African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441)

by Solomon, Barbara H. (EDT); Rampone, W. Reginald, Jr. (EDT)

  But behind the counter Nyaguthii wept.

  ZOË WICOMB

  Zoë Wicomb was born in 1948 in Namaqualand, South Africa, and was educated at the University of the Western Cape. Upon graduation in 1970, she traveled to England and continued her studies at Reading University. She lived in Glasglow and Nottingham and returned to South Africa in 1990 to teach at the University of the Western Cape. She came to the attention of the reading public with her first collection of short stories, You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987), which addresses the issue of apartheid. Among her other acclaimed works are David’s Story (2000), Playing in the Light (2006), and The One That Got Away (2008). Wicomb teaches creative writing and postcolonial literature at the University of Strathclyde in Glasglow.

  N2

  (2008)

  They argued all the way from Stellenbosch.

  Something odd, as they sat around the table toasting Jaap’s prize-winning pinot noir—later she thought of a spiked drink—slipped into what she had described to her girlfriends as a nice ’n’ easy relationship. A lovely evening it was too, with the mountain just taking colour, and in her hand the crystal flute with those divine little beads jostling at the brim.

  Now for this barbarian, she had smiled into Jaap’s sunburnt face, you must fill it right up, almost to the brim, yes, just so, so I can watch the suicide leap of the bubbles. No half-glass for me.

  As a child Mary loved weddings. Then grown-ups sipped from wide-brimmed coupes at darling little ponds of champagne. She supposed it hadn’t been real but what did she care about such snobbish distinctions, méthode champenoise sounded grand enough for her; it was the effervescence that counted. She watched the sparkles rising from the bottom in a stream of light and bubble at the brim. Oh, there was nothing like it, bubbles that hurled themselves at her, that couldn’t wait to be taken. That’s what’s best, the moment before, when for seconds you are queen of a world of pleasure that awaits. Mary saw herself fixed in a photograph, with glass held to lips moist with expectation, chin—still young and firm—regally lifted, but there you are, who can resist greed, even when you know that that moment is best, that the actual thing falls just short of its promise. Like sex, she supposed, and surprised herself by casting a resentful look across the table at Harold.

  Harold, only half-focused on the still-life of crystal, liquor and lips, was asking about vines cultivated on higher slopes, about the heavy sandstone loams, and so caught that ugly look with puzzlement. Was she bored? Uncomfortable about something or other? Not that her demand for a full-to-the-brim flute was not charming. He had half-smiled, solicitously. No wonder she felt cross, not knowing what to make of such a hybrid look.

  Yes, sex. She would have liked to have said it out loud. That’s what people like Harold with all their talk of politics don’t think of, that there are now all kinds of freedoms. Just think, that a man who had sat in prison for decades, no champagne, no sex, was the one to push the country into the twentieth century, into the civilised world; she had been to Amsterdam where they made no bones about these things. Now everyone here at home could talk about it, see it on television, read about it in magazines, even in poems. No need any longer for men to make sinful trips to the Wild Coast or Sun City, it was all there to be had at home. And what’s more, for women as well. Sex between all kinds, although she would have drawn the line there, perhaps taken one step at a time, no good being too advanced, even stepping ahead of England, but that’s freedom for you, just as De Klerk said, freedom is unstoppable.

  All of which prolonged the moment of anticipation, for the glass was still held to her mouth while she pondered liberation, until Harold, now attentive, watched the composition come to life: the glass pressed against cherry-red lips parted, the liquor spurting. Behind her, the sun was dipping fast, drunkenly, in the usual gold and reds, and then the light, how the light ricocheted from the crystal as she tilted it to her lips. The something flare of lightning . . . beaded bubbles something at the brim . . . Mary thought of lines that were once, perhaps, recited at school; she couldn’t quite remember.

  It was getting late. From below in Idas Valley the smell of location woodsmoke rose, and the skelbek of a drunk woman could be heard above the distant beat of kwela music. It was time they went home.

  Drink up, said Harold, still smiling. Only one glass for him; he was driving. Jaap pushed a bottle across the table. To lay down.

  Ag, no man, what’s the use of a prizewinner if you can’t pass it round?

  And again, Drringcupp. Crass like the skelbek that drifted onto the terrace, his voice cut through the first sifting of frangipani as the light drained quickly, helter-skeltering after an already-sunken sun.

  She turned to Jaap. What a beauty you have here—has she said that before?—top marks from me.

  Oh, I can’t take all the credit. I’ve got some first-class men working for me. My manager, he can tell just the right moment to irrigate, that’s crucial you see, and I’ve even got a chap here from Idas Valley who knows everything there is to know about hanepoot.

  He smiled, shyly for such a big man who stretched comfortably, brown arms flung out as if blessing the table. But the table too had had it. Others had left their traces on crumpled napkins; the cloth was stained with wine; and beside the posy of wild flowers an oyster canapé lay capsized, its crushed stern flung to the edge, to the printed border of guinea-fowl craning their speckled necks onto the table. Mary folded her napkin, placed it over the scrap of pastry. Post-prandial sadness flitted across her face.

