Bones, page 5
Disease comes like a swarm of white locusts covering the trees, breaking the branches with their weight, a weight never seen by any eyes alive today. The locusts of disease will eat into the fields of our harvests until we remain like orphans in the land we inherited for our children. We did not inherit this land for ourselves but for the children whom we have inside us. Look at the clouds of locusts. Eat them if your mouth waters for them, but this cannot be eaten since it is a bad omen. The locust that our ancestor says we can eat comes alone and runs away when we run after it. But this swarm cannot be on its own. It has its own messages which I tell you are not good. Have you ever seen a swarm of locusts so large and with such a mouth as to eat even the fireplace? Locusts that nibble and chew at everything, the hard mupani, the succulent baobab, the hard rock? No. This is not a swarm to appease the eye of any ancestor. It is a swarm that would eat the children to death, goats and sheep to death. It is a swarm that cannot be measured. A swarm that does not spare even the well. Look what has happened to the fields and the forests. They are a mountain of white locusts.
But what does this tell us? What does the disease that the cattle have tell us? The disease that eats into the mouth of the cattle and goats and the donkeys. It does not tell us to sit and wait for other things to happen. It tells us that the clouds have changed in the manner they used to bring rain to us. When rain falls from earth to sky, we must know that things have begun to happen. Things we cannot understand. It is a sign that the sky has been tampered with. Bad hands are in it. Bad hands are inside the whole story. So we cannot wait to see what has to happen. He who waits while a murderer kills his own mother may not be able to live to tell the story to those who come later. The disease of the cattle and the goats is here, eating the cattle to death. Now, look at the bones littered on the plains. Does that look like a sign of good harvests to come? Does that look like signs for a successful hunt? Does that look like the year of the big suma harvest when the women went to the forest and came back with basketfuls of suma? I do not know, but let me tell you that to remain silent after seeing all those signs is to wait for my own end. An end so big it will be told by old men and women with wrinkles on their faces. And it will be sung by angry warriors in the forest, hunting but not even meeting the little rodents which are not hard to find. There is disease on the land. Disease spreads on the land like a mat, with everybody seeing it and not wanting to shout it to the whole village. Disease spreads with the coming of those who have walked the land without knees. The people without knees have knelt and broken their legs on our land, so they will not leave to go to the land of their own fathers. They will sit and hunt the animals because they do not have a place to stay, skinning the animals. But since they have big guns, their hunt is going to be successful, so that those of us with a big desire for meat will go to them in hiding and ask for a piece or two of meat. Roast meat, bones, bits of offal. Then they will say since the meat is so nice and you do not have big guns for hunting it, we can stay here and teach you how to hunt. We can stay here and even show you how to kill all your enemies with the big guns which we are able to make. Then some of us will say, the big guns are the things we have been waiting for. The big guns are the things which we can use to rob all those who have robbed us before. The big guns are the things we can use to protect our totem, the biggest in the land. The big guns are the ones we can use to protect our chiefs and the shrines of our ancestors. Do you not know that when the enemy villages attack us they pass dirty water on the shrines of our ancestors? That will then have to stop if we have the big guns which fire with clouds of smoke. If you can make us some more of the big guns, then stay and we will give you a little plot so that you can farm if you want … There is disease in this land, spread like the cloud which you will want to see change to rain. A cloud that never rains, a cloud that tortures us all with no rain but shining with the pregnancy of rains all the time.
I will run to the shrines of our ancestors and speak these words. I will say your children have refused to listen. They have eaten the fat from the carcase killed by an enemy, so their mouths have been sealed for ever unless you give them the medicine to make them wake up from their lost dreams. I will say this is the last time someone will honour you properly at this shrine because the children of your children have succumbed to silence. The children of your children will for ever not bring any gifts to these shrines. All the holy shrines will be turned into fields and playgrounds because your children have eaten the silent tree. A more powerful medicine-man has come to defeat the herds you left for your children. So they will not tell the people without knees to leave them alone to honour the graves of their ancestors. They will join the strangers in singing the songs of their own doom. They wear the loin-cloth of the strangers so that they will not know how to wear the things of their own hands. They have stopped making praise-songs to the great deeds of their fathers. No. They sing praise-songs only to the deeds of the strangers whose songs they do not understand. All this they do because they are lost. They do not know any more the footpath to their own wells which they dug with their own hands. Punish them if you want, but they are still not beyond any help. A few of them can stand up to the deeds of the strangers, because the strangers are not many yet. Some of them have gone to fetch their wives so that they can start multiplying in preparation for the long battle, the battle of many nights and days. So they do not want to say insulting things yet. They want to wait until they can fight. Do they not know that he who fights without enough preparation is throwing his only spear to the enemy?
