21. A Woman's Place

“You’d think,” Fasi said in exasperation, “That in a place with Our Granny in charge, women would get a better deal.” I had no need to ask her about her niece’s problems: the next week when I called in to see her and Langanipa, she wanted to talk about nothing else.

“You know, Tommu,” she went on. “It was always women’s work to gather food. They planted everything in the jungle. Men never cared about growing things. They always thought it was enough to go out hunting birds and animals. Every few days they would bring in some little dead creature. But if you had to rely on men you would have starved. My mother was in the jungle and she told me. They could do very well without men as long as there weren’t other men they needed protection from.

And who was it taught us about the Americans? A Woman.  But then the men got the Tractor and it went to their heads. Men think a Tractor is the only way to grow food. They expect women to just do what they say and treat them as if they were Our Granny herself! And if a woman has the courage to stand up for herself, then you see how they stand together to put her in her place.”

“Come on, Fasi.” Langanipa said reasonably. “Not all men are like Iliva’s husband. You know that he is unusually obnoxious. Don’t pretend that all of us are like that. Look at Tommu here, for instance. You can’t imagine him behaving like Manla Kulu.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s you and Tommu that are the exceptions. As far as I can see, most of the rest of them are exactly like that nasty man.  I warned her before she married him that things would end badly. But would she listen?”

She turned to me. “There has to be a balance in a marriage. One partner – and I don’t care if it is the man or the woman – can’t own the other one. It was clear from the moment that she first met Manla Kulu that he had no respect for her. He wanted to make all the decisions and tell her what to do. And how to do it. And when.

But you can’t tell young people anything. They think that they are the first people ever to have grown up. she said that she loved him and that she was happy to let him take charge. He would never do anything to make her unhappy because he loved her too much.”

“Stop, Fasi, stop!” I protested. “If she was happy to let him take charge, wasn’t that her decision to make?”

“She decided. She made a mistake.” Fasi responded. “In the beginning, they had a lot in common. She was madly in love with him. And so was he. She thought about what he wanted and she assumed that he thought the same about her. She wanted to be a wife. He wanted a cook.

You know what Gardeners are like. People take gifts up for Our granny and they get given to the Gardeners. Chickens, pigs, vegetables – fruit of every sort. I don’t know what Our granny gets to eat, we have to presume that she gets the best of what is given to Her, but there’s so much food that the Gardeners end up throwing it away. In any case, a good part of getting on as a Gardener is to do with feasting.

Iliva wasn’t even a particularly good cook when she got married. But what she could do was read. She asked Bahla to get hold of books on cooking. She learned to cook the American way. You’ve never seen food like it. He would invite his Gardener friends around. Their house became the place that all the Gardeners wanted to be. That is the secret of his success, if you want my opinion. He is friendly with all the top men because of those feasts.

So at first it was a great triumph. She was so busy bringing up the children and cooking that she never even worried that he wasn’t there very much. And of course, the better she cooked, the more he was able to get choice ingredients. Manla Kulu was getting to be one of the most popular Gardeners. Thanks to her efforts.

And then she began to teach the children to read. When she was a tiny child, Iliva learned how to read. Her father was a Reader before he passed away, and he taught her. It was natural that she wanted her children to read too. But when Manla Kulu found out about it he was as angry as a snake. He told her that Our Granny wouldn’t want his children to read. He was one of the fattest Gardeners without worrying about books or being able to read them. If anyone needed to know what was in a book he could get a Reader to tell him. The important thing was to know Our Granny’s will. Manla Kulu could tell her that whenever she needed to know it.

She tried to reason with him, of course. She explained to him how she learned to cook. He said that nothing she cooked was exactly like what was in the books. He said that he told her what he liked and she changed the recipes to suit him. Actually, it was really him that she learned from.

By then, by good luck, the children already knew how to read. He can never take that away from them. They went down with her to the book room and they could read as much there as they wanted to.”

