Confession of the Lioness

The Hunter’s Diary: SIX. The Reencounter

Tandi is buried early in the morning. There aren’t many people at her funeral. Most of them are women. The administrator puts in an appearance, accompanied by his wife. The deceased was, after all, their maid. The absence of her boss would provoke suspicion in the village. In contrast to her husband, Naftalinda looks shattered. At one point she tries to make a speech. But her sobs prevent her from speaking. She composes herself, wipes away her tears, and gradually assumes a pose of majestic grandeur:

The lions are besieging the village and the men continue to send the women out to look after the allotments, continue to send their daughters and wives to collect firewood and water in the early morning. When are we going to say no? When there are none of us left?

She hoped the other women would respond to her invitation to rebel. But they shrug their shoulders and walk off, one by one. The First Lady is the last woman to abandon the ceremony. Deep inside her, she feels like the very last woman. Just as I feel like the last hunter.

* * *

When the service is over, Florindo comes up to me to announce that rifles will arrive the following day.

You’re going to have reinforcements.

I don’t need any. All I need is me. Keep the weapons for something else. To combat poachers, for example.

Maliqueto and Genito are going to get weapons and will be under your command.

I’m not going to command anyone. If you want to form another team, that’s fine. But what I’ve got to do, I shall do by myself.

The discussion gets more heated. Those present move away as a sign of disapproval. This is not the appropriate time or place. But the administrator is too excited:

Do you realize the political risk I’m taking? That I staked everything on this hunting expedition for my promotion? What is it you want me to do, to get involved in other procedures?

The writer draws us away, far from the church. It’s he who resumes the conversation:

I don’t understand, my dear Makwala. What do you mean by “other procedures”?

To tell you the truth, the administrator replies, I’m beginning to have my doubts about these lions. Because they come into the village, even during the day, and their intentions are almost human …

The writer laughs, but Florindo doesn’t give up: These animals are looking for someone, sniffing around doors, they are killing to order. They can only be fabricated lions: Why else would they not eat the poisoned meat left out for them before as bait? And why did they tear up clothes left out on the clotheslines?

You can be sure of this: No true lion would behave like this, the administrator concludes emphatically.

* * *

When we get back to our quarters, I prepare lunch. The writer is in the living room, working. I notice he keeps peering at my chaotic papers. I don’t care anymore. I also read his notebooks and even steal the odd sentence of his. On the other hand, I’m beginning to get a somewhat tardy taste for writing. Something about the act of writing suggests the pleasure of hunting to me: In the emptiness of the page, there are infinite shocks and surprises concealed.

I serve Gustavo his lunch and fill his glass. The writer begins to feel uncomfortable with such ceremony. During our meal, neither of us exchanges a word. Afterward, I go to my room and return with a rifle that I throw abruptly into his arms.

What’s this, Archie?

It’s yours. The rifle is all yours.

Please, Archie, what the hell do I want with this filthy weapon?

I raise the palm of my hand as a sign for him to listen, without any interruptions.

Do you remember what happened that night when Hanifa called us? Do you remember how I hesitated to pull the trigger?

The writer places the weapon on the floor with the utmost care, as if he were handling an explosive device. I wait for him to finish this delicate operation before going on:

Some days ago, Gustavo, you wanted to know which hand I used to shoot. Well, I use neither the right nor the left hand. I no longer shoot.

I don’t understand.

My fingers don’t obey me anymore — my fingers have died. The truth is this: I can no longer hunt.

I hold my arms up high, displaying my fingers, which are crooked like old hooks. The writer is lost for words. I have come across as being so sincere, so vanquished, that he can’t come to terms with seeing his image of me crumble before his eyes.

I’ve lost my hands, I conclude, defeated.

I observe my hands as if I’d never seen them before, as if they were completely strange. In exactly the same way as my brother Roland had contemplated his useless body in the hospital.

Don’t tell anyone, I beg in a whisper.

No one will know, Gustavo assures me. Then he asks: Forgive me, but wouldn’t it be better to accept the administrator’s offer and hunt with the help of Genito and Maliqueto?

Never.

I don’t understand. So who is going to kill the lions?

You.

How?

You’re the one who’s going to kill them.

You’re crazy!

I’ll lead you, don’t worry. At the precise moment, all you have to do is pull the trigger.

I expected the man to be more obdurate and refuse flat-out. But Gustavo Regalo seems to be pondering. Maybe the writer is beginning to yield to a surreptitious desire. He picks up the gun, weighs it in his hands, and aims at an imaginary target.

Do you think I could hit the creature? he asks.

There’s a glimmer of a new emotion in the writer’s soul. There’s the beginning of an almost infantile enthusiasm. And I think: Everything that we have carefully built over centuries in order to remove ourselves from our animal nature, everything that language has covered over with metaphors and euphemisms (our arms, our faces, our waists), in one instant can be converted back to its naked, brutish substance: flesh, blood, bone. The lion doesn’t just devour people. It devours our very humanity.

