The Stone Virgins Page 9

  In Gulati, we planted land mines in shrines, among absent worshipers. We called out our own names among ancient shadows, the rocks that watch over you all night while you sleep. One rock is pinned on another, and another, smaller, suddenly larger than the eye can see, past trees, past the steady flight of birds; the entire formation is suspended in the sky, shaped in a balanced symmetry. We wove through leaf and thorn toward each mysterious image. At night, the rocks held shadows from the moon, which fell through trees whose branches were free of leaves. The stars spread over the rocks and lay there till we tried to touch them; then they vanished, as though they had sunk deep into the rock, their light lost to our eyes, to our touch. The stars dart like night insects, like torches handheld.

  If you lie flat over the rock and there is no moon, the stars spread over your body like a glittering mat, and warm you like a blanket. You have the feeling of being divine. Here you are safe, part of the elements, precious, priceless like eternal things. You are fundamental, like lightning. Days go by that are ethereal like this, and you forget you are in battle against anything more substantial than time. You linger in this moment the way one lingers in a sweet memory, returning each day to the celestial contour of the rock as to a passionate lover, equally unclothed, taking the same amount of risk with your mind, alert to betrayal but not safe from harm, gaining a foolish courage with each encounter. Then the moon returns its luminous presence, and once more you regain a profile; the moon a metamorphosis, you become a target, a definite enemy. You are aware of your responsibility, the commitment in your bones to end other lives so that yours may begin. If you are fortunate, you will forget quickly that you made any kind of resolve. You are here—that is all—your arm folded over a warm rock like a hearth, your knees trembling quietly.

  You are learning to resist the slow pursuit of memories. It destroys your instinct. You are learning not to thrill at a firefly, your emotion taut like a string. After all, you are being followed. It is a mistake to be static, to start identifying plants. That one, which lets out spit from its stamen in order to trap bees and butterflies. You begin to recognize its special pollen on bees, on your skin a bouquet. You are now sedentary, knowing too that plant which is a parasite, which grows on the shoulder of a tree where dead leaves and soil have gathered; it has bloomed. How long have you remained here in order to watch a parasite bloom? The other plant, whose succulence is richest at night, when you can peel its skin away with your nails, it slides off, soft, as though blanched. Too long, to have discovered this, how many nights?

  You lie under the stars and recall the odor from a dead man. It is the easiest odor to return to the senses; its impurity rises from within, like a shroud. You leave your shelter of stars; after all, everywhere there are stars.

  There is a shrine in Gulati where we met, about thirty of us each time. It was the only time you lay so close to another’s fear. A cave called Mbelele. An enclosure, enormous, known throughout Gulati as the most sacred of sacred places. Not visited. The villagers would never enter it, not even to find a lost child. It has light in it that slides round the overhanging rock, the rock that keeps the rain out, the rain that heals. The light sparkles like water. When you feel it on your skin, you know this light has been living here for weeks: a closed place. To go in, you climb onto its back, hanging on to each groove as you ascend; each missing crust on its back is a salvation, a foothold on time. At the top is a slim aperture. You place your hand on the edge of one wall, and slide down, your legs going in first, searching the cold air. You let go of the wall, your breath rising like a swimmer. You keep falling. You are through, landed, surrounded by a fuming light. You are water and air.

  From this handful of light, plants grow, burrowing deep into the floor of this cave, finding water. These plants lack any direct light; they breathe what is scattered in it. Often the ground decays, the plants dead from the stillness in the air. Mbelele has its own seasons. Closed, sound does not travel out of it. We were safe in that immobile air. We heard nothing outside our own suppressed voices; we were not heard. We left our ammunition here, and clothing, and returned after months of fighting; this womb. Long ago, humans lived here. This was clear. We found an unbroken pot and used it for our own cooking. We found a man long dead. His bones. His hair. And all over the inside of these walls of Mbelele was a thundering testimony of a sorrow to rival our own. We were perplexed. Unsafe. In our war dance. Our sure guns. Grenades. Land mines. Wounds: purple burns drying in spoonfuls of gentian violet. Our wisdom: a gauze.

  To get to Mbelele, you walk through forests of tall grass, heavy-winged. During the rains, the grass is wet and slippery; the mushrooms and snails crush underfoot, the millipede, the hawk spread out, the birds feeding their young with worms; then the smell of yellow grass sweeps over the knees.

