The Madonna of Excelsior

by Zakes Mda

  ALSO BY ZAKES MDA

  Novels

  The Heart of Redness

  Ways of Dying

  She Plays with the Darkness

  Melville 67

  Plays

  Joys of War

  And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses

  The Nun’s Romantic Story

  The Road

  The Hill

  We Shall Sing for the Fatherland

  “Jumping handily between past and present, Mda deftly renders the tensions between maintaining an indigenous culture and altering it in the name of progress.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  Ways of Dying

  Winner of the M-Net Award for best novel, 1997

  Winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize, novels, 1997

  Special mention, the CNA Award for best novel, 1996

  Honorable mention, the Noma Award for best book in Africa, 1996

  “Tender humor and brutal violence vie with each other in Mda’s pages, as do vibrant life and sudden death. The struggle between them creates an energetic and refreshing literature for a country still coming to terms with both the new and the old.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A rollicking, at times whimsical tour through the dying days of apartheid as witnessed by the Professional Mourner, Toloki, who wanders from township funeral to township funeral with the hapless wonder of a Chaplinesque loner.”

  —The Village Voice

  “Once you have finished Ways of Dying, you won’t know whether you read the novel or dreamt it. Zakes Mda has gathered up all the human waste and political detritus of South African life and distilled it into a magic realist text of great beauty, humor, and pathos. . . . Mda’s novel, with its jewel-like moments of pure imagination, its gentle upward narrative structure, and its repertoire of distinct, intricately carved characters whose lives mean much more than their deaths, bears out this paradox.”

  —Sunday Independent (South Africa)

  sunlight is Mda’s love of nature and of the country. It is there in all its openness and beauty, vibrancy and color, as a healing, liberating force.”

  —Citizen Weekend

  “A brilliantly observed study of the inner workings of small-town South Africa.”

  —O, The Oprah Magazine

  “By turns earthy, witty, and tragic, this energetic novel deftly handles issues of racial identity, rape, and revenge. . . . This is Mda at his best.”

  —Pretoria News (South Africa)

  The Heart of Redness

  A New York Times Notable Book

  Best Book, Africa Regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, 2001

  Sunday Times Fiction Award (South Africa), 2002

  Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award for Fiction, 2003

  “Brilliant . . . A new kind of novel: one that combines Gabriel García Márquez’s magic realism and political astuteness with satire, social realism, and a critical reexamination of the South African past.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A major step in the new South African novel—now a polyphony of voices, suddenly freed yet still shadowed by deep and immense riddles.”

  —The Village Voice

  “Quiet, subtle, and powerful . . . Mda’s enormous skills as a storyteller are everywhere in evidence, making the book impossible to put down.”

  —The Washington Post

  “This emotionally rich novel dares to seek redemption amid desolation. In these devastated lives, Mda finds grace, tenderness, even the kind of world-weary humor that is born of hardship.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “A postcolonial, postapartheid revelation . . . a humorous, mythic, and complicated novel.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  ACCLAIM FOR ZAKES MDA

  The Madonna of Excelsior

  “A lightning flash of a novel from start to finish—inspired, revelatory, and exhilarating.”

  —Time out New York

  “Graceful . . . Sharp and unsparing . . . Mda refuses to undermine his nation’s problems with cheap melodrama. Yet his gift, in addition to being an extraordinary writer, is to infuse the past with meaning, to make urgent the challenges of the present, and to reveal the gentle, often stinging, human comedy in both.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Black South Africa has found a strong new voice in Zakes Mda, a marvelous storyteller.”

  —The Economist

  “Captivating . . . In vibrant prose infused with equal parts satire and social criticism, Mda charts new emotional terrain exploring the Madonna-whore complex in a South African setting.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Resplendent images of emerging African independence . . . There’s a lot going on here. A gorgeously colored picture of personal and cultural metamorphosis. Exhilarating stuff.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Zakes Mda . . . has taken our literature to new heights.”

  —Sunday Sun (South Africa)

  “A deeply positive vision for the future . . . Mda’s work penetrates the mystical, the magical aspects of our lives, sometimes reshaping real events, sometimes inventing new ones. He is compelled by the need to tell a story.”

  —Independent (South Africa)

  “Warm, exuberant, and . . . very funny . . . Running through the book like

  Zakes Mda

  Part of this novel is informed by actual events that took place in and around Excelsior, and which are in the public record. The characters are fictitious, except for the few public figures who bear their real names.

  THE MADONNA OF EXCELSIOR. Copyright © 2002 by Zakes Mda. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.picadorusa.com

  Picador® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by Farrar, Straus and Giroux under license from Pan Books Limited.

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  Designed by Cassandra F.Pappas

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mda, Zakes.

