White Mamba

Bernard was angry as he went in search of his daughter Agnes. The time had come to put a stop to her disrespect. Today he would correct her in such a way that the lesson would not need to be taught again. He had had enough. 

But as he walked, he turned his mind, forcefully, to more pleasant things.  He thought how satisfactory life was. He was an important man in the village and people looked up to him. They listened to his opinion with respect. This was good. This was important; a long-held ambition fulfilled. 

“All of my children,” he said to the trees he was walking amongst, ” and my brothers and sisters, have been educated. There are not many in the village who have done that!” Yes, he was pleased with himself.

Then his face frowned as his mind, of its own will, brought his thoughts back to Agnes, his daughter. She had defied him.   

“I am a man!” He spoke aloud. “And I know what it means for a woman to mock a man.  It is as if she has spit upon him. I will not allow it! I will make Agnes show respect!” 

Today she had not washed his shirts properly. She had taken the laundry down to the river to clean, yet his shirts looked like they had been dropped in the mud by the bank.   

“She would not dare to do such a thing on purpose,” he told himself.  “Impossible!”  But they were a mess and she was nowhere to be seen. He would teach her to be more careful. It was his duty as a father…   

So his feet carried him through the forest and down to the river in search. Perhaps she was there. He frowned again. She had been so disobedient lately! His beatings seemed to have no effect; she only became more sullen. When she was like that his mind tried to replace her face with that of another … who was it? Someone from a long time ago….   

His feet brought him out of the trees and along the edge of the river. His eye caught sight of the white square of paper against the green grass of the river bank and his feet turned and fled. They carried him in a panic back among the trees until he gained control … until he was finally able to bring them to a stop.  He spoke to them sternly, hoping to shame them for their cowardice. 

“Why are you running? Was there a lion hiding in the grass?” 

“No,” they seemed to reply, “but it could have been a snake… it might have had the bite of a mamba and you would die.”

He knew mambas were black or green. And very deadly. So he mocked his feet with incredulous laughter, “A mamba is white?” 

On the question his mind flashed him a picture of another time. And his heart took flight, running panic-stricken from the memory as his feet had from the paper. 

“Stop!” he shouted at it. And then he remembered the other time. 

As if it was now he saw again the green river bank with the little white square of paper he had approached so unknowingly. He remembered vividly the angry black letters of his name marring the pure cleanness of the surface. He had picked it up and recognized his sister Beatrice’ writing. (Why had he not dropped it immediately? The wind would have carried it into the river and it would have been safely lost.) But he had not.   

He had opened it. 

Mercifully his mind stopped the memory there.  His breath was coming in shallow, desperate gasps, his heart thudding loudly in his chest. He cursed himself, asking his body if it did not know that, in the old days, he would have been a great warrior and a mighty hunter. Yes! It was true. He had all the qualities his grandfather had when he was the village hero and killed the leopard that had been taking the children.   

So he scoffed at his feet’s cowardice and the laboured breathing of his tight chest. As he quarrelled with them he sat down on the hard ground by the path, telling himself it was because he chose to, not because his legs were refusing to hold him.

“What was I to do?” he demanded, wishing his body to defend him.  “I am the oldest brother, responsible for the family since our father died. Dorcas had already shamed us by having a baby by that madman Yusef. And then for Beatrice to be with child by Harold! The family could not stand for it. I refused. She should not have done that. How could she bring shame on us and then demand we accept her child as we did Dorcas’? I was right to refuse I tell you.” He was shouting and pounding his fist on the dry African dirt he sat upon. 

Then his mind seemed to remind him that Beatrice had been only 16 when he had beaten her and sent her to her boyfriend’s parents’ to live. 

“How was I to know they would refuse her?” he demanded. “Any respectable family would have accepted their son’s girlfriend and made her his wife. I did only as tradition said. She belonged to him and his. They were at fault, not I.” 

“But the beating you gave her!” his troubled mind protested. 

He shouted at himself, “Shut up. You know nothing! Nothing! I only hit her a few times with the stick. It was not my beating that laid her back open to the bone.” 

Yes, that made him feel better! It had not been his beating.

Beatrice had come from her boyfriend’s parents’ house with her back bleeding and raw… her head too. He remembered her begging him to leave her in peace. (Why did he remember this now?) She had pleaded with him, pointing to Dorcas’ son playing in the dirt nearby. She had said, “You didn’t beat Dorcas. The son of Dorcas lives here as your brother. Why do you refuse that I am your sister?”

He should have known she would demand the same treatment as Dorcas. Of course she didn’t understand the shame he felt as the eldest son. She was a woman, and it was well known that women were not made to understand such things. That was why he had to take charge. The whole village had been wagging their heads at him. He had to stop this madness.   

