Burying dreams, sorrows ‘Under the Tongue’
The book is an intricate, evocative and horrendous; yet captivating and revealing poetical rhapsody of the pain of memory buried under a crest of uncertainty and hope.
YVONNE VERA’S “Under the Tongue” (1996) explores the burden of silence when debilitating sorrows, pains, dreams and expectations remain shrouded in the secret enclaves of the mouth as a heavy stone is cast on the tongue.
Like a river in whose belly different creatures exist in their cosmopolitan way, either as friends or foes, food or baggage, the mouth hides a plethora of wonders and desires of its own which can only be discerned through words, and not just language, for language only carries dreams in its mute unfathomable way.
The book is an intricate, evocative and horrendous; yet captivating and revealing poetical rhapsody of the pain of memory buried under a crest of uncertainty and hope.
Through the use of a combination of the first person singular narrative voice complemented by the stream of consciousness informed by the present tense, and the third person omnipresent and omniscient authorial voice, Vera hoists the reader on an intriguing voyage of suspense, as individual aspirations are buried in societal taboos, stereotypes and expectations.
Deceit becomes central to the events unfolding in the story whose plot hinges on the juxtaposition of the past and the present, as the individual seeks solace from silence to remain relevant to a society that sidelines him/ her through a cloud of secrecy which somehow burdens his or her psyche.
It is into this enigmatic world that the first person narrator, Zhizha, a young innocent girl whose resonating sorrow reverberates in her grandmother and mother’s experiences, and father Muroyiwa are thrown, albeit at different ports of time.
Set predominantly in the sprawling township of Dangamvura in Umtali (now Mutare) and Njanja during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, the story captures women’s struggles in a society that trivialises their suffering and confines them to silence as their lot is wont to.
Their tongues are tangled into accepting violence, agony and despair, as the river that carries their dreams, for the separation of life and death is as wistful as it is vain.
The use of metaphorical and symbolical elements drawn from nature allows the individual to locate herself in the intricate web of her existence without, however, giving her hope beyond the mere analogy that exists between life and death and the bearing of the vagaries of nature on her suffering.
As is epitomised by Grandmother; the narrator’s paragon of virtue and resilience, the tumultuous nature of existence is like a tremulous river, which, though life giving, cannot exist without paying allegiance to the sky that necessitates its cyclical nature.
There is pain in toil as much as there is hurt in love, despair in hope and death in life. It is through this juxtaposition of contrasting elements that the artiste adeptly exposes the nature of human existence as the individual cushions herself/himself with scepticism, which gags him/her; and the fear of the existence of fear becomes more prominent that the fear itself.
The extended metaphor of water in all its liquid states, which pervades the story, also highlights the paradoxical nature of life.
Procreation begins with water, and the woman breaks water during labour, her monthly circles are watery, and violence, despair and pain, which crouch on the horizon of hope lead to death and tears; another form of water.
And all this can be hidden under the tongue, because: “A memory is a mouth with which to begin. We have no mouth . . . Only the departed can speak our sorrow and survive. Only they can walk on a path covered with such thorns, such unwelcoming soil . . . Only they have wisdom that can embrace suffering.”
It is this resignation to fate culminating from the fear of the unknown which is baneful to regeneration and progress, especially so when it comes from those “wisened” by age and experiences.
It foists paralysis, malaise and stasis at the personal, familial, communal and national levels, as solutions are sought from the dearly departed. Chiselling hope in memory is as tragic as it is gagging.
The narrator knows more of pain, hurt, deceit and suffering than she is conscious of how to extricate herself.
Her grandmother is always yodelling about the broken chain of dreams women cherish, and her mother totters under the weight of societal expectations in a male-dominated world, which domiciles her; as she tells Grandmother: “Did he not teach me silence, this husband, that a woman is not a man? I am silent. Just silence to speak my silence against the husband who is not a man but a lizard with a rotting stomach.”
Like her mother she is aware that, “death (cannot) arrive when the mouth has not allowed it to arrive. Death has a name which we can carry in the mouth without dying. Only words can bury us not silence.”
It is this seeking of the elixir through the metaphysical and silence which Vera is contemptuous of as it results in the creation of internal volcanoes that will erupt destructively if allowed to simmer for long. Words should be forged out of the silent language of suffering.
The narrator’s father, Muroyiwa, also loses his marbles as a result of silence as his mother fails to explain to him the circumstances of his birth beyond telling him that he was born in a calabash and that the following day he died only to resurrect after another day.
As the last born child, the family believes him to be a curse and wishes him dead, and dooms him as he becomes imbued with butterflies and death which find him in Umtali where he meets Runyararo, the narrator’s mother.
The mystery of his birth darkens his paths and relegates his father to total darkness through blindness as his eyes are lacerated by seemingly harmless roots as he toils on his barren piece of land. These roots are metonymic of the secrets rooted in their family.
Witchcraft and barrenness; abhorred in African societies always find blame in women as is the case with Grandmother, who is blamed for bearing a disabled son, who later dies because his head kept on growing.
Like the entire society her husband blames her for the misfortune. “Muroyiwa” also means “the bewitched one”. Women always bear the brunt of societal abominations not only from chauvinistic men, but from fellow women, and all this is kept under the tongue.
The writer also purveys the squalid and mundane existence of blacks in colonial Zimbabwe as they are only meant to get fodder to be able to provide cheap labour in the mines and industries.
Women whose husbands left for the war of liberation also find themselves burdened by the anxiety of waiting, and society expects them to keep on waiting oblivious to their desires, even though chances are that their torch-bearers perished at the front, especially so when they fail to return after demobilisation. With their frustrations seething like vile inside them, they break their mirrors in the street and keep on waiting.
Read the full review on www. herald.co.zw