Confession of the Lioness (20 page)

Naftalinda was injured, and I brought her to the hospital. Nothing very serious, but she's got to stay there.

Did anyone else get injured?

Genito was killed.

Genito killed the lioness, Maliqueto killed the lion. The only thing left for me to do, the last hunter in the world, is to verify the success of these shameless killers. The only thing left for me, Archangel Bullseye, who knew about bullets but not about writing, is to write up the report of the incident.

But the administrator doesn't want me to leave for the village just yet. He asks me to stop for a few minutes at the clinic. Naftalinda would be very happy to see me. Afterward, we would return together to Kulumani.

*   *   *

The First Lady occupies a private room. The sheets cover her vast body somewhat parsimoniously. Naftalinda's shoulder is swathed in a large bandage, which looks like a minute rag on her. The woman takes my hand and looks at me with a maternal air:

I have a request to make. Take Mariamar with you to Maputo.

Mariamar?

She's Hanifa's youngest daughter. Next week I'll be going back there too, and I'll look after her.

Don't worry, I'll take her.

You're a good man—you remind me of Raimundo, the village blind man. You have something in common, there's something uncanny …

Uncanny?

That man is out and about at night, he sleeps out in the open. And yet he was always spared by the lions. Do you know why he was never attacked?

Don't tell me he's one of the lion-men?

On the contrary. It's because, of all the villagers, he's the only one who is a complete person, a complete human being. Just like you, our hunter—

And now me
, Makwala butts in.

Yes, you as well. You've become my man again, my dear Florindo.
Then she turns to me again:
If you'd seen him last night …

I've got to go, Dona Naftalinda
, I excuse myself politely.

Let me look at you. You look so happy, so young.

Last night I slept in good company.

So did I. Last night I was happy, after such a long time. Even with my pains, I was well loved, I slept well and dreamed well.

Naftalinda dreamed that her mother was lulling her once again in her arms. But she sang to her in Portuguese, which in real life never happened. All the lullabies were in Shimakonde.

Until yesterday
, she says,
my dreams couldn't speak with my memories. Last night they could. Last night I was lulled by time.

*   *   *

On the way back, Florindo confesses that he's going to quit his post. He's going to be a teacher again. It's not out of choice, but he's resigned to it.

If it was down to me, I like politics more. But with Naftalinda, it just won't work.
Then, after a pause, he adds:
You'll write up your report on the hunt, I'll write up the indictment against those who raped Tandi.

Tell me what happened with Genito.

It was a simple but enigmatic story, like everything that happens in Kulumani. The man had succumbed while killing the lioness, next to the road. The same lioness that had attacked Naftalinda and Mariamar.

Was Genito taken by surprise?

The administrator didn't know the details. But he did know that the tracker and the lioness died together in mutual embrace, as if they both recognized each other as close relatives.

It was very difficult to pull their bodies apart. It was like a reverse birth. Apparently the writer even shed a tear. He couldn't even take a photo of them.

*   *   *

I imagine the writer and his tear. Certainly an invented tear, just like the word he had created. And then I think the journey was worth it for him. Gustavo Regalo now knows what a lion is. And he knows even better what a man is. He'll never again ask the reason for hunting. Because there's no answer. Hunting happens independently of reason: It's a passion, a giddy hallucination.

Are you sad you weren't the one to kill the lions?
Gustavo asks, point-blank.

Me, sad?

I know what you're going to answer. That you don't kill, you hunt.

I spent the night with the woman of my dreams. How can I be sad? For sure, maybe I'll now want all the nights time has to offer. The hunter is a man addicted to miracles. The hunter is a demon saint.

 

Mariamar's Version

EIGHT

Blood of a Beast, a Woman's Tear

When the spiders join their webs, they can tether a lion.

—AFRICAN PROVERB

I now admit what I should have announced at the beginning: I was never born. Or rather: I was born dead. Even now, my mother is still waiting for my birth cry. Only women know how much one dies and how much one is born at the moment of delivery. For it's not that two bodies separate: It's the tearing apart of one body that was trying to preserve two lives. It's not the physical pain that most distresses the woman at that moment. It's another pain. It's part of you that is detached, the gouging of a road that gradually devours our children, one by one.

That's why there's no greater suffering than giving birth to a lifeless body. They placed that inanimate creature in my mother's arms and left the room. They say she sang me a lullaby, reciting the same mantra with which she had rejoiced in previous births. Hours later, my father took my weightless body in his arms and said:

Let's lay her to rest on the bank of the river.

It's by the water that they bury those who have no name. There they left me, so that I should always remember that I was never born. The damp soil hugged me with the same affection that my mother had devoted to me in her vanquished arms. I recall that darkened embrace and I confess that I yearn for it in the same way one does for a distant grandmother.

The following day, however, they noticed that the soil of my recent grave had been turned over. Was some subterranean beast taking care of my remains? My father armed himself with a cutlass in order to defend himself from the creature emerging from the ground. He didn't get as far as using the weapon. A tiny leg ascended from the dust and turned on itself like some tumbling spar. Then the ribs, the shoulders, and the head appeared. I was being born. The same convulsed shudder, the same helpless cry of the newly born. I was being delivered from the belly from which rocks, mountains, and rivers are born.

They say that my mother aged as much as it is possible to age in that moment. To be old is to await illnesses. In that instant, Hanifa Assulua was one great malady. My father peered at my mother's grave expression and asked:

So, am I the father of a mole?

