[2713, Evening] Victory and Defeat [Past Lit]

knitting

My love, my vast waters, I cannot live another desert day. My throat is parched for want of you; I am as bones stripped of flesh and dried of all life. We will neither of us survive another season of drought, of this I am sure. Please, my love, please we must the two of us be brave. Forget our fathers and our husbands and all that would look cruelly upon us. We shall find a place surrounded by water and nothing else. If we should float softly like ships on Hulali’s gentle hand or sink like stones to a drowned place where our bones become intertwined as coral, I no longer have a care. So long as I am with you.

Please, I beg again. With every part of my heart and the water in my veins. Please.

Come with me.

Msrah was calm as he folded the letter, sealed with the scent of musky citrus perfumes, and placed it back in the envelope. Too calm, perhaps, as the odd feeling of drifting washed over him. He had half a mind to check the air to note any strange shifts and tastes, to study the mona to see if it had prickled and twisted up around him in some perceptive spell. There was only that unfamiliar smell of oranges and cloves. He gathered up the bundle of letters, smudged faintly with berry lip stains and kohl, with teardrops and fingerprints and stowed them safely in his wife’s jewellery box. Her secret place. Msrah didn’t feel much in the way of guilt about that. Feeling had dripped smoothly from his body like silk across skin bathed fastidiously in cool goat’s milk and crushed patchouli petals.

He was dressed immaculately, naturally, all ornate gold embroidery across the front of a midnight blue salwar kameez, cut low to his chest and accented with golden draperies. It was far more expensive looking and intricately designed that his clothes from a few hours earlier, from what he wore habitually- but there was the sense of occasion that came with tonight. Msrah smoothed down the breast of his kameez and had to remind himself that he was still supposed to be celebrating. That he was supposed to feel something like triumph.

Smile, he told himself inside. Outside, he heard the coachmen and cloven hoofs in the dirt. His father’s voice drifted up from the courtyards as he helped his mother down from the carriage. Msrah let go of a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding onto, clenched his fists into a tight ball and pulled his head up towards the ceiling.

“I think they’re here,” Chione’s voice drifted in from the hall. Her footsteps came next and he equipped himself to look at her.

“Are you ready?” he asked. Not even coolly. As natural as a breath of air from his lungs as he continued to look at his sash. Fixing it to his shirts with a sapphire brooch dark as evening’s waters.

“Yes.” She folded her arm over her abdomen, arms bare and buffed so that they shone in the gas lamps. He didn’t look at her properly, not yet; she presented herself to him only as the smallest blur of dark skin and deep blue fabric out of the corner of his eye. There’d be no warmth for him on her face. Only the detachment of one viewing an entire life as a blur in the corner of an eye. Was there a moment, he suddenly wanted to ask, in six years of marriage that you loved me? Did you ever even try?

“We should go then,” he took her by her bare arm. Just below the twisting gold bracelet on her bicep. She wore another at her throat, and one around her ankle. Gifts. And he wondered if this woman had come to view them as chains. Smile, said that voice once again inside. Chione only nodded slightly, dark eyes shifting in a way that he’d once mistaken for coyness. He would not be making that mistake again.

The air had cooled in the darkness, had become distant in relation to the close warmth of day. The housekeeper had led his parents into the small interior courtyard of their narrow town riad, where water trickled into the shallow pool of the fountain. Among the potted palm trees, his mother took a seat as his father stood and in the distance the cicadas were screaming.

“There he is!” Father gibed as he saw the two of them in the hallway leading out from the bedroom, pressing his lips together as he opened out his arms. “My boy. My boy the councillor.” Msrah ducked into a bow as he allowed himself to be pulled into an embrace by the senior Mulugeta. Ahmon was a wealthy trader now into his late sixties with a ruby turban sitting over his white hair but he had a strength about him like his son that was a rarity among the arati, softened now into something like a puffed out pigeon chest and large arms.

“Ea, jara I am still a councillor. Things have not changed since we parted this afternoon.”

“Ja’xa bahjea, allow an old man his prideful hot air. Thirty four years your juela and I raised you, you cannot expect me to have tired of enjoying the fruit of all my labours in the space of the few hours it took for the womenfolk to set their curls.”

