Bones, p.4
Bones, page 4
This is why Marita says the job I do on this farm is good. I cannot have many accidents, except one day when I burnt the soup and the madam screamed as if I had put poison in the whole thing. Then trouble started until baas had to send me on a holiday for three months. I thought I would never come back to work for Manyepo again. When I came back I swallowed some saliva and spat a little bit on the shiny floor of the house to repent my sins. Many years have passed between those dangerous things and now. I am here and everybody is now happy that I am here. Baas drinks until he cannot say my name properly, all in my own eyes. Did he not once send me away before he started drinking? Then what happened? Manyepo started asking me to remain for the night so that I could fetch him the drinks. He drank the beer that burns the lungs until he could not walk, until his legs were made of water, then walking became as difficult as lifting an elephant. Very difficult. And I lifted him with my own arms and put him into his bed like a child. I did it, with my own arms. From that time, he scolds me with a smile on his face, he does not scold me too much about my drinking and singing in the farm compound. He just jokes about it, calls my mother a few names and asks for his food. Just like that. And he tells me secrets about how my people and I are lucky to be allowed several wives. If one woman is not good, then we can always go and sleep with the other. He calls it fucking, but he does not want to tell me what it means. Fucking boys, fucking girls, fucking lazy, fucking everything. I do not know what it all means, but I know it is not good to say it when Manyepo’s wife is near. A stream does not flow forever. Marita, I smell your body all the time in my sleep. What can I do without saying your name on my lips? Let me do what you asked me to do, then I will see whether your words are full of weight. Words have weight, Marita. Words from a child’s mouth are like feathers, real feathers. They fall on the lips and are blown away by the wind. Words with strength do not suffer the night’s dew. They remain on their legs even after a storm has passed. Let your words be like the mountains which I found the same age when I was born and still they are full of power, standing there all the time doing the same things. Words must be like that, erect like the thing of a little boy on waking up, promising the girls that when I grow up certain things will happen which are being made now. That is what strong words are about, Marita. A stream does not flow forever, but the stream remains there. It may dry, but it remains there like the hills which I saw when I was a little boy. All those rocks, big boulders and humps. I went over them, running up and down into the water that licked my bare soles. Then I jumped into the pools, naked as a baby, to feel the coolness running all over my body. Then I lay on the white rock spread there before me like a hard mat, feeling the pricking sun’s sting eating into my shiny skin. It was like being a chief enjoying the leisures of my own land. Then I ran after the lizards, cutting their tails with a whip. But they always grew new tails like small plants cut when they were still keen to bloom with flowers. Yes, they grew new tails in a short time. And how I thought if someone cut off my own legs or hands, they would grow anew like tails of the lizards. It was such a joy, but soon I had to go to the forest to herd cattle and goats, running after the warm traces of cowdung smoking in the plains or mixed up in the water that I used to wash. Marita, the growling of the bull’s stomach was something to me. I used to watch the cattle chewing lazily under the shade of the musuma trees, chewing as if to show me that I was not able to enjoy what they enjoyed. And the smell of the chewed grass, it told me who I was. And the smell of milk from the udder of the cows was such joy. Sometimes I wished I were a calf, but then I would get furious when I thought that my milk was taken away from my mother to be given away to the children of those who walk on two legs. Imagine, taking away the milk from a little calf to give your own children, that is good for the children who receive the milk, but the children whose milk is taken away do have pains in their hearts. It is not good. Marita, those hills, these memories remain here for ever. Your words must remain as permanent as the rocks and the hills, as the smell of cowdung or even the growling of the bull’s stomach. It must be like that. Words must remain licking the soles of the feet of my memory so that I will do what I want to do without feeling bad. How can a man refuse what he has been offered? Do not refuse what you have been offered unless you are sure you will never receive anything good from the one who offers you. Even when you are given a snake, take it and throw it away later when you are alone. A gift should never be turned away. Take it, examine it, then see what you can do with it. If you can’t do anything with it, throw it away when the giver has gone so that he will continue to think you are worth some more gifts. But I would be a fool to refuse sharing my blood with you. I have always desired to do so, but there are things which take a long time to be said because they should not fall on too many ears. They should fall only on the ears of those who must hear them. A thing like this, Marita, is not something you can go about shouting to all ears in the compound. It is not good. It is not good because your husband will eat me like a lion eating a little goat. It does not help to fight back when you know how much you deserve to be beaten. The thing will wear heavily on my heart until I die a bad death in my old age. Do they not say that those who have done bad things of regret do not die early? They live for a long time so that they can tell their children and the children of their children’s children how ashamed they are of themselves. It is very painful to hear the fading voice of an old man rumbling on about how he did this or that without knowing that it was bad and that it could bring a dark cloud to his life … you see those young leaves sprouting with colour and smell, you see the young goats roaming among the rocks and taking large gourds of milk from the breasts of their own mother goats, I was like that myself until one day the earth turned its back on me. Then I spilled ancestral beer in the village well and finished the whole job by shitting in the well where I knew everybody came to fetch water. Then I laughed as old men and women vomited after drinking the bad things that came out of the body of a person … that was what my ears heard in their youth, from the mouth of the old man who wore skins because the earth had turned away from him … Earth, sky, I look at you and think what you have seen. You have seen many things, but you still keep quiet as if you had seen nothing. The things of inside the chest can burn one to death. They are heavy most of the time, Marita.
