The Stone Virgins Read online

  Till he could relish that taste and know the shape of these roots, how can he, with truth and abandon, ever proclaim to linger, to love her as absolutely as she desires to be loved, as knowingly, with all his mind intact, not wandering off to his own tree, to his own slope and incline, to his mountains in the eastern highlands, where that mazhanje grows and beckons him to return? How can he promise to linger without having seen the thornbush suffused with bloom, not knowing about giraffes feeding on leaves the size of a whisper till satisfied and able to hold their heads up above the bluest sky? Him, not knowing the wonder of that, how could he be so sure he could stay as long as that, not having seen nor harvested caterpillars feeding on mopani leaves, not having witnessed their mutable flights, their wondrous turn, and tasted their succulence by her fireside? Him, not having seen the leaves of the mopani emerge and redden the tree, shape into wings not green but a tender maroon, and seen their roots running through the sandiest soil in Kezi, the driest, the most porous soil, with a color like buried bone.

  Thenjiwe wants him to stay till he has met her sister, Nonceba, who is away at boarding school, finishing her last year, and who will be here in the first week of December to stay, and be able to meet him; for him to see Nonceba gather the most beautiful flowers from the river and spread them all over the house as she always does, only then can he, too, hear an antelope leap across full streams, as Thenjiwe does at the thought of her only sister, Nonceba, always. In the aftermath, rain. Her mind is traveling back, before this moment, wanting him to travel with her and watch her play with Nonceba in the streams those many years ago, when they are both little and their bodies quiver with delight as they fall into the surface of the river, making the water sing; the Kwakhe River swallows their bodies like boulders, the water circles them, and the heavy raindrops push open their eyelids. The water is warm to the skin, but the river is a rumble, sudden, and they hold hands and rise out of the current to the bank; their laughter is so high, it reaches the hills of Gulati. They watch hornbills swoop beneath tree branches and rise, firmly, into the rocks of Gulati. Only then.

  Thenjiwe wants him to hear their two voices together, so that he will know, as tenderly as she does, that before he occupied all the places in her mind, Nonceba, her sister, had already been holding her hand quietly and forever. She runs through cultivated fields; the earth new, with the scent of honey wafting in the air, and the clouds, the rain overhead, and Nonceba.

  Nonceba. She who is patient like a mantis, who has no sudden impulses, slow and careful in everything, as though she moves on a delicate ray of light—yes, a mantis in sunlight. That is why she, Thenjiwe, always has to take her sister’s hand and run straight into the fields, and not let go, not till Nonceba is running ahead of her, free of her fingers, with all the colors of the sun in her heart. Nonceba, who, though different, is also she, Thenjiwe. Then he would know all of her being, her sister nearer to her than her own shadow, who is her own breath flowing into her body. He needed to stay first, a little longer, then tell her again about his desire to wake, to die, to be reborn in her graceful arms.

  This is not what he hears her say. He misses both their particular claims. He breathes slowly and low and separates himself from her. He does not hear her silent song and leaves in order to protect her own truthful search, which he dares not understand nor disturb, certainly not to defend himself or to escape from her, but to respect what he has interrupted. He remembers breath by breath the movement of her, feeling her in the darkness and seeing her as though the room were full of light, knowing her beauty, in darkness or light. Her neck is graceful in the darkness, moving slowly toward him, under his palm spread and held over her, turning her to him, to his own lips and movements. Nearness: to feel, to see. To touch, her pulse under his palm, and both their lives in her. This he sees. This he desires. This he holds dear as they turn, in each other’s arms. She is restless in or out of his arms. In leaving her, he feels the earth open and swallow him whole. He takes the first turn out of the room and recalls each of her footprints on that same ground on which he once followed her, his foot encased in her footprint, and he is already loving her as he always would, or would want to, or would never be able to teach himself not to. He leaves her and loves her still. She hands him back that single seed he brought from his own land, and it is glistening like a jewel because she has kept it in her mouth for so long, a seed ready to be planted elsewhere, not here, since she knows nothing about its roots, and if it can survive the most permeable soil in Kezi, the driest, and her tongue craving its memories.

  The best love is brief and intense.

