A cowrie of hope, p.8
A Cowrie of Hope, page 8
Almost at the same time, the owners of the stands between which she had slept arrived and there was activity on and outside their stalls. She became uneasy standing between them. So she threw away the mulberry stick with which she had been cleaning her teeth, tightened the citenge briskly round her waist, held the bag of beans by its horns, and without help from anybody, pulled it to a place directly west of the mulberry tree.
On hard, parched ground lightly covered with grains of sand, she leant her bag of beans against a stone, opening it just enough for a hand of any size to scoop a few beans, sift them through thoughtful fingers, and drop them back without anything having been spilt.
After she had done this, she went back to the place where she had slept and picked up the blanket, bedsheet and her bag of sackcloth. These she put under the mulberry tree. Then she stood between the tree and the bag of beans facing south so that she could keep an eye on both her beans and her possessions.
The first person to stop by her bag of beans was a busy-looking young woman in a dark suit who looked as if she worked in good offices. She asked the price and was told one hundred and twenty thousand kwacha. The woman then wrote something down on a piece of paper and walked quickly but gracefully away.
The second potential buyer came a while later. She was a fat, talkative woman with a dark, rough skin and long greying hair combed backwards and tied behind her head with a piece of cloth the same colour as that of the green citenge in which she was tightly clothed. So tightly clothed from shoulder to ankle, that her breasts and bottom rocked with every step she made.
‘These are beans from Mbala District,’ she said, passing a finger through the legumes. ‘You can’t tell me not.’
‘They are from there.’
‘Let me hear a good price from you and this bag is mine. The money is here.’
She patted the portion of her waist above her left hip to indicate where she kept her money. Nasula laughed shyly, telling herself that she had received one who was another one.
‘Don’t laugh, good one, you are a mother like me. Money has become difficult to find. The new people in government are closing state companies east, west, north and south. The result: all men in the country have lost their jobs and become hopeless. They spend time begging for beer in the bars to drown their sorrows instead of looking for food for their children to eat. The mother is the one who feels the pain of a new life coming into the world. She must fight on, alone, for something that her children can swallow. A mother cannot fail to understand the pain and suffering of another mother. Is that a lie?’
‘It is not a lie.’
‘Must not a mother then give another mother a price that is of the church? Go on, good one, what are you giving these beans to me for?’
‘One twenty only.’
‘Go away from here,’ cried the fat woman, throwing a dismissive hand into the air. ‘Friend, when did you last go to church? I can afford eighty.’
‘We have a problem, then.’
‘Why, good one?’
‘It cannot work.’
‘Nothing fails to work between mothers. If you are so hard-hearted, I can add another ten. But I will go back home without a loaf of bread and a packet of sugar for the children’s breakfast.’
‘Anything less than one twenty will not work.’
The fat woman, talking with fast extravagance, tried again but she failed to bend Nasula. She left, promising to return when she had raised a hundred thousand kwacha. As soon as she was gone the man from Solwezi, whom Nalukwi had spoken to previously, about the price of beans, came and greeted Nasula.
‘Serious buyers have not started arriving yet,’ he said conversationally. ‘It is still early. What was that woman who has just gone saying?’
Nasula explained.
‘Don’t waste your time with her if she comes again,’ the man said. ‘She sells beans at this market, in the vegetable section. She and others of that section sell beans and other things in small quantities packed in plastic bags. When they see someone new, like you, they try to force you into selling your produce at their price, so that they can gain more when they resell. These beans will not go for anything less than one twenty.’
‘I’ll not listen to her.’
‘They are not people to deal with,’ the man said. ‘They make a lot of money even when they buy at the normal price, but they still want to steal more from you.’
Seeing a couple arrive to look at his beans, the man excused himself and rushed off.
More people came and went, appreciating the beans as being good, but not buying the bag. Some blamed their failure to do this on the price, others on the government, which they said had made money difficult to find. Yet others gave no excuses and went away silently, as if for them nothing in the world was right or wrong.
The day had come of age. The shops and offices had opened and there were people at the market who went beyond asking the prices of produce and did their buying. The sky was clear like natural water, the sun whitish gold, fiercely bright and hot. Nasula wanted to sit down under the mulberry tree – she was beginning to feel hot, bored and tired – when an odd-looking, middle-aged woman of medium build and gnarled hands that seemed to twitch, as if from need of alcohol, stormed towards Nasula’s bag of beans.
‘This is what I am looking for,’ the woman said excitedly. ‘These are the beans. How much are you selling the bag for?’
‘One twenty.’
‘I have no quarrel with your price but let me give you a hundred, that is what I have.’
‘Add twenty thousand.’
At that very moment a man with a Homburg, which added to his stature, and a scent which smelt, if not expensive, then not natural, loomed before the two women, drawing them into the glow of his presence, and interrupting what Nasula had been about to say. Well built and in his late thirties, the man had well-cropped brown hair, a scanty brown beard and broad shoulders. He wore an immaculate checked suit, dark shoes, a white shirt and a red tie.
Although there was something shrewd, and not transparent, about his long, scar-marked face and bright eyes, the man was impressive taken altogether; and the gaiety of his disposition was charming to the eye and mind.
