“For the love of God, Teresa—”
“Have I grown ugly?”
“You are more beautiful than ever. But the case is altered with us, Teresa, the case is altered! You are a wife!”
“I told you that that means nothing.”
“Well, and let Don Fernão tell me that himself, and then I might feel safer,” I said.
“Are you such a coward, then?”
“I will fight Jaqqas if I must,” said I, “or stick lances in the bellies of Kafuche Kambara’s warriors. But I have no wish to do combat with a rightfully angered husband.”
“Andres —Andres —”
She gave me a look both of desire and of fury, that made me fear her very much.
Slowly she arose, and came flowingly toward me, and I did see the unconfined globes of her breasts swaying beneath her thin draping, and the darkness at her loins was apparent, too, and I felt myself losing all resolve.
“Andres,” she said, “give me no more talk of angered husbands. You and I are lovers, and nothing else is significant. Come: you want me as much as I do you.”
“I will not deny that.”
“Then come.”
I shook my head. “It is too dangerous. I tell you, we must make an end of this union.”
“Nay,” she said. She drew nearer, and rubbed herself against me most unsubtly amorous, with a pressing and a thrusting of her loins on me that made my yard stand out fair to split my breeches. “Do not compel me to beg you, Andres,” said she.
“I beg you, Teresa—”
She backed off and there was rage now smouldering in her eyes.
“I cannot believe this! I crawl to you, and you refuse me? What have you done? Have you renewed your vow to that English wench of yours, and returned to your chastity?”
“She has not entered my mind often in recent times,” I did declare, to my shame, for it was the truth.
“Then why do you shun me? I cannot believe this fear you claim to have of Fernão. He will not know. And if he did, he would look the other way, I swear it! Nay, it must be something else that keeps you from me.” She stepped back one pace more, and the look upon her face changed, growing harder, growing colder. “They tell me that in Loango you did buy a slave-girl, a young one, and that she is your bed-toy. When I heard it I laughed at it, for I know the African women are not what you desire. You want no flat noses, you want no thick lips and heavy rumps. Or so I did think. But is it true, Andres? Do you use your little black slut, and care no more for me? Do you? Do you?”
Her words came at me like daggers. I could say nothing.
Yes, yes, I did sleep with Matamba, and yes, I took great pleasure of her, and yes, all that Dona Teresa had heard was true; but that was not the whole story of my refusal of her. It was not Matamba that had come between us, but rather the conjoining of lust with politics in this city, and my fear of letting a new embroilment with Teresa’s body embroil me also in some fatal tangle of ambitions. But I had told her all that already, and she had brushed it aside, seeking a more elemental motive. I searched my brain for some new argument that might sink to the core of the matter, and prevent it from seeming a mere jealous squabble between women, but I found no reasoning worth offering her. And so I stood, silent, gaping, while within me came the insinuating devilish temptation to put all this word-spinning behind me and throw myself atop Teresa’s body instantly in a willing embrace, that any other man in half his right mind would give a year of his life to enjoy.
Yet did I not do that, nor anything else, but remained as it were paralyzed. And then the worst of all possible things befell, for in that moment did Matamba enter the cottage, all unaware, and come lightly onward into my inner chamber, calling out my name in a cheery voice like a familiar lover, “Andres! Andres!”
Oh, God’s bones and shoulders, what I would have given to have her choose any some other different time to appear!
In the year when I lived with my wife Rose Ullward so long ago, we did keep two cats as pets, a grizzled tabby tom and a sleek old black-and-orange female, both of them amiable and easy-tempered animals, that stood and made a purr most vociferous when I rubbed them behind the ears. They were Rose’s cats, but they liked me well enough, and I them. One ghastly windy rainy winter day, when I was within the house with them and they were squatting together in the window-ledge, asleep in the warmth, some stray cat did come by outside, and perched on the sill, and peered in at them, as though yearning to join them out of the rain. I know not why, but the coming of that stray did set my two cats’ fur on edge, and they rose like beasts that had seen an evil spirit, and began upon the moment to fight with one another, squealing terribly and leaping about and sending clouds of their fur flying into the air. I would not have these animals, both so dear to me, injuring each other, and so, without giving the matter any thought, I went to them and seized them to hold them apart. Which was a most grievous mistake, for with a single accord they turned on me as their enemy, and so clawed and bit and furrowed me that within moments was I bleeding amazingly along my arms and both my ankles, and stood in sore pain. This taught me two things: one being that the cat of your hearth, though he be old and tame and sleepy, is nevertheless a hunting animal with ferocious fangs and claws and sturdy sinews; and the other being, never set yourself as umpire between two cats in combat, for you will be the chief sufferer in that. Yet I did not learn those lessons sufficiently well, I do believe, since something of the same story now replayed itself in my cottage, and with something of the same result.
By which I mean that the moment Matamba did enter my chamber, Teresa pulled back, crouching, drawing her lips away from her teeth, shaping her hands into fearsome claws as though she meant to destroy her rival straightaway. Matamba, though wondrously startled at finding Dona Teresa here and she near naked at that, needed no time to comprehend that she was in menace.
“Ah, you are the witch-woman,” said she. “You are the sorceress! I know you, idol-maker!”
“Slave! Trash!”
“Ah,” said Matamba, hunching forward, extending her arms with her hands held in the same claw-fashion. “Ah, Jesu Maria, God is with me!”
And from Teresa came words in the Bakongo tongue that I had never heard her speak before, black mingo-jango words out of the souls of her grandmothers, a hard gibbering magical stuff that amazed me to hear it out of her beautiful lips. And for each word she spoke in that dark incantation, Matamba did call forth the name of a saint, though I did see the terror in her eyes, and I felt no little fright myself at this witchery magicking that poured from Dona Teresa.
For a half minute, perhaps, they circled one another, poised, taut, the one woman crying curses and sorcery, the other answering with her holy names, and I looked on stupefied, thinking I must hold them apart from one another.
But I waited an instant too long. For Dona Teresa, with a hellish shriek, suddenly leaped upon the waiting Matamba.
“Nay!” I cried. But it was like shouting commands to the wild hurricane.
They rushed together with a loud clashing of flesh and grappled one another and entered into the most unloving of hugs, tugging and pulling each to knock the other to the ground, and all the while snarling like enraged beasts. They were of about one size, Matamba being a few years younger and somewhat more sturdy of build, but Dona Teresa having a lithe leopard-like strength to her. They grasped and struck at each other while I stood by for the moment all frozen, never having seen women fighting before.
Dona Teresa’s flimsy garment soon was a shred, and a reddened row of scratchings ran across her front from one shoulder over the breast to a side of her rib-cage. While at the same time she grasped Matamba’s thick woolly hair and did tug at it to rip it from her head, and brought her knee up to the black girl’s crotch, whereupon Matamba clawed her again, and this time flung her down, Matamba’s own garment coming undone at that. Teresa rose and launched a new assault, the air being all full of shrieks and sweat.