Confession of the Lioness

Mariamar’s Version: EIGHT. Blood of a Beast, a Woman’s Tear

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.

Genito speaking to the lioness? Something about the story sounds false to me. But I have long ceased trying to find any truth in this world. I want to speak. A cavernous, incomprehensible voice emerges from my throat. Maliqueto asks, alarmed:

What did you say?

I haven’t said anything. When I try to repeat it more clearly, I can confirm once more that I have lost the ability to speak. But this time it’s different: From now on, there will be no more words. This is my last speech, my final piece of writing. And what I leave here is written with the blood of a beast and a woman’s tear: I was the one who killed these women, one by one. I am the vengeful lioness. My sworn commitment will remain, without respite, without fatigue: I shall eliminate all the remaining women there are, until only men are left in this weary world, a desert of solitary males. With no women, with no children, the human race will end.

A match devoured by fire, that’s how I see the future. The sky will follow humanity’s example: It will wither away as barren as me. And no river will shelter on its banks the dead bodies of children. For there will be no more children born. Until the gods become women again, no one will be born under the light of the sun.

Tonight I shall leave with the lions. From this day on, the villages will quiver at my raucous lament and the owls, in fear, will turn into daytime birds.

For the people of Kulumani, this prophecy will be confirmation of my madness. That I had become like this because I had distanced myself so much from my gods, the ones that bring clouds and summon the rains. That my powers of reason escaped me because I had turned my back on tradition and my ancestors who preserve the peace of our village. But I only obey my fate: I’m going to join my other soul. And I shall never again feel the burden of guilt, as happened the first time I killed someone. At that stage, I was still too much of a person. I suffered from that human illness known as conscience. Now there is no more room for remorse. Because, when I reflect clearly on it, I never killed anyone. All those women were already dead. They didn’t speak, they didn’t think, they didn’t love, they didn’t dream. What was the point of living if they couldn’t be happy?

For the same reason, years before, I killed my little sisters. I was the one who drowned the twins. Everyone thinks it was a boating accident, but it was I who sabotaged the craft and pushed it out into the waves of the sea. It was much better that these little girls were never allowed to grow up. For they would only ever have felt alive in pain, in blood, and in tears. Until one day they would get down on their knees and beg their own executioners for forgiveness. Just as I begged Genito Mpepe all these years.

It was I who led Silência to death’s door on that fatal morning. She was my sister, my friend. More than this, she was my other self. For her, however, jealousy was always an insurmountable obstacle. Silência always wanted to be me, to live like I lived, to love whoever I loved. My sister always appropriated my dreams. That’s what happened with Bullseye, the hunter. I soon regretted telling her of my encounters with the visitor. For she accused me of distorting the situation, as if that story belonged to her. Deep down, she was tormented by jealousy. For she didn’t have enough soul in herself to invent another life. She was dead from fear. That’s why when she stopped living, she didn’t die.

* * *

I’m coming to the end. Every end is a beginning, Adjiru Kapitamoro used to say. But not this end. This is the final conclusion, the collapse of the very last skies. I only have one unaccomplished wish left: to go and see the ocean again. Maybe that’s why, as I feel myself falling asleep into my last human slumber, the same dream invades me. The sea crashing onto the beach, birds of foam fluttering through the air, and Archangel Bullseye this time awakening from the sleep of a drowned man and taking me far from Kulumani, to that place where mirages dwell and journeys are born.