David's Story

by Zoe Wicomb

  When David, at precisely that hour, slips into a side door of the Crown Hotel, he sees the light glowing on Mount Currie, the world flushed with a promise of pinkness, but he is too preoccupied to stop, to think of its origin. His heart leaps but he will not follow it, he will quell it sternly, put it aside, snuff it out like a candle, for there is no time for dilly-dallying in this way. He will not be seduced by flirtatious light.

  Cautiously and wearily he makes his way to the room for the second time. David does not know what to do but is not accustomed to admitting such a thing to himself. He will take time slowly, minute by minute, so he attends to his person, brushes up a lather, shaves meticulously, then packs his shaving things away. Rummaging through his bag he finds a hairbrush that Sally must have packed, and standing in front of the mirror he performs the unfamiliar task of sliding the useless brush across his hair, noting with surprise the grey at his left temple. Then he finds his toothbrush and brushes as his mother has taught him to do, up and down, getting the bristles between the teeth and behind as well—Don’t forget behind the teeth, you can never brush too carefully, too hard. He draws blood from those unsuspecting gums, which makes him spit several times, expecting to hear the teeth clatter into the basin, expecting all to disintegrate, but no, they remain in his mouth. He packs the shaving things, the toothbrush and paste, the hairbrush, into his bag. Could it be that he is leaving? And where would he go?

  He takes the loathsome thing out of his pocket and looks once again. The list is now marked by four fold-lines, across the girlish writing. He rests it in the veined brown hand, a hand unmarked by manual work that has been waiting in the world these thirty-five years to be on this day transformed into that of the intended, the hand of a girl to be married, a girl in a haze of innocence—and he laughs harshly—waiting in the ambiguous light for the truth that will be withheld from her. Can it be, he asks, can it be true that he does not know the truth? Or worse, that it stares him in the face, the truth which he cannot bear? And is truth not what he has been pursuing all these years of trouble and strife and dalliance with death—the grand struggle for freedom?

  And now, can there be no turning back, now that he has allowed the blood to be quickened by her, the beloved? Once he had put his hands on her shoulders intending to deliver a fashionable peck on each of her cheeks, but had been unable to remove those willful hands. Now, having held her, even at a distance, even if that holding was a holding off, is there no going back? Once there is acknowledgement, once their eyes have spoken, is there no going back? And does this betrayal of his family brand him as traitor through and through, someone on whom his comrades have to keep a watchful eye?

  No, and mentally he clicks his heels, his honour is unquestionable and the truth lies in black and white, unquestionably, in the struggle for freedom, for the equal distribution of wealth, for education for all, for every man and woman and child’s right to dignity.…

  Inviolable like the tokolos, a hit list cannot be amended in any way. To pluck the pins out of the wax doll is not a possibility, for there is no longer a subject to perform such a task. What David does is therefore something of a miracle, something performed in the trance of his freedom mantra. He can, of course, not touch his own, but he scores her name out with a pen, repeatedly, so that it can no longer be recognised. The terror mounts with each stroke of the blue ballpoint. When the name is completely obliterated, he shudders at what he has done. Has he, the intended, been directed into acting, into becoming the agent for others?

  By way of making amends to Dulcie he writes her name on another clean sheet of paper. Below it he writes: It is they who obliterate her name.

  Which is surely imprudent. This they also occurs in other scribblings, but David does not answer my questions about who they are. Thus I can offer no substitute; I must stick with the pronoun. A person must, as David all too often says, each trust to his own judgment. Or hers, as I often correct him.

  CAPE TOWN 1991

  Sally awards herself a quiet hour while the children watch television at the neighbours’, but she soon shuts the book in irritation. She has had enough of the bodies of black women: their good thick legs, their friendly high-riding backsides, their great sturdy hams. And if not about unwieldy black behinds, there is always something to read about the tragedy of being coloured and therefore, it would appear, in limbo. If only she were lost, she sighs, so that no one, not even David, would ever find her. She ought to rise from her very own good heavy hams, but remains on the sofa staring at cobwebs under the sideboard. In the afternoon light their gossamer pile winks, but to hell with it all, she will not move.