  The yellow grass. We had no name for that grass which flowers in thousands under your foot, that has a fiery odor like abandoned memories. This odor floods all the way up to the hills. If you stay in that field long enough, you soon hear the bees singing, your eyelids fall, the odor pursues, and you are anointed.

  The yellow grass field is not a place to linger. Instead, you hold your breath and move quickly. You move your limbs swiftly, with hardly any air reaching your nostrils. You hold your breath till your senses are alight, till your feet have acquired their own judgment of distance and safety. You are dead except for your body pulling forward. You are breathing only that air which is already trapped inside your body, nothing else. You do not breathe out. It is hard, but you get it right after a while. Then your arms are the air you long for, and you are in full flight like an eagle. You are racing forward, your knees parting the grass and opening a path for your body to slip through. You are gliding, incandescent, like a waterfall.

  With relief, you overcome this field of yellow grass. You let go. You are dizzy with the force of air pounding down to your lungs. You keel over, rise quickly, mutter a word. You do not stop till you reach that ancient parting in the rocks, the valley with the stream wedged in it, which they call Simude. It glitters. Now you are close to the largest rocks of Gulati, which spill into the clouds, and the water at last is pure. It is so pure that you can hardly see your own reflection in it. A strange sensation of being invisible grips you as you look down into the water. Your instinct is to place your cupped hand into this clarity and drink, but if you do, then your body will give up; you cannot move on, not today. It is best to leave this pleasure behind—you leap over this stream. Now you have left Simude, many distances back. You are near the shrines, among those rocks in Gulati, which change shape as you approach, which shrink and expand according to the beating of your heart, the hills, which sway, which balance one above the other. When your breath returns, cools, and your eyes are open wide, then the rocks also are stilled; their shapes emerge from the distance and you realize that you are among the rocks. Among the rocks. Hidden. Everything is infinite; it is there, not you. The rocks continue in their immortal strength. You are separate. Transient. Human strength rises and wanes. Even at its summit, our strength is not rock: igneous. The mind is perishable. Memory lingers, somewhere, in fragments. Such rocks; something happened, an event cataclysmic. Something happened; this is memory. You are alive; this, too, is memory. You allow sleep to cleanse your body like warm water, like that clarity of Simude. You laugh in your dream; you rest. A cleavage in this rock. You are safe. Now. The yellow grass is wrapped over your body, the odor severe, like a carcass, dead things.

  Before the rocks, among the short bushes, there is a plant, round, with orange petals, scattered everywhere and growing wild, all over that old ground. These are shelters on which many insects are born. You wake in a cloudburst. It is raining in Gulati. You are amphibious. The rain soaks you clean. Petals float to shore; humans grow wings and take flight like birds. You sleep once more.

  The safest dwelling place is the bomb crater, which death has already visited. The smooth places and the flat ground fertile with insect life and growi
ng plants are unsafe, like the unsteady rocks, unsafe. You cannot hide near a rock. You enter it; you hide inside, in its largest cavity. A room in a rock, where you may swing your arms, where leopards give birth. Your eyes sweep over the coarse-grained surface—you are alone, a carcass immured. On the rounded roof, an arm is spread to the sun. The buffalo dance.

  I place my hand on the rocks, where antelopes and long-breasted women stand together. Tall women bend like tightened bows beneath a stampede of buffalo, while the rest spread their legs outward to the sun. Even now, as I speak, they are there hunting something else beyond the buffalo, something eternal. What is it that they hunt? They move past the lonely herds. Are their arrows raised against time, these keepers of time? Beyond the rock, there is nothing but light. The women raise their arms against the light. Perhaps their arms welcome the light falling from the curve of the rock, a light indelible; each stroke carries a thousand years of disbelief.