And he had! His other sisters had not become pregnant before they were wed. They had learned the lesson.   

He was feeling better now. His courage was strong as he stood again and retraced his steps toward the river. The white square of paper caught the sun and his heart pounded. He gritted his teeth and approached warily, as he would have had it indeed been a mamba. (So he told himself, denying the thought that, in truth, he would have run in the opposite direction faster than the Cheetah.) His forehead was sweating. He could feel the drops running down his cheeks and off his chin. But he was not afraid. It was a hot day. 

He crouched down in the tall grass, right hand stretched out toward the paper. Finally, with a mighty surge of courage he grabbed it! And looked at it. Ha! It was only a piece of blank paper torn from some student’s book. He sank down to the ground in relief. 

“You see?”  he asked his body in triumph, “it is nothing.” He smiled and began to relax. 

Then his mind reminded him that that other paper had also been a piece torn from an exercise book. He remembered. His sister had taken a page from the exercise book he had bought her. And she had written her last words on it. He had found it there by the river when he was searching for her.   

His memory recalled that day clearly, although until today it had been erased from his mind and life as if it had never been. Now he remembered. 

He had returned from a hard day and there was no food. She had refused to cook his meal! How was a man to stand for that? She needed to learn proper respect. He would teach her! 

But she had not given him the chance. She had taught her own lesson: She had left him a note. 

His brain was hurting him. The blood pounded in his head so that he had to hold it tightly to stop it from bursting like a ripe pawpaw hitting the ground. He couldn’t stand it.   

“Stop it!” he shouted. “She was wrong I tell you!”  

Against his will his mind read the note from long ago. “For you, Bernard, my brother.” The bitterness of the words, he recalled, had spoken clearly from the paper. “I hope that one day your daughters will know the pain I have known and be treated as you have treated me. Your actions will come again to you and you will regret what you have done. Farewell, ‘brother’!” 

It was a curse. He had known it at once, as had the whole village. Everyone knew that such words spoken in anger become a curse. And for a younger sister to curse the first born son was the greatest shame! 

“How dare she curse me?” he had thought. “I will make her unsay it. She cannot do this to me. I will not allow it!” 

So he had shouted inside himself then. Now he shouted it aloud into the dirt and grass he was lying on, trying to force consent from the indifferent soil. 

Gradually, as he lay there, his mind became still and as empty as his words. Then it spoke to him again. “It has happened. Her curse has come. You have driven your daughter to the same extreme. She will follow Beatrice into the river.” 

“NOO!” his heart screamed. “No, Beatrice … Agnes … No.”   

His mind played another trick with him. He saw again his sister Beatrice as they had dragged her body, big with child, out of the river. She had never known how to swim. 

She had thrown herself in the river, and they had thrown her body in the forest. Someone who killed themself could not be returned in dignity to the earth. It was not right. So he had not done it. He prided himself on doing what was right, what was according to tradition. It was why he was respected. So he had overruled the rest of the family. (Why should that bother him now? Why did he remember that now? He need only remember that it was finished. She was dead. Long ago.) 

But she had left her curse on the bank.  

A curse made in death is many times more powerful than an ordinary curse. He understood this as clearly as the whole village. But he had denied it. He did not deserve her curse. He was the eldest brother ….He deserved only respect…didn’t he? 

“What does authority mean when you drive your own daughter to the fulfilment of the curse?” His mind, weary, asked of him. 

His body understood even if he did not. It knew those things meant nothing. It writhed in agony by the bank of the river and screamed out to the dead past, “Beatrice!  I’m sorry.  I was a foolish man …. Come back!”  But it was too late. The words rang uselessly round and round inside his soul. His guilt rolled in slow tears from his eyes, dripping one by one onto the dry soil, releasing some of the empty agony within. 

Then his ears heard a sound; it intruded through his pain. He opened his eyes in fear lest he be seen groveling here. He would be a laughing stock! He looked around wildly. It was Agnes, his daughter, walking unsteadily toward the river. She had a square of white paper in her hand. 

She did not know how to swim. 

His body responded before he could command it. It jumped up and ran toward her as fast as a Cape Buffalo defending its young from a predator. 

“AGNES!”  his mouth shouted as he ran. “Agnes forgive me.  Agnes, no!” 

She turned a dazed, numb face toward him; beyond feeling. 

He ran faster, his fear reaching out to touch her, stop her before it was too late. He got there as she was placing the white square of paper on the side of the river. He could see the black scrawl of his name marring the clean white surface.