The Collector of Treasures by Bessie Head

First published: 1977

Type of plot: Vignette

Time of work: 1966-1975

Locale: The villages of Puleng and Gaborone, in Botswana

Principal Characters:

• Dikeledi Mokopi, the protagonist, who murders her husband
• Garesego, her husband, the antagonist, an administrative clerk
• Banabothe, their eldest son
• Paul Thebolo, the principal of the Puleng primary school
• Kenalepe, the wife of Paul Thebolo and Dikeledi's first genuine friend

The Story

Bessie Head's vignette of a village woman abandoned and abused by her husband begins in medias res. In the first of the story's four sections, Dikeledi is on her way to prison in Gaborone, the country's new capital city, from her village, Puleng. She gazes indifferently at the passing landscape of the bush as she rides in the police truck. As a result of the long day's lonely journey and her emotional turmoil, she finally collapses, "oblivious to everything but her pain." On her arrival at the prison that night, she is stirred to consciousness by the police, who dutifully record her crime, "man-slaughter," and her life sentence. As Dikeledi is led to her barren cell, the wardress remarks sarcastically that she will be the fifth woman currently in the prison to have been sentenced for the same offense, murdering her husband, and notes that the crime is "becoming the fashion these days." Having been locked up, Dikeledi is left to her own silence in the dark cell.

On rising early the next morning, the other four women—Kebonye, Otsetswe, Galeboe, and Monwana—introduce themselves. Kebonye asks Dikeledi why her parents have named her tears, and she replies that it was after her mother, who died when Dikeledi was six years old, her father having died in the year of her birth. In the ensuing conversation, Dikeledi expresses little sorrow for her crime, which was murder by castration. As the women begin their work in the prison, they observe that Dikeledi's "hands of strange power" are especially skillful with sewing, knitting, and weaving. She has, in fact, reared her three children largely through her own efforts, because her husband abandoned her after four years of marriage.

After the day passes in intimate disclosure among the five women, the third-person, omniscient narrator describes Dikeledi's newfound friendships as "gold amidst the ash, deep loves that had joined her heart to the hearts of others." In this "phase three of a life that had been ashen in its loneliness and unhappiness," Dikeledi accepts the tender compassion possible in friendship: "She was the collector of such treasures."

Having established the protagonist's complexity of character, yet withholding the comprehension of it from the reader, the narrator begins the second section with a digression on the "two kinds of men in the society." With cultural background analyzing the evolution of the type of man who bears no responsibility for his family or for his community, Garesego is introduced as the model of the man who is "a broken wreck with no inner resources at all." For Garesego, national independence has brought a two-hundred-percent increase in salary that permits him to engage "in a dizzy kind of death dance of wild destruction and dissipation." He leaves his wife and three sons in favor of drinking and prostitutes. Ironically, he does so in the same year, 1966, of Botswana's independence.

Against Garesego, the narrator sets the second type of man, modeled by Paul Thebolo. He devotes himself entirely to his family's stability and to the community's well-being. Not only is he principal of the primary school, but also he is the epitome of the caring neighbor. Further, he is an example of leadership, moderating discussions of politics and assisting the villagers whenever they require his skills in literacy. His inner resources give him "the power to create himself anew."

Dikeledi meets Paul when he arrives in Puleng to build his house. She, renowned for her ability to thatch a roof, offers to assist in setting up the household. Not long after, his wife, Kenalepe Thebolo, arrives; the two women develop an intimate, enduring friendship. Because of the Thebolos's reputation, Dikeledi's dressmaking business begins to boom. Throughout the next eight years, the friendship deepens. By virtue of her craft skills, Dikeledi becomes nearly self-sufficient. Kenalepe even offers to "loan" her husband to Dikeledi in order to share the joy of sexuality, which she has renounced, never having experienced sexual pleasure with Garesego. Dikeledi refuses Kenalepe's offer, but when Kenalepe is hospitalized after a miscarriage, Dikeledi cares for her children and household.

As Dikeledi cleans the kitchen hut one night while Paul is visiting his wife, he returns to find her hard at work, and they share a moment of intimacy, one that does not rest on a sexual perception of each other: "It was too beautiful to be love." Such an affirmation that a man can possess goodness yields one more "nugget of gold" for Dikeledi. This second phase of her life has led to a sense of hope and joy in her independence and friendship.

During the developing intimacy with Kenalepe and Paul, Dikeledi confides much of her past. In reply to Kenalepe's question of why she married Garesego in the first place, Dikeledi explains that, having been orphaned at six, she was reared by an uncle, who regarded her as a servant; even her cousins thought of her as their servant. She was forced to leave school early, and she was never included or loved as a member of the family. When Garesego proposed through her uncle, Dikeledi married him to escape the bondage of her uncle's family. While this first phase of Dikeledi's life continued, she tolerated Garesego's irresponsibility, drunkenness, and unfaithfulness, nurturing a fragile pride based on his claim to prefer her for her traditional values and an uncertain hope for love within a family of her own. Garesego, however, regarded traditional women as primarily servants; thus, he abandoned her and the children altogether as soon as his post-independence promotion made it financially feasible.

Dikeledi's crisis comes when she learns that her eldest son, Banabothe, has been accepted for secondary school. Remembering the disruption in her own education and having witnessed Banabothe's dedication to his studies, she is distraught to learn that she has not saved enough money to pay all of Banabothe's fees and still pay the primary school fees for her two younger sons. Out of a desperate refusal to interrupt the education of one son, Dikeledi decides to seek Garesego's help to pay the fees for all of them; they are his sons, too. When she approaches him as he leaves his office, she is shocked not so much at his hesitation as at his accusation that she is the mistress of Paul, who, Garesego argues, should bear the cost of the fees. Paul, later hearing of the slander against himself, confronts Garesego; after an exchange of insults, Paul punches Garesego, giving him cause for further slander. He tells the villagers that his "wife's lover" did it. They in turn spread the gossip about the man who many consider "too good to be true," but they also criticize Garesego for failing in his duty to Banabothe.

To save face with the village and to provoke Dikeledi, Garesego sends a note to her, announcing that he will return home and requesting that she prepare a meal and a bath for him. Despite his stated intention for a reconciliation, Dikeledi knows that he is coming home to demand sex in exchange for even considering the partial payment of the fees; she agrees to the visit, and she begins her extensive preparations—including the sharpening of "a large kitchen knife used to cut meat." When Garesego arrives that evening, he responds to her with callous indifference and ignores his children, further convincing Dikeledi of the righteousness of her plan.

After drinking beer and feasting, Garesego believes that he has won his claim to his wife over Paul, because he does not see him next door. He dismisses Dikeledi's request about the fees without a firm commitment. While she bathes him, he drifts naked into a smug, self-satisfied sleep. Dikeledi leaves him, kisses her children goodnight, and, in a detached trance, unconsciously attempts to wake him with the noise of her cleanup. When he sleeps on, "lost to the world," she kneels by the bed, removes the knife from where she had hidden it, and castrates him in a single stroke. Garesego's bellowing as he bleeds to death brings Banabothe, who is sent to summon the police, and Kenalepe, who flees in terror. Paul, too, arrives and, after staring dumbfoundedly at Dikeledi, promises to rear and to educate her sons.