  Time we went, Harold announced in a first-time voice.

  Ah, she thought, a spike of jealousy. That’s what it was, jealous of Jaap who travelled to Europe once, twice a year with his estate wines. And oh yes, what if she were not ready to go, what if she did not think it time? But coming as it did, belatedly, the thought slunk off. So she looked deep into the empty glass, spun the stem, set it down, and pinged with her perfect nail against the crystal. Which made the men rise. Their chairs scraped against the stone paving of the terrace.

  Ja-nee, said Jaap, that motorway is no joke in the dark. I see those squatter people have started throwing stones from the bridge again, something in this morning’s Cape Times about the N2. Kapaah! he beat together his large hands. Also onto a Merc it was, but on the other side, coming from Cape Town. Luckily it hit the back.

  Mary thought of the three wild men. On the N2 that morning, as they drove to Stellenbosch, the black men leapt naked, except for skimpy loincloths, out of the bush, ran across the dual carriageway jumping the barriers, and disappeared into the bush on the other side. Their faces were covered in grey clay. They may have carried shields and spears.

  Ag what can one do, she shrugged, there’s nothing to do other than brave it out. That’s now the new life for us hey, just braving it out on that chicken-run.

  Jaap’s kapaah! hands fell, See-you-soon, on her shoulders. Then she felt quite sober.

  * * *

  Princess’s boy, the eldest, it was not that he did anything in particular, he just was funny, different from other children. Mrs. Matsepe could not put her finger on it. Êh, that Themba was deep-deep, which may have made for a charming little boy, always with his head tilted asking funny questions like an old man, but now that he was no longer little, there was a strange brooding air about him that surely would bring trouble. And what can you do?—you can pray and pray to God to keep the children safe, but that’s life, nothing but trouble, nothing to do, just the business of braving it out.

  Funny how children grow overnight, and for that matter a boy who doesn’t eat much. Even over the big days, Christmas and New Year, just like that turning fussily away from all the special food, and still shooting tall and broad into his eighteenth year, a good-looking boy with Princess’s firm chin and deep black skin, so that she wrote to her sister to say how fine he looked, never mind the strangeness that had already
started to set in, she supposed, when his voice finally broke.

  Princess wrote to say that yes, Themba had written, Themba now wanted to go back to school, start where he left off in Standard Six, Themba wanted to be a photographer. And in the envelope was twenty rand. Twenty rand, êh, the girl must be mad sending big notes in the post with all these skelm postmen who sit in the dunes with the mailbags and a tube of glue, going through people’s letters before delivering them, late in the day, when the sun is already sitting in the middle of the sky. But miracle of miracles, the money slipped past the hands of those skelms, which is something to be thankful for, and another thing, at least Themba didn’t want to be a postman.

  But still, Mrs. Matsepe was hurt. The boy was her own since so-so high, since before she herself had children. Why had he not spoken to her? If only she had thought of it first, that he should go back to school, that they could manage again now that things were getting better. But Jim said, and Jim too was no less than his father, Jim said it was only right, it was only respectful that he should write to Princess first, that he appreciated having two mamas, that he should test out his ideas on paper before blurting out things that might come out wrongly. That was when she stopped listening. Having given her this bullshit wisdom he would in any case expect her to speak to Themba. Which was just as well. Only last week, when she complained about the boy’s strangeness, Jim of all people came up with such a kaffir-idea that she just had to shake her head.

  About this Themba business, he said, I thi-ink . . . and then stared deeply into his mug as if she had nothing better to do than stand around waiting. As if she were not about to take her life in her hands as she did every morning before sunrise, squash herself into a show-off taxi that would hurl itself recklessly all over the N2, as if driving people under cover of pounding music into a death of steel and fire were better than delivering them to their places of work. Not for Mrs. Matsepe—she adjusted her beret—that was her name, that’s who she was, since the day she decided to hell with laws and in-laws and came to the city after Jim, her lawfully-wedded husband. No, after all those troubles—and now also Jim with a head full of foolish ideas—she would survive any taxi-ride to get to her Greenoaks Nursing Home, where she was in charge of all the cleaning girls. No, for her it was nice to get out to Rosebank every day, nice to be spread out amongst trees and purple flowering bushes, away from the noise of the motorway, from the filth of Crossroads. She would not give up hope that they’d get away; it was just a matter of time.

  Jim cleared his throat to continue, but then the blue work van hooted, and without grabbing his lunch-pack he rushed off. So now he’d have to spend money on slap-chips. It was she, Mrs. Matsepe, who got up early, got everyone ready for the day, packed his bread with peanut butter and a nice sprig of parsley she took from the Greenoaks garden. She admired the way cook put a curly bit of green on the dinner plates, made everything so nice and appetising, but that man of hers was too stupid. It was not till nighttime, in the creaking bed, whispering so as not to wake the children, and worried about Themba who was not yet home, it was not till then, and with an elbow nudge from her, that he returned to his thought.

  Themba must go to the bush, to initiation, it’s the right way to turn him into a man, help him over this difficult business of growing up. He must go into the bush.

  She could tell from his voice that his heart wasn’t in it, but still, she really didn’t expect such a backward idea from a Christian man. What could have got into Jim?