That was when a strange light came to rest on my little face. And it was then that they saw how deep my eyes were, as deep as the river's calm waters. Those present contemplated my face and were unable to withstand the heat of my gaze. My old father, fearful, stuttered:

Her eyes, those eyes …

A suspicion then began to stir in all of them: I was an inhuman person. No one dared say a word. But it wasn't long before my mother realized: In my eyes there were the flashes and translucence of another, distant soul. In the solitude of her distress, she asked herself the reason why my eyes were so yellow, almost solar. Had anyone ever seen such eyes in a black person? Maybe my eyes had become so luminous because they had spent so long searching the dark subterranean depths.

Murkiness, it is said, is the domain of the dead. It's not true. Just like light, the dark only exists for the living. The dead inhabit the dusk, that fissure between day and night, where time curls in on itself.

Those who live in darkness invent lights. These lights are people, voices more ancient than time. My light always had a name: Adjiru Kapitamoro. My grandfather taught me never to fear the gloom. For within it I would discover my nocturnal soul. In truth, it was the dark that showed me what I had always been: a lioness. That's what I am: a lioness in a person's body. My shape was that of a person, but my life would be a slow process of metamorphosis: my leg becoming a paw, my nails claws, my hair a mane, my chin a jaw. The transmutation has taken all this time. It could have happened more swiftly. But I was bound to my origins. And I had a mother who sang for me alone. Lullabies endowed my childhood with shadow and forestalled the animal that lay within me.

Gradually, however, something began to change in our home. As happens with lionesses, I was left to my own devices. Little by little, Hanifa Assulua abandoned me, without any guilt, without a word of comfort. As if she had realized that I had occupied her belly and dwelled in her life purely by accident.

*   *   *

I return home after the fight with the lioness, my back aching and my arms gashed. I don't seek out my mother. She won't help me. I only have myself to provide solace. I follow the behavior of wild animals, and curl up in a ball like a fetus. When I'm floating between sleep and wakefulness, my grandfather Adjiru appears before me. It isn't a vision. It's him, my grandfather. He's on the veranda, seated on a mat. That was his oldest throne.

Don't you want to go inside?
I ask.

It's out here on the veranda that one waits
, he replies.

I try to take his hand, but he spurns it. Other hands now help him, he explains. Then he asks me to listen to him. I need to know some truths about my existence. He takes a deep breath, as if he knows he only has an instant, and then he spills it all out. These are the words of Adjiru Kapitamoro:

Maybe, my dear granddaughter, you believe you are not a person. There are visions that assail you, there are ravings that will forever follow you. But do not give credit to these voices. It was life that robbed you of your humanity: You were so treated like an animal that you thought you were one. But you're a woman, Mariamar. A woman in both body and soul. And that's not all: You, Mariamar, can be a mother. It was I who made up the story that you were barren, infertile. I invented such an untruth in order that no man in Kulumani would be interested in you. You would remain single, free to leave and put down roots far from here, free to have children with someone who would treat you like a woman. You found that man. That man has come back. I summoned him back to Kulumani myself. How did I do so? Well, how do you summon a hunter? I invented some lions, and the fame of these lions extended throughout the country. This is my secret: I'm not, as people thought, a carver of masks. I'm a maker of lions. Not because I'm a witch doctor, but because, ever since I died, I've become a god. And that's why I know about past lies and future illusions. It won't be long, my granddaughter, before you are once again Mariamar Mpepe. Far from Kulumani, far from your past, far from your fear. Far from yourself.

I listen to Adjiru's long narration with my eyes closed, and I understand his motives. He doesn't want to forfeit my company. The only god left to me needs me more than I need him. That's why he insists that everything in my existence was as it should be. I was a human being, the daughter of human beings. I had become as I was, furtive and solitary, doubtful of my nature, because of mistreatment when I was a young child.

I open my eyes once more merely to confirm that Adjiru is no longer there. I breathe deeply and hear another voice deep within me. And this voice fills my head: There is no Adjiru, there are no invented lions, no gods putting the past to rights. The truth is quite different; it wasn't life that deformed me. I was invalidated as a woman ever since my birth. I visited the world of men merely to give them something to hunt. It was no coincidence that my legs were paralyzed. The wild creature in me demanded another posture, more prone to feline crawling, closer to the ground, nearer to the smells. Nor is it a coincidence that I'm infertile. My belly is made of another flesh; I am composed of souls that have been swapped.

*   *   *

Adjiru's apparition is already remote when I set out to see the dead lioness early this morning. Next to the road to Palma, on the red sandy verge, lies the lioness as if she is merely resting. It's the same one that attacked Naftalinda, the same one I fought. If it weren't for the bloodstain under her shoulder, no one would know she was dead. The policeman Maliqueto had been left to guard the trophy. To prevent witch doctors from coming to steal the flesh. Witch doctors, hyenas, and vultures are the only creatures that eat the flesh of a lion. All the onlookers had got bored and only Maliqueto is left to guard the remains.

Ignoring the policeman's presence, I prostrate myself in front of the feline. I contemplate her open eyes, her tongue hanging out, as if she were merely tired and thirsty. I take my clothes off and, stark-naked, lie down next to the lioness, laying my head on her still body. Who knows, maybe I could still hear her beating heart. It's too late: All I can hear is the throb of my own chest.

Maliqueto gazes at me with a mixture of fear and puzzlement. He looks down at the ground and says:

They took your father's body away just a short time ago.

My father's body?

Yes. Genito Mpepe died. The lioness killed him. Didn't you know?

I don't answer. I can't decide what I feel. Maybe I don't feel anything at all. Or maybe his death had already occurred a long time ago within me.

It was very strange
, the policeman continues.
Your father didn't seem to be aware of the danger. He walked towards the lioness without a weapon, and they even say he spoke to her.