  The Madonna of Excelsior / Zakes Mda.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-42382-9

  EAN 978-0312-42382-7 ISBN 0-312-42382-7

  1. Apartheid—Fiction. 2. Rape victims—Fiction. 3. South Africa—Fiction. 4. Group identity—Fiction. 5. Mother and child—Fiction. 6. Racially mixed children—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9369.3.M4M33 2004

  823'.914—dc21 2003054728

  First published by Oxford University Press Southern Africa, Cape Town

  First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  10 9 8 7 6

  On 10 May 2000, together with a phalanx of my daughters, I visited Father Frans Claerhout at his studio in Tweespruit, Free State. I had always wanted to meet him. He had mentored some artist friends of mine, James Dorothy in particular. Claerhout presented me with a book on his work written by Dirk and Dominique Schwager. But first he painted a golden bird on the black flyleaf and signed his name. I dedicate this novel to the bird.

  THE MADONNA OF

  EXCELSIOR

  WOMEN, DONKEYS AND SUNFLOWERS

  A THESE THINGS flow from the sins of our mothers. The land that lies flat on its back for kilometre after relentless kilometre. The black roads that run across it in different directions, slicing through one-street platteland towns. The cosmos flowers that form a guard of honour for the lone mot
orist. White, pink and purple petals. The sunflower fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. The land that is awash with yellowness. And the brownness of the qokwa grass.

  Colour explodes. Green, yellow, red and blue. Sleepy-eyed women are walking among sunflowers. Naked women are chasing white doves among sunflowers. True atonement of rhythm and line. A boy is riding a donkey backwards among sunflowers. The ground is red. The sky is blue. The boy is red. The faces of the women are blue. Their hats are yellow and their dresses are blue. Women are harvesting wheat. Or they are cutting the qokwa grass that grows near the fields along the road, and is used for thatching houses. Big-breasted figures tower over the reapers, their ghostly faces showing only displeasure.

  People without feet and toes—all of them.

  These things leap at us in broad strokes. Just as they leapt at Popi twenty-five years ago. Only then the strokes were simple and naïve. Just a black outline of figures with brown or green oil paint rubbed over them. Men in blankets and conical Basotho hats pushing a cart that is drawn by a donkey. Topless women dancing in thethana skirts. Big hands and big breasts.

  That is one thing that has not changed, for Father Frans Claer-hout is still a great admirer of big hands and big breasts. He is, after all, still the same trinity: man, priest and artist. The threeness that has tamed the open skies, the vastness and the loneliness of the Free State.

  Twenty-five years ago Popi peered from her mother’s back at the white man as he warmly and masterfully daubed his broad strokes. At five she was precocious enough to wonder why the houses were all so skewed. And crowded together. She thought she could draw better houses. Her people, those she sketched on the sand in the backyard of her township home, were not distorted like the priest’s. They were matchstick figures with big heads and spiky hair. But they were not distorted. Yet his very elongated people overwhelmed her with joy. She saw herself jumping down from her mother’s back and walking into the canvas, joining the distorted people in their daily chores. They filled her with excitement in their ordinariness.

  “Popi, we must go now,” her mother said.

  “Awu, Niki, I am still watching,” appealed Popi. She always called her mother by the name that everyone else in the township used.

  “The Father has no use for me,” said Niki as she walked out of the gate of the mission station. Popi was sulking on her mother’s back. She had wanted to stay with the distorted people in their skewed houses.

  “We cannot waste time with your silliness,” said Niki.

  She had a long way to go. She was going to hitch-hike all the way back to the black township of Mahlatswetsa in Excelsior, thirty kilometres from the Roman Catholic mission in Thaba Nchu. Traffic was sparse on these roads. She knew that she would have to walk for miles before a truck would stop to give her a lift. Truck-drivers were really the only people who felt sorry for hitchhikers.

  But trucks were few and far between on these provincial roads. She would have to walk for miles with only cosmos, the qokwa grass and sunflowers for company. Popi would be fast asleep on her back.

  Although her visit to Thaba Nchu had not been a success, she was grateful that the priest had given her a few coins for her trouble. But she was disappointed that he had no use for her. She had heard from the women of his congregation that he painted naked women. In all the neighbouring townships and villages, women walked out of their skewed houses to pose in the nude for him. He paid his models well. Niki had hoped that she would also be able to pose for him.

  But the priest had no need of a model. He was not in his nudes-painting mode. He had a few canvases of distorted people and skewed houses and donkeys and sunflowers to complete. Then, in a few weeks’ time, he would be painting the madonna subject. If Niki and Popi could come back then, he certainly would use them as models.

  The priest was captivated by Popi. He loved all children. Even those who were emaciated and unkempt. Though Popi stayed on Niki’s back all the time they were in his studio, he played with her, making all sorts of funny faces. Then he tore out a page from a magazine and shaped her a donkey. He gave it to her and pranced around the room, braying like a donkey. The stocky trinity with his broad face and snow-white mane brayed and brayed, and Popi laughed and laughed.

  All this time Niki was nervous. She knew that the priest must have been wondering why Popi was so different from other children. Why she was so light in complexion. Why her eyes were blue, and why she had flowing locks.

  We who know the story of Excelsior do not wonder.

