by Zoe Wicomb
Smithy threw back her head in laughter. He didn’t leave because of your dressing gown, though he should have done. High time that went into the bin, so why don’t you come shopping instead, but Mercia thought herself above retail therapy. Smithy was patient. She listened over and over to the same story, the same arguments. And the same question: was the old Craig for whom betrayal was unthinkable the same person as the Craig who had betrayed Mercia?
Heavens, Smithy, replied, who would have thought that you’d use the language of pulp fiction? It’s not a question of betrayal, nothing to do with subjectivity; it’s just what happens when your affections shift to someone else. Then Mercia would say triumphantly, so when women grow old and fat and ugly it’s fine for men, themselves grown old and fat and ugly, to put aside notions of commitment and fidelity?
Neither of you is fat and old and ugly, but it appears to be what some men do. Who knows to what extent Mother Nature herself is responsible? Why, for instance, do men and women have such different libidos? When women are well past such things, men are still driven . . . Smithy was careful not to speak of reproduction.
Well, your Ewan wouldn’t run off, would he?
They both laughed at the phrase, at the idea of Ewan running anywhere.
There’s no knowing what an accident of time and place might bring. Someone may well one day step in his path and like what she sees just as he looks up at her in wonder, both smitten by the new. Then that will be it, the very Ewan who doesn’t run.
How romantic, and how well prepared you are, Mercia snapped.
Mercia knew that there was no solution to such talk. Commitment and fidelity were themselves contingencies, but there was some comfort in raking over those embers, in trusting that they would one day according to the law of nature burn themselves out, collapse into ashes. Only a month ago she would not have thought in terms of ashes, so there was something to be said for the old, tired metaphors.
Jerking its way out of a narrow road, the bus jolted her out of the obsessive thoughts. Mercia had imagined that it would belt niftily along the motorway, had no idea that it would first bump through suburbs on the edge of the city, making her stomach heave as it then made up for lost time on the motorway. Oh, she had not been looking and now the mist has crept up, engulfing them.
Mercia started at the sound from the seat behind her. Hers was not the only heaving stomach. She had been aware of the little boy’s voice, the chatter of one who has learned to make meaningful sounds and now was afraid of pausing, so that the words were a constant stream linked with because . . . because . . . because, used as a filler and in answer to his own questions. The young mother interjected with a soothing voice, reassuring him about the animals awaiting them in the zoo, the growling wra-wra of the lion; the hiss-ss of snakes. Christ, that was why people preferred the train. Mercia had not known that the bus went via the zoo. No wonder it was full of babbling children and mothers with flexible vocal cords, up and down the scales of infantile wonder and pious motherhood, backed by the rustle of snacks from backpacks.
Behind her there was the unmistakable sound of boaking, so that she jerked forward to avoid projectile vomit. The child cried, a slow gathering of sobs as he lamented the mess he had made, a mess that spread over the seat, over his mummy, over the animals in their lairs, over the entire day. He was sorry, he wailed; it was all messy, he wailed.
The woman’s voice wormed and slithered soothingly. It was only sick, she said, only the crisps and juice come back up because the bus was bumping his tummy, and as for the mess, no matter at all, Mummy would clear it all up. How lucky they were that in the backpack there was a spare pair of trousers, and look, a whole packet of wet-wipes with which to mop up the sick. A plastic bag for the dirty tissues, ran her commentary, as she cleaned up. But the child, implacable, and evidently a cleanliness freak, would not be consoled; he had ruined everything.
Sweetheart, my sweetheart, the woman soothed, there is nothing in the world to worry about. Mummy will sort it all out. A little boy can’t help being sick, the greedy lion cubs too have been sick, and that’s because like the hungry caterpillar they’ve eaten too much—one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, and he recited along between sobs: one cherry pie, one sausage, until the voice became inaudible as his face, Mercia imagined, was squashed into the woman’s bosom.
Sweetheart, my sweetheart, sang the maternal voice, everything’s fine. Shall we try to find the gruffalo at the zoo? Silly Mummy, hey? Doesn’t she know . . .
There’s no such th-thing, he sniffed and gasped, as the gruff-gruff-gruffalo.
