David's Story

by Zoe Wicomb

  But what, he asks, if a reader should try to find meaning in the historical disjuncture?

  Nonsense, I say, it’s clearly an error. I begin to tell him of the misrecorded Come in uttered by James Joyce in answer to a knock on the door, and included in the text by his scribe, the young Beckett; and then, uncharacteristically, I shriek as I remember. Youth Day—Soweto Day, the sixteenth of June—that’s also Joyce’s Bloomsday, I gabble excitedly, Day of the Revolution of the Word. Imagine, black children revolting against Afrikaans, the language of oppressors, on the very anniversary of the day that Leopold Bloom started with a hearty breakfast, eating with relish the inner organs of—

  David grimaces, shakes his head, interrupts: Don’t, that’s horrible. What on earth are you talking about, eating a man’s organs?

  Not a man’s; the inner organs of an animal. Oh, forget it, I say, just another coincidence. But wasn’t that also the day you met Dulcie, in the Soweto Day celebrations?

  Yes, yes of course, he says, but what’s that got to do with your Mr. Blooms? You must understand, be clear about this, that Sally is jealous of nothing at all. It is by no means that kind of thing, what your kind call an affair, my relationship with Dulcie.

  We banter about my kind, skirting about Dulcie, a protean subject that slithers hither and thither, out of reach, repeating, replacing, transforming itself.…

  •

  The stout widow, Madame la Fleur, of sallow skin and emerald eyes, was a Huguenot of stout spirit who had kept her religious beliefs a secret. Even from her master, the good doctor Cuvier, who had taken responsibility for her son’s education and who indeed seemed prepared to do anything to ensure a bright future for the boy. For all her Protestant principles, she knew of no better education than the Jesuits could provide and, distinguishing between mind and soul, trusted in her own ability to undermine their influence on the latter.

  That Madame la Fleur left on a false alarm of a new wave of persecution is a possibility that she never allowed herself to contemplate. For her plain-speaking, no-nonsense God, she braved a wicked night of howling storms to collect her darling boy, and tossed on a choppy English Channel until days later they reached the cliffs of Dover where Protestant fathers, wet crows in their sodden, sombre garb, welcomed the Parisians and drove them in the driving rain to Spitalfields. Here, much addicted to a rickety Queen Anne chair, she sat wrapped in a cashmere shawl, a bashful gift from the celebrated Cuvier, and trembled for the treachery that he would undoubtedly have read in her actions. Walking through the dreary London markets of food fit only for dogs, she choked back her tears. Who could be trusted to provide the master with a perfectly baked brioche for breakfast? And how would the eminent doctor, occupied with learned thoughts, know how to describe to a new and ignorant housekeeper precisely how to prepare his tourtière de poulet?

  She chose not to remember those months in London. She had never spoken to an English person before; she had only heard from a rakish relative incredible tales of his adventures as manservant accompanying one such personage on a sentimental journey through France and Italy, a distinguished gentleman of letters much discussed by Cuvier, who could not abide his style of beating about the bush. And now, from her own experience, it was not difficult to attribute the man’s legendary strangeness to the national character. How indeed they beat about the bush even in discoursing about their weather; besides, the language was impossible, slippery and barbaric, and she had to rely on her reluctant son for translation and instruction.

  The expensive education and refinements of the young Eduard la Fleur allowed the boy to resist adaptation to his new impoverished circumstances. His habit of rocking to-and-fro as he memorised the religious texts to which they owed their condition made his mother fear for his sanity. Besides, she detected a disturbing tone in his voice, as if the syllables were infused with venom; but then, perhaps his voice was breaking once again under the strain.