Ahmon was jubilant, still as giddy as a schoolgirl in the wake of his victory but it was all Msrah could do to summon up his insincere smile. He was pleased too, despite the relatively minor positioning- at the scope of the win and yet…he raised an eyebrow slightly. All your labours, Jara? And I suppose I did no work at all.

His mother smiled too, kissed him and laid her cool palm against Msrah’s face. “Are we all ready, heh? Are the womenfolk sufficiently beautified? Ea, ea yes I would say so. Two of the finest jewels in all of Thul’Ka. Chione, jue’na, come here to me- you shine like a rare and precious stone as always,” continued Ahmon as he kissed Chione too and ducked into a low bow. “No wonder, no wonder the boy takes his career victories in his stride. How can an electoral neighbourhood compare to the prize he has already won?” Her smile was meek and Msrah felt a curl of anger. The woman was a serpent. Looking his family in the eye as if she had no shame surrounding the many years and deep waters of her betrayal.

As they headed towards the carriages, Ahmon touched his son on his arm. “There is,of course, still much to discuss. This is but the first step for us mija’xa.” Msrah was under no illusions that tonight was not simply a party in order to celebrate Bull Elephant gains in this recent election. There would be scheming in a different uniform, for all the finery and the food and wine and music the only thing that mattered were the plans. His father was still in the mode of trader and the product he had to sell tonight was his son. Would lead him around the party and say ‘san’hulali, fine friends. You’ll remember mija’xa of course. Msrah Mi Mulugeta. No doubt you have heard of his astounding victory in The Gripe. The percentages! The percentages do not lie.” It was coarse and unsubtle salesmanship and yet it seemed to work well for his father. Always had done.

Even among the politics and the plots though, his eyes still found Chione. Among the women. Drinking red wine deep from the glass and bristling at lulls in the conversation. She despised these parties; he had long suspected it. But when she smiled for the women and kissed them in greeting he wondered. Was she here? The desema bitch from the letters. Had they met at a Bull Elephant function? His career ultimately driving her closer to some degenerate seductress.

He pictured each of the women Chione spoke to as her lover and felt ill to his stomach. Such a thing, he had always believed, was for the licentious, brash, ugly women who either could find no man or simply refused to please one and do their duty. The letter had seemed to imply that she was married too but he could not reconcile these politicians wives- who stood and smiled and dressed as they were expected to- with the image of this other woman. His hand tightened around the glass in his hand, a strong rum that burned as it went down, and he was nowhere but in some dark room in a sordid part of town, watching his wife destroy their marriage and every sense of decency and morality that any mugrobi knew.

“Excuse me sirs,” he found himself saying in the middle of a deeply important discussion involving his future with a senior party member who was close friends with his father and a few others but he could not concentrate. “I must have a word with my wife.”

“Yaka, she will wait surely?” said Ahmon, his eyes narrowed as he looked at his son and his mouth pressed into a thin line.

“Let the boy go,” said the old friend of his father’s, eyes sparkling as he gave Msrah what he assumed was some conspiratorial wink. “He has had a big day. Behind every man is a great woman, we must share our victories. Ea, had I a woman so beautiful I would not let her stray from my side for one moment.”

You are welcome to her, he wanted to say bitterly. Perhaps you could stomach pulling the shame and the lasciviousness out of her. For I have surely failed.

This thought of failure, more than anything had his teeth gritted together and anger burning in the pit of stomach. Bowing to take his leave- sure that he would catch the wrath of his father later- Msrah strode over to his wife. There, in view of the women, he grasped her by the arm and pressed her into a kiss. It was cold like shards of ice. Like kissing a corpse. The idiot politician’s wives all laughed to cover their embarrassment. “Do’mea, I must steal the lovely Chione from your company.” More laughter and smiles. He could tell immediately which of them were much pleased by his appearance, had learned those looks from school age. Chione had never been like that and when he’d first met her it had seemed exciting. Like a challenge. As if a woman could be won like an election. With enough time and weasel words.

