The Witch Doctor's Wife (5 page)

S
econd Wife had just finished stirring the stiff mush, and was in the process of shaping it into a smooth ball when Cripple hobbled into the family compound. That was just like her; wait until the real work was done, and then offer to stir the pot of manioc greens or poke at the chicken bubbling in palm oil at the fire’s edge. Disabled or not, there was no denying that Cripple was a lazy woman who milked her husband’s sympathy for all it was worth.

“Let me help,” Cripple said. Predictably.

“No, all is ready.” Second Wife turned her back and clapped her hands, ostensibly to call the children. In truth, she couldn’t
bare to look at her husband’s eyes, to see the joy in them that Cripple’s safe return brought.

“Cripple,” Husband said, “how was your day? Did you get the job?”

“Of course, Husband. Did I not tell you I would?” She laughed. “I have already begun; that is why I am so late.”

“Ah. What are your duties? What is the American like?”

The children, who always claimed to be starving this time of the day, were crowding around Cripple instead of the food pots. “Yes, tell us,” they said in one voice.

“The American is as tall as a papaya tree, and her hair is as soft as the threads of green corn. But her eyes—they are the color of water, with maybe just a hint of sky reflected in them.”

The children’s gasps of pleasure annoyed Second Wife immensely. They were forever begging their other
baba
for her silly stories. Well, Second Wife could tell such stories too, if she had time to think. But who had time to think when there was always so much work to be done?”

“And the job?” Husband said.

“Oh Husband, I think you will be disappointed in me, because I am not her housekeeper.”

“
Kah
,” Husband said, “that is indeed surprising news. But I am not disappointed in you. It is the American woman who disappoints. Clearly she has no vision.”

“Do not be hasty to judge her, Husband. I am not her housekeeper because—instead—I am her assistant.”

“Her assistant!” Husband roared with laughter. “Do you joke with me?”

“I am telling you the truth. She said that a mind such as mine would be wasted on the tasks of a housekeeper. I am to be trained to use a typewriter and a sewing machine!”

“A mind like yours,” Second Wife muttered, “is not deserving of such an honor.”

Unfortunately Husband had ears as sharp as a jackal’s. “What did you say?”

“I said that the food is ready.”

“Yes,” Cripple said, “it is time to eat.”

Second Wife felt her cheeks burning with anger. How dare the woman come to her defense. It was nothing more than a ploy, a way to keep Husband convinced that his first wife was as generous of spirit as everyone believed she was—everyone, that is, except for Second Wife. Cripple was a fraud who manipulated others with her disability. The time would come, and soon, when Husband would see through her and discard her like a cracked gourd. Second Wife was sure of that.

The Nigerian felt strangely happy. The fish had given him energy, and last night he’d made
two
important discoveries, not just the one he’d anticipated. And all because of bats.

At first he’d been confused, mistaking the bats for swallows. But when he realized his mistake, he remembered that bats often live in caves and so there must be a cave nearby. He paid closer attention to their movements and was astonished to see that they appeared to emerge from behind the waterfall.

How could that be? The water was coming down with such force that the spray stung his face and chest. The Nigerian scrambled over slippery boulders, trying to catch the last of the dying light. At least there weren’t any crocodiles to worry about going in this direction.

The roar of the falls was so loud that it seemed to suppress his other senses. It wasn’t until the Nigerian gave up on the cave, and had turned his back to the onslaught, that he felt the cool breath of air against his neck.

For Senhora Branca Violante Cunha e Mao de Ferro de Sintra e Santos Abreu e Nunez, early morning was the best part of the day.
Fortune had smiled on the Nunez family the day they were given their housing assignment. All the houses suitable for Europeans were company owned, of course—the Consortium owned
everything
. Invariably the best houses were given to mining officials according to rank. Cezar Nunez, as the new manager of the Bell Vue grocery, was at the bottom of the hierarchy.

But the Vice President in Charge of Operations had recently retired to Belgium. His now vacant mansion was built on the edge of the breathtakingly beautiful gorge that had given rise to the town’s name. His replacement had four small children and a wife who was paranoid that her children would climb over the low stone wall that enclosed the patio and tumble to their deaths. The wife happily settled for the only other empty house, which was located in the heart of town. Would the Nunez family be willing to live on the gorge?

As she sat there savoring her second cup of coffee and listening to the roar of the falls, Branca couldn’t think of a sillier question. Both the house and its setting were the kind of things that only movie stars or crooked politicians ever got to enjoy.