  4

  The women want to take the day into their own arms and embrace it, but how? To embrace the land and earth, the horizon, and triumph? To forget the hesitant moment, death, the years of deafness and struggle? The women want to take the time of resignation, of throbbing fears, and declare this to a vanished day, but how? And take the memory of departed sons, and bury it. But how? To end the unsure sunsets, the solitary loveliness of the hills? Instead, nothing moves. The rocks remain solid as ever; the boulders are still. Not different. The trees are bare of leaves and carry a stunned and lethargic silence. The women expect sudden and spectacular fissures on the rocks. They expect some crack, some sound that will wrap over them like lightning and they will not need to ask if independence is truly here, or if indeed this is a new day. The women feel an immense pride. They burn in it. This is the most exalting feeling they have for those who have returned, the most protective; they have endured the most agonizing absence, and this feeling is the most understanding emotion, the most accepting, the least demanding, the clearest, the least desperate, the most merciful, born of terror, this pride, filled with glory and tenderness.

  A burden lifts as a new day appears. This new day. A place to start again, to plant hope and banish despair, to be restored. Everything is changed. Day is light, not heavy; light as a leaf. The women move from every weaving and meandering pathway, in and out, onto the main road so that the day can find them, find their bodies, which are longing to be touched by something new. They remove bright scarves from their heads and toss them like butterfly wings. They greet the air in red, blue, and green cloth intertwined. The cloth twists under the arms raised, and fingers searching. Their hair is young, even if it has turned white with waiting. For years, they have only learned to wave their voices, from door to mirror, with no hope of release, and now they can dance in the clouds. They wave their arms like promises. They swing their scarves from arm to arm. Shout, and watch their own voices ripple high into the sky, to the hills of Gulati.

  They sing earth songs that leave the morning pulsating. They weep in daylight, surrounded by ultrablue skies and the smell of rain. Their minds a sweet immersion of joy, they float, jubilant. Their senses almost divine, uplifted; their pain inarticulate. Voices rise to the surface, beyond the dust shadows that break and glow, and lengthen. They will not drown from a dance in the soaring dust, from the memories of anger and pain. They will not die from the accumulation of bitter histories, the dreams of misfortune, the evenings of wonder and dismay, which should have already killed them. The echoes from Gulati, which should have already killed them. The despondency, to tremble when a door is tightly shut, when it opens wide. A door, a mind. The dust turning into vapor above the distant rocks, which should have destroyed their minds but did not. Today, they walk on a dry earth, not dead, in an intoxicating brightness, and leave no trace of fears, embraced by the day overflowing, touching branches and the tops of trees, a day veined, alive, not dead, replete with wonders and new destinies. They rejoice in a vast sweetness and sound. All that is bright among them is brighter still: the sky, the altars in Gulati, hope. A wind sweeps through the hills, their voices, their bodies in chorus. Their voices wake the somnolent dove. It flies through the dancing light above. Independence will not come again, and the best spectacle of it is in these women, with the pain in their backs, the curve of their voices, and their naked elbows beat
ing the air.

  The young women abandon their age mates who are afraid to be with them in quiet places, and who insist on meeting at the bus station and in the presence of their protective mothers. These young women approach Thandabantu Store with a new and purposeful gaiety. They do all they can to discover what their own harrowing impatience is about, and can it be halted, somehow? Can it be stilled and satisfied? Freely and willingly, they slide beside men as old as their oldest brothers, who have returned from the war with all their senses intact, except for that faraway, traveled look that makes the girls a bit fearful, a bit dizzy, a bit excited, that makes them feel brave, as though they are sliding their hands in the cotton-soft coolness of ash, where, it is possible, a flame might sparkle and burn. These solid men suddenly in their midst make their mothers mist, tearful with the wonder of their safe return. They are here. They wear lonely and lost looks but have a touch wild as honey. Their arms and hair are washed with leaves of mint. They refuse neat portions of Lifebuoy and Lux soap bought especially for them from Thandabantu Store and wash their bodies with herbs from the hills, from the river, like modest beings. They guard their loneliness. Their shoulders glow with the last rays of the sun. The women worship these men who lead them all the way to that final place they want to be and which has long been in their minds.

