Mia CoutoThe Sword and the Spear by David Brookshaw

Abstract

His current book (not a novel) is similarly stripped, but to different effect. It details the tragic story of the El Bordo mine fire of 1920. Herrera pores over documents to piece together what exactly happened, and the results are infuriating. He starts with the aftermath of the fire, in which the families of the deceased have to prove their relation in order to receive a payout. To start off with the pettiest of indignities sets the tone for the rest of the book, as we are given a step-by-step account (as far as the documents can say) of what happened on March 10. To repeat the rest of the action of the book would feel too much like spoiling it, short as the book already is. Suffice it to say that the Mining Company needlessly ended nearly ninety lives by closing the door to the mine before everyone could get out. Once they’d done that, they lied about the number of the dead and set about covering up their responsibility for the accident, for those deaths, for anything. Well, “covering up” might be putting it incorrectly. They don’t have to “cover up” much when they controlled the inspectors sent to assess the damage, to see if a crime had taken place, to place blame. What Herrera has done is demonstrate the callousness of these operations and the people who ran (and run) them. It happened recently, only a hundred years ago. The workers had no recourse, no way to empower themselves, and as such went to work every day with the possibility that it could be their last. Some literally died nameless, and others weren’t even given Books in Review Mia Couto The Sword and the Spear Trans. David Brookshaw. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. 288 pages. MASTER STORYTELLER MIA COUTO frames an inspired tale with actual events in The Sword and the Spear. The novel illustrates polarization transcending time and place, demonstrating evolution of the Other. Questions of gender dominance, identity, and home loom large. It’s 1895 in Mozambique. Emperor Ngungunyane rules the State of Gaza, which Portugal (owing British financiers) seeks to colonize. While war rages, five people move upriver in a dugout, echoing Joseph Conrad ’s Heart of Darkness. Sergeant Germano de Melo, exiled for working against the Portuguese crown, reports on Ngungunyane’s army. Germano heads to a hospital near Ngungunyane’s court with hands bleeding profusely. Katini Nsambe paddles the canoe. His VaChopi tribe aligned with the Portuguese against Ngungunyane, who vowed to exterminate their race. Katini’s daughter Imani, fifteen, learned Portuguese in school. She’s Germano ’s interpreter—and his heart’s desire. Imani’s brother, Mwanatu, guards Germano. After Ngungunyane’s forces kill Mwanatu, Katini offers Imani to Ngungunyane in marriage, to slay him. She loves Germano. Bianca, Germano’s Italian friend, yearns to meet Mouzinho de Albuquerque, a Portuguese cavalry officer whose photograph captivated her. So begins this second volume of Couto’s Mozambican trilogy, Sands of the Emperor, following the first, Woman of the Ashes (see WLT, May 2018, 64). David Brookshaw translated both. (The saga ends with The Drinker of Horizons, out in Portuguese but not yet in English.) Book 2 recaps the first in the introduction, adding a glossary of African and Portuguese terms plus historical figures. Each volume is an independent novel. Read together, they encompass the story arc of an actual African king resisting colonization. Mouzinho represents the colonizer brandishing the sword. Ngungunyane holds the spear. Several thousand watch him surrender. Describing only that fateful 1895 meeting would be fascinating, but Couto is far too gifted a writer to settle for that. Blending myth, visions, and imagination, he selects two characters to narrate. Germano and Imani also typify the sword and the spear— love across cultures. As in Woman of the Ashes, Couto alternates their chapters: Germano in letters to his military superior, Imani in memoir. Sometimes facts weaken their voices. Past events merge with current in flashbacks. The two describe surroundings —people delivering speeches atop tall termite mounds or Katini playing his marimba. Most characters miss home but have trouble defining it. Ngungunyane creates child soldiers...