Under African Skies (8 page)

Authors: Charles Larson

BOOK: Under African Skies

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Diouana gave way to her memories. She compared her “native bush” to these dead shrubs. How different from the forest of her home in Casamance. The memory of her village, of the community life, cut her off from the others even more. She bit her lip, sorry to have come. And on this film of the past, a thousand other details were projected.

As she returned to these surroundings, where she was doubly an outsider, her feelings hardened. She thought often of Tive Correa. His predictions had come cruelly true. She would have liked to write to him, but couldn't. Since arriving in France, she had had only two letters from her mother. She didn't have the time to answer, even though Madame had promised to write for her. Was it possible to tell Madame what she was thinking? She was angry with herself. Her ignorance made her mute. It was infuriating. And besides, Mademoiselle had made off with her stamps.

A pleasant idea crossed her mind, though, and raised a smile. This evening only Monsieur was at home, watching television. She decided to take advantage of the opportunity. Then, unexpectedly finding Madame there too, Diouana stopped abruptly and left the room.

“Sold, sold. Bought, bought,” she repeated to herself. “They've bought me. For three thousand francs I do all this work. They lured me, tied me
to them, and I'm stuck here like a slave.” She was determined now. That night she opened her suitcase, looked at the objects in it, and wept. No one cared.

Yet she went through the same motions and remained as sealed off from the others as an oyster at low tide on the beach of her native Casamance.

“Douna”âit was Mademoiselle calling her. Why was it impossible for her to say Di-ou-a-na?

Her anger redoubled. Mademoiselle was even lazier than Madame: “Come take this away”â“There is such-and-such to be done, Douna” “Why don't you do this, Douna?”â“Douna, now and then please rake the garden.” For an answer Mademoiselle would receive an incendiary glance. Madame complained about her to Monsieur.

“What is the matter with you, Diouana? Are you ill or something?” he asked.

She no longer opened her mouth.

“You can tell me what's the matter. Perhaps you'd like to go to Toulon. I haven't had the time to go, but tomorrow I'll take you with me.”

“Anyone would think we disgust her,” said Madame.

Three days later Diouana took her bath.

Returning home after a morning of shopping, Madame Pouchet went in the bathroom and quickly emerged.

“Diouana! Diouana!” she called. “You
are
dirty, in spite of everything. You might have left the bathroom clean.”

“No me, Madame. It was the children,
viye.
”

“The children! The children are tidy. It may be that you're fed up with them. But to find you telling lies, like a native, that I don't like. I don't like liars and you are a liar!”

Diouana kept silent, though her lips were trembling. She went upstairs to the bathroom and took her clothes off. It was there they found her, dead.

“Suicide,” the investigators concluded. The case was closed.

The next day, in the newspaper, on page 4, column 6, hardly noticeable, was a small headline:

“Homesick African Girl Cuts Throat in Antibes.”

â1965

LuÃs Bernardo Honwana

(BORN 1942)
MOZAMBIQUE

Luis Bernardo Honwana, a journalist and newspaper editor in Beira, a major city in Mozambique, knew poverty as a child in a large family in LourenÃ§o Marques, a village near the capital. His father was a translator for the Portuguese administration. While completing his studies, Honwana worked as a cartographer and subsequently as a reporter and editor. His first stories (including “Papa, Snake & I”) were published in 1964 as
Nos MatÃ¡mos o CÃ£o-Tinhosa.
Later stories have appeared sporadically in international quarterlies and anthologies.

Honwana's story “Dina” (“Dinner”) describes the oppressive condition of field workers for a Portuguese landowner. Although Donald E. Herdeck does not compare it to Kafka's “In the Penal Colony,” his comments about the story imply a strong connection between the two works: “The story is not brutally told, but rather, it is about the almost unendurable work the peonized workers in the colony must perform, the power of violence exercised by the Portuguese overseers and the loss of self-respect by the Africans who are herded together for the long labors in the blazing-hot fields.” The story was included in
African Writing Today
(1967), edited by the South African writer Es'kia Mphahlele (one of whose stories is included in the present anthology).

From 1964 to 1967, Luis Bernardo Honwana was imprisoned because of his nationalist ideas. At the time of his release, he stated that he intended to study law. He currently lives in South Africa.

PAPA, SNAKE &
,
I

Translated from the Portuguese by Dorothy Guedes

As soon as Papa left the table to read the newspaper in the sitting room, I got up as well. I knew that Mama and the others would take a while longer, but I didn't feel like staying with them at all.

When I stood up, Mama looked at me and said, “Come here, let me look at your eyes.”

I went toward her slowly, because when Mama calls us we never know whether she's cross or not. After she had lifted my lids with the index finger of her left hand to make a thorough examination, she looked down at her plate and I stood waiting for her to send me away or to say something. She finished chewing, swallowed, and picked up the bone in her fingers to peep through the cavity, shutting one eye.

Then she turned to me suddenly with a bewildered look on her face. “Your eyes are bloodshot, you're weak and you've lost your appetite.”