  These women, lively and impatient, have secured a freedom that makes their voices glow. They know everything there is to know about anything there is to know, and have tasted their own freedom mature, because it is truly theirs, this freedom. They have not misunderstood. They hold that freedom in their arms. With imaginations unencumbered, they will have children called Happiness, called Prosperity, called Fortune, called True Love, called More Blessing, called Joy, called Cease-fire. Why not? The names will cascade like histories from their tongues … Beauty, Courage, and Freedom. All their children will be conceived out of this moment of emancipation. Born into their arms like revelations, like flowers opening. It will be necessary to give their offspring middle names that will provide them strength … Masotsha, Mandla, and Nqabutho. Names to anchor dreams.

  These women are the freest women on earth, with no pretense, just joy coursing through their veins. They have no desire to be owned, hedged in, claimed, but to be appreciated, to be loved till an entire sun sets, to be adored like doves. They want only to be held like something too true to be believed. They want to know an absolute joy with men who carry that lost look in their eyes; the men who walk awkward like, lost like, as though the earth is shaking under their feet, not at all like what the women imagine heroes to be; these men who have a hard time looking straight at a woman for a whole two minutes without closing their own eyes or looking away; who smile harmless smiles, which make the women weak at the knees and cause them to fold their arms over their heads.

  This man seems to say he has not killed anyone, that this is just talk because the country needs heroes, and flags, and festivities, and the notion of sacrifice. Does she not know that? His tone is pleading for her to stop examining his wounds and hindering his view of the hills. At the start of each new day, the question is on her lips, unspoken. Did he? Did he kill a white man?

  He gives her a can of sardines and then a yellow ribbon to weave through her plaited hair, and asks her if she is going to be a schoolteacher and teach their children to say a e i o u with their mouths shut. He does not stop there with his questions. He asks if it is fine if he contributes to the making of these children, now, under this tree with its arm touching the ground, beneath this warm rock that has absorbed a whole day, under this syringa bush with its petals fanning the air, here, under this open sky, upon the sands of the Kwakhe River, the driest soil there is throughout Kezi and beyond, and surely this river sand sucking their feet in can keep any kind of secret, including their own. And the woman surrenders all the freedom in her arms, nods her head within that softness of night, and accepts those thighs that have climbed slippery rock and the most severe hills of Gulati. Peace and calm pervade every nook, every crag, and surge through her waiting heels.

  It is only when he sleeps, his arms flailing about, his voice darker than night and lit with stars, that the woman awakes and pins him down. Then she knows that her journey with this man is long and troubled, and that she cannot keep leaving him each night to his dreams. She is frightened, excited, lost. This man sleeps, but his eyes are open wide. In the morning, she is not looking at him, but at the circling hills of Gulati. She could never suggest it. Even if he smiled and told her the truth about everything, she could never suggest it—that he take her out there to see the hills up close, to touch distant rock, distant water and sky, to drop into the vast space where his mind has wandered through, falling, constantly, even as she moves her lips and whispers his name on her tongue. She could never suggest it, of course not. Not even without saying it, without thinking it. Not even if he said it himself. Lying next to him under the shadow of night is as far from Kezi as he is going to take her. As near to smooth rock and to the torrent of stars out there. She cools his feet, unlaces, pulls, twists the worn and weathered leather boots off him.

  The women who return from the bush arrive with a superior claim of their own. They define the world differently. They are fighters, simply, who pulled down every barrier and entered the bush, yes, like men. But then they were women and said so, and spoke so. They made admissions that resembled denials.

  They do not apologize for their courage and long absence, nor hide or turn away from the footpath. These women understand much better than any of the young women who have spent their entire lives along the Kwakhe River ever could understand about anything or anyone, and they tell them so, not with words, but they let them know fully and well; they let them speculate, let them wonder what those silent lips are about, what those arms, swinging from hip to shoulder, are about.

