The Joyful Song of the Partridge by Paulina Chiziane

Author:Paulina Chiziane [Chiziane, Paulina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2024-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

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What is being celebrated today?

Two processions heading in opposite directions. One celebrating the end, the other the beginning. One crowd crying, the other laughing. One heading west, the other east. Both marking the death of the same man. They reach the meeting point and look at each other. They defy each other. And there is some murmuring.

Among the marchers heading east, there is merriment and laughter. Who killed the wizard, the witch doctor? It was José dos Montes, an exemplary black, a visionary who recognized that times were changing. On his own, he entered the wild animals’ redoubt and eliminated the most dangerous of all the terrorists. The wizard was confronting the regime with souls from the other world. He was mobilizing the rabble against the might of our empire.

Among those marching westward, there is gloom. Who killed our saintly patriarch, Moyo, he who healed the wounds in our bodies and souls? It was the traitor José dos Montes, in an act of ingratitude.

Because he wanted to possess the impossible. Because he didn’t want to listen to the voice of reason. No, he wasn’t mad. That was a trick he used in order to carry out his abominable deed.

Moyo’s body is lowered into the ground to the rhythm of somber drumbeats. At the same moment, José dos Montes climbs onto the pedestal. Guns and cannons in the fanfare of victory. A military parade. Upon the death of a man, the sailors award a copper star, which embellishes the shoulders of their brave men.

In his victory speech, José dos Montes declares that everything he did was for the fatherland. But his conscience tells him a different story. I didn’t kill anyone, I killed myself. He feels a sudden nostalgia. He remembers. In Moyo’s death agony, the key words. Ascent. Fall. A star. The flimsy badges they place on his shoulders carry the weight of a man. For they represent his ascent; they have stars. All he wants was to tear his own heart out in an act of suicide.

Songs of the people, the intoxication of pain and grief. In their eyes there are gloomy shadows as the future is inaugurated. The waltz of change. The sacred symphony of new words. From now on, the word “freedom” has been killed. Let slavery be called discovery. Let slaughter be called civilization and humiliation be termed conversion or Christian baptism. Let submission be called fidelity. Let all the humiliated submit themselves to those elegant gods who live in the heavens and the clouds, far from the mud and the dust, represented on the earth by the god-fishes who have disembarked from the caravels. That’s how it will be forevermore. From this day onward, we shall call them molungo, mulungo, nungu, muzungo, muzimu, meaning he who comes from the sky, heaven itself, the greatest God, the white god, heaven, Paradise, in all the languages of our land.

The people dance at the funeral of their Moyo knowing that, although he is absent, he will send them messages from under the earth, in drops of dew and of rain.

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