I told Fasi that I remembered the times when Iliva and the kids used to come to the book room together. At first she used to read stories to them and then they read by themselves. But then she stopped bringing them with her.

“Their father objected. He didn’t want them down with the Readers. He said that the Readers were in danger of disrespect. The Gardeners would explain the will of Our Granny and sometimes the Readers would say that this or that didn’t fit with what the books said. Manla Kulu said that he didn’t want children of his brought into contact with people who doubted Our Granny’s word. In the end, she couldn’t take them with her any more. But she still smuggled books home for them.”

“And she still came down to the book room herself.” I said.

“Yes Tommu. And you know that when the Readers wanted to understand how the Americans ate or what they thought in other areas she was interested in, they turned to Iliva. She started to earn money herself, part time, as a Reader.”

“That’s right.” I agreed. “She knows more about American tools for cooking and about how they furnish their homes than anyone else. All of us rely on her for one thing or another.”

“And that’s what really upset him. At first he simply insisted that she should hand over any money she earned to him and she was happy to do that. But then the Readers saw that the more money they paid her, the more she had to give to him. So they only paid her part of her salary and if she wanted anything, she could ask and they would get it for her.

But what really annoyed him wasn’t the money. Giving him the money she earned didn’t make him less cross. If anything he was more angry than ever. He began to create extra work for her, getting her to cook for other Gardeners as well as at home. That made things worse, because other people began to realise what she was capable of. So he stopped her from cooking for anyone else. He said he didn’t want to be known as Mr Iliva.

I think he began to beat her.” Fasi continued. “She will not admit it but every now and then she has a bruise or a black eye from ‘walking into a door’ or ‘falling over’. At the same time, the Readers want her to spend more time at the book room. She understands the language of the Americans and they consulted her more and more.

Then suddenly, he tells her that Our Granny didn’t want her going down to the book room at all any more. He said Our granny had decided “that it did not befit the rank of a Gardener, leave alone one of the fattest Gardeners”, that his wife needed to earn money from the Readers. He forbade her to go down there. Of course they still wanted to talk to her and they would bring books up to the house to consult her on the difficult bits. He told her that she was forbidden to see anyone from the book room.

Well, she said that he couldn’t stop her because she wasn’t doing anything wrong. He answered that it was wrong to disobey a Gardener. And even if he had not been a Gardener, it was wrong to disobey her husband. He’s taking the case to the Gardener’s courts. He says that she has shown disrespect.

That,” Fasi continued, “Is where the trouble really starts. He knows all of them. The stupid thing is that it’s her cooking that got him in with them. They can do anything. They have had people put to death, you know.”

“He wouldn’t want them to execute her.” I protested. “He just wants to show who’s boss.”

“You can’t say that.” Fasi wailed. “He wants revenge. He’s made himself look like a fool. He has to blame somebody and she’s the closest one. He even wants to punish the Readers who consulted her.”

“But how could he do that to his wife?” I asked. “Surely, it makes him look even more stupid if he takes her to court? It makes it obvious that he can’t deal with it himself.”

“Who can say what he’s thinking?” Fasi looked at Langanipa. “My husband won’t admit it, but I think that part of the problem is that Manla Kulu is afraid that he’s not a real man. He is afraid that his wife is better than him. Cleverer and more capable. When he married her he wanted the most beautiful and talented woman so that other men would look up to him. After a while, he realised that they look up to his wife but they don’t respect him. They feel sorry for her. That’s why he wants to punish her.

And she made the mistake of always giving way to him at the very beginning. She thought that if she let him have his way then he would be prepared to do the same for her. But in the end, it was just take, take, take. She let him get into the habit of having whatever he wanted and the more she gave him, the more he took.

If they had an argument, she ended up having to make the peace. Or else the argument would have gone on forever. He would go out day and night with his friends, but if she set foot outside the house he wanted to know why and where she had been, who she had seen. He wanted complete control of her. And for a long time she accepted it. But in the end, the time came when she could not accept it any more. And now who knows what the decision will be.”