  Sally has no difficulty in keeping still for long periods. Having been brought up in a respectable coloured home, she kept still throughout her youth. For the ambitious Ant Sarie who spent many years observing the behaviour of ladies in the Logan Hotel, the idea of her daughter rushing about like the roesbolling girls of the village was out of the question; in fact, there was no need at all to compare her with vulgar girls who would certainly end up in service. To become a lady, she knew, there was no better practise than simply keeping still; she had watched ladies taking slow, short turns in the landscaped garden of the Logan, stooping now and then to admire a shrub, but returning to their sofas and English magazines, or to their rooms to read improving books.

  Thus Sally learned to fill the long, hot karroo hours with reading. There were magazines left in the hotel with the subtle odour of grandeur still trapped between the pages. But even the writing on packages of sugar or mealie-meal brought pleasure, her favourite being the old Bokomo flour cotton bags, washed and bleached for making broekies so that the faded letters trailed off into the seams. Best of all were the occasional novels about nurses or murder mysteries left in the rooms by careless guests. These books Ant Sarie kept for a few days in the broom cupboard, waiting for enquiries, but no one ever asked after them, so that after a week or so she took them home for the child whose hunger for stories could not be stilled. And there was always the Bible, with the best, most educated English in the world, one of the ladies told Ant Sarie as she handed her a little black volume. Reading, lying across a bed casting her eyes over print, was a decent way for a girl to spend her time and could only keep her out of mischief. And so Sally, after a brilliant start in the rough and tumble of five-stone-throw or ten-stones-in-the-hole, settled down, either reading or doing her homework at the kitchen table, while her whirlwind brothers chased after inflated goat bladders or tin cans or other whirlwind children.

  Keeping very still did not exempt her from all the tasks a girl had to do, including keeping her hair swirled guerrilla-fashion under a tight stocking, but these tasks were carried out quietly and efficiently, and she was rewarded with a lie down and a chance to read a chapter. Most importantly, Ant Sarie explained, keeping still prevented her from making friends. Friends were the ruin of all God-fearing young people. No one would be led astray were it not for friends. Take her older brother, Danie, a clever boy who had only just managed to scrape through standard seven, ruined by the iniquities of friends. No chance of him becoming a teacher, and if he did, he would be one of those who gave coloured people a bad name—a drunken teacher. For a girl it was doubly important since there was also modesty to maintain; she need only look at groups of girls ambling aimlessly, arm-in-arm, giggling at boys in the alluring crimson light of dusk, to know why a lady did not have friends.

  No one had told her that all that keeping still encouraged the growth of an uncommonly large posterior, and by the time Sally thought of taking more exercise, steatopygia had set in for good, lycra had been invented, and she was doomed to long-legged step-ins that turned fresh spring days into a stifling tropical swelter. It was the Movement that offered freedom in the form of loose khaki trousers and a break from reading about the sad coloured condition. And marriage to David, she sighed, that lost her her place in MK—and took her back to the overrated business of reading novels. How could such things possibly be c
alled weapons of the struggle? Perhaps the stuff and nonsense that is said nowadays about culture is meant to placate women like herself, and she rises stiffly onto her own good solid legs to cook sausages for the children, whose voices rollick down the length of the street as they chant: You won’t make it to heaven / Without the AK-47.

  This night, the second of David’s absence, Sally, a light sleeper—her dreams filled with Dulcie—is woken by the sound of footsteps around the house. There is whispering just below her bedroom window and what sounds like an argument at the gate. She leaps out of bed to check the room where the children sleep peacefully and hovers in the doorway with her eyes fixed on the window. There she waits until what sounds like the reconnaisance of her house is completed, the consultations over. Encouraged by their carelessness, their attempts to let her know of their presence, she moves to a window at the front of the house. The arrogance of these people, who even now will not let them be. Through the lace curtain she does not see their faces but notes the last of two men in black pile into a large car and sail off into the black night.