Christ, Mercia’d had enough. She thought about changing seats. Then her own stomach heaved as she lurched into the past, once more a child groping for her mother’s skirt, sobbing her sorrys and her incomprehension. She did not mean to drop a cup onto the cement floor. Why would she be beaten for an accident? How could anyone imagine that she wanted to see it in shards? She too loved the cool white of the glaze, the pretty pink posy on the rim. But there was no such thing as an accident, said Nettie. There was only carelessness, a disregard for her parents’ hard work and sacrifice, which in itself was an offense before God, and which the child knew to be the case. The beating then stood for a lesson in care and vigilance.
The word, sacrifice, was firmly attached to God, who sacrificed his own son for the sins of the world, although it was not clear how that connected with grown-ups’ sacrifice for their children. They did not explain how or what they sacrificed. The seven-year-old Mercia thought of a stack of firewood, the smell of a burnt offering, but why did it induce guilt? Besides, her mother did not make sense. How could there be no such thing as an accident? The word existed, and carelessness what’s more was clearly not the same as doing something on purpose.
Was the fire Mercia allowed to go down, having forgotten to feed the woodstove, more deserving of a beating? She had ruined the bread and so was a good-for-nothing, ungrateful child, idle, with her nose buried in Die Jongspan, her mother said. She could not be trusted with anything when there was something to read.
That brought an end to Die Jongspan, which they decided was an unnecessary indulgence that filled a girl’s head with too many stories. Over and over Mercia read the few remaining back issues of the magazine until she knew by heart all the jolly escapades of the boer children, the chicanery of Reinhart the fox, and the adventures of Jakkals en Wolf.
The bus stopped at the zoo, and for a second Mercia toyed with the idea of getting off. Precisely, she castigated herself; it was just as she had always thought—children inspire sentimentality. She kept her eyes down. She did not want to see the woman and child, did not want to host an image of them. No image, no redux.
At the bus station Mercia welcomed the long walk to the National Library. The howling wind would blast the cobwebs out of her head, the unseemly, blubbering mummy-longing, inspired by no less than an incident of vomiting. Christ, a broken heart may demand new directions but there was no need to regress to childhood.
How little she knew of this city only a few miles away. Mercia smiled at the old rivalry, remembering Craig’s joke about the best thing to come out of Edinburgh being the train to Glasgow. Whilst living with Craig, she refused to think of Glasgow as home. Now, rehabilitating, did that not demand that she take a stand? Was there not the risk of being irretrievably lost? between cities? between continents? What a day for being assailed by nonsense. Mercia had to remind herself that she had only been unsettled by a pious mother-and-child display. Grieving for Craig need not turn her into a fruitcake.
What will you do now? Smithy had asked, and she knew exactly what Smithy meant. Had she, Mercia, not been going on for years about Craig being all that kept her in Scotland? That she would have liked to return to South Africa after the demise of apartheid? She only hoped that she had not used the horrible words—her parents’—of “sacrificing herself” for Craig. Said maybe in jest, but horrible all the same. Returning now, as a woman who
had been left, smacks of defeat. To smithy mercia said that it was too soon to make decisions. Her work was there at the university; it was no time for further upheaval. she had no intention of missing out on a hard-earned sabbatical.
The rain came suddenly, viciously, and Mercia was wearing unsuitable shoes. She’d had enough of that malarkey, of the bus and its adventurous route; like a grown-up she would get the train back to Glasgow, forfeit the return bus ticket. In fact, she was cold, wet and weary, in need of a coffee, and reluctant to go to the library. There she was, so close to Harvey Nicks. Why not, for once, do the unexpected? Why not get out of the bloody rain, forget about the library, and take in not only a coffee but also some shopping instead?