The way she spoke made me feel obliged to say that none of this was my fault, or else that I didn't do it on purpose. All the others looked on very curiously to see what was going to happen.

Mama peered down the middle of the bone again. Then she began to suck it, shutting her eyes, and only stopped for a moment to say, “Tomorrow you're going to take a laxative.”

As soon as the others heard this, they began eating again very quickly and noisily. Mama didn't seem to have anything else to say, so I went out into the yard.

It was hot everywhere, and I could see no one on the road. Over the back wall three oxen gazed at me. They must have come back from the water trough at the Administration and stayed to rest in the shade. Far away, over the oxen's horns, the gray tufts of the dusty thorn trees trembled like flames. Everything vibrated in the distance, and heat waves could even be seen rising from the stones in the road. Sartina was sitting on a straw mat in the shade of the house, eating her lunch. Chewing slowly, she looked around, and from time to time, with a careless gesture, she shooed away the fowls who came close to her, hoping for crumbs. Even so, every now and then one of the bolder ones would jump on to the edge of the plate and run off with a lump of mealie meal in its beak, only to be pursued by the others. In their wild dispute, the lump would become so broken up that in the end even the smallest chicken would get its bit to peck.

When she saw me coming near, Sartina pulled her
capulona
down over her legs, and even then kept her hand spread out in front of her knees, firmly convinced that I wanted to peep at something. When I looked away she still didn't move her hand.

Toto came walking along slowly with his tongue hanging out, and went to the place where Sartina was sitting. He sniffed the plate from afar and turned away, taking himself off to the shade of the wall, where he looked for a soft place to lie down. When he found one, he curled round with his nose almost on his tail, and only lay still when his stomach touched the ground. He gave a long yawn, and dropped his head between his paws. He wriggled a little, making sure that he was in the most comfortable position, then covered his ears with his paws.

When she had finished eating, Sartina looked at me insistently before removing her hand, which covered the space between her knees, and only when she was sure I was not looking did she spring to her feet with a jump. The plate was so clean that it shone, but after darting a last suspicious glance at me, she took it to the trough. She moved languidly, swaying from the waist as her hips rose and fell under her
capulana
. She bent over the trough, but the back of her legs was exposed in this position, so she went to the other side for me not to see.

Mama appeared at the kitchen door, still holding the bone in her hand, and before calling Sartina to clear the table, she looked around to see if everything was in order. “Don't forget to give Toto his food,” she said in Ronga.

Sartina went inside, drying her hands on her
capulana
, and afterwards
came out with a huge pile of plates. When she came out the second time she brought the tablecloth and shook it on the stairs. While the fowls were skirmishing for the crumbs, pecking and squawking at each other, she folded it in two, four, and eight, and then went back inside. When she came out again she brought the aluminum plate with Toto's food, and put it on the cement cover of the water meter. Toto didn't have to be called to eat, and even before the plate was put down, he threw himself on his food. He burrowed into the pile of rice with his nose, searching for the bits of meat, which he gulped up greedily as he found them. When no meat was left, he pushed the bones aside and ate some rice. The fowls were all around him, but they didn't dare to come nearer because they knew very well what Toto was like when he was eating.

When he had swallowed the rice, Toto pretended he didn't want any more and went to sit in the shade of the sugarcane, waiting to see what the fowls would do. They came nervously toward his food, and risked a peck or two, very apprehensively. Toto watched this without making a single movement. Encouraged by the passivity of the dog, the fowls converged on the rice with great enthusiasm, creating an awful uproar. It was then that Toto threw himself on the heap, pawing wildly in all directions and growling like an angry lion. When the fowls disappeared, fleeing to all corners of the yard, Toto went back to the shade of the sugarcane, waiting for them to gather together again.

Before going to work Papa went to look at the chicken run with Mama. They both appeared at the kitchen door, Mama already wearing her apron and Papa with a toothpick in his mouth and his newspaper under his arm. When they passed me Papa was saying, “It's impossible, it's impossible, things can't go on like this.”

I went after them, and when we entered the chicken run Mama turned to me as if she wanted to say something, but then she changed her mind and went toward the wire netting. There were all sorts of things piled up behind the chicken run: pipes left over from the building of the windmill on the farm, blocks which were bought when Papa was still thinking of making outhouses of cement, boxes, pieces of wood, and who knows what else. The fowls sometimes crept in among these things and laid their eggs where Mama couldn't reach them. On one side of the run lay a dead fowl, and Mama pointed to it and said, “Now there's this one, and I don't know how many others have just died from one day to the next. The chickens
simply disappear, and the eggs, too. I had this one left here for you to see. I'm tired of talking to you about this, and you still don't take any notice.”

“All right, all right, but what do you want me to do about it?”

“Listen, the fowls die suddenly, and the chickens disappear. No one goes into the chicken run at night, and we've never heard any strange noise. You must find out what's killing the fowls and chickens.”

“What do you think it is?”