  How dare they, and how could she have believed that these were things of the past? Only this time they appear to want nothing: no raid, no search for documents, no questions, just dark figures moving around noisily with something like stockings over their heads of all things, a mimicking perhaps of the comrades? No doubt a new tactic for unnerving her. Are they hoping that she will get in touch with David, betray his whereabouts at the Crown Hotel? Surely they know that revolutionary codes do not allow for that. She ought to consult with someone but decides to let it pass. Should it happen again she’ll get in touch with Comrade K.

  Sally would like to telephone, to hear whether there is someone in the room with David, for she would know, she would be able to tell. Perhaps these people know of her fears, her jealousy, and she blushes with shame. Is there nothing at all private in one’s life? Does everything belong to politics?

  Ouma Sarie is in town to visit. It is not often that she comes, but a sudden longing to see her girl, her grandchildren, has overcome her, and there’s mos nothing to prevent her from catching a bus, from doing in her old age as she pleases. With her old Joop dead she can do exactly as she pleases and so she got out those rand notes from under the mattress and caught her bus. Thank God there were buses everywhere these days, people moving about like nobody’s business, that’s what Joop would not be able to understand, that catching a bus to town was nothing these days, that the world being all in a spin with this travelling, no one would even come to greet and sing you off to a safe journey precisely because it was nothing at all, and so she could go to town whenever she longed to see her children. Yes, that’s what being a widow was about, don’t think of the aches and pains, but of how you can do as you please; no more shirts to iron and collars to turn and socks to darn; and she folded her things into the bag, a nice light bag of plastic straw so you don’t have to struggle with the extra weight.

  And now she staggers up Kiewietlaan with her zip-up bag, hoping that they’ll be there—Saartjie, or rather Sally, and the children—not, of course, that David man who is never anywhere. She should really have telephoned from the village shop. They don’t mind at all her using the telephone, yes, even white people have changed, but ag, it’s no good, she never thinks of such things in time, will never get used to it, besides, she’s just too old to practise a phone voice at her age. But not to worry, there they are; the children see her and come running like puppies, wagging their tails, tugging at her skirts. Ouma’s here, Ouma’s here, they scream, and dance around her as she unpacks the eggs, real eggs with deep yellow yolks laid by her own hens, and the apricot chutney, and the atjar pickle that Sally loves. She must remember to take some empty jars away with her to make more for Christmas. But Sally is on edge, greets her with an eye that sweeps across the road, and no wonder the child is out of sorts, with all the curtains drawn on such a lovely day, starting every time these show-off Cape Town drivers screech down the road.

  Ag, ma, don’t worry, she says, it’s just these Boers, same old games, I know their tricks but it’s just the children that I worry about—a person can’t keep them in all day. It will be alright when David gets back, won’t be long. No, really, she says, smiling at Ouma’s snort of disbelief, he’s just gone to Kokstad for a few days. And then she surprises herself with sarcasm: Just a little trip for David to, well, find himself.

  Ouma Sarie claps her hands and, lifting a child onto each knee, declares, We’ll find ourselves at the seaside tomorrow. Yes, we going to have a nice little Saturday at Seaforth—that’s now a good idea, hey, she says, noting Sally’s doubtful look.