And if I miss? Gustavo wants to know.

Don’t worry, my dear writer. I’m not giving you the gun to kill the lion. It’s more for you to defend me.

* * *

I hope the writer will defend me. It looks as if he’s already started defending someone: He has sent a report to the central government criticizing Florindo’s inertia with regard to the rape of Tandi.

Have you spoken to Naftalinda? I ask.

It was she in fact who asked me to denounce this crime. And Hanifa, the maid, also came to me: She maintained that it was her husband, Genito Mpepe, who was in charge of the gang of rapists.

Do you trust what Hanifa says after that episode the other night?

Genito Mpepe himself confessed he was in the mvera leading those fiends.

My dream about the lions in the church springs to my mind. And I remember Father Amoroso’s strange prophecy: You haven’t come to hunt lions. You’ve come to kill a person!

* * *

Tandi’s funeral, so simple and poorly attended, worried me more than I could have imagined. I wasn’t allowed to attend the funerals of my mother and father. I wasn’t the right age. I don’t know whether there’s a right age to contemplate death. Tandi’s disappearance affected me as if some part of me had been torn away. I had held one of that woman’s bones in my hand. How can I sleep without being visited by ghosts?

The ceiling slowly gains density and I slip into a rare and mellow state of sleepiness. On that border between wakefulness and slumber, that’s when I see my sister-in-law enter my room, with the wariness of a shadow. I’m dreaming, and I don’t want to leave my dream. Luzilia emerges from the mist, Luzilia creeps through the house, Luzilia slips into my sleeping quarters. Beautiful, sweet-smelling, suggestive. She seizes the rifle and begins to dance with it. She caresses the weapon as if acquiring life from it. I sit there motionless, and follow her sinuous insinuations. The woman brushes the barrel of the rifle across her face as she stares at me, weighing me up with her eyes.

Be careful, it’s loaded! I warn her.

I know, that’s why I’m dancing with it.

All dances are like this one, dangerous, almost fatal, the nurse adds. We start off in the arms of life, and end up dancing with death.

Her lips kiss the trigger and then she sucks the barrel lasciviously. Her eyes remain fixed on mine. But I sit there, cold and distant. It’s well known: There’s a time to love and there’s a time to hunt. The two never mix. If I were to give in, I would be betraying an age-old tradition: When one is hunting, one cannot have sex.

Don’t you see, Archie? I’m the lame serpent …

Then I understand: The woman wanted to take possession of my soul. To my astonishment, Luzilia begins to take off her clothes, her body emerging leisurely and voluptuous. The light that bathes her gives her a moonlit air of unreality. She approaches, turns her back, and leans against me, impressing upon me her bodily curves. The ice turns to boiling water in my heart: I unravel, excited to the marrow, unable to speak, my fire quickened.

Have you nothing to say, my little Archangel? she asks.

What she asks is too hard a task. I am the hostage of temptation: When I try to speak, I lose my throat; when I try to touch her, my fingers fail me. Exactly as happened while hunting, in love too I am no longer in control of my body. All that I can utter is an inarticulate puff:

Say, me?

All at once she faces me. Her mouth, her teeth, her tongue, everything in her joins forces to extract my soul. And I almost die at long last, plunging into the abyss of sleep.

* * *

I awaken with a jolt and walk along the hall when the first shreds of light herald the new morning. I pass the writer, who announces point-blank:

A woman has just left here.

A woman? What woman?

I don’t know, I’ve never met her before. She arrived from Maputo, she’s come looking for you. She says her name is Luzilia.

Luzilia?

Impassive on the surface, a volcano within me: Here I am, caught by surprise like an ambushed animal. In my outward air I am serene, but within me I am running impetuously, an adolescent succumbing to temptation. And I can already feel Luzilia’s body next to mine, already am absorbed in her groans and her sighs. It isn’t just the fulfillment of a dream I am seeking, but the healing of a wound caused by rejection.

An hour later, Luzilia returns. She greets me with a kiss on the cheek that almost brushes my lips. She pats her face, scratched by the rough brush of my unshaven chin. I feel her breasts touching my chest, and we remain like that for a moment or two.

I knew you’d come.

Liar. I didn’t even know myself.

So how’s my brother?

It’s because of him that I’m here. Your brother … I don’t know how to tell you …

Has he died?

No, not yet.

Not yet?

Roland wants you to return to Maputo as quickly as you can. There are things he wants to tell you before he dies.

I need one more day. Then we can go back together.

Well, then, I’ll go back to Palma, as I’m in a guesthouse there. Meet me there tomorrow.

Don’t go just yet, Luzilia. I want to show you the river. Afterward, I’ll drive you back to Palma.

* * *

From the most prominent bank of the Lideia we contemplate the valley in absolute silence. Only after we have sat down on the granite rocks does the nurse get ready to talk:

There are things I have to tell you. First, about your mother, about her death.