Mercia felt a little tremor of guilt at wasting her research day, but she would make up for it, has surely already made up for it in the sleepless nights when she worked around the clock. She was contemptuous of the notion of a makeover, especially for the woman who has been left, but she could do with something new. A quick flip through racks of overpriced clothing designed for undernourished children was discouraging. A glamorous assistant came along and said, Yes, her intonation halfway between statement and question. Later, l’esprit de l’escalier provided Mercia with: Glad you’re in agreement/I haven’t yet spoken/Is that a greeting/Yes indeed—but at the time, affronted, she grabbed at a couple of garments and announced, I’ll try these. She stared in dismay at the figure of a fifty-two-year-old in the mirror. Like the favored photograph of themselves that people carry about for decades in their wallets, Mercia had identified with an outdated image of herself. What did it mean when friends said she looked remarkable for her age?
Only a burka would do, Mercia said to the unsmiling assistant as she handed back the clothes.
It was still early enough to get a train back and start work as if the excursion to Edinburgh had not taken place. The train passed through the small towns of Linlithgow, Polmont, and yes, Falkirk too. No escape from home there at the foundries of Falkirk, she smirked, as the train pulled in at the station. The black and white station signs carried a reminder, as did the hanging baskets of petunia and begonia, ugly municipal combinations of pink, orange and purple.
Falkirk was the name stamped in relief on the three-legged cast-iron pots at home, pots manufactured for the colony, for Africans to cook their staple mealiepap over an open fire. Nowadays, for the experience of traditional potjiekos, the three-legged pot straddling its fire has found its way to fashionable braais. Once at a barbecue that Jake had organized, Mercia asked about the word, potjiekos. She had never heard it before. Where did it come from? Who used it?
Jake laughed. Give us a break, man. We’re free in the New South Africa to do as we please, invent if we want. Just look at you, definitely an example of the pot calling the kettle black.
They ate heartily the perfectly ordinary stew from the three-legged pot, the potbellied omphalos of authenticity, itself a potbellied word. And there where it was cast, in the foundries of Falkirk, a sudden burst of sunlight accompanied the rain, so that the water dripping from trees glittered like Christmas streamers as the train pulled out of the station. Jakkals en Wolf gaan trou. That’s what they said at home when rain and sunlight commingled. An unlikely marriage between jackal and wolf, right out of Die Jongspan.
When the train arrived at Queen Street station, Mercia was unable to leave her seat. Her heart seemed to break over and over again, and that when she thought she was well on the way to recovery.
It is midnight. Mercia, sitting at the table in her pajamas, looks up in the dark at Jake, who stumbles into the kitchen. She sees a wounded animal. His disheveled hair has not been cut for months; he is unwashed, an old mangy lion without a tail, dragging his left leg. She jumps up to throw her arms around him, but he pushes her off roughly.
No man, Mercy, leave me alone. If you don’t have a drink for me, just leave, go home, and he turns on his heel, shuffles back to his bed.
When Mercia returns to bed, she closes the chapter she has been working on, and opens the file, Home. If she can’t speak to her brother, she could at least write about him, about growing up in that place. That would be her only way of reaching Jake.
Antoinette, the name of a French queen—whatever possessed her parents?
For people like them, plain folk, names must transcend their condition; a name must ring with grandeur, and so earn respect. A grand English name, as they thought it to be, would cancel out the Afrikaans surname with its reference to madness; it would influence the life of a girl with few resources, and help in the tricky business of finding a husband, for who nowadays would want a Kaatjie or a Grieta. Certainly not a teacher, or rather a principal, for that was what the Malherbes had in mind for their only daughter.
Antoinette, who passed her Junior Certificate with flying colors, had learned about the French Revolution. Her parents would not have known of that queen’s unfortunate death, and she did not tell them, but since her schooldays she has refused to look at a fowl or a sheep held down on a block with a chopper hovering over its head. Her father complained that all that schooling had given her airs. Why, with such a grand name, he whined, had she chosen to call herself Nettie?
Surely no one named Antoinette could help thinking of the guillotine, Nettie explained to her husband, who, delighted by her knowledge and identification with Marie Antoinette, agreed to spare her the sight. She did not admit to a distaste for meat, and as a good wife gritted her teeth to prepare dinners. Nicholas could not be expected to tolerate a fastidious palate, so it was a question of subterfuge, God forgive her, of strategic dishing that would allow her to eat as little meat as possible. Prolonged cooking guaranteed detached bones that could be buried under rice or potatoes accompanied by just the sauce or gravy, bones that she would then uncover for display. Like a dog, she thought. For Nicholas, like her father, was strict, a good man, a man of principle who would not tolerate fussiness. It would take some drilling to find the well of kindness that she knew was there, in his heart. And frugality helped. He praised her for the way in which provisions stretched well past the weekend, even if the meat cooked to death was not always to his taste.