  She packs their picnic, and although Sally objects to the striped plastic bag, she will hear nothing of it: by far the lightest thing, why make yourself tired carrying extra weight? They spread out their blanket on that fine white sand, and how they eat, the little things, their boiled eggs and peanut butter sandwiches, murmuring with pleasure, and she remembers how her own children never got enough to eat, that Saartjie, or rather Sally, was always hungry, ate so much more than the boys. Oh, she tried her best to teach the child the ways of a lady, but no, she turned out rough like a boy, running all over the place, the Lord alone knows, nowhere to be found, a person of no fixed address. Good God, and how she worried, how the girl had let her down, running away from college so that she could only fear the worst: running after men, ’cause for what other reason could a girl want to disappear so mysteriously, and although she did not speak to Joop for days when he said she was whoring around, she knew deep down that he must be right. And how she feared the scandal, the disgrace of Sally returning to the village with child and Joop still an elder in the church. That was what happened to girls who went to town, and to Sally of no fixed address, whom the police had come to look for at the house once, shouting, Ons skiet haar vrek—We’ll shoot the bitch—as their tyres churned up her swept yard in a flurry of dust, scattering the stones that she had gathered into a pathway to keep the dust down. And she knew that they would, they would shoot as if the child were a dog, so that she rushed to the rescue of the flowering red malva that the wheels had caught, nursing it with a jug of water, pinching off the damaged leaves, stroking the bruised stem, coaxing it into recovery, for her bruised heart did not know what to think: if the child was in politics, although they had not made it clear, well, God had to forgive her, but was it not worse than whoring? She could only hope that he had not driven over her malva deliberately, hope that the sergeant with the moustache, brusque as he was, had nipped the plant by accident, that at least would be something. And when Joop came home she said nothing of the malva. He said of Saartjie that it was a relief, her politics, but that one could not be sure of those ANC types, that perhaps being in politics did not stand in the way of whoring.

  And now, how everything’s turning out alright, De Klerk letting Mandela out to help him fix up the country nicely, and her Sally all settled down decently, herself a mother. There Sally is with the little one, holding her as she treads water, Kick your legs, kick. And at her feet Jamie, gathering smooth white stones, muttering to himself, and the little waves washing at the shore, coming in at an angle, waves on which black-and-white birds bob in the sun, and the honeycombed pattern of light trembling under the water. And in the pleasure of it, the pleasure of all that shimmering water in which her children play like fish knowing their way through the waves, she, a woman of the karroo who is not so used to water, listens to the lapping and the sloshing and the lovely cries of children and sees the blue folds of the Buffelstalberg cool in the distance and so her eyelids droop, droop as the water laps and laps.

  Sally had not known that she was afraid of water. She loved paddling and took some pleasure in feeling the resistance of water, but required to swim at one of the training camps, she found it impossible to put her face in it. In the thick Mozambican heat the water felt like oil, and the comrade with his hand under her belly barked his instructions, Up, draw u
p your legs, and out, kick, flap the ankle, hands forward, round, and again. And how poorly she performed, unable to confess her terror.

  He said, as they made their way gingerly across the burning sand, A fuck, that’s what you need, and she saw his bulging shorts and knew that her time had come, as she had known it would come sooner or later, this unspoken part of a girl’s training. And because she would not let him force her, lord it over her, she forced herself and said, Okay, if you want. It did not take long, and she had no trouble pushing him off as soon as he had done, and since she had long forgotten the fantasy of the virginal white veil, it did not matter, she told herself, no point in being fastidious, there were more important things to think of, there was freedom on which to fix her thoughts. Then, cleaning herself in seawater, over and over, she lost her fear, found her body dissolving, changing its solid state in the water through which she then moved effortlessly. Which was, of course, just as the comrade had said.

  And now, holding little Chantal, whose plump legs flap without purpose, she panics at the child’s playfulness, her gurgling refusal to follow instructions. Then Jamie joins them, and conspiring against the swimming lesson they tumble like seals, laughing and splashing, and oh, what it takes to stay calm, for she is determined that the child should learn to swim today, no later than today. Chantal slips out of her hands, a sea creature tormenting her, so that, exasperated, she smacks the child, and Ouma, surfacing out of the cool blues and greens of sleep, holds out her arms unsteadily to receive the sobbing little girl.