Manyepo is not a bad man, Marita. When you climb a tree you must not then tell it that its branches are bad when you are up there. It will let you fall to the ground where you came from like a stone. Then all the bones inside will break like the firewood we break to cook our own food. The tree will smile at your death as they bury you inside the fingers of the tree which take food for the leaves. Then the leaves will be green—even in the dry season—with the fat from a body that is buried there. Manyepo takes us as children without homes of our own because we came here to look for him on his farm. Do you not remember how the whole Muramba village came here to look for work when they heard a new farmer was coming to open a new farm? Some came with their children, their dogs and cats and all they could carry. Manyepo was here, fuming as if the villagers had annoyed him by coming to offer their sweat to him. He growled like a lion with little ones … Yes, what are you looking for, fools? Did someone say I was opening a refugee camp? Look at you, with dogs and cats and children. I want workers, not refugees. People must learn to work, not to loiter around as if waiting for manna from heaven. I want strong men and women, not children, bloody children with no idea there is something called work … Then he inspected us like a police sergeant, feeling the strength of our muscles to see who was full of bones and who was full of watery muscles … You can join my workers, not you. You are okay, but I will have to test you. All the women will go weeding for two months before I can be satisfied. Then I will tell you who stays and who goes. That is my way of doing things. I don’t want to keep lazy bones on this farm. I have finished … Then we all worked for months without pay to get Manyepo’s word. Marita, you worked like a donkey, losing all your sleep so that you could stay on. Then everything worked well, and you could stay. Too bad for your husband. He was weak with disease but Manyepo told him he was pretending to be ill so that he could stay on the farm for nothing. You pleaded with Manyepo, kneeling before him as if he were your husband until Manyepo said yes. That was the way it should be. Then I saw that Manyepo was not a bad man. He has bad and good in him like all of us. But this is his own land. We are like children up the tree. We cannot blame the tree for its crooked leaves. The tree is the way it is, so we have to climb if we want the fruits.
Yes, Manyepo will kick you and shame you in front of your own people. His anger can spill over into the fields and nobody understands him. But we have taken him as he is. Our own fool. Every village has its own fool. Every family has its own priest, but behind every priest there is a fool. Manyepo is our fool. He gives us food, but we have to work first. He is not like Makaza, the district commissioner who comes in his land-rover to tell us that by the end of tomorrow we must move because he is building a road where we live. If we do not move, Makaza drives bulldozers over our grass huts with a smile on his face. Then after he has destroyed our homes he comes the next day on his horse, to ask for taxes. Makaza is mad, I tell you. His madness has never been seen in these parts. Manyepo is better because his madness only lasts for a day or two. Makaza’s madness is like a stomach. You cannot take it off for a while. It stays on until he dies.
Marita, for many years Manyepo has believed everything I tell him. Do you remember how I would tell him that my aunt had died and that is why I could not come to work on time? He always laughed and then said I owned all the aunts in the world and he allowed me to continue work without losing my pay. Not the way he treats you and your husband, Marita. You lose one day of work, he makes you lose all your pay for the whole month. To me he is a good man. I do not know what is inside him most of the time because sometimes he speaks in a language I do not know. A rough language which makes saliva jump out of his mouth like bullets from a gun. You should see him speak with his friends when they come. He laughs and tells endless stories to them in the language I can never understand. All he says to me is Chisaga, get us something good, my friends are here. Then I run around like a boy, cleaning everything, cooking his favourite food before telling him that all is well. Then he tells me to go out and play while they eat. They eat hills of food, leaving some for the dogs even when I have given the dogs some good food. Sometimes I am lucky to get the left-over food for my children too. But not always, Marita. Good things cannot be done every day. One day is cloudy, the next is cloudy and rainy, but the next is plain naked sky. It is the same with Manyepo. One day he is fire, the next day he is ashes, but he is our fool. Let me take what I have never taken from him because of you. I know he will think it is the two men he dismissed from work after he found them giving bad things to his dogs. Muringi and Chatora, how could you give your shit to Manyepo’s dogs? You even went round the compound saying a dog is a dog, give it shit, it will eat it and ask for more. Muringi, a man with children must not enjoy doing the things children do. Have you not heard Manyepo saying we are liars, we lie like children all the time? It is not good for a man like me, with children filling the compound, to be called a boy. But it is you, Muringi and Chatora, who make us look like children in the village. How do you expect Manyepo to resist whipping you as he did before he sent you away to the police? The police are not a thing to play with. They say they give them strong medicines to make them full of power and courage. Look what they did to you. They whipped you in the eyes of everyone like school children who have stolen from the teacher’s garden. Now you have no work and the story of what you did has filled the ears of all who could give you a job. We must be careful, because the things of life need care.
6
Janifa
‘Marita, what will you do if you find your son?’
‘Child, how can you ask me such a question?’