They are clever, the strangers. They can say all the nice words of humility, but I see in their green eyes much mischief even as they go to give a few gifts to the king. The holy king accepts the gifts, but he says he knows the gifts he must accept and those he must not accept. He accepts because you told him that a gift must not be turned down. It must be accepted even if it is a useless gift from a child who does not know useful and worthless gifts. Even if it is a useless stick or the skin of an unripe fruit, it can be thrown away later when the giver has gone. So the holy king accepts the gifts from the stranger without knees.
But did Manyengavana not say that he heard the great king boasting about the strange gifts he has been honoured with? Did he not even say in his own praise-song that he is the one who is feared by those whose knees bend only for him? That can only mean there is hidden happiness in the gifts the strangers have brought to the court of the great one. It can only mean while the mother does not think a little water brought by the little girl’s spilling water-pot is useful, the mother has some pride in the child’s achievement. What if one day the great king says the only gifts he will accept are those from the strangers? Will anyone move a tree which has been allowed to grow its roots under the rock? Will anyone be able to move the rock which has invited smaller rocks to sit on top of it?
*
… I stood on the cliff of the mountain rock and saw the bones of my people falling like feathers from the bird high up in the sky. Who would save them crashing on to the hard soil, the hard rock beneath? …
*
Arise all the bones of the land. Arise all the bones of the dying cattle. Arise all the bones of the locusts. Wield the power of the many bones scattered across the land and fight so that the land of the ancestors is not defiled by strange feet and strange hands. Do not allow the shrines of your fathers to wilt under the arms of the strangers who behave as if they do not have shrines where they come from. Do not let your ancestors be praised by tongues they do not understand. Rise and clean the sky if it cannot give you rains. Brew the beer of the ancestors and ask them to do what you cannot do. What sky will not listen to the thunderous voice of the ancestors? What cloud will not shed its tears to cool the earth when commanded by the thunderous voice of the ancestors? Rise all the insects of the land. Sing the many torturous tunes of the land so that any strange ears will know that an uprising is at hand. Rise you the colourful birds of the rivers and the hills. Sing all the tunes of the land so that any stranger will know that this land is the land of rising bones. Rise all the children of the land and refuse to suckle from strange breasts. Then all the strangers will know that the power of the land is more than the power of any other miracle that can cheat the eye.
The cattle are dead. The goats are dead. What will the herd boys do except to rise with all the creatures of the land? Where will they get the milk that kept them company in the forest? Only tears will keep them company. The disease of the land is here. The blood of the land flows on the lips of strangers, dripping with bits of flesh from the insides of the children. Rise and tell the ancestors that all the bringers of this evil will be made to tell the story of war and battle to their children. Rise. Rise. Rise. Rise you who look for honey in the forests. The land of the honey of the trees and the ant-hills is now diseased. Only tears flow there for the young and the old to rise and swell like boils on the buttocks of an elder.
*
In my sleep, I saw many clouds drifting from the south to the north. I saw clouds drifting from the place of sunset to the place of sunrise. I saw dark skies covered with clouds I did not know. Then I heard many voices of war, war-songs revived and war-songs made for the great fight of my people. Mothers, children, trees, insects, birds, animals, they all joined in the war-songs of the people. I saw many bones spread on large plains and on the hills. Bones spread like rough mats on the banks of the rivers and in the water. But the fish would not eat them. Rising bones. They spoke in many languages which I understood all. Tongues full of fire, not ashes. Clouds of bones rose from the scenes of many battles and engulfed the skies like many rain birds coming to greet the season. There were so many bones I could not count them. So many they made the sky rain with tears. Some I did not see where they were buried, but they leapt into the sky like a swarm of locusts, with such power that they broke the branches of the sky where they rested in their long journey to places I did not know. Right across the land of the rivers that flooded all the time, they heaved on the chest of the land until they formed one huge flood which trampled on the toes of armed strangers. Armed strangers who shot all the time for many days as if they were now hunting for ever. They shot into the hearts of the bones and kept on firing until they could not be seen in the smoke of their own gunpowder.
Then one sunset I saw them come together in a huge celebration of the success of their battle. They did not see the bones scattered on the battlefield. They sang in strange tongues which I could not understand, but they were songs of praise for their gods of war. They came from the celebration and bound all the survivors in heavy chains so that they will not rise again.
… you can torture me,
spread my bowels for the jackals to eat
and tear them to pieces,
mutilate my body with your anger,
throw my brains to the vultures,
leave the remains of my body in the playground
for your children to play with,
cut my ears to decorate your own ears,
cut my fingers
use them to wipe your own sweat …
my bones will rise in the spirit of war. They will
sing war-songs
with the fire of battle. They will compose new war-songs
and fight on
until the shrines of the land of their birth
are respected once more.