“Msrah…this is inappropriate. People will talk,” she muttered, a curl of panic running through her voice. Perhaps she expected he would try and paw at her in some dark corridor, filled up with a victory and testosterone that could easily warp into lust. The idea of tracing the same path as her lover made him sick.

“You’re hurting me,” she gasped. He was holding too tightly onto her arm as he pulled her along the corridors and into a corner of the vast stone courtyard. It wasn’t out of malice- though he would have well been in his rights to hold too tightly. To do much worse, he didn’t doubt, like in the stories of other cuckholds.

And yet, as he looked at her, rolling her arm from his grip and pulling away to stare at him- her honey brown eyes glaring at him, he found that same strange calm washing over him. Found he could talk to her quite rationally, without an ounce of tremble or a break in his voice.

“I am divorcing you, Chione,” he said simply.

Chione’s eyes knitted together for all of a moment before she folded her arms over her body and turned away.

“How long have you known?”

“How long have I known? That’s all you will say to me? After six years? We have a child together.”

Chione put her hand up towards her temples as she took a deep glug of her wine. Though her voice was as soft and smooth as his, Msrah could see that her hands were trembling. “You’ll be granted sole custody of Mekeela, of course. It’s what we both want. I would never be able to give her what you can. I…I never did learn to love her. No matter how hard I tried she seemed to always be another bar at the walls of my prison cell.”

She could not even bring herself to love his child. Msrah could see now that he didn’t care for this woman. Everything she was had so successfully extinguished any last lingering flames of any affection he may have nursed for her once. His wife.

“We must keep the courts out of this,” was all he said.

“Yes. It would not be good for your career if our affairs were conducted so publicly. And I…”

“You would be ruined socially. They would never allow you to live in Thul’Ka undisturbed.”

Perhaps some grains of dignity could be scrabbled from this whole situation. It need not be public, surely? An amicable divorce that would settle into nothing over the course of a few months provided they stayed quiet and private about everything. In a few years he could marry again. Someone who didn’t flinch away from his touch, who didn’t seem repulsed to kiss him. Who would love him. It didn’t seem like an impossible thing and as he considered it he realised how much he had longed for it all these past frigid years of his marriage.

“I disgust you,” Chione sighed as she finished her drink.

He pulled his head away and looked at the sky. At twin moons and the constellations. It was a virtue, they said, to be honest above all else. But sometimes the truth presented itself as something unpalatable and ugly. In these situations it was often better to remain silent. But with the silence came a wealth of meaning all of its own.

“You had best leave tomorrow. I have the party to attend to and the servants would gossip if you left tonight. Go to the house of your father and we will say it is for a visit until the formalities are dealt with. After that…” after that you can go and live in sin as you wish. I want nothing more to do with you. “After that we are free.”

“Ea, ea,” she whispered and bowed her head low. From the shudder of her breath he sensed that she was weeping. Not out of sorrow for the corpses of a marriage that she had killed with her infidelity. But out of joy.

They went their separate ways and she tried to smile at him weakly, as a kind of thanks or affirmation for the descision, but Msrah could not return it. He smoothed out his shoulders and held his head high as he went to join his father. There was much business of slapping him on the back and congragulating him on a win he had almost forgotten about. Yes. He had won. He was a victor.

And here were his spoils.

**

“Yaka. Yaka, yaka! Maguala, ya’arka, fucking shit. Yaka!” Ahmon’s words were a torrent of disjointed curses, in Mugrobi, in Estuan in words that didn’t seem to belong to the lexicon of any language on vita. He was beyond comprehension as the spit bubbled up around the sides of his mouth and a vain went popping at the side of his forehead. At one point as he went stamping around the study, Msrah wondered if he might actually be in the throes of a heart attack until his finger rose and was pointed at the centre of Msrah’s forehead. “I will not allow it. Not now. Not ever.”

“The deed is done, mijara. She’s gone already to her father’s house. We are both agreed.”

“I do not agree,” Ahmon countered savagely and his face fell into disappointment in a way that tugged on Msrah’s heart. “We were doing so well…everything is there in front of us. All we have to do is reach out and take it. Get her back at once. Before any damage is done and the word gets out.”

