The Stone Virgins Read online

  Knowing Nonceba better, he now understands Thenjiwe. Such a circuitous route to discover her, he thinks, to know her, to have better cared for her, and, as he wishes desperately now, to have protected her. How could he not have heard the pleading behind her every word, from each motion of her body, as he held her, from bone to bone? How had he missed her nuance as close as he was to her, as involved, missed her tears, when he remembered almost everything about her, each word she uttered, each of his own words to her?

  Thenjiwe needed other kinds of truths before accepting their own truth. They hardly knew each other. He had not known how to handle that sort of desperate emotion in him. She had hesitated; he had hesitated, and left. He had not heard her at all. Perhaps this was the similarity between the sisters, to ask him to wait, till she again calls his name. He would let Nonceba be. Leave her and bury his own longing, but he would not walk away. When he met Nonceba, then, he was seeking penance, for an absence, for a forgetfulness, for abandon: He now felt it was he who had walked away. Thenjiwe had asked him to stay. He needs to sustain the attitude of the penitent: a contrite heart, which dares not double its original sin. He is beginning to mistake his weakness for fortitude.

  He needs a sterile solution to wash wounds; an ointment to wash both their wounds. He is an amalgam, man and martyr. No. It is not much to sacrifice love; he does not deserve the term at all. He is not a martyr. He has nothing to surrender. What has he got to sacrifice? If he turns to look, whose life has he saved? He remembers collecting Nonceba from the hospital after she has been discharged for the last time from the surgery, then, later, sitting down and unwinding the bandage from her face. The bandage is light, spoiled; it peels off like a protecting net. He closes his eyes to remove the last layer, which clings to the skin. She has endured the worst. He replaces the dressing, carefully following the instructions the nurse has provided him with. He says nothing. His movements alone fill the room; his arm stirs around her head, swinging, slowly folding her into his armpit, following the bandage. Closely, he searches her eyebrows, her cheeks, her stillness. If there is to be pain, he must be the one to bear it.

  She offers to cook. He remains seated and listens to her movements in the next room. He pulls her hospital card from a yellow folder. There is a staccato narration: “ … inflicted as by a sharp object … could be a blade … victim did not see the instrument … grievous harm … lips cut off … urgent surgery required … skin graft.” He replaces the card in the folder and moves to the kitchen. He already guesses that she will not eat. Perhaps she will drink something. He discovers that it is weeks before she has any appetite.

  He must retreat from Nonceba; perhaps he has become too involved in replicating histories. He should stick to restorations of ancient kingdoms, circular structures, beehive huts, stone knives, broken pottery, herringbone walls, the vanished pillars in an old world. A new nation needs to restore the past. His focus, the beehive hut, to be installed at Lobengula’s ancient kraal, kwoBulawayo, the following year. His task is to learn to re-create the manner in which the tenderest branches bend, meet, and dry, the way grass folds smoothly over this frame and weaves a nest, the way it protects the cool, livable places within—deliverance.

  ALSO BY YVONNE VERA

  Butterfly Burning

  Without a Name and Under the Tongue

  Yvonne Vera

  THE STONE VIRGINS

  YVONNE VERA is one of Zimbabwe’s most acclaimed writers and social critics. She was born in Bulawayo, where she is now director of the National Gallery, and is the author of Butterfly Burning (FSG, 2000) and Without a Name and Under the Tongue (FSG, 2002). The recipient of numerous international accolades, Vera has been awarded the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region) for Under the Tongue, the 2002 Berlin Literature Prize (work in translation) for Butterfly Burning, and the 2002 Macmillan (UK) Writer’s Prize for Africa (adult fiction) for The Stone Virgins. In 2003, she won Italy’s Feronia Prize for Butterfly Burning and was a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee for Without a Name and Under the Tongue.

  Praise for The Stone Virgins

  A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

  “Writing no more and no less than necessary, Vera demonstrates what fiction does best: showing us how it felt to be there … We must thus keep an eye on Yvonne Vera … Not only because after this book we will hunger for more, but also because she dares speak unpleasant truths about her own country.”

  —Eric Grunwald, The Boston Globe

  “A poignant novel … Vera is to be commended for confronting Zimbabwe’s violence-ridden past, and for seeking to break the silence that perpetuates further violence.”

  —Tracy Price-Thompson, The Black Book Review

  “More persuasive than a mere story [and] as much a testament to human hope as any human can hope for.”

  —Melvin Bukiet, Chicago Tribune

  “Vera’s not for readers who want their fiction simple to read and comfortable to mentally digest. With that in mind, if you’re willing to give The Stone Virgins a try, afterward Yvonne Vera is likely to be counted among your very favorite authors.”

  —Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “With simple poetic words, Zimbabwean writer Vera brings home the daily struggle in her country … Brilliant.”

  —Hazel Rochman, Booklist

  “A fine, excruciatingly delineated portrayal of the malevolent effects of war on a people.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The Stone Virgins is Vera at her lyrical best. Her affinity for visual art comes through in her writing. Her descriptions are painted, by turns, in bold palette-knife-applied strokes and delicate pastel colors. The novel exudes compassion, tolerance, and sensitivity—the three hallmarks of great writing. Post-colonial African literature is led by Zimbabwean writers, and she is by far the most imaginative and original voice among them.”

  —Zakes Mda

  “Yvonne Vera writes with magnificent luminosity. The Stone Virgins is a song about the author’s people, and the tragedy of their lives and their loves, contrasted against the sheer beauty of their land. It may yet prove to be one of the notable novels of the twenty-first century.”

  —Ama Ata Aidoo

  “[Yvonne Vera] brings to this novel her extraordinary gift of sidelong and oblique entry into the heart of things using the total environment, trees, sky, river, rocks, and mountains—they are themselves characters—to express human emotion. Her treatment of love is unusual and strikingly original, bringing out its redemptive power that triumphs over the horrors of war and human cruelty.”

  —Eldred D. Jones, Editor, African Literature Today

  Copyright © 2002 by Yvonne Vera

  All rights reserved

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Originally published in 2002 by Weaver Press, Zimbabwe

  Published in 2002 in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  www.fsgbooks.com

  Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott

  eISBN 9781466806061

  First eBook Edition : November 2011

  First American paperback edition, 2003

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Vera, Yvonne.

  The stone virgins / Yvonne Vera.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-374-27008-7 (hc : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-374-27008-2 (hc : alk. paper)

  1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Violence—Fiction. 3. City and town life—Fiction. 4. Women—Zimbabwe—Fiction. 5. Zimbabwe—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9390.9.V47 S76 2003

  823’.914—dc21

  2002025004

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-374-52894-2

  Paperback ISBN-10: 0-374-52894-2.

  With gratitude to the city of Munich for residency at Villa Waldberta,

  Feldafing, where this novel was completed.

  a, The Stone Virgins