  As Niki trudged the black road until she became one with it, Popi’s mind wandered back to the man who loved women, donkeys and sunflowers. And to his creations.

  Woman and girl melted into God’s own canvas.

  THE GARDEN PARTY

  POPI TELLS US that it all began when the trinity was nourished by Flemish expressionists. Theirs were ordinary subjects: sympathetic men and women living ordinary lives and performing ordinary rituals. Popi knows all these things, and shares them with all those who care to listen. We suspect that there are many other things that she knows, but keeps to herself. And there are others that she has decided not to remember.

  Twenty-five years ago she saw the thin outlines that defined the concertina player and the dancers. At the time she knew nothing about Flemish expressionists. She had not experienced, through the broad pages of colourful coffee-table books, their mystique that embodied protest.

  She was only five. And she was with Niki.

  The strokes were not broad like today’s strokes. The trinity had not started with broad strokes. They got thicker and rougher as he became more comfortable in his own style. The strokes Popi saw did not stand out. The surface was smoother. The finish was grainy. The colours were fruity. Thick fingers like bunches of bananas pressed the concertina keys. White and brown strokes marked the folds of the instrument as it breathed heavily in and out.

  The musician’s hat was an overripe tomato. Brown hair peeped under the brim. He was intent. The song had drawn his eyes into his skin, and they had become brown slits. His long nose was sunburnt. He squeezed the concertina. It squealed. Men and women danced. Full-figured women in Starking apple dresses. Skirts of golden pears and Granny Smiths. Pink blouses. Out-of-step men in brown hats and brown suits. Or in light blue shirts and green pants. Sleepy-eyed men with big groping hands.

  The musician squeezed the instrument and it wailed a graceful wals. Men and women floated on the clouds. Then he squeezed a lively vastrap. Quicker, quicker than the wals. He was playing Japie Laubscher’s Ou Waenhuis, the famous composition about an old barn. The zestful party danced in a circle. The men’s arms were around the women’s waists. The women’s arms were around the men’s shoulders. Feet close together, turning on the same spot in a fast tiekie-draai.

  Rosy-cheeked girls in pink dresses screeched their laughter under the architrave. Then they ran to the lawn to make a nuisance of themselves to the boys who were playing with a rugby ball, practising throws that might see them being picked for Haak Vry-staat, or even the Springboks, in later years. There were no flowers in the garden. Just the lawn. And the small shrubs that would one day grow into a hedge along the short wrought-iron fence. The girls chased one another among the boys. The boys didn’t take kindly to this. They chased the girls away until they disappeared behind the whitewashed house.

  The house was an imperfect copy of an English bungalow. But it was more exuberant than an English bungalow. As exuberant as the fruity dancers. Two bay windows with ornate stained glass on each side of the brown double doors, which also had painted glass panels. Purple columns supporting the purple architrave. Pillars whose crude capitals were halfway between Ionic and Corinthian. The roof was green. It was made of corrugated-iron sheets instead of tiles. Purple gutters. Green and white chimneys on opposite ends, one with a cowl and another one with a television aerial attached to it. Television was only a few months old in South Africa. This house, therefore, belonged to a man who not only had t
he money for such novelties, but was also determined to set the trends.

  The boeremusiek of the concertina was relentless. The liedjies, or tunes, were getting louder. The volkspele or dances were getting exaggerated, as the concertina filled the dancers with even higher spirits. It had something to do with the cherry liqueur. The circle of buoyant rounded figures danced in and out of the wide doors. Niki passed the time by trying to identify each of the revellers. Popi couldn’t be bothered. She was busy sketching houses on the sand just outside the gate. She was concentrating very hard, determined that her houses would not be skewed like those she had seen at the trinity’s studio a week before. Her houses would stand straight.

  Niki knew almost all the revellers. There was Sergeant Klein-Jan Lombard with his voluminous wife, Liezl, stamping the ground as if they were in a military drill. He of the South African Police, who also acted as a prosecutor at the magistrate’s court. She of the yellow cherry jam that had made her famous throughout the entire district. There was Groot-Jan Lombard, Klein-Jan’s doddering father. There was the Reverend François Bornman, the dominee of the local Dutch Reformed Church, dancing with a woman Niki could not identify as she had her back turned most of the time. The dominee—one marble eye from a gun accident five years ago—was not in his usual black suit and white tie, but in a brown safari suit. There was Johannes Smit, a very prosperous and very hirsute farmer with a beer belly. He didn’t have a partner. And, of course, there was pint-size Adam de Vries, and his strong-boned wife, Lizette. This was their house. This was their garden party.

  Adam de Vries ran a small law practice in addition to being the mayor of Excelsior. Like most of the revellers present, he prided himself on the fact that his grandfather had been one of the founders of this town, back in 1911. It had been established on an old farm called Excelsior. People came from surrounding farms to settle here. And since then various members of his family have worn the dynastic mayoral chain. Except on a few occasions when there was no clear candidate from the family. Like when the late and lamented butcher, Stephanus Cronje, became the mayor.