Confession of the Lioness Read Free Page A

authority that had escaped him for some moments.
    I want you to shut yourself away here when this hunter arrives. Do you hear?
    Yes.
    While these people are in Kulumani, you’re not to stick so much as your nose outside.
    Silence descended on the room once more. My mother and I sat down on the floor as if it were the only place left in the world. I patted her shoulder in an attempt to show comfort. She avoided me. In an instant, the order of the universe had been reestablished: we women on the ground; our father pacing up and down, in and out of the kitchen, displaying his mastery of the house. Once more, we were governed by those laws that neither God teaches nor Man explains. Suddenly Genito Mpepe stopped in the middle of the house and, opening his arms, declared:
    I know what the solution is: We let the mulatto come, we leave him to kill the lions. But then we won’t allow him to leave.
    Are you going to kill him? I asked, alarmed.
    Am I the sort of person who kills people? The one who’s going to kill him is you.
    Me?
    It’s the lions you summoned who are going to kill him.

 
    The Hunter’s Diary
    ONE
    The Advertisement
    There’s only one way to escape from a place: It’s by abandoning ourselves. There’s only one way to abandon ourselves: It’s by loving someone.
    â€”EXCERPT PILFERED FROM THE WRITER’S NOTEBOOKS
    It’s two in the morning and I can’t sleep. A few hours from now, they’ll announce the result of the contest. That’s when I’ll know whether I’ve been selected to go and hunt the lions in Kulumani. I never thought I’d rejoice so much at being chosen. I’m in dire need of sleep. That’s because I want to get away from myself. I want to sleep so as not to exist.
    *   *   *
    The sun’s nearly up and I’m still wrestling with the sheets. My only ailment is this: insomnia broken by brief snatches of sleep from which I wake with a start. When it comes down to it, I sleep like the animals I hunt for a living: the jumpy wakefulness of one who knows that too much inattention can be fatal.
    To summon sleep, I resort to the ploy my mother used when it was our bedtime. I remember her favorite story, a legend from her native region. This is how she would tell it:
    In the old days, there was nothing but night. And God shepherded the stars in the sky. When he gave them more food, they would grow fat and their bellies would burst with light. At that time, all the stars ate, and all glowed with the same joy. The days were not yet born, and that was why Time advanced on only one leg. And everything was so slow up there in the endless firmament! Until, among the shepherd’s flock, a star was born that aspired to be bigger than all the others. This star was called Sun, and it soon took over the celestial pastures, banishing the other stars afar, so that they began to fade. For the first time, there were stars that suffered and became so pale that they were swallowed up by the darkness. The Sun flaunted its grandeur more and more, lordly over its domains and proud of its name, so redolent of masculinity. And so he gave himself the title of lord of all the stars and planets, assuming all the arrogance of the center of the Universe. It wasn’t long before he declared that it was he who had created God. But in fact what had happened was that with the Sun now so vast and sovereign, Day had been born. Night only dared to approach when the Sun, tired at last, decided to go to bed. With the advent of Day, men forgot the endless time when all stars shone with the same degree of happiness. And they forgot the lesson of the Night, who had always been a queen without ever having to rule.
    This was the story. Forty years on and this maternal comfort has no effect. It won’t be long before I know whether I’m going back to the bush, where men have forgotten all the lessons learned. It’ll be my last hunting