  The bush, she exploded, call that strip along the N2 a bush? Just a rubbish scrap of trees left there to keep our place out of sight.

  Yes, but it’s still our bush, that’s what we’ve made of it; we must make do, it’s all we have for the young ones to go to, to become men. Even the students have started going to the bush . . .

  As if that meant anything, Mrs. Matsepe snorted. Those students were toyi-toying fools, always going on strike, loafing about at weekends, doing those terrible things to girls in the hostels and then talking rubbish about roots and traditional culture. She supposed that that was what Themba wanted to be, a student.

  I’m saying to you now and I won’t say it again, Jim. No people of mine are going to have anything to do with such backward things. A pretend-bush in Town, that’s the very last I want to hear of it.

  But now, with Themba back at school, now a young man, who carried on scowling and shrugging his shoulders and going about with others who looked as if they carried guns, she did not know what to think. What if she were wrong? If it were the only way to pull him right, should she not think again about initiation? If the boy himself were to ask, would she not say, yes anything?

  But Themba said nothing. Themba did not speak; he sat with his head buried in books.

  * * *

  For a few seconds before he braked sharply, the car hobbled as if the road had grown potholed. Mary raised her eyebrows and turned away disdainfully. The last straw, said her look.

  So now I’m responsible for the behaviour of the car, he said.

  I said nothing at all. I don’t care who’s responsible, but I would like to get back to civilisation. This is no place to get stuck in the dark.

  We’re not stuck, he hissed. Then, resolving to be patient, it was after all no joke for a woman to find herself in the middle of nowhere: It won’t take a minute, just a puncture, just a matter of changing the wheel. I got the spare checked just the other day.

  He opened his door a fraction, and in the light leant over her to scrabble in the cubbyhole for a torch. Mary shrank into the corner, her head turned to look into the moonless night.

  Themba heard the screech of the car coming to a halt just yards away. He had made himself a hideout in the Port Jackson bushes, had cleared the space of rubbish blown from the houses, and had dug out with his hands something of a dip in which to settle himself comfortably. Here he often sat in the dark, with the smell of earth not quite smothered by petrol fumes, the sound of the traffic a steady whoosh and hum, and through the screen of reeds and bushes his eyes followed the flashes of light and the sleek shapes of cars sailing by in the black night. Behind him, Crossroads was drowned in darkness.

  Themba sat up, squatting to see the yellow light spill onto the shoulder of the road, the light on the woman’s cropped yellow head. He watched the man wrenching at the handbrake, swinging his long legs out onto the tarmac and, in another pool of propped torchlight, opening the boot and lifting out a jack. Themba could see that he hasn’t done this before, not on the chassis of this car. The man groped for a place to fit the jack, looked about ruefully for a second, then slid on his back under the belly of the car, a silver beauty of a Mercedes Benz . . . yes he’d found it, the jackpoint. Now he reached for the wheel brace to loosen off the nuts.

  In the intimate interior of the car the woman’s yellow head was bent over a handbag in which she pushed things about, groping for something at the bottom. Another flash of light within that lit space, then a glowing circle of red as she drew deeply from a cigarette. She stared straight ahead. A car rushed past. For a second, her face shone white and still.

  Fuck. Fuck. The voice cracked into the night so that Themba started, losing his balance. The man threw down the brace in a rage, then picking it up again, pushed with all his might, with clenched teeth, at the nut that would not budge. The woman’s head was turned, towards the bush; she had heard a branch give as Themba toppled on tensed ankles. Oblivious to the angry grunting of the man, her hand groped in the bag, while her eyes flitted in search of the invisible branch.

  Themba squirmed with guilt. For spying on them, for not helping the man. But it was not his fault that they had landed right there at his private place, displaying themselves in their own light, acting out their business in slow motion it seemed, before his eyes, and hearing Mrs. Matsepe’s voice to keep away from white people, to keep out of trouble, he hesitated.


  Then he stood up, parted the branches noisily and walked straight out onto the road. The man’s back was turned. The mlungu woman was out of the car in a flash, like a movie star, kicking open the door; her gun was clasped in both hands trained on him. He held up his hands, stuttered, Hô-hôkaai lady, I’m just coming to help, get the wheel loose so we can put on the new one lady. Stupidly betraying himself as spy.

  In slow motion the hands were lowered, a slow smile twitched on her face as she looked him in the eye, the moody boys’ eyes, ag he was only a kid, and her lips settled, smiling, Yes, sorry, you know what it’s like on the N2 . . .

  The man was taking the gun out of her hand, pushing it casually into his own back pocket, smiling energetically at Themba. Ag man, she’s just a bundle of nerves, and pointing to the wheel, it’s these bladdy nuts, you can have a go if you like but I’ve been trying all this time you know.

  We must put something by the front wheel, the boy said.

  Themba picked up the torch to search the ground and pointed the light at a suitable stone. A moment’s hesitation before the man bent down to pick it up himself. With the front wheel wedged, he tried again and shook his head. He watched the boy straining against the brace. Just his luck that the boy should be the one to shift the nuts.