‘I’ll give you one hundred and thirty thousand kwacha, mama, for this bag,’ he said. ‘These are good beans.’ His polished accent and the rather scented odour of his body seemed to intimidate Nasula. ‘What do you say, mama?’
She looked at the woman who had offered her a hundred thousand kwacha, as if to ask if she could afford the additional thirty thousand kwacha the man had offered. The other pouted her lips and bent her head to one side indicating defeat. Nasula shrugged and looked down at her bag of beans which was now about to leave her, a breeze of relief and happiness rising inside her heart.
‘Did you say one thirty?’ she asked the man, to be sure she had heard him correctly.
‘Correct, mama.’
‘You can take the bag.’
‘Close it up, mama, I will find some boys to come and lift it into the car for me.’
The woman who had offered a hundred thousand kwacha and the man who had offered more left in opposite directions, like enemies who did not want to go the same way after the war.
Nasula started sewing up the opening to the bag. As she finished, the man who had offered to buy the bag arrived with three young men and asked them to lift the bag into his car. The young men dropped the bag into a horizontal position. One of them held the horns while each of the other two grasped one of the two bottom corners. Nasula stepped forward to help the young man at the front. Then they all lifted the bag to the car with the man who was buying the beans striding ahead of them.
The car was parked by the edge of the market, along the road that marked the southern border. It was a bright yellow car with a black line on its sides. A beautiful machine, as immaculate as its owner. Nasula’s eyes darted from one to the other, as the man opened his boot and she and the helpers threw her bag of beans inside.
When he had closed and locked the boot, the man who was buying the bag of beans fished out a five hundred kwacha note and gave it to the oldest of the three young men, saying that he and his friends would know how to share the money.
‘Come, mama, let us go,’ he said to Nasula and started walking back in the direction from which they had come. ‘I want to buy some more of these beans.’
Still walking, he took out a bunch of notes and counted them, making Nasula’s heart throb with anxiety.
‘Six hundred thousand kwacha, I must buy three more bags and hire a van to take them home,’ he said to himself, loudly enough for Nasula to hear. But then he did not give Nasula her share of his wealth. He put everything back in his pocket and walked on.
Reaching the spot where Nasula had been selling the beans, he told her to wait there a bit longer.
‘Let me see if I can find some more beans like yours,’ he said walking northwards towards another part of the market.
Nasula waited and waited and the man did not come. She became impatient and decided to follow him. She followed the passage along which he had walked, there was no sign of him. She walked down every passage where produce was sold in bulk, searching for him, but in vain. She decided to go and wait for him by his car. The yellow car had gone.
The nearby vendors confirmed her fears. It was clear that the man had cheated her out of her bag of beans.
6
Echoes of Darkness
Suffering woman, what is it that you have done to deserve this misfortune? What trouble have you caused against the gods? What have you spat on the shrine of your ancestors? A soul cannot be condemned to misfortune forever. This is too much.
She did not cry along with her thoughts sitting hunched on the folded bedsheet and blanket under the mulberry tree, waiting for Nalukwi to come to the market, the side of her head resting on her knees, her arms wrapped round her legs. The shock was far too deep.
Everything about her seemed to fall into oblivion. There was a semblance of peace, clarity and orderliness, now that she had been left alone, forgotten by the world. The existence in which the people at the market had immersed her, following the discovery of the theft, had been chaotic. Soon after the story of her loss had spread, she had been surrounded by a large crowd of strangers wanting to hear from her mouth exactly what had happened.
Men and women, girls and boys, children. They watched her like a lost pet, asking her questions. Even questions unrelated to her loss. What tribe was she? Had she a husband and children? Did she go to church? Lye kalanda we! Like a poisoned fish, confused and frightened, she gasped out the story before an ever thickening and jostling throng. They listened, and shook their heads in disbelief, resignation, or amused recognition at what people in the capital city were capable of doing; blending sadness and laughter into one fruit for the consumption of they knew better what spirits.
With time, an eternity of time, the commotion died down and the crowd melted away leaving her alone. That was when she sat down on the bedding under the mulberry tree and now, apart from the semblance of peace, clarity and orderliness, she felt the growing heaviness of her soul and spirits. The sun was still very hot and bright but she did not bother to move into the shadow of the mulberry tree. She continued sitting on the other, opposite, side, outside and a distance away from the shadow.
A familiar voice, full of life, suddenly called her name. She looked up and saw Nalukwi coming towards her. Emotion surged through her. She bit her lips in a bid to keep herself collected before the one who had done so much for her, and whose goodness always occasioned a swelling of emotions.
But when Nalukwi arrived, her voice and her presence so stirred Nasula’s feelings that instead of a calm response, she just looked at her friend, and did not reply to her greeting; the expression on her face so flat that Nalukwi’s own became a shroud of curiosity.
‘Nasula, has something bad happened to you?’ Nalukwi said, her face strained with anxiety. ‘What is wrong?’
She tightened the citenge in which she was carrying the baby and bent forward towards Nasula, resting her hands on her knees.
‘Something bad has happened, Nasula?’
Nasula nodded. Tears pricked her eyes and she wept. She wept only once and stopped, shrugging herself out of self-pity.