She paused from her reveries to proofread the invitation she had just written. If its recipient understood her attempt at English and responded in the affirmative, then they would be having drinks together in the club restaurant on Thursday at four. If she accepted Branca’s invitation, the American would unwittingly kill two birds with one stone. For one thing, Branca could use a new friend—no, be honest. Make that
any
friend. But to be friends with a missionary, maybe then the vicious tongues would stop wagging.

The self-righteous Belgian hausfraus had always thought they were too good for her, even before the rumor started. And what made them so special? They were only the wives of the white-collar mine workers. Instead of shoveling gravel, their husbands shuffled paper, or sorted diamonds. Yet these women had the te
merity to look down upon Branca simply because she was Portuguese.

Portuguese. The word was more often than not hurled as an epithet amongst the Belgians, especially the Flemish speakers. It was like calling someone a nigger in the United States. True, the Congo was a Belgian colony, but if not for the Portuguese explorers, there wouldn’t even be a European presence in the Congo. At least not to this extent.

Branca’s many times great-grandfather on her mother’s side, Joao Albergeheria e Mao de Ferro, had been an apprentice navigator on one of Vasco de Gama’s voyages. Her father’s family descended from minor nobility. Branca herself was red-haired and blue-eyed, the legacy of some Celtic ancestors who’d settled in the north of Portugal centuries ago. She certainly did not deserve to be classified as barely above a mulatto—unofficially, of course. But it may as well have been officially, given that both she and her husband were treated like lepers.

Satisfied with the accuracy of her invitation, Branca sealed the envelope before ringing one of the two little brass bells next to her. Immediately the head houseboy appeared at the doorway. His snappy uniform was so much more attractive than anything worn by the Belgians’ servants.

“Yes,
senhora?
”

“Please deliver this to the American guesthouse. Make sure that the American woman, Mademoiselle Brown, gets it. Under no circumstances should that pushy housekeeper get it. As a matter of fact, wait for the reply and then ask for the original note back.”

“But
senhora
, there are many variables. What if—”

“Francois Joseph, do you value your job?” For Branca it was a rhetorical question. Francois was an
évolué
, a man dedicated to the pursuit of evolving into the special class of educated Africans who would someday rule his country or, at the very least, shed his
past as an ignorant bush person. To that end, the man had abandoned his birth name, answering only to his baptismal name.

The fact that Francois wished to emulate the ways of European civilization made him an excellent houseboy. He studied table settings, memorized recipes, and because he’d worked for more than one European, the keenly observant man was more cognizant of what went into running a proper household than was the
senhora
herself. That’s why he’d been promoted to head houseboy three years ago.

“Yes,
madame
, I value my job.”

Branca dismissed him with only the slightest of nods.

Husband hadn’t slept at all. Cripple was snoring softly on one side of him, but even without checking to see if Second Wife’s eyes were open, he knew she was staring at the roof of the hut, rigid with anger. It had not always been this way.

When he paid her bride price and brought her to his home, Second Wife had seemed quite happy to be the wife of a witch doctor
and
a man with a cash income. For the first time in her life she could purchase material for new clothes, as well as luxuries such as glass beads and brightly colored scarves. When there was no meat from the forest to be had in the marketplace, Husband bought cans of sardines or dried
makayabo
fish. When the babies started to come, there was a little money to treat them at clinic if need be. (Of course clinic visits were to be kept secret, lest Husband’s reputation as a witch doctor suffer.)

But it had not been possible for Husband to conceal his special fondness for Cripple. It was as if her spirit and his spirit were two halves of the same seed pod. That she wasn’t fertile was no longer important, now that Second Wife was producing heirs. Cripple’s mind was fertile, and that pleased Husband greatly.

Yet even as he rejoiced in having Cripple, it pained Husband that Second Wife was so unhappy. He could see her point; Crip
ple did next to nothing to relieve Second Wife of the burden of caring for seven children
and
maintaining the manioc plot. Although now that Cripple had a job, things would surely change for the better.

Husband was not about to sell the manioc plot, which had been in his family for generations, but he would look into the possibility of hiring another woman to do the work, instead of Second Wife. And if what he had in his pocket turned out to be what he suspected it was, he might even be able to hire an entire village full of women to help Second Wife.