When Nettie’s first baby lay squirming helplessly beside her, the mother looked on in terror. Was it really hers? What, dear Lord, had she done? And whatever came next? Where in God’s name was Mother Nature, whose job it was to flick the hidden switch of motherhood so that Milk and Love would fountain in abundance? Nettie fell back wearily against her pillow and watched the two delivering oumas whispering to each other and bustling about the baby, who had forced its way out with such wayward enthusiasm, leaving what felt like a hole. Nettie’s bruised body was like an egg drained of substance, no more than a fragile shell. No wonder she felt nothing for the baby. There was only terror, and she knew that to be a sin.
Lord have mercy upon us. Christ have mercy upon us.
The Anglican litany learned for Confirmation haunted her. When she left the Moravian mission station for high school in town, her father agreed that the English church would stand her in better stead. Over and over the prayer rang in her head—Lord have Mercy upon us. Christ have Mercy upon us—demanding to be uttered. Antoinette Murray could not do so.
Come now, Ouma Anna said sternly, as she laid the tiny damp creature on Nettie’s breast, you’ve got to feed her. Nettie feared that her empty frame, the eggshell, would shatter, but she nodded and looked away, so that the ouma had to get the little mouth affixed. Then the baby sucked vigorously, making the mother wince with pain. How would it manage to extract milk from such emptiness? If only Nicholas were there to advise, but he was kept out of the room by the oumas, who took no little pleasure in lording it over Meester. These were things he had no knowledge of. He had been shown the little girl, now he had to keep out whilst they cleaned and bound the mother’s body, smacked and swaddled the baby, and got her to feed. But Nettie lay listless, silent, until he appeared and assured her that the Lord would indeed have mercy
, that Mother Nature worked hand in hand with patience.
Nicholas picked fresh lucerne from the cow’s pasture and having packed it liberally on brown bread and butter, persuaded her to eat. Whoever’s heard of eating cows’ food, the oumas protested, but the hole at the heart of Nettie slowly shrank and thin milk trickled into the baby’s greedy mouth. Nettie stifled cries of pain as the gums clamped on to her cracked nipples. The oumas recommended Borsdruppels, so aptly named for the chest, but Nicholas, forgetting to be polite, said that was nonsense, that antiseptic Friar’s Balsam would do the trick.
Never again would Nettie rely on Mother Nature. It was her own efforts, her own stoicism that healed the wound and the nipples, and trickled substance into her body, so that caring for the baby, a girl, brought a wary kind of love. As for the child’s name, yes, they would have to rely on God’s mercy, but Mercy seemed to her too abject, too poor-sounding with a two-syllabled surname. The variant Mercia was just the ticket.
The second child was much delayed. Nettie would not admit to it, but she did everything in her limited means to prevent pregnancy. Nicholas advised that she should stop feeding the little girl, but the child fortunately was thin as a stick insect, so that Nettie claimed the milk to be a necessary supplement. More than three years later, when Nicholas, anxious for a boy, would tolerate no more of her nonsense, the morning sickness announced another pregnancy. The birth saw Nicholas trick the oumas out of their privileged roles. Of course, he would say that the baby had given him no chance to summon the midwives, that it came charging out of the womb as if pursued by demons, but the oumas pursed their lips. In his pride he let slip that the pots of boiling water and strips of linen had been at the ready. The oumas were outraged. What could Meester possibly know about the secret rites of bringing a child into the world? Too proud to have his son delivered by old Namaqua women, that was it. It was poor Nettie, subjected to the indignity of a man’s gaze, his clumsy attentions, deprived of women’s knowledge and care, with whom they sympathized. They muttered their curses. Meester’s know-all pride and arrogance must come to a fall.
