October

by Zoe Wicomb

  Antoinette too, having been a Malherbe, was of good stock. If theirs had come to be an Afrikaans name, well the Malherbes knew better, knew that it was fighting Huguenot blood that coursed through their veins, infusing them with wholesome Calvinism. When, as a teenager, Mercia tried to correct her father about sly Slamse, pointing out that the slave blood of Cape Malays was also part of their heritage, he dismissed it as foolish ANC propaganda.

  Nicholas did not tire of telling his young children the story of how he had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. That he was one of a large family, of a father who was illiterate, was neither here nor there. The important thing was that that father was visibly of European stock, that he was a God-fearing, clean-living man of the land, even if that land belonged to a boer. For all his disadvantages, he had built with his bare hands a decent house for his family, fed and clothed them, and had never been in debt. Through hard work he gathered an adequate herd of cattle; in other words had set the example of pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. The Murrays, Nicholas said, were a tall and erect people; they held their heads high, and therefore each generation prospered beyond their fathers.

  As the children grew older they secretly mocked Nicholas, who checked their postures, and was not past flicking his aapstert at their legs with a clipped Head up, shoulders back. This pulling up by the bootstraps, Jake sniggered, did not make sense. It would surely make of the Murrays a crooked clan, bent over, always fiddling with their boots, anything but erect. He did not fancy the idea of prospering in that contradictory manner. The children noted that Pappa Murray’s grandfather, the great Scotsman, was never mentioned, except in terms of the blood that he had brought. No doubt short and crooked with eating too much oats and lack of sunlight, and a drunkard to boot, Jake conjectured. Clearly Pappa didn’t know him, otherwise there would surely have been aggrandizing stories. Most likely the Scotsman had another legitimate family, besides the children fathered upon his black slave.

  Years later, after Jake had lost his job in the wine industry, he taunted Nicholas, drunkenly holding a bottle of wine by the neck, tilting his head and swigging directly from it. Look, he said, no slouching here; I’ve learned to keep my head up. Good Calvinist habit, he laughed, smacking his lips. I drink in honor of our Huguenot forefathers who brought the vine to the Cape, who established our flourishing wine industry on the backs of Namaquas and other qua-quas and slaves and the dop-system of weekly pay in flagons of cheap wine. Jake stumbled about in unlaced shoes. No danger, he declared, of pulling himself up by his bootstraps.

  May God forgive you, Nicholas said, bewildered by Jake’s madness. He shut his eyes, and his hands patted various parts of his person, as if in search of the aapstert that would cure all abomination. He spoke with difficulty, a Moses about to stutter his fifth commandment, but was it not too late for that? Instead, it was the story of Noah that would have to guide the boy, a story that Jake had clearly forgotten.

  God sent Europeans to darkest Africa, he said, to teach us about moderation. Wine is to be drunk in the manner of Holy Communion, and drunkenness, as the Huguenots well knew from the story of Noah, is an abomination. Noah himself was of course blameless. How could he have known about the effects of wine? What God tells us is that Noah’s son Ham laughed at his father’s nakedness, and that Ham’s descendants were blackened by the curse of Noah. Which places on us, the people of Ham, the burden of redeeming ourselves in the eyes of the Lord.

  Nicholas’s voice grew stronger. We may not have in English different verbs for animals’ eating and drinking, it is too civilized a language, but just think, my boy, of the Afrikaans, vreet and suip, the gross words for the ways in which animals consume, words that we also use for the shameful excess of human beings.

  Ja, Jake declared, slurring and swaying melodramatically, I am gesuip. And following the Latin conjugations that we learned from an aapstert, here it goes: You are gesuip / He/she/it is gesuip / We are gesuip / You are gesuip / They are gesuip. But tell me, he hiccupped, tell me, Grootbaas, do you know what Malherbe actually means?

  Nicholas shook his head sadly. Who could have imagined such an abomination, such a disgrace? He was glad that Nettie was snugly in her grave. Nettie would know that he had done his best for the boy, that he was blameless, that in spite of regular chastising, the feckless Namaqua ways had infected the boy.

  Now Nicholas is dead. Did her father die of a broken heart? Was that what his heart failure was about? Has he been killed by Jake’s outrageous behavior? Had Jake found some choice words with which to strike a fatal blow? That, Mercia assumes, is what Sylvie means. If only she had been there to protect him, an old man who, having done his best, had to live with the disappointment of contrary children. Mercia sighs. Well, nowadays people know the risks involved in reproducing themselves. That the clone they hope for and groom may well turn into a viper. At least, Mercia has always assumed that that is what her own womb would produce.

  It is more difficult than Mercia had thought, trying to work on her book, wading through the cant that clings to local versions of postcolonial memory, whilst waiting for Jake to rouse himself. Does she imagine that he will one morning rise and shine and over a cup of freshly brewed coffee discuss his condition or Nicky’s plight with her? She chooses not to think that far ahead. But by midafternoon Mercia has had enough. She is bored with her summaries of existing arguments. The promise of new insights darts about, as elusive as the floaters that here, in the October light, assail her vision. So much for being home, where her eyes can no longer manage the moderate brightness of spring. Perhaps like grief these symptoms that appear one by one will pass, at least the ones that