  Disembodied beings. Their legs branch from their bodies like roots. The women float, moving away from the stone. Their thighs are empty, too fragile, too thin to have already carried a child. They are the virgins who walk into their own graves before the burial of a king. They die untouched. Their ecstasy is in the afterlife. Is this a suicide or a sacrifice, or both? Suicide, a willing, but surely a private matter? Sacrifice means the loss of life, of lives, so that one life may be saved. The life of rulers is served, not saved. This, suicide. The female figures painted on this rock, the virgins, form a circle near the burial site, waiting for the ceremonies of their own burial. Here, the rock is almost pure. The knees have been eaten by time; the ink is blotted out. Something is hidden: The legs are wavering strokes of blood-lit tendrils on the rock. Far from that alarming grace of the arms, the face raised high from the shoulders. Down, below the waist, the light washes over them. Perhaps they have been saved from life’s embrace. Not dead. I place my hand over the waist of the tall woman, on an inch of bone, yet forty thousand years gather in my memory like a wild wind.

  It is true: everything in Gulati rots except the rocks. On the rocks, history is steady; it cannot be tilted forward or backward. It is not a refrain. History fades into the chaos of the hills, but it does not vanish. In Gulati, I travel four hundred years, then ten thousand years, twenty more. The rocks split open, time shifts, and I confess that I am among the travelers who steal shelter from the dead.

  I open my palm against the belly of the woman on the rock, the one with outstretched arms. The space between her knees, shafts of light. The stretch of her arm, a tattoo.

  There is water here before the rainy season. The rocks split open and let the water run down to the valley to feed the animals. Before any storm occurs, something here drowns. Sometimes it is only a word that drowns.

  Both the people and the animals eat the marula; they thrive on its liquid flavor. In all the ages, five thousand years ago, two thousand, four hundred years, and yesterday, the rain dancers throw water into the air, upward, past the hills, like pebbles. The water is carried in wooden plates. This is a winnowing dance: that which is raised to the sky is hope; that which is left behind can only bring death.

  The crater. I trace my way back to the explosion. I feel the air for its unnatural flavors. I distill the air. I find the unholy ingredient in it. I find its man-made chemistry. I follow that smell like a wise dog. I meet limbs discarded, the flesh hanging from uprooted trees. The broken ground, an aftermath of ambush. This is my life’s basin. This is the afterbirth of war, its umbilical presence. This crater is a burial ground, a mound for the dying. This is the last gasp of war. I am safe. The ground is warm. I rest in that new detonation. The odor of the dead protects me from wild animals, from hyenas, from concession-seekers. I lie among the arms, legs, the torso of an already-forgotten man. This is a resting place, this singed place, this shrine of powdered stars. I enter the lives of the dead.

  The soil is chaos and ash. I enter into its burning. The soil is warm like a liquid. I am among the dead voices. I inhale their last breath. I share their last memory, this sight of thundering perfume. I hear their last sounds, charred voices. A man can vanish in a single sigh. An instant is eternal; in it, a man becomes all sound, then perishes into ash; the echo of his own death outlives him. His life cracks like bone, melts, condenses into a fine paste. No struggle can restore a man’s life. Nothing can recapture his presence. He is flame, the smooth heat found on a piece of frayed metal, the mound cooling, finally silent, as though nothing sudden had happened. It is a peaceful calm, except for the signs of death everywhere, the absolute detonation. His life is past. It is not clear if he has died alone or with another. Was he alone? Was he?

  I am among the dead voices. I discover a whole side of a trouser leg that is intact. It has been burned all around the edges, mapped. No loose threads—the fabric is heavy. Camouflage. No hem. No waist. The cloth starts halfway down the thigh. He was a tall man. A pocket on it. Intact. Buttoned up with metal hooks. Safe. Inside is a blue whistle. A chain on the whistle. I rest it on my palm. I close my fingers over it, fingers that are burned. I am curious. I raise it to my tongue. When my lips reach its flat tip and I clasp it with my mouth, I know that I have tasted the presence of a dead man.

  I breathe in his passageway, my breath following his. I blow slowly. The sound emerging is his voice, calling from the ashes. I raise his lips to mine. An eerie passage. Not a lament, but an embrace. Not an embrace, but acceptance. The whistle has the shape of a snail. The sound from it is sharp, contained; it can be directed across distances. Sound is precise, cannot be duplicated; yet, a man imitates the man before him, with all his weaknesses. I hold the whistle with my thumb and forefinger. This is how he must have held it, the man before me. I know I have erased his last touch, the impress of his fingers. I have lost him. I blow a soft tune, which I can hardly hear. It is the only way to bury man—with a sound lighter than his own ashes.

