Mia Couto - The Tuner of Silences

I thought I knew what it was to rain. But at that moment, I had to reassess the meaning of the verb, and began to fear that I should have hired a boat instead of a motor vehicle. Once the rain had stopped, however, the flood followed: a deluge of light. Intense, all powerful, capable of inducing blindness. Water and light: both billowed up before me indistinctly. Both were boundless, both confirmed my infinitesimal smallness. As if there were thousands of suns, endless sources of light both within and outside of me. Here was my solar side that had never been revealed before. All the colours lost their hues, the entire chromatic spectrum was transformed into a sheet of whiteness.

Marcelo always dresses like that, in white. Perhaps he is here, within my field of vision. I know for sure that Marcelo is here, present, within my field of words. I don’t just see him because of the reverberation of light, the random occurrence of brightness.

Farther on, I pass a group of women. They are bathing in the still waters of a pond. Others, a little farther ahead, are washing clothes. I stop the car and walk over. When they see me, they cover themselves with cloth, fastened hurriedly round their waists. Their breasts are withered, hanging lifelessly over their bellies. For sure, Marcelo hadn’t allowed himself to be smitten by this type of woman.

I linger for some time, watching them. They laugh as if they can tell my secrets. Could it be that they know of my condition as a betrayed woman? Or does our condition as women unite us, ever betrayed by an unfaithful destiny? Later, these country women take to the road again, carrying cans and bundles on their head. It’s only then that I understand how graceful they are capable of being. Their gazelle’s step cancels out the weight they carry, their hips swing as if they were ballerinas advancing across an endless stage. They are protagonists of an eternal spectacle, simply because no one ever looks at them. With their can on their head, they cross the frontier between heaven and earth. And I think to myself: that woman isn’t carrying water; she’s carrying all the rivers within her. It was that spring of water that Marcelo sought to find within his own self.

All of a sudden one of the washerwomen appears to drop some clothes that look very familiar to me. They are shirts of a whiteness that I seem to know. I am gripped by unease: those are Marcelo’s clothes. Distressed, I stumble down the slope and the women are frightened by my impetuous approach. They shout out in their language, gather the clothes from the water, and make their escape over the opposite shore.

We awake early on the second day of the journey. I contemplate the sun rising, and through the dusty haze, it’s like a piece of earth that has become separated and is emerging in levitation. Africa is the most sensuous of the continents. I hate having to admit to this cliché. I get out of the car and sit on the back of the truck. This silence isn’t like any period of quiet I have ever experienced before. This isn’t some absence that we hasten to fill out of fear of emptiness. It’s an awakening in our depths. This is what I feel: that I am possessed by silence. Nothing precedes me, I think to myself. And Marcelo is still to be born. I have come to witness his birth.

— I am the first living creature —I proclaim out loud, as I reopen my eyes, to the astonishment of Aproximado.

The lights, the shadows, the whole landscape all seem to have been created recently. And even the words: I was the one dressing them, as if they were the children who fill the main squares of small towns on Sunday.

— See here, Miss Marta. See what I’ve found —Aproximado announced, showing me a reel of camera film.

— Was it my husband’s?

— Yes, I stopped here with him so that we could have a rest.

All of a sudden, a shadow was cast over my sense that we were present at the Creation. There is, after all, no beginning. In my life, everything has been in its death throes, on the point of ending. I’m the one who has already been. I’ve come in search of my husband. If one can call someone a husband who has run off with someone else. This may well be the place where the world is beginning. But it’s where I am reaching my end.

Once again, women. These are other ones, but as far as I am concerned, they are indistinguishable from the previous ones. They cross the road, half-naked. The nakedness of Africans was once a topic of debate between myself and Marcelo. All of a sudden, black bodies emerged onto the market of desire as socially acceptable. Dark-skinned women and men took magazines, newspapers, television, fashion parades, by storm. Their bodies are beautiful, sculpted with grace, equilibrium, eroticism. And I wonder to myself: why did we never notice them before?

How is it that the African woman has changed from being a focus of ethnographic interest to feature on the covers of fashion magazines, in advertisements for cosmetics, or on the catwalks of the world of haute couture? I could see only too well that Marcelo took delight in contemplating these images. A deep anger bubbled inside me. It was clear that the invasion of black sensuality was a sign that values attributed to beauty were becoming less prejudiced. But black female nudity led me to consider my own body. Thinking about how I saw my body, I came to the following conclusion: I didn’t know how to be naked. And I realized that what covered me was not so much clothing as shame. It had been like that ever since the time of Eve, ever since the birth of sin. For me, Africa wasn’t a continent. It was the fear I had of my own sensuality. One thing seemed obvious to me: if I wanted to win back Marcelo, I would have to allow Africa to emerge within me. I needed to give birth to my own African nudity.

I take in my surroundings as I crouch down. The ground is criss-crossed by thousands of ants, parading along infinite little tracks. I’ve heard it said that women from here eat this red sand. When they die, they’re eaten by the earth. When they’re alive, they devour the very earth that will swallow them up tomorrow.

I pull up my underpants as I get to my feet. I’ve decided to hold it. My bladder will have to wait for another piece of ground. A ground that isn’t being scribbled across by famished insects.

We return to the truck. The road is a serpent undulating on the curve of the horizon. The road is alive, and its huge mouth is devouring me.

The vehicle advances slowly across the savannah, and the track’s substance dissolves as the dust cloud rises into the air like a vulture’s wings. The dust covers my face, my eyes, my clothes. I’m being turned into earth, buried outside the earth. Could it be that, without realizing it, I’m turning into the African woman who bewitched Marcelo?

— What are you doing here?

The papers plummeted to the floor. I thought their fall would be a gradual, fluttering descent. On the contrary, they collapsed in one solid sheaf and the noise they made caused the crickets around the house to fall silent.

— Were you reading my letters?

— I don’t know how to read, Miss Marta.