  In Spitalfields her strong hands rummaged helplessly through heaps of yarn. Only faith kept her from despairing of the puckered fabric that issued from her loom. She wove because no one believed that she could do anything else. If she was a Huguenot she would have to be a weaver, for that was what Huguenots did so well and in no-nonsense England that was that. Until divine intervention came in the form of a ship bound for the Cape Colony, where the last of the surplus Huguenots were being sent. Hostile and cold and themselves clamouring for employment, the English were best left behind. Certainly Madame la Fleur did not relish the thought of real barbarians, but without the skills needed to be a real Huguenot in London and with a son who languished in a creaking chair with theological texts, the idea of the veld seemed preferable. In any case, here was an opportunity for austere worship of God, who could try her faith anew with droughts and locusts and an absence of boulevards and boulangeries. Little did she know that after the standoffish English there would be enforced assimilation at the Cape, where they would have to merge with the Dutch, speak their language, and worship with the brutes so hopelessly deprived of the civilising influence of European women. Or that her weaving skills would have to be replaced by winemaking, for that was another thing Huguenots did so well. That’s life, she sighed resignedly, an endless shuttling back and forth between opposing worlds. Besides, who was she to set herself against the making of history and tradition.

  On the ship, the green-eyed Eduard vomited copiously or stared across the vast blue reciting his psalms, roused not at the thought of brave colonial adventures but by the souls of the poor barbarians, clumps of disfigured steatopygous people whom he imagined as stonefaced congregations chattering in a wild tongue throughout the service. As they neared the equator, where flying fish broke through the tepid water, curving into the tepid air, Eduard contemplated the mirror smoothness of the ocean and thought of Cuvier, the benefactor who beckoned him into his room to see the grotesque drawings of a woman’s vast buttocks and other parts that he knew were sinful to look at. There were also sketches of a delicate face with high cheekbones, shell-like ears and slanted eyes, but these were severed from the bodies. It was the buttocks that made the boy sigh deeply, as the silver fish fountained out of the sea, those mountains of insensible flesh that would have to be infused with a love for God.

  The rest of Eduard’s story can be found in Mrs. Sarah Gertrude Millin’s narrative about miscegenation, although the reader should note that she has taken several liberties with the tale, including casting the boy as an Englishman and adding some years to his age—in other words, that her narrative is as unreliable as David’s.

  Adam Kok I begat Cornelius Kok the Careless (who even after his death lost the diamond fields of Griqualand West) who begat Adam Kok II who begat Adam Kok III who more or less begat Adam Muis Kok. All without the interference of women. Which was just as well, or the Paramount Chief’s Staff of Office, bequeathed by the Dutch colonial government and responsibly passed on from generation to generation, would undoubtedly have been sold by a faithless wife. (There is the indisputable example of the first native woman of no parentage, Eva/Krotoa, who in spite of being taken into the cleanliness of the Dutch castle, in spite of marriage to a white man and fluency in his language, reverted to type and sold her own brown children’s clothes for liquor.)

  But women—and complication—will intrude, and thus Adam Muis Kok begat a daughter, Rachael Susanna, who, sitting on the knee of her esteemed relative Captain Adam Kok III, listened to marvellous and greatly exaggerated stories about M’Ntatisi, the giant Batlokwa warrior-chieftainess, and Victoria, the small, fat, and cross British Queen.

  Bewitched by the child, the captain said, Why not—if she were good and quiet and obedient—why not a female successor? Her father, Adam Muis, whose name in any case did not bode well, could keep an eye on things until she was ready to rule. To which the captain’s chair-bound lady of steatopygous fame nodded vigorously, congratulating him on his good sense, for she, too, having thrilled at the tales of female rule, came to think of the
child as her very own. When Adam Muis Kok, whilst leading the Griqua rebellion in 1878 against British annexation, was shot by a dashing high commissioner in a scarlet coat, old Lady Kok leapt more nimbly than her figure would allow out of her chair to assume the heavy staff of office which, despite the shaking of beards and grizzled heads, she held with a steadfast hand over her feckless people.

  Rachael Susanna Kok, growing up in the shadow of her aunt, tried not to think of the threat of ladyhood and indeed forgot all about the destiny pronounced by the captain until she married none other than Andries le Fleur, the grandson of a queasy young Huguenot, Eduard la Fleur, whose limp, linen-clad figure we have left in an earlier century, insensible to the silver flash of flying fish at the equator as he stood vomiting on the poopdeck.

  On the autumn equinox of 1867, when Andries Abraham Stockenstrom le Fleur shot headfirst into the world, the cry of the departing stork was quite drowned by the scream of Ouma Truida, the midwife. The good woman had once before delivered a cauled baby years ago in Griqualand West, and that one’s legendary powers of vision had not stood him in good stead.