  These women wear their camouflage long after the cease-fire, walking through Kezi with their heavy bound boots, their clothing a motif of rock and tree, and their long sleeves folded up along the wrist. They wear black berets, sit on the ledge at Thandabantu Store, and throw their arms across their folded knees. They purse their lips and whistle, and toss bottle tops and catch them, and juggle corn husks, which they toss at the young boys, who leap to catch them before they touch the ground. They close their eyes and tuck their berets into the pockets along their legs, button them up, and forget them. From this high plateau, they watch the young women who think freedom can be held in the hand, cupped like water, sipped like destinies. Who think that water can wash clean any wound and banish scars as dry as Kwakhe sand. These women whose only miracle is to watch water being swallowed by the Nyande River after the rain, if it rains, and who mistake the porous sands of Nyande for the substance of their laughter, their reckless joy, their gifts. These young women who possess intact and undisturbed histories, who without setting one foot past the Kwakhe River think they can cure all the loneliness in a man’s arms, hold him, till he is as free as the day he was born, till he cannot remember counting the stars overhead, counting each star till he is out of breath and ready to hold his own screaming voice in his hands, to fight. With their immaculate thighs and their tender voices and unblemished skin, they will make a new sun rise and set, so that yesterday is forgotten. Time can begin here, in their arms.

  The female soldiers marked with unknowable places on their own faces, with an unquenchable sorrow around their eyes, unaccustomed to a sudden stillness such as this, a sedentary posture and mind-set, no longer wanderers, not threatened or threatening, these women hold their peace and say nothing to condemn or negate, but keep their distance awhile to gather all the evidence they can about the others’ cherished hope. This is a cease-fire. When they can, they will avail themselves of destinations. The only sign they give of disapproval is to shake their heads sideways and look long and well as the young women walk into Thandabantu Store in their petticoats or with broken umbrellas to purchase some cream, some Vaseline, wearing leather sandals or with
bare feet. They wait before they say anything or pass an opinion. They chew bubble gum, bought by the handful from Thandabantu.

  They stay in their camouflage and pull out cigarettes and smoke while standing under the marula tree. They hold their faces up and seem amused either by the sky or by passersby—their mothers. They walk leisurely to Thandabantu Store, slowly, as though they have a lifetime to consider what independence is all about, a lifetime to place one foot after another, a lifetime to send a ring of laughter past the wing of a bird. They have no haste or hurry, no urgent, harrowing hunger to satisfy, no torment they would rather not forget. Independence is a respite from war; the mind may just rearrange itself to a comfortable resolution, without haste, at the pace of each day unfolding and ending naturally, and opening again like a flower.

  They sit on empty crates, like the men, then from here they watch the sun as though the watching of a sunset is simply a soothing pastime; but watching the sunset from Thandabantu Store and watching the sunset from the bush with a gun in your hand are related but vastly different acts. They are learning, with patience and goodwill, how it is to watch the sunset from Thandabantu. To watch a sun setting without a gun in your hand, so in this fair pursuit they forget that they are male or female but know that they are wounded beings, with searching eyes, and an acute desire for simple diversions. It is an intimate quest.

  The men who for years have been going to Thandabantu to watch the sun, to summarize the day and what they have just heard of the war in the bush, who are part of the quality of this veranda and the sound of it and therefore an essential aspect of a place named Kezi because Kezi starts and ends at Thandabantu Store, these Kezi men have moved without reluctance or amazement at their displacement, moved to the marula tree and brought their hand-carved stools with them, and from here they watch these women exude an elegance more spectacular than anything they have ever watched set or burn, their posture more genuine than their own feet on Kezi soil. They watch from the corners of their eyes, feeling tongue-tied and charmed and privileged. And these men, whose feet have never left the Kwakhe River or wandered anywhere farther than Thandabantu Store, lower their eyes frequently and efficiently, and their shoulders, too, and pull their torn and faded hats farther down. Thus contrite, they glance at those military shoes, at those arms like batons, and look straight away, enchanted but not betrayed. They avoid those eyes or those hips under those clinging belts. The breasts, held carelessly up, as though they are nothing but another part of the body where some human life just might be nurtured and survive, the breasts only a shape on the body, like the curve of the shoulder, a useful but wholly unremarkable part of the anatomy. The men know but dare not discuss how those breasts have held guns, have held dreams, and that they could never hold anything overnight less burdensome, less weighty than a broken continent.