My bones will rise
with such power
the graves will be too small
to contain them.
The ribs of the graves
will break when my bones rise,
and you stare in disbelief,
not knowing if your hunger for war
can stand up to it. Then the locusts will not be seen
again
and strangers will not think that
he who accepts them is full of foolishness …
8
The Unknown Woman
MY BONES RISE AND FALL
‘The children have come, and they have been killed.’
‘What children, are you mad?’
‘The children. They have been killed. But it has not been said what they wanted. They were killed.’
‘Madness is eating into your thinking. How can you call armed gangsters, thieves, robbers, you call them the children? Whose children, if I might ask?’
‘The children of the soil.’
‘Listen to your evil Zapu spirit. Do you think a few armed gangsters will fight a whole army and win? You must be mad, raving mad. I am a government worker and I do not want to get mixed up in such things. Mine is to work and get home for a good day’s rest, nothing else.’
‘I did not say you must go and join them. After all, they have been killed.’
‘I wish I could kill them myself. Then you will clean your head of all that rubbish about children. Meaning anybody who passes by armed with an old musket.’
‘I did not say they are my children. Do you now know that even if you do not like them, they are someone’s children?’
‘And if I were that someone, I would wish I had never met the woman who kept those things in her stomach for nine full months. And if I hear you talk about the children again, you will die a bad death. I will report you to the police and they will come and tear you to pieces. Do you not remember how those you call children were torn to pieces before they even fired one shot from those dead guns they carried?’
‘But even if they were killed, talking about them makes my blood move well. Do you want me to hide the things that make my blood move well? Then, what will I be, a corpse without any blood?’
‘You and your corpses. I work at the hospital where there are so many corpses. You could borrow some if you wanted them for a day’s company.’
‘Yes, if the hospital has started killing people so that the corpses can be borrowed for a day’s company. I would like to borrow one myself. Do you take me for a witch who would enjoy the company of a corpse? Do you take me for a witch, me, the daughter of Samanyanga whom you went to plead with in order for him to allow me to be your wife? Next time you must know which things hurt the heart of a woman when you speak.’
‘If you do not shut up, I will call the police. They will know how to talk with you since you have such a tongue of fire.’
*
We gave each other words of fire, I and my husband, I did not know that what is in the heart is in a deep cave. Why did you not tell me what you had done for all these years? I spent all the time feeling sorry for the hot words I had poured into your heart. But what did I know? Nothing. You hid the deed that made many faces sad for many years. I did not know how it had all happened, but you hid it in the core of your heart like one hiding an old love affair with a neighbour’s wife. Just like that. Leaving me to stay in the ignorance of the darkness of the night. What did I know about all these things which people told me at your death? Do you think it calms the heart of a woman to know after so many years that her husband had been having an affair with the wife of the neighbour? No, it disturbs the bottom of one’s heart. It breaks the heart of the woman who gave birth to so many children who are your pride in all the beerhalls you visit. Did they not teach you that a man without boys to succeed him is a dead man? And did I not give you as many boys and girls as you had wished in your prayers? It does not matter, though. I did not wish to be compensated. I was doing my duty. But why did you not feel inside your heart that there were certain heavy things that I could have helped you to carry? Yes, heavy things which need to be carried by two people.
Old Sister Takunda tells me you saw the children before anybody else. Then you told them to go and hide behind some place so that you could bring the medicines under the cover of darkness. You never brought the medicines because you sneaked into the hands of the police and told them you saw an armed gang asking for medicines. They claimed they had come to fight the strangers, and you did not know who the strangers were. You were a government worker with all your life coming from the government. You did not want to play any tricks with the hand that fed you. So, can the police help to cleanse your hands? And the children were all killed.
But old Sister Takunda says there are others who had a different story. She says Old Mutambara, who was quite lookable then, met the children when he was hunting near the town. They stopped him and asked him if he knew a trustworthy somebody who knew how to obtain medicines for them so that when they started fighting, they could treat themselves.
‘No, I do not know any medicines, my children. Do not kill me. It is desire for buck meat which drives me into the forest like this. Nothing else. Do not point your guns at my chest. I have young children to raise and if I die now it will also be the death of the children. My wife is pregnant, and she has a weak chest. She will die now if I die.’
‘No, baba, we are not murderers. Listen carefully to us. We are your children. All we need is medicine to treat ourselves if we should get injured in the fight with the strangers. Do you know someone who works near medicines? Someone who can take some medicines from where they are kept without being noticed for some time? That is all we need. One of us here will come with you to this someone so that we can talk with him ourselves. But it must be someone who keeps things in his chest.’
