Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

The next morning, Noria was extremely uncomfortable in the presence of the old hag. But the grandmother was all sweet like honey, and behaved as if nothing had happened. Noria avoided her assiduously. At midday, by some stroke of good fortune and coincidence, her husband arrived. Noria was besides herself with joy. But for some strange reason that Napu could not understand, his grandmother was very angry to see him.

‘What do you want here?’

‘Oh, I just came, gran’ma. Just to see you and Noria.’

‘To see us for what? Are you not working?’

‘I got a lift from the truck of my employers. They came to deliver bricks for the construction of a general dealer’s store in a village not far from here. So I thought I would come and see if the baby was born yet.’

‘Well, you can see that the baby is not born yet. So what are you going to do about it?’

Noria was already into her eleventh month of pregnancy, but there was no sign of the baby. The old hag blamed Noria’s own people for bewitching her. She, on the other hand, suspected the old hag, although she never before voiced her suspicions to anyone. In the presence of the grandmother, she told Napu what had happened the previous night. The old woman was shocked beyond words that an innocent-looking girl like Noria could be capable of inventing such dreadful lies about her. ‘What snake is this that you have brought to my homestead, Napu, who is bent on poisoning your relations with your own grandmother who brought you up when your own parents had taken to the world, abandoning you as a baby?’

Obviously Napu did not believe Noria. But she insisted that she was going away with him. ‘I am not staying another night here with your grandmother. I am going back to town with you.’

‘She is not going anywhere, Napu. You cannot be controlled by a woman.’

‘Oh, yes, I am going. If he does not take me with him, I’ll walk the road alone. The roof of my father’s house is not leaking; I’ll go back there.’

Napu relented, and agreed to take Noria back to town with him. She went into the hovel, packed her few items of clothing into a pillow case, and stood outside, waiting for the road. Napu said good-bye to his grandmother, and they walked away. The grandmother shouted bitterly after them, ‘You Napu, you will see the eyes of a worm! You have married that lying bitch from the lowlands! Now you are going to spend all your money on her, and I will not see even a black cent from you!’

By the thirteenth month, the lovestruck couple began to consult diviners and herbalists of all types. Where was it heard of that a woman carried a baby in her stomach for so many months? Experts mixed herbs for them, asked them to slaughter animals, and performed mysterious rituals in their brickyard shack. But still the baby refused to come. Napu finally ran out of money and could no longer afford the experts. He could not send any more money to his grandmother either, and she piled more curses on the hapless couple. Friends advised Napu to send his wife back to her home to work things out with her family. There was no doubt that That Mountain Woman had put some curse on her. When this rumour reached the ears of That Mountain Woman, she vehemently denied the accusation. ‘How can I put a curse on my own daughter? In any case, I do not mix medicines that hurt people. My medicines only heal and bring good fortune, and wealth, and love, and fertility. I am not a witch. I am a doctor.’

One evening we saw Napu and Noria alighting from the bus that came from town. Noria was wearing an old donkey blanket, and she had covered her head with it so that we would not see who she was. But we knew immediately that it was Noria. Her willowy stature gave her away. She looked and walked very much like her mother in her younger days, when she first came to the village. Oh, yes, we all knew that when That Mountain Woman came to our village she was in tatters. She was strikingly beautiful, but was in rags. It was the unappreciated Xesibe who made her a person. Anyway, to go back to Noria, she walked home barefoot, as her shoes had long since worn out. Napu followed her hesitantly.

When they arrived at Noria’s home, they found Xesibe and his wife eating the evening meal. When That Mountain Woman saw her daughter she wailed, ‘Oh, Noria, my poor baby! You are back!’ Noria threw herself into her mother’s arms and wept bitterly. But Xesibe did not feel any pity for her. He said, ‘Now that the world has thoroughly thrashed her, she comes back to us.’ For once, That Mountain Woman did not lash at him with her tongue. Xesibe was expressing exactly her sentiments. Encouraged by this tacit consensus, he went on, ‘She thinks that this world is her mother’s kitchen!’ Still That Mountain Woman did not lash out, but said tearfully, ‘It is enough, Father of Noria, we should just be grateful that she is back.’

Then they both turned to Napu, who was just standing there like a chicken that had been soaked in water.

‘And I take it this is the excuse for a man you have chosen over us?’

‘He is my husband, father.’

‘Husband? How many cattle did he pay?’

‘I will certainly pay, sir. When I have accumulated enough money, I’ll come and pay.’

‘You have shown us how much you don’t respect us. Your people did not even come to appease us, and to negotiate with us, after you had kidnapped our daughter.’

‘I do not have any parents.’

‘You mean you sprung from a stone?’

‘I only have one old grandmother who brought me up. I did not mean to disrespect you, sir. I was afraid, sir, for we did you wrong. I wanted to work first, and have money, and come to make peace with you when I had lobola to pay.’

‘Are you now inventing your own customs? If you knew that you were a pauper who ate lice, why did you do dirty things with my daughter?’

That Mountain Woman was more concerned with Noria’s ravaged appearance. She uttered a few choice descriptive phrases. These pertained mostly to Napu’s mother, and to her private parts. She did not forget to use the usual label that she stuck on people she did not like: that they were products of bungled abortions. Napu was taken aback, for in all his life he had never come across such stingingly colourful language. He immediately decided that he hated That Mountain Woman with all his heart.

‘Look what this son of a viper has done to my baby!’

‘It is not his fault, mother. I went with him because I loved him.’

‘My own daughter wearing a donkey blanket! My daughter whose father has so many cattle he can buy all the blankets in the world! My daughter whose mother grinds and mixes medicines that can heal all humanity!’

We thought Napu would leave with his tail between his legs. But we were wrong. He became stubborn and defiant. He told them that he was not at all intimidated by That Mountain Woman, even though he was sorry that he did not go through the proper customary channels to marry their daughter. But he could see that even if he had done the right thing, Noria’s parents would never have sanctioned the marriage since they had clearly shown themselves to be such snobs. Unfortunately there was nothing that they could do about it, since he, Napu, son of a nobody, had married their daughter in front of the law. Xesibe protested that his objection to the whole sorry business had nothing to do with Napu’s pedigree, but had everything to do with the fact that he had disrespected them by taking their daughter without due process of custom and tradition. After all, he himself did not begin life as a wealthy man. He had been as poor as Napu, but had worked hard herding other people’s animals and cultivating the land, until he accumulated his own wealth. That Mountain Woman screeched indignantly, ‘Why are you on the defensive, Father of Noria? Why should we explain ourselves to this upstart? And why do you allow him to talk to me like this? Are you a man or just something that someone left behind when they squatted in the donga?’