwife if you still want to bear more children? That is what you must do, Marita. If you shit in the village well, remember that tomorrow you will carry your water-pot that way for more water. Be careful about your footsteps, Marita, otherwise you will end up with your own toes covered in shit. Marita, you are a married woman, the sins of a married woman also smear on to her husband. That’s why when they see a mad wife they always say the man is in big trouble, the man eats what even a dog has never eaten, the man has eaten the woman’s thing. Do you want me to be like that, Marita? A man with a beard must control his wife. Not let her run around wild like a rabid dog. If you are determined to continue with this madness, you will see why the dog cannot laugh while it can show you its teeth. I tell you this because you are still my wife. But remember that there are many young girls looking for men like me with a good job and a good record with the white man on this farm …

  And how you stared at him, Marita, as if the man had the wrong things coming out of his mouth instead of the other end. Marita, you do not know how it is to breathe the air without sharing it with you. You do not know how these trees will never give me the coolness which they gave us together as we sat there to listen to the words your son left us to go to the war. You did not mind when they called you Mother of Terrorists. You just smiled as if you were happy to bring forth children who would roast other children to eat. Children who were said to be so cruel they could throw a man into large flames to be consumed while they danced round the fire like the monsters you once told me about in the story of the girls who ran after man-lions without knowing it. But Marita, did you find your son, then?

  3

  Marume

  Manyepo, look at my bare breasts, and these cracked feet, do you not think that my feet should be covered so that I can work better in the muddy soil of your fields? All the children staring at a woman’s bare breasts, do you not think it is shameful? Why do you not give your own wife that chance to go around half-naked with flies cleaning their coats on her nipples? As you say with that harsh mouth of yours … the work is not hard, even children can do it, you people are bone lazy … why do your own children only come to admire the green maize and not work with us in the fields for a day? These things are not good, Manyepo. My own wife has been telling you these things for a long time, but you dared call her wide-mouth. You even insulted her with her private parts in the presence of all the men and women of this farm. Do you think the girls in this farm will respect me when they hear the private parts of my own wife being mentioned in public? It is not good, Manyepo. I know my wife is full of harshness, but she works harder than any woman you have ever brought here to this farm. She works until she cannot sleep at night. She groans and says she has things crawling in her blood, things which she has asked Marume, the herbalist, to try to calm down. But she still complains, only at home in the compound. She says her blood will one day burst out and leave her dry. But she never tells you these things because she says you do not care. You only care to have your work done in the fields. They called you Manyepo because you think we are always lying to you. How can we be liars all of us except the baas boy? Was he not born in the same village as me? Did his father give him different rules from those which my father gave me before I went to herd cattle in the forest? You say we smell of things you do not understand, we lie, we are lazy as children and we should always have someone to make sure that we work, do you think we are children with all this beard on our faces? Have we, the men, not made our wives pregnant and have the wives not become pregnant after we slept with them? Then how do you come to think that we are children, Manyepo? Men should be treated like men, Manyepo. But who told you that a man can be beaten just like that? To slap a man in the face in front of his own wife and children, Manyepo, do you know that it is like killing him?

  But then listen to what Marita has said in my own ears today … Husband, you will have to remain alone. I want to go to the city to ask those who know, where my son is … You mean you want to go to the city alone, I say … Yes, because you cannot leave your white man, she says … But Marita, you are my wife I married with my own father’s cattle, I tell her as she scratches the dry soil with her fingernails. She looks me in the face like a policeman arresting a thief. She is so bold that I can see her boldness in the eyes and on the face. She stares at me and tells me to take it as it is because she has already packed her belongings. She says she will not come back before she has found her son because they tell her that some lucky mothers have gone there and come out with their sons on the same bus. They say a long list, a very long line of names is hidden somewhere—where, if you are lucky to get someone who can read and who is full of patience, they can read the long list for you and tell you if your son is dead or not. They say many mothers have come out of that house with the names with hope that their children may still be walking on the soil in the city, but with different names from the ones the mothers gave them.

  Marita wants to go and look for her son. She has been crying all the time, tears drowning her face all the time. Now she has made up her mind to go and see for herself … If the city is so frightening as you say, she says with a voice full of grief … why are so many people living there? … But Marita, do not be attracted by the many things people say about the city. What is bad will remain bad even if people say many good things about it. Look, Manyepo, she is going without even telling you because she says you are not her father, but only you, my husband, must know about it so that people may not send bad wishes with me. She is going in a few days, Manyepo. But she does not fail to come to your fields to work harder than before, Manyepo. Do you know what it is to be a husband without a wife … all the cooking, washing for myself, carrying the water from the well over there? It’s going to be very hard for me, let me tell you with my own mouth. Your own wife is all right because you have all the water and food you need prepared by Chisaga, that fat cook who sometimes puts all sorts of things in your food when you make him angry. Be careful, Manyepo. You must not make Chisaga angry. He will put dreadful things in your food and then watch you eat. It is bad, Manyepo, but I do not think I would not do it myself if you did the things you do to him, to me. I eat fire sometimes, but I have to control myself because my father taught me that even a chief’s son is a commoner in other lands. In my own village you would not shake my beard the way you do here, Manyepo. I would have cut your throat a long time ago. But this humility is not empty-handed. A chief’s son is a stranger, a commoner, in other lands. That is all.

 

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