It was not going to be a simple matter, however, to sell what Baby Boy had found in the field. The mining Consortium owned the mineral rights to all of the land on the Belle Vue side of the river, a strip twenty miles long and ten miles wide. How the Consortium had come by these rights was a moot point; the Belgium government enforced their claim, and that’s all that mattered. Any African found panning for diamonds, or even just fishing along that bank of the river, was subject to a harsh reprimand.

The land on the village side of the river was another situation altogether. Although the Consortium claimed the strip immediately adjacent to the water and extending for a hundred yards inland, they did not mine there. But that was only because few diamonds had ever been found on that side of the river. Still, the Consortium was not about to turn the land over to the Africans, in case the land ever yielded the precious stones. In what the Belgians thought was a generous move, Africans were allowed use of the shore for fishing, bathing, voiding, and for acquiring drinking water.

The manioc plot was at least half a mile from the river, but Husband knew that anybody willing to buy Baby Boy’s discovery would naturally assume that the gem had been found on the Belle Vue side of the river. Such an assumption would undoubtedly lead to imprisonment, and probably severe beatings as well. Even if
Husband journeyed to another city, selling the stone would be fraught with danger. Where had he gotten such a thing? Had he stolen it? If no, then where had he found it?

Therefore until the enormous diamond could be sold, it was worth no more to Husband and his family than a piece of gravel. In fact, it was worth even less. At least a pebble that large could be used to give a stray dog a good thwack on the ribs.

If
—and it would be a huge gamble—Husband could broach the subject with a trusted European, one who might even be considered a friend, and speak hypothetically about such a stone, then perhaps some useful piece of information might be forthcoming. If, after this conversation, even a glimmer of hope was offered, Husband would bury the diamond until such time as it was appropriate to act. If, however, there was absolutely no chance that the stone could be sold for a vast sum, then, in the dark of night, Husband would cast the stone into the gorge, and it would never again be seen by human eyes. No hole that Husband could dig would ever be deep enough to permanently hide something this valuable—especially from himself.

His heart pounding, Husband was the first to rise from the family sleeping mat.

C
ezar Nunez cursed softly as he fumbled with the keys, trying to find the right one for the Yale lock that kept the groceries in his store safe from two-legged predators at night. There was a watchman, of course, an old man with a bowed jaw, who claimed to have fallen from the top of a palm tree while harvesting palm nuts. The fellow had come with the store, so to speak, and although he spent his nights drinking palm wine and dozing, Cezar had no intention of sacking him—or anyone else for that matter.

It was his head clerk, Kweta Daniel, who deserved a dressing-down. Kweta, he’d been assured, was 100 percent trustworthy, and as punctual as a Brussels streetcar. So far, in the three months
since he’d taken over the Grand Market, Cezar had seen no reason to question the African’s honesty. But if this is the way Brussels streetcars ran, then it was no wonder the Belgians had been such pushovers during the war.

Damn that man! He was supposed to open the doors to customers at half past seven on the dot, and it was already a quarter to nine. At the very least, if he was ill, Kweta should have sent a runner with a note, in which case Cezar would have opened the damn store himself. If this happened again, then Cezar’s job might well be on the line. In the meantime, he had no choice but to deal with one very unhappy customer.

“Monsieur Nunez,” the operations manager’s wife said, murdering the pronunciation of a fine Portuguese name, “my husband wished to have milk with his morning coffee. We were out of it, so I sent the boy to buy some. He came back empty-handed, of course. I sent him back and again he returned with nothing. My husband was furious that he had to report to his office without his coffee. So here I am to sort things out. Why are you just now opening the store?”

The operations manager—OP behind his back (the P stood for
pissant
)—was the highest-ranking Consortium executive in the field. Since the entire town was owned by the Consortium, and everyone in it employed by the same (as were the inhabitants of the village across the river), the OP was nothing less than a dictator. As a person, the OP seemed fairly decent, so Cezar preferred to think of him as a benevolent dictator—or maybe just a king, who ruled without divine will.

“Madame, I am deeply sorry, and I apologize for your inconvenience.”

“Monsieur Nunez, have you been up all night drinking?”

“No, madame.”

“Then why are your hands shaking?”

“Uh—it’s exceptionally cool out this morning?”

“Are you asking me?”

“No, madame.”

“Here, give me those keys.”

“Certainly, madame.”

During the handover, Madame OP leaned close and sniffed. “You drunken swine,” she hissed softly.