“The fowls are bitten and the chickens are eaten. It can only be the one thing you think it isâif there are any thoughts in your head.”

“All right, tomorrow I'll get the snake killed. It's Sunday, and it will be easy to get people to do it. Tomorrow.”

Papa was already going out of the chicken run when Mama said, now in Portuguese, “But tomorrow without fail, because I don't want any of my children bitten by a snake.”

Papa had already disappeared behind the corner of the house on his way to work when Mama turned to me and said, “Haven't you ever been taught that when your father and mother are talking you shouldn't stay and listen! My children aren't usually so bad-mannered. Who do you take after?”

She turned on Sartina, who was leaning against the wire netting, listening. “What do you want? Did anyone call you? I'm talking to my son and it's none of your business.”

Sartina couldn't have grasped all that because she didn't understand Portuguese very well, but she drew away from the netting, looking very embarrassed, and went to the trough again. Mama went on talking to me, “If you think you'll fool me and take the gun to go hunting you're making a big mistake. Heaven help you if you try to do a thing like that! I'll tan your backside for you! And if you think you'll stay here in the chicken run you're also mistaken. I don't feel like putting up with any of your nonsense, do you hear?”

Mama must have been very cross, because for the whole day I hadn't heard her laugh as she usually did. After talking to me she went out of the chicken run and I followed her. When she passed Sartina, she asked her in Ronga, “Is it very hot under your
capulana
? Who told you to come here and show your legs to everybody?”

Sartina said nothing, walked round the trough, and went on washing the plates, bending over the other side.

Mama went away and I went to sit where I had been before. When Sartina saw me she turned on me resentfully, threw me a furious glance, and went
round the trough again. She began to sing a monotonous song, one of those songs of hers that she sometimes spent the whole afternoon singing over and over again when she was angry.

Toto was bored with playing with the fowls, and had already finished eating his rice. He was sleeping again with his paws over his ears. Now and then he rolled himself in the dust and lay on his back with his legs folded in the air.

It was stiflingly hot, and I didn't know whether I'd go hunting as I usually did every Saturday, or if I'd go to the chicken run to see the snake.

Madunana came into the yard with a pile of firewood on his back, and went to put it away in the corner where Sartina was washing the plates. When she saw him, she stopped singing and tried to manage an awkward smile.

After looking all around, Madunana pinched Sartina's bottom, and she gave an embarrassed giggle and responded with a sonorous slap on his arm. The two of them laughed happily together without looking at each other.

Just then, Nandito, JoÃ£ozinho, Nelita, and Gita ran out after a ball, and started kicking it around the yard with great enjoyment.

Mama came to the kitchen door, dressed up to go out. As soon as she appeared, Madunana bent down quickly to the ground, pretending to look for something, and Sartina bent over the trough.

“Sartina, see if you manage not to break any plates before you finish. Hurry up. You, Madunana, leave Sartina alone and mind your own business. I don't want any of that nonsense here. If you carry on like this I'll tell the boss.”

“You, Ginho”ânow she spoke in Portugueseâ“look after the house and remember you're not a child anymore. Don't hit anybody and don't let the children go out of the yard. Tina and Lolota are inside clearing upâdon't let them get up to mischief.”

“Sartina”âin Rongaâ“when you've finished with that, put the kettle on for the children's tea and tell Madunana to go and buy bread. Don't let the children finish the whole package of butter.”

“Ginho”ânow in Portugueseâ“look after everythingâIâm coming back just now. I'm going along to Auntie Lucia's for a little chat.”

Mama straightened her dress and looked around to see if everything was in order, then went.

Senhor Castro's dog, Wolf, was watching Toto from the street. As soon as he saw Wolf, Toto ran toward him and they started to bark at each other.

All the dogs of the village were frightened of Toto, and even the biggest of them ran away when he showed his temper. Toto was small, but he had long white hair which bristled up like a cat's when he was angry, and this is what must have terrified the other dogs.

Usually he kept away from them, preferring to entertain himself with the fowlsâeven bitches he only tolerated at certain times. For me he was a dog with a “pedigree,” or at least “pedigree” could only mean the qualities he possessed. He had an air of authority, and the only person he feared was Mama, although she had never hit him. Just to take him off a chair we had to call her because he snarled and showed his teeth even at Papa.

The two dogs were face-to-face, and Wolf had already started to retreat, full of fear. At this moment Dr. Reis's dog, Kiss, passed by, and Toto started to bark at him, too. Kiss fled at once, and Wolf pursued him, snapping at his hindquarters, only leaving him when he was whining with pain. When Wolf came back to Toto they immediately made friends and began playing together.

Nandito came and sat down next to me, and told me, without my asking, that he was tired of playing ball.

“So why have you come here?”

“Don't you want me to?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Then I'll stay.”

“Stay if you like.”

I got up and he followed me. “Where are you going? Are you going hunting?”

“No.”

“Well, then?”

“Stop pestering me. I don't like talking to kids.”

“You're also a kid. Mama still hits you.”

“Say that again and I'll bash your face in.”