Читать книгу The Amputated Memory - Marjolijn de Jager - Страница 13

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I became unhappy about not being a man. A man is free. He shows up, makes decisions, gives orders, and women and children obey. The women stay, and the men leave. And like you, Father, I wanted to leave, to leave with you.

Our oldest brother went away with Grand Pa Helly to be treated by the Pygmies. When they brought him back they said he was better, although we didn’t know what had ailed him. It occurred to me that it might have been a trick to teach the boys all sorts of different things and let the girls stupidly slave away in the kitchen without even allowing them to eat what they felt like eating. Men could eat snakes, turtles, crocodiles, even cats, while the women had to make do with leaves and manioc tubers. It’s no surprise, then, that they’re not smart enough to deserve going elsewhere.

It did, indeed, seem to me that my brother had become smarter than my sisters and myself—since he was back from the Pygmies he knew an awful lot! First of all, he now had a room all to himself in our aunt’s house. He had widened a hole in the wall between his bedroom and that of Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez. He invited us in, my little sister and me, supposedly to tell us about his Pygmy adventures. But in reality he wanted us to help him with his newest activity. Trembling, he would look through the hole, then put his ear right on it and with his mouth reproduce the noises we could hear—it was a kind of swallowing sound made by a mouth holding too much saliva. Then he asked us to play flood barrier—pulling up our dresses and standing with our legs apart, rolling our behinds around—while he reproduced the same sound.

I would have never dreamed up such a game by myself. It’s certainly very clever, but I don’t care for it. No matter how much I rack my brains, I can’t associate that horrible sound with anything I know. It must be something my brother saw at the Pygmies, something that only boys can see, since he refuses to let us have even a glance. True, I’m not a boy, but I swear I’ll take a look through that hole some day when my brother is not there to make us foolishly roll our behinds around with our pagnes bunched up while he makes mysterious sounds with his mouth.

Unfortunately, he is always there when the noise begins. “When will I become a boy?” I ask Grand Pa Helly. He just laughs.

Time passes, and now we accompany Grand Madja as often as possible to make real flood barriers. Once there, we obstruct the brook’s flow with a main dam made with the trunks of dead trees, branches, and mud we’ve dug up from the banks with hoes. We actually do bunch up our pagnes and dresses. We open our legs, arch our back, and begin to let the water pass between our legs over the little secondary dams, while we roll our hips to the beat of songs and drums. “A koum a koum, a koum ndam ndam koum, koum hitok hi koum, ndam ndam!” Tirelessly, we sing without stopping until all the water is gone and we catch the fish, crabs, and crayfish hiding underneath the mud and roots.

No men are ever present at this fishing trip or at our dance, a dance that is strictly reserved for women. It’s all about who rolls her hips the prettiest, who can keep the beat the longest and best while tossing out the water. It is so beautiful! I love fishing and dancing this way, and I’m surprised that my brother, who is a man, would even know about it. How did he manage that? Could he possibly be spying on the women the way he spies on Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez? I wouldn’t like that at all. I have to conclude that men, before they become men, obviously learn women’s things first. Soon I will, too, without any doubt.

One day my brother asks us a favor: He’d like us to hold him tightly between our legs. Why? He tells us that if we go along with him he’ll let us look through the hole. But then he warns us that it’s dangerous; we might become men. My sister has no desire to become a man, but I certainly do! I agree to lie under him and squeeze him any way he wants as long as he lets me look first. After some lengthy negotiations he consents. We wait for the appropriate day. When he notices the sound of the floodwater and calls us to his room immediately, my sister and I rush to the hole. Aunt Roz is thumping against her husband, who is burying himself between her legs. She lets out screams that he stifles by sticking his tongue in her mouth. My word, he makes her swallow his saliva! I feel like retching. Ratez rises and turns her over, white foam covering the hair on his lower belly. There’s not enough time for me to turn around before a spurt of vomit escapes from my throat, and my brother drops the clump of earth that he’s rigged up to close the hole. Uncle Ratez catches sight of us and screams with fury.

They gave all three of us a terrible spanking, sprinkled chili pepper between our legs, and made us lie down on a mat in the sun. My brother growls: “You saw, didn’t you? It’s all your fault, you little witch! Couldn’t you have been quiet at least, like your little sister? No, of course not, you always have to stand out with your outrageous reactions, and always at the wrong moment. Now we won’t be able to watch anymore.”

“So much the better! What’s wrong with you, how can you stand looking at such ugliness,” I say to him, sincerely shaken and profoundly disgusted.

He looks at me with as much surprise as anger. He’s really very upset with me, and I don’t know why. If his jet black eyes were swords they’d slice me in two.

“You idiot! What’s your problem? Honestly, I wonder if you’re really a girl and will ever become a woman. If so, you’ll never have any flood lands between your legs for others to go fishing in! Stay away from me and leave me alone.”

I feel his attack on me as an unfair rejection and something inside me closes up.

“If that’s what it means to be a woman, then I’m very glad not to be one. I don’t want any foaming floodwaters between my legs or any of your saliva in my mouth. I’ll never have you on me, and you’d better not talk to me anymore either, you nasty boy.”

We stay cold with each other until an uncle comes to pick him up. Still, when we see him disappear around the curve in the road, my little sister and I weep bitter tears. He was sure to learn things, whatever they might be, to surpass us once again with further knowledge. But I console myself by saying that there are some things I’d rather not know. Never again would our relationship be close enough to talk about our private lives, in spite of my spontaneous outbursts and the efforts I’d make, although Aunt Roz claimed that men are quick to forget what they don’t like, while most women never forget what has hurt them.

