Mia Couto - Confession of the Lioness

I don’t know why they published the advertisement. There aren’t any hunters anymore. There are people out there firing their guns. But they’re not hunters. They’re killers, every single one of them. And I’m the only hunter left.

Archangel Bullseye? Is that your name?

I’m the only one left, I repeat without answering her question. And I continue my feverish discourse. Soon, I assert, there won’t be any animals left. For these false hunters spare neither the young nor pregnant females, they don’t respect the closed season, they invade parks and reserves. Powerful people provide them with arms and whatever else they need.

It’s all meat, it’s all nhama, I say with a sigh, despondent.

Only then do I look again at the fat woman’s expressionless eyes, as she waits for my disquisition to end.

Is your name Archangel Bullseye? Well, you’re going to be able to hunt to your heart’s content, you won the contest.

Can I come into your office? I want to give you a kiss.

With unexpected agility, the woman gets up, leans across the counter, and waits, her eyes closed, as if my kiss were the only prize she had won in her whole life.

* * *

I hurry away from the newspaper offices, dodging through the crowd of street vendors. I’m going to visit my brother, Roland, at the Infulene Psychiatric Hospital. He’s been in the hospital ever since the accident in which our father lost his life. It’s been a year since I last paid him a visit. Now I can’t wait to tell him about the contest. Roland deserves to be the first to know. Besides, I don’t have anyone else to share my happy news with.

It’s a long bus ride. The hospital is quite a way beyond the suburban shanties. With my head leaning against the window, I watch crowds thronging the streets and sidewalks. Is there enough ground for so many people? And I hear my old man’s lament: Where I was born there’s more earth than there is sky! I close my eyes and, for a moment, I pretend that I come from somewhere else, full of earth and sky.

I sometimes ask myself whether I shouldn’t be committed to the hospital as well. My brother’s girlfriend, whose name is Luzilia, is a nurse and is convinced I’m mad. I don’t argue — maybe I have gone mad. But then I ask: Can someone who no longer has a life also have his sanity? To tell you the truth, it was she, Luzilia, who made me lose my mind. It’s because of her that I’m writing this diary, in the vain hope that this woman will one day read my muddled scrawl. Moreover, it’s not the first time that I’ve embellished my handwriting for the sake of Luzilia. Once before, I addressed some brief but ill-fated lines to her. At the time, what I wrote was an invitation. What I’m scribbling now is my goodbye. A false farewell, like everything in a hunter’s life, is a charade. Where for others there are memories, for me there are merely lies and illusions.

* * *

Luzilia is right: My madness began on the day a gunshot tore through my sleep and I discovered my father in the living room, spread-eagled in his own blood. Before I became an orphan, everything in me was intact: the house, time, the sky where I was told my mother was guarding the stars. All at once, however, I looked at life and got a fright: It was all so boundless and I was so small and so alone. Suddenly I stepped on the earth and recoiled: My feet were so meager. All of a sudden there was nothing but the past: Death was a lake that was darker and more sluggish than the firmament. My mother was on the far shore, writing letters, while my father swam without ever crossing the endless waters.

* * *

Nothing has changed in the old hospital. It’s Luzilia who comes to meet me in the large waiting room. She’s still beautiful, her look seductive, the same habit of moistening her lips with her tongue. Luzilia is a nurse in that hospital — nothing there is strange to her.

It’s so long since you were last here …

I’ve been so busy, one way or another , I lie.

Your brother and I got married.

I feign happiness. Luzilia talks and her voice recedes into the distance. She explains that Roland had been discharged the day before the wedding and they’d even tried living in her house. But it didn’t work. Roland didn’t know how to live outside his illness. And he was readmitted to the hospital.

* * *

I gradually stop listening to my brand-new relative. Perhaps I don’t know how to be the brother-in-law of someone I wanted as a lover. I escape the present, returning to the events of a year before. It was in that same room that I confessed the deep love I felt for Luzilia. It was a long, empty afternoon, the type that spins out like some contagious disease. Without looking at her face, I took a deep breath and declared my love to the startled Luzilia. As she said nothing, I pressed ahead:

There’s something I should say, Luzilia: Every time I come here to the hospital, it’s you I come to see.

That’s not true. What about your brother?

It’s because of you that I come.

At this point I handed her a letter. Her little fingers remained still as she took her time reading it. Her hand lingered. Then she read in a low voice:

Ever since I started loving you, the whole world belongs to you. That’s why I’ve never given you anything. I’ve merely returned things to you. I don’t expect recompense. However, this message requests an answer. As tradition dictates: If you love me, if my feelings are reciprocated, fold the corner of this letter and return it to me tomorrow.

* * *

The next day, Luzilia made no mention of the subject. She didn’t bring the letter with her, and didn’t say a word. She couldn’t have imagined how wounded I was by her indifference. I should have contained myself, but was unable to:

So there’s no fold in the letter?

She shook her head. I hid the hurt I felt at being rejected. For we do, indeed, have room enough to bury our little deaths deep within us! We travel down corridors, from one end to the other, in a silence that is as cold as that very asylum. As I left, Luzilia asked me:

Please don’t stop coming to the hospital. Your brother has no one else.

You must throw my letter away.

I’ll do that.

It was a stupid mistake to confess my feelings. I shouldn’t have done it. So give me back the letter.

It’s mine. Am I not mistress of everything?

* * *

One year later, and Luzilia walks in front of me, confirming her status as mistress of my soul, and owner of the world.

* * *

My brother, Roland, is sitting on the veranda of the infirmary, gazing, as always, at his own listless hands. It’s as if time hasn’t passed: There he is, surrendered, as ever, to his fate.

Tomorrow, I leave for the bush , I announce.

Nothing changes in him. He continues to look at his hands as if they were dead.

It’s going to be my last hunt , I add.

At this point, his whole body stirs into action, in a sudden frenzy. My brother suddenly emerges from his enduring lethargy. With the despair of a man drowning, he leans on Luzilia’s arm and approaches me. He seems to be talking, but he doesn’t utter a word. He merely emits a kind of string of anxious sighs, as if swallowing more air than his chest can accommodate. The woman understands what he is trying to say, and nods in agreement. They understand each other. Then he returns to his old chair and sinks back into himself. As there’s no more to be said, Luzilia accompanies me to the hospital gate. I’m the one to break the embarrassed silence.

What did Roland say?

He asked me to go with you on this hunting expedition.