  But such a caul!—a veritable lisle stocking pulled tightly over the little one’s head, as if he could not risk entering the world without a guerrilla’s disguise. Ouma Truida’s skilful scissors trembled as she removed the membrane, but like Baby Jesus the infant uttered not a single cry. Po-faced like his implacable grandfather—she might as well have left him imprisoned in his caul for all he seemed to care about the world. Not that he was not alert. The mixture of Malayan-Madagascan slave, French missionary, and Khoisan hunter blood had produced a perfect blend of high cheekbones, bronze skin, and bright green almond eyes that stared with such knowledge that his mother, whose name no one remembers, wept and turned away.

  The nameless woman trusted no one, not after the lies and the loss of land, the interminable trekking, and the bad manners of the British who were supposed to be their saviours. As for expectation, well, she had learnt her lesson in Griqualand West that it was only sensible to stand such a thing on its head and await the opposite. No matter how old the legend of the caul, the world was becoming horribly modern and she would not believe that it would bring her son good luck.

  Against death by water, the midwife insisted. Sailors would give you anything for such a caul.

  Now that’s just the sort of good luck you need when you live miles inland, the mother retorted. Did I not see with my own eyes how you had to cut this blue-in-the-face baby out of captivity? And now look at him.

  The baby’s old-man eyes narrowed into points of green light, hard as diamonds.

  Bury the thing and not a word to a sailor or anyone else, said the mother.

  Ouma Truida had to agree. Klaasie Fortuin, her first cauled child in Hopetown, could see right through the earth to where the diamonds lay glittering in the deep. And what fortune or hope did that bring him, led as he was by the collar like a sniffer dog to show white people where to dig. And his potbellied children running about bare-bummed with nothing to eat. If anyone should ask about Andries’s caul, they would simply deny it.

  Andries, unlike other children, did not like playing with water. Some say that it stemmed from the day of his christening, when old Dominee Joshua’s trembling finger missed the font. Insensible to moisture, the horny digit traced a perfectly dry cross on the baby’s brow. On reaching home, his mother, reading an omen in the accidental lack of water, gave him a sprinkling that even the indomitable infant could not withstand.

  His stylus eyes filled with a liquid that dispersed the light; his toothless mouth gaped once, twice, resisting, before he gave in to a hearty wail. It was then, through snot and tears, that he heard the first voice: Fear neither water nor the absence of water. Listen to the waves lapping at Robben Island, and look to the radical moisture of the desert where your Grigriqua ancestors tended their stock.

  The voice that at first sounded incomprehensible was in fact in Xiri, the old Griqua tongue, which was then still spoken by the older generation.

  That he was able to access the language came as no surprise. The mixing of blood may have been old hat in the melting pot of the Cape; what the infant Le Fleur, guerrilla-in-arms, understood was that above the new roar of eugenics, the Khoi, oldest blood of all, spoke at once most clearly and in code. And that the imperative, its preferred mood, made for its clicking clarity.

  From the diary of Andries Abraham Stockenstrom le Fleur, Paramount Chief of the Griquas

  Kokstad, 16 June 1885. Standing on the crest of Mount Currie like Moses of old, I cast my eyes across the valleys of Nieuw Griqualand, across the rich, brown paps of earth, across God’s green grass beckoning in the breeze, along the veins of water coursing loudly under the surface of the land. A rising sun spread her golden rays evenly over the earth, over the tattered pondoks and the prosperous homesteads alike; flocks of steaming livestock stamped their feet, bellowing their morning prayers. And there on the mountain, the others having eagerly gone ahead, I stayed and watched the sun travel across the blue dome until it reached the zenith. Then all grew dark for seconds as she withdrew her light. When the blood red circle of sun appeared once more, her rays surveyed the earth, marked out the rectangle of Griqua land, from the Umzimkulu across to Umtata, and the voice of God called from a bush burning with the fire of the sun, Andries Abraham Stockenstrom le Fleur, and I said, Lord, I am your servant, and the voice said, These are your people who have lost their land, who have become tenants on their own Griqua farms. It is you who must restore to them their dignity.