“I do not want her back,” Msrah sniffed, trying to meet his father’s eye. He was almost beseeching in his speech. Willing his father to understand. “She has a lover.”

“Then you ask the mona to punish the man for his dishonour and reclaim your masculinity, how could you have allowed this Msrah?”

A turning of his head as he wrinkled up his nose in disgust and fought to spit out the words, “It is a woman, jara.”

Ahmon went back to swearing. “Idiot. Ya’arka. Hulali drown Tocari Isha Okri and his entire family for selling me a dud brood mare. Islanders! Not to be trusted any one of them. You wonder why their hair is so thin and limp? Because it is as loose as their morals.” Msrah went back to watching the rum swirl around in his drink as his father paced. “He will fix this. I will make him. She shames his family as much as she shames ours. More. I will make sure of this.”

“Yaka!” he finally said. He could take it no longer. “The only way to fix this is to allow us to divorce quickly and quietly. I tell you father, we love eachother not.”

“Love! Love?! You sit here and you talk to me of love?” thundered Ahmon. “My son, I took you for a politician and not the heroine of some hat desema romance story in the papers.” A stomp of his foot. “It matters not that you love her. It matters that the scandal will ruin your reputation and your chances of ever being reelected anywhere in the city. For the first time, boy, there are eyes on you, people are talking about you and we must insure they are for the right reasons. Everything we have built has been upon this image of who you are. The father and husband. It is what we sell. Did I not teach you that?”

“Ea, I know but…”

“It seems I should have spent more time teaching you how to please a woman.”

Msrah stood up at that and curled his hands into a fist. “Enough,” he barked as Ahmon saw very clearly he had touched a nerve, stepping forward to grasp his son by the shoulders.

“She made you a cuckold and you roll over and allow her to do so. She is the one who is jeopardising everything.” He didn’t want to hear this. But it was true. “An election is nothing. You took The Gripe and they adore you. Soon the city will fall too. It is only a matter of time. Only a matter of the goods with which we have to sell. You do want to succeed don’t you son?” Msrah nodded. Everything he was had been groomed to such a thing. Instilled in him from a young age. He thought of the campaign trail, of that perfect moment when the votes came in. “And you will,” said Ahmon with a nod.“As soon as you learn that power and your career is more important than such trivial things as love and happiness.”

His career. It was all that he had, in truth, he realised that standing in this study with his marriage in tatters. Ahmon pulled back and patted Msrah on the shoulders. “Then I have your consent to send for Chione. Do not worry; I will make sure she understands better what is expected of her this time around.”

Wordlessly Msrah nodded.

**


Chione was weeping openly when they brought her back to the home, her father and his father standing gravely behind her. Gone was the paper thin mask of anything like happiness and she stood before him as raw and red as an open wound, a cut on her cheekbone and a strange prickle in the mona around her. It smelled like burned hair.  He may have touched her shoulder lightly and assured her that he wanted this as much as she did were it not for the old man. “And here is Mekeela to see you,” was all he said brightly as the nursemaid brought over the burbling two year old and placed it in the woman’s arms. The child squirmed a little uncomfortable but soon settled into place and Chione choked hysterically, as if she were hyperventilating.

The letters did not come back with her. Msrah did not know who they belonged to but Ahmon said that Chione had told them. That she was dealt with suitably.

After they left, she stopped crying. Rimed her swollen eyes with kohl and arranged her hair for dinner where they sat in silence. He tried to speak once the housekeeper had retired to the next room but she dropped her fork on the plate with a clatter. “No,” she hissed. “No you won’t speak to me. I hate you for what you’ve done. I will hate you as long as I live.”

It was fair. He hated himself for it too.

“Why Msrah?” she broke down and whispered in a thin voice.

“Power is more important than such trivial things as love and happiness,” was all he could say flatly in return.

The house keeper came back for the dessert and they were quiet again. Msrah said he was not hungry and would likely take in some exercise after the dinner. It was important to stay fit and trim for his public appearances in his new constituency. Chione poured herself another glass of wine.