‘How are the children and their father at home?’ she said, rubbing the tears from her face with the inside of her hand.
‘Everybody is well at home.’
‘I don’t know what to say. The devil surely has a say on earth, but he should have sympathised with you and what you did for me, Nalukwi. He should have spared me this one time. After all you did, Nalukwi, for things to end like this …’
‘What has happened, Nasula?’
‘The bag of beans, Nalukwi.’
‘Ee?’
‘Gone without one ngwee being paid for it. It has been stolen.’
Nalukwi fetched a slab and sat down on it, opposite Nasula. In a silence stamped with grief, Nalukwi wept. Shaking her head in disbelief, she rubbed her tears, clapped her hands and then in a low, shocked voice blunt with melancholy, she spoke. ‘What bad luck is this, god of mercy?’ she said. ‘Are we not going to be allowed to make any progress, even with the little in our hands, from our own sweat? When we can’t borrow or beg, like they who are rich? Nasula?’
She clapped her hands, made rinsing movements, and again, she wept, rubbing her tears away with the back of her right hand.
‘Did it happen at night?’
‘It was during the day.’
‘Where you had slept?’
‘There, where that stone is. That is where I had displayed the bag. It’s not a long time ago that the bag was taken. I had displayed the bag. There was interest.’
Nalukwi asked the younger woman what had happened and she told her the story, describing the man who had stolen the bag of beans and his car in great detail.
‘Did you see the money, note by note, when he was counting it?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘It wasn’t a bundle of real money. It must have been a bundle of paper cut from a newspaper and placed between two real notes. You should have asked him to pay you before the bag was lifted into his car.’
‘It was the way he looked, Nalukwi!’
‘I know. Am I not talking to say something for something to say, like one who is mad? Do I have what to say, Nasula of ours? People know about individuals like that, and that there are many of them these days, but they still get cheated – every day and everywhere. Have you not just forgotten, maybe, that I talked about it in Swelini? Don’t you remember me saying something about men who look decent and well-to-do but are something else, judging from what they do to survive?’
Nasula remembered Nalukwi’s words in Swelini. The words about men of the city in suits and ties who looked like ministers or even the president himself turning into cheats and thieves. She remembered very well. The memory of the words tasted bitter.
‘I have remembered. I feel bad for you, Nalukwi. How you helped me to Lusaka with that bag of beans, only for me to give it away to a thief in a suit and a tie.’
‘Say it not.’
‘Hmm!’
‘And everyone of us so poor, no one will help with even a coin for your travel back to your home,’ Nalukwi lamented. ‘Just this time I have returned from the village, I found the people home with nothing to eat. Nothing. What I came with from Wimbe and Swelini is what has saved us. What are we going to do, Nasula, poor people that we are? Where are we going to find the money for your fare?’
Nasula, unable to restrain herself any more, started crying. She cried silently. Large, warm tears trickled down her cheeks, slowly, like rivers crossing a plain in search of the sea.
‘Let us not go on crying,’ Nalukwi consoled her and stood up. ‘Nothing will come of tears. What has happened has already happened. Rise up and we will go home.’
Nasula stopped crying and stood up, wiping away the tears from her face with one end of the citenge she wore around her waist.
Nalukwi had brought her black travelling bag, to carry back the blanket and sheet. Nasula put the blanket, the sheet and her sackcloth bag into the hold-all and slung it over her right shoulder. Nalukwi suggested that before they go, they should try to find out if anyone at the market knew something about the man who had stolen the beans, his name or the registration number of his car.
Nasula felt lightened by the suggestion as well as being in the older friend’s company. Nalukwi’s head was always teeming with ideas. They bolstered your sanity and gave your mind something to cling on to at such a hopeless time as this one.
‘Let us first go and talk to the man from Solwezi,’ Nalukwi said and led the way, her step robust and sure as always, as though nothing in the world was the matter.
They found the man counting money, standing in front of his last three bags of beans that were leant against each other in a circle. He had sold one bag a while back, it seemed, and was trying to make sure his first counting in front of the customer had not been faulty. Recognising Nalukwi, the man made a friendly welcoming gesture, indicating that they should keep quiet until he had finished. His addition complete, he stuffed the money into the inside pocket of the jacket of the same worn, old-fashioned suit that he had been wearing the day before. He and Nalukwi shook hands over his bags of beans and exchanged enquiries about health and work. To Nasula, the man simply nodded and stood back in silence.
‘What a bad thing it is that has happened,’ the man broke the silence, addressing Nalukwi and staring sadly at Nasula. ‘Where were you yourself?’
‘At home.’
‘You live in Lusaka?’
‘I live in Lusaka, my home is in Mandevu. She lives in the village. We are from the same area, Mbala. We came together from the village yesterday. I had been there two weeks ago after the death of my uncle. She decided to come with me to sell that bag of beans to raise money for her school-going daughter. It was the only bag of produce that she had in the world and the only way of sending her only child to secondary school. I said, “Let us go. You will save the future of the child, even if you remain starving after you have sold the beans and sent the child to school.” That is how we struggled with the bag and came here to the market.’