  I slide the whistle into the pocket on my right thigh. I nestle into the warm soil, as close to the dead as I can travel, as far away from the claims of the living, far from myself. Here, in this soil, there is something I can trust, someone. Everything I fear has already happened. I do not fear what has already happened—not the ungraceful arm of history, not recent and touchable deaths. Geographies are my only matter, my absolute concern. Umhlaba. This earth. The darkness falls close to my skin, like skin. In the darkness, a wind builds, whipping through the trees. It moves against my cheek and throws wild dust into my eyes, hard and sharp grains like bits of ground bone. If I close my eyes, I can tolerate this rough exposure; it is a merciful burial. I raise my hand to protect my face. My eyes are open to the breath of a wind. I hold the rough grains between my fingers. The sensation is not unpleasant. I sleep.

  10

  It is no longer a touch tracing my chin, not only a touch on my lower lip, his roughness invading, the agony prolonged, but more than that. I feel, now, each moment. I am trapped in my bones. He is here. Sibaso. In my bones.

  At first, the moment is painless and I do not react, knowing nothing; then a piercing pain expands, and my body turns numb, motionless, with a searing pain. He has sought my face. Held it. His fingers, the gap between my eyes, the length of my brow, the spread of my cheekbones, my lips, moving or silent. He cut. Smoothly and quickly. Each part memorized; my dark blood, my voice vanishing. My mouth, a wound. My mouth severed, torn, pulled apart. A final cut, not slow, skillfully quick; the memory of it is the blood in my bones.

  He lifts me from the ground. He holds me up, lifts me through my arm, my cracking bone. I close my eyes and find in my body a sound surrounding me, my heart hammering against my chest, sudden, my outtake of breath. I lift from the ground. Blood rushes to my ears.

  His hand is on my shoulder. I press upon the ground with my hand, my wrist bending, my open palm. My arm grazes over the ground as he drags me up, and pulls, and flings me forward into his body. Wings open and flap overhead, a bird in the sky.

  Human voices are far awa
y, too far away. No one can hear. No one sees. The grass thatch of the huts, brown, spreading out, and the huts flatten and melt into gray earth. There, the flank of a boulder, dark, as though water has been poured over it. This vision leaps into my eyes, familiar, yet distant, too far, farther than my own silence. He moves closer. I hear the sound of his shoe. He is closer than that. He swivels my weight in his arms and pulls me up to his shoulder. My arms rest against his shirt. My blouse is pulled up where he holds me tightly against himself. The waistband of my skirt is loose. I feel the cloth slide down my thighs. His shirt, with the blood soaked in it, is so close I can smell it.

  I know his name. I cannot call his name. My tongue is silent, his name on it. I could call out his name. I try, but I hear him breathing, near. I am standing, raised up, as high as his shoulder, pulled up. Himself poised for another action. His mind is reeling. I know he will kill me. I close my mind as simply as I would close my eyes, effortlessly. I have been waiting; he, too, has waited, thought out his action, calculated his own capacity to inflict harm. His eyes are everywhere. This I see. I close my eyes briefly. Perhaps I do not close my eyes at all, but I miss his next act. It occurs between one breath and the next, one gesture, one act. I carry this moment now like a blindness.

  His movements are quick. I do not remember when or how anything occurs, the unfolding of his fierce act. I search and search for the precise moment of his action. I do not find it. I have been waiting, alert to each of his movements. There is a blank moment when I miss all the motions of his body, the ripple of his mind. There is a moment when I lose his one hand under my arm. His scent vanishes. His brow. He pushes my head forward—this I remember—and his hand locks over the back of my neck. Briefly. He releases my face and both his hands are before me. This I miss. I am still. I do not remember where the palm of his hand is, but it is no longer on my neck, no longer behind my body, but in front of me. I do not remember any of his actions without feeling him pressed on my body, following his body like a shadow, tracing the outline of his mind. His arm swings. Moves upward. Is swift and quiet. I am on the ground once more. I miss his arm swinging toward me, and him, holding the shape, the curve of my body on his palm, on the edge of his sudden and fine instrument. I recall no sound. I hear nothing. Not a single intake of breath, his or mine. His face so silent, I do not feel his first stroke. It falls on my flesh like light on water. Soundlessly. Like a sharp and burning light.