Cezar Nunez had no choice but to endure the indignity. It hadn’t always been this way, Cezar licking the boots of Northern Europeans like he was a dog whose job it was to clean up their spilled porridge. When he married Branca, the most beautiful woman in Portugal, the young groom had been one of the richest men in the country—at least his father was. If things had gone right—well, they hadn’t. The bulk of the family fortune had been made from owning a German munitions factory. When that factory was nationalized in the mid-thirties, shortly after his son’s marriage, Cezar’s father fell into a deeply depressed state and committed suicide.

Left with just a small tire-producing factory in Lisbon, the younger Nunez—with his wife’s encouragement, it must be noted—gambled everything on a career as a retailer in the Belgian Congo. During the war years, it appeared to be a good investment, and Cezar and Branca started a family. When the children reached school age, they were sent to Portugal, returning to visit during the long school break, at which time their parents lavished affection upon them. For a while everyone was happy. But then for reasons Cezar could not explain, the chain of small stores that sold dry goods to Africans began to fail, one by one.

It felt like a curse had fallen on the Nunez family. In less than one generation their fortune had dwindled to nothing, and now this. The former heir to immense wealth and privilege was working as manager in someone
else’s
store, and a Belgian hausfrau was accusing him of being drunk, whereas he hadn’t had as much as a sip of wine since dinner the night before.

Somehow
, someday soon, Cezar Nunez was going to stick it to the bitch, and everyone like her. Either he’d find a way, or die trying.

The morning after she’d hired Cripple, Amanda was up bright and early. She couldn’t wait to see her newest employee again. Perhaps today she would ask Cripple to take her on a tour of the village—oh my, she should have done that yesterday. It would be downright inconsiderate to ask a handicapped woman—a cripple at that—to walk back up that horribly steep hill. Unless—she could walk Cripple home
after
work. That was it!

Amanda chased the last bite of scrambled eggs around on her plate with the last bite of toast. Then she savored her last sip of coffee. Protruding Navel was a presumptuous, irritating man, but he was also a fabulous cook. If only he wasn’t forever popping up out of nowhere. You couldn’t even think about him without the risk of—and there he was now!

“Mamu Ugly Eyes,” he said in Tshiluba, having glided into the room completely unnoticed, “there is someone here to see you.”

Amanda cringed. How fast that horrible name had spread. She should have been more emphatic yesterday to Cripple. Well, she hadn’t, and it was too late now.

“Cripple is here, yes?”

“No,
mamu
, it is another African. A man.”

“What does he want?”

“He will not say. Only that he must speak with you in person. But I have seen this man before. I believe that he works for the Portuguese woman whose house you see across the gorge.”

Amanda folded her napkin into quarters and placed it on the table before rising. Without having to ask, she knew where to find her visitor. Whites used the front door, Africans the back—with, of course, the exception of Cripple. It was an unwritten rule here,
but hard and fast nonetheless. In fact, it was not that much different from the way things worked in South Carolina.

The staff at the language and orientation school in Brussels had tried to prepare the young American for just about any situation she was likely to encounter in the Congo. Unfortunately, not a word had been said about the possibility that Amanda might even find one of the Congolese physically attractive. It was all Amanda could do to keep her eyes on the man’s face, just above the bridge of his nose.

“Yes?”

“Mademoiselle Ugly Eyes, here is a message from my employer, Senhora Nunez.”

The visitor spoke in French. Good for him. But from now on, Amanda would only speak Tshiluba to the Africans—unless, of course, she knew for a fact that they couldn’t speak this major trade language.

“How did you know my name?” she asked.

The messenger’s eyes widened and he laughed. “So, you speak our language.”

“You sound surprised.”

“
Mamu
, none of the white women in Belle Vue speak our language. Maybe just a few words, which they shout at their servants, and all of which they pronounce badly.”

“And the white men?”

“That is different. Some of them speak our language very well. That is because they must work with uneducated villagers who do not speak French. Perhaps a few Portuguese speak it as well. I think they pick it up from their mistresses.”

“Their
what?
I don’t understand the word.”

“The women who are not their wives. We say ‘mistresses.’ Now do you understand?”

Amanda could feel the blood pour into her cheeks, undoubtedly turning them a bright pink. “Yes, I understand. Now please
tell me how it is that everyone knows my name is Ugly Eyes. Was it from my assistant, Cripple?”

“I do not know,
mamu
, for I heard it from my wife, who heard it from our neighbor. But we have a saying in the village: whisper your secrets only in the privy, but know that even those walls can hear you.”