  And when I went down into the valley I saw a people of running sores, of filth and idleness and degradation. What had become of the warriors of the Great Trek of ’62? Where were those who, driven from the diamond country of the West, scaled the mighty Drakensberg and, fired with freedom, built the roads and tamed and tilled this fertile land? Reduced by annexation to a people without a patch of earth to call their own, a people without pride, a yawning people, following the sun around the crumbling walls of their pondoks, a dispossessed people who had given up and who had lost their God. And according to my word I will stir them from their slumbers, imbue them with the courage to fight the white man, recover our land, and with the help of God breathe fresh vigour into their slack veins. Annexation! There can be no such thing; we will not acknowledge their cheating bits of paper.

  Captain Eta Kok gave us a warm welcome and boasted of the handsomeness of the town, but what was there to boast of except a church with the arrogant Reverend Dower in the pulpit and a Scottish magistrate’s office right next to the Kok palace. My heart bled as Captain Kok saluted and bowed to the enemy, to the chief constable, so that I had to relieve my distress by going for a walk, past the plots now owned by thieving settlers. I took the rich brown earth in my hands, watched it trickle sluggishly through my fingers, and knew that there lay a hard task ahead.

  Griqualand for the Griquas and the Natives. This is our land. We will wipe out the stain of colouredness and gather together under the Griqua flag those who have been given a dishonourable name.

  When I returned to the palace, Father was giving thanks to the Lord for our safe arrival. Through the humble Griqua voices woven in descant, the spirit leapt into our hymn, Juig aarden juig—Rejoice, earth, rejoice—and gathered us together in a flash of fire that streaked across the firmament.

  When Abraham le Fleur, pioneer of the Great Trek across the Drakensberg into Griqualand East, erstwhile secretary to Adam Kok III and later adviser to Lady Kok of steatopygic fame, sent his son, Andries, in search of a pair of mules whose hind legs he had failed to tie together, he could not have imagined the consequences.

  Mules, he mumbled, more trouble than they’re worth, obstinate like these wretched Griquas. Why God should allow such breeding, I do not know. I’d trade twenty of these wretches for a good horse.

  Which both grieved and frightened the pious son, for not only does the Creator know best, but before his eye flashed a vision of his fathe
r’s downfall brought about by a vengeful horse. (Reverend Dower’s readers will note how, within a short appendix, that author uses the young man’s vision to transform the father from Griqua-agitator-for-compensation to Abraham-the-horse-thief.) Mistaking the young man’s glazed look for one of contempt, Abraham sternly warned him not to return without the animals.

  On the first day the youth roamed the veld, eagerly sniffing the forest pines, praising the blue sky, and, if the truth be told, not thinking too much about the errant mules. Such delight brought inevitable guilt, but Andries, thoroughly questioning his heart, decided that to rejoice in the earth was as much a holy duty. Day two, however, found our hero somewhat disheartened. He had slept badly in a recess, hardly a cave, where the stars in spite of sealed eyes burned on his retinas. The entire night sky crowded into the canvas of his mind: the three kings of the Orient danced with brilliance, a meteor with ominous tail of fiery stars travelled steadily across, and sleep came fitfully only with Venus’s morning light. Still there was no sign of the mules.

  He had brought only one day’s supply of bread and lard but found a small bag of kaiings that his mother had slipped into his sack. To punish himself and the indulgent woman he resolved not to eat the kaiings but on the second evening succumbed, only to find the cold twists of fried tail-fat unpalatable without bread. On the third day the hungry Andries cursed the mules, the stubborn, sterile offspring of male donkeys and female horses. Stupidity and laziness, that’s what made them wander off; they deserved no better than to be used as beasts of burden. But given to self rebuke, he thought of his Khoi ancestors who wandered at will to and from the castle because they would not be enslaved, which according to the Dutch showed that they were lazy, irresponsible, and without ambition. Could it be the mixing with European blood—for he would not allow the knowledge of slaves from the East—that later enslaved his people? The young man shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. He roared his rage into the veld and felt the blood galloping through each vein, separately and distinctly, with a force that made it perfectly possible, he thought, to turn up the earth with his bare hands.