Actually, if it were only my brother and my aunt’s husband Ratez, I would have lost any desire to become a man. But there was my father—far away and yet so close, so strong and brilliant—who always knew how to impress not only women but everyone else, too, except Grand Pa! Even Grand Madja and Aunt Roz couldn’t stop getting together on Sundays to talk about him as if it were a second worship service. They would admire his photos, complain about his escapades and whims, but always regret his absence and pray to God to protect “their man” and bring him home soon. The other three mamas would come and join the conversation. Their chattering was interspersed with what was to me very irritating, wild laughter, as they rambled on about his great exploits. In a peculiar blend of pride and resentment that only brought the man more honor, they would tell and retell the tales of his seductive arts and his epic fights with their parents or former husbands.

But the person who most inspired my wish to be a man was Grand Pa Helly himself.

Although he was quite old, his tall, slender, and muscular body was always half naked, while the women were forced to be wrapped in layer upon layer of cumbersome pagnes. He exuded freedom, nobility, and wisdom. People came from far away to consult him, and his words were scrupulously heeded.

I am Grand Madja’s namesake and, as custom has it, I’m also her double, so that Grand Pa Helly is “my husband.” He converses with me in the same way he does with my grandmother. He tells me things I think I understand. He takes me with him into the bush to reset traps, collect game, cut willowy rattan, and look for medicinal plants. When we come home he tells me he’s hungry, reminds me that I’m his wife and should prepare his meal. I rush over to my little cooking pots, crush some sand, kaolin, herbs, use oil to make a mixture, and pick fruit. Lovingly I serve him, and he has a feast. Was he a magician or did he actually eat my dishes? It remains a complete mystery.

In any case, with him you don’t talk about other people as you do with women. He and I talk about ourselves, the earth, and the sky. He knows the constellations and shows them to me, and every night he asks me to find and name them: Ngwén Hônd, or Ax Handle; Bon ba nyû, or the Orphans; Hiôrôt hi honk, or Southern Star; Hiôrôt hi gno mbock, or Northern Star; Makas ma anè, the Pillars of Power; and many more.

To him I reveal my desire to become a man like he is.

“For what purpose? You’ll never need that. You are a complete being, better than a man, better than a woman, and you should thank the Creator.”

“Does that mean you don’t want to be my husband anymore?”

“No, it means there’ll be moments when I’m your wife, and you’re my husband.”

I don’t quite see how, but for now I’m the happiest woman on earth because I’m his wife.

• • •

It is the women of my clan who manufacture macho men. They always want their man to be the tallest, the most feared, the most handsome, the most respected, “the most, most, and most”!

My husband covers distances in a day that it takes others five days to cross. When he comes back he’s carrying merchandise that five men would have trouble lifting: six tubs of shea oil, four bags of mpum peanuts, four bags of sweet massô yams, fowl, pigs, and sheep. All of it is suspended from two long poles he balances on his shoulders. . . .

When Grand Pa Helly returns from his maternal uncles, everyone comes running. When he speaks, everyone listens. They whisper that he doesn’t walk on his feet, but that his spirit carries him on its wings. I ask him to confirm what they say. As is his wont, he bursts into crystalline laughter, looks at me tenderly, and says: “That’s a good one. Actually, it’s less tiring for old bones to take advantage of the wings of the spirit and, besides, it obviously is faster to fly than to trot around on aged legs, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do. But, tell me, then, can women fly as well, is that allowed?”

“Whatever the case may be, you, my little wife, are allowed to take any flight you can muster by yourself.”

With a husband such as this, you don’t feel a great need to be a man anymore. I’m beginning to appreciate being a woman; the only problem is food restrictions and all the other taboos imposed on women. I, for one, don’t like manioc leaves. I confess this to my husband.

He then simply and secretly puts my share of snake, cat, or turtle aside for me. He keeps me company while I’m enjoying my treat so that no one will suspect or mistreat me. Not a soul would ever dare think that he might violate any taboo for my sake alone. There’s absolutely no reason anymore to want to be a man; I am a woman, I know and do man’s things, I am fine.

Still, inside me there’s the awful memory of the battle between the legs, floodwaters and foam, the saliva of others; but a strong sense of modesty overcomes me every time I think of it and I can’t talk to my husband about this. So I decide to watch and see how he acts with my namesake.

I discover that they’re always underneath white sheets, gently swaying face to face, as if welded together. They caress each other’s neck, they murmur sweet things, they call each other’s name, and they breathe together in the same rhythm, first fast, then gently, very gently. Afterward they talk for a long time, about the past, about today and tomorrow and beyond. I always fall asleep before they do, even though I really want to listen to the end. In any event, I can’t hear very much because they speak so quietly, sometimes muttering, sometimes whispering. When they talk they seem eternal.

I’m grateful they don’t fight. My husband doesn’t make my grandmother cry, he makes her murmur. And in the morning everything is tidy: not a trace of foam anywhere. I really am very lucky: My husband is a “most, most, and most.” “When I’m big enough to have another husband, one of my very own, he has to be another ‘most and most,’ and my sons, too,” I say to myself.

Sadly, now that I’m willing to grow up, I’ll probably die without any man close to me. Very few men accept having great women beside them. Those who are daring or crazy enough to want it often pay for it very dearly: They become the laughing stock of others and end up living outside the mainstream. I console myself by remembering that between Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez and their noise in the dammed-up floodwater, and Grand Madja with her husband Helly in their sweet whisperings, there is no middle road that I find acceptable. Merely a recollection of refusal or total abandon, no more, no less. I also console myself with the thought that this way there won’t be any man to see me completely decrepit when I’m about to die. You can only die nobly when you are alone, and do so quickly, in a blinding moment that leaves no time for self-pity.