I know what happened. She was ill.

Your mother died of kusungabanga.

Is that the name of an illness?

You could say that. An illness that kills all the others, those who aren’t ill.

At first I didn’t understand. But then Luzilia explained: In the language of Manica, the term kusungabanga means to close with a knife. Before migrating for work, there are men who sew up their wife’s vagina with needle and thread. Many women get infected. In the case of Martina Bullseye, her infection proved fatal.

Roland knew about it. That’s why he killed his father. It wasn’t an accident. He avenged his mother’s death.

* * *

My heart is flooded with anger: My brother had killed my father! And I repeat “my father” to myself as if he were more mine than Roland’s. My accusation gradually gives way to another feeling akin to envy.

Tell me, Luzilia: Can my brother sleep?

Roland sleeps, his wife confirms. How could I remain indifferent? My brother had managed the total exile that I had always coveted. I envied Roland for his madness and his slumber. I envied him for his wife, and the love given him that I never had.

I walk away from Luzilia, over to the cliff to get a better view of the valley. Ever since I arrived in Kulumani, the waters of the river have swollen. In the distant mountains where it rises, it must have begun to rain. The river never sleeps. In this, it’s like me …

Here by the river, I courted a girl …

I use the vague memory like a rapier, moved by the absurd wish to hurt Luzilia. And I continue:

There were two sisters, that’s right, but I can’t remember their names or their faces. I got as far as kissing one of them. But I don’t remember either of them. Maybe if I saw them again …

Men, men! A woman would never forget like that. I bet they remember you.

I admit that at the time I was drinking heavily and even resorted to the liquors they make around here.

So what had you come to do here, in the back of beyond?

I’d come to kill a dangerous crocodile.

And did you succeed?

Do you doubt my skill as a hunter?

You didn’t always catch what you wanted.

I pretend not to hear. I follow the example of feline creatures, who feign distraction before hurling themselves at their prey. I no longer know how to deal with Luzilia except as a hunter.

There’s one thing I don’t understand. Is it true that you understand what Roland is saying in that strange way of talking he has?

Suddenly I realize how close I am to my father’s suspicions when confronting the fidelity of my mother’s letters. My God, how like Henry Bullseye I am! Luzilia is far from my thoughts when she replies:

Don’t forget I’m a nurse. And then I’ve been looking after him for so long! I listen to your brother like someone reading another person’s palm.

Nor should I forget that Roland could make use of the written word. It had always been his weapon, his refuge. From her trousers pocket, Luzilia draws two sheets of paper. She chooses the most crumpled one and gives it to me. It’s a letter from Roland, I recognize the handwriting of the well-behaved, eternal child. I don’t like reading out loud. I feel weak, ridiculous, denuded. For that reason, I read it in an undertone.

My dear brother: I imagine my condition must pain you. I want to tell you that I don’t suffer. On the contrary, I’m happy because I can never again be a Bullseye. I have shed my inherited name with the same pleasure that some widows burn the clothes of their tyrant husband. After that shot, I no longer feared what I had been. No further crime awaits me. I am empty, like only a saint can be. Do you remember what our mother would call us? My angels, that’s what she would say. Here in this asylum, there’s no need for demons or angels. All we have is ourselves, and that’s enough. Yes, I killed our father. I killed him and will kill him again every time he’s reborn. I obey orders. Those orders were given me without the need for any words. It was enough to see my mother’s sad look. Don’t pity me, dear brother. At first, my alibi was madness. Then, it became my absolution. Our mother always warned me: A bullet kills in both directions. When I killed old Bullseye, I committed suicide. Once, after our mother’s death, you said: If only I could die. Well, now I’m telling you. It’s not death that confers absence upon us. The only way to cease existing is to go mad. Only a madman gains vacuity.

Those lines confirmed my age-old suspicion: My brother pretended he was mad. The only truly sick creature was me, with my tormented nights, and my cruel memories of a half-lived past.

Can I ask another question? Did you and my brother ever make love?

Luzilia doesn’t answer. She merely smiles sadly. She unfolds the second sheet and waves it in front of me.

Do you recognize this?

It’s my old letter, that unlucky missive in which, many years ago, I declared my love. Without saying any more, Luzilia walks toward me, her sad smile now taking on an enigmatic air. She kisses me.

Let’s go to Kulumani, let’s go to your room.

We can’t. The writer shares the space with me.

Let’s go to Palma, we’ll be more relaxed there.

We get into the car. Her hand stops me from turning the ignition. And she whispers in my ear:

You were right, this is your last hunt. I’m coming to get you …

We set off in silence, Luzilia’s hand still perched on my arm.

Tonight … And she pauses, seeking the right word.

Yes?

Tonight, make me scared of myself.

I look at the sandy road that unfolds in front of us, with more bends in it than distance, and I think: To live is to wait in hope of what may be lived.