‘Chokwadi, I want to know what you will do when you find your son.’
‘I will be happy.’
‘Just that?’
‘Yes. Just that. The things that trouble my heart will go away. I will be happy.’
‘But you are happy without him, Marita.’
‘The things inside the heart are heavy, child. Very heavy.’
‘You think he will want to marry me? That is what he wanted when he was little.’
‘That is not easy for me to say. Days change all the time. But I will not be unhappy if you do not like him. The forest where he has now grown up for part of his life can make people change. Did you not hear what they said about those things which the fighters can do? I do not think they tell the truth all the time, but we would have to see with our own eyes to believe some of these things. The womb bears all sorts of people, thieves and priests. But I did not teach my child to do bad things because to do so is to shame myself in the whole village. How could he then leave me and start stealing, doing all dark things which the mouth is ashamed to name? This is why I also want to find him. I want to ask him if it is true, those things we heard once happened. It might be true as in the stories which our grandparents told us … the stories of long-toothed ogres which feasted on the blood of good people until there were no good people remaining. Big monsters which ate fire and vomited the embers. It may be true that children can do all sorts of things. Did Muringi and Chatora not give Manyepo’s dogs heaps of dung to prove that a dog is a dog, give it shit and it will eat and ask for more? You may call it madness, but it happens. But there are things that cannot happen. Dogs eating shit is nothing new, but children eating their fathers is something that needs to be looked into by a strong medicine-man.’
‘So you think medicine-men can help?’
‘Medicine-men of these days can cheat you into poverty. Do not trust them. They give us all sorts of roots and mixtures and claim we will be this or that, lies.’
‘Then what does one do when children are said to eat their parents, roasting them just like that?’
‘First see them do it before you join the hunt for the medicine-man. People are liars, know that.’
‘But how can someone cook such a lie and have no shame going around telling it to the whole village?’
‘Evil spirits still possess people, even those who have learnt the ways of the white man. Have you not seen how Manyepo swells with evil when his fields are not giving him what he has dreamt they would? Evil is all over the place.’
‘Marita, you must join those who preach the new light of god. You will do well.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you are good with words.’
‘You want me to join those mad ones who never end their talking until someone drops a coin in their bowl? My mother always told me to eat of my own sweat, not to beg like that.’
‘Suppose you find that your son is one of those who talk of god and the power he has to move mountains from one place to another.’
‘Do not fill your head with that rubbish. If god is so good and so full of power, why does he let the children of the compound workers die every day while Manyepo’s children will never know what hunger and disease are all about? What crime did the little ones commit? The sins of the fathers and mothers, the preachers say.’
‘Show me someone whose father or mother did not commit sin.’
‘Marita, these things will trouble you for a long time. Is that why you refused to be washed with the holy water so that you would have more children?’
‘Washing my belly with water so that I can have children, that is enough even to make the chickens laugh aloud.’
Marita, she is like that, a gentle fire which burns all the time. I do not know what I will do without her on this farm. Do you know that she works for me as well? When the baas boy gives me my small plot to weed, Marita quickly finishes my small bit and then goes to weed her own share. Child, what are you doing in these fields from which you will never harvest anything? You should be in school so that you do not end up in the same grave that will swallow your mother and me. I feel sad for you to think that Manyepo wants you to take your mother’s place in the fields. We have better things to look forward to, child. Not this endless suffering. You were not born to suffer, child. The sun shines for everybody … then she wipes her face with a dirty palm, smearing her face just like that without caring. After the day’s work, Marita looks like a ghost in the fields. Manyepo calls it hard work, but to think that Marita only gets a cup of beans for her food because she does not have children, it pains me inside. The things of inside are difficult to understand all the time. The things of inside burn like a strong fire, but I only look at Marita and the fire inside me stops burning me to death.
7
The Spirits Speak
1897 MY BONES FALL
Arise my children. Do you not see the vultures flying over the corpses that are not yet? See the clouds which fake the flight of the vultures. Many clouds hiding many vultures with large beaks, all waiting for the many corpses that are not yet. Do you not see the corpses when there are vultures in the sky? Look at the sky and tell me if you can see the sun? The large wings of the vultures are like shady clouds so that you cannot read the pattern of the sky. The sky, so old and with so many eyes that you do not see. But it remains silent all the time as if it were a blind puppy which does not know the colour of sunshine. The sky remains silent all the time as if it doesn’t see anything on that earth. Look at the many wounds coming from the vultures, my children. Disease has eaten into the wealth of your soil. Disease has eaten into the wills of your ancestors, your own fathers and mothers. Disease has sucked the juice of the land you inherited for your children. Do not sit and drink to the comfort of your hearts because there is no reason for you not to rise, not to see the clouds of vultures in the sky. Disease crawls on the rocks which you have known to sit there all the time for your protection. It has eaten into the core of the heart of the hard mupani and the great baobab. Disease grazes the pastures like cattle of your wealth. Disease flies in the sky like the fish- eagle that heralds the coming of the season of the rains. Do not let the eyes of disease inflict its pain on the land while you sit under the shade of the tree without a name as if all was well. No, you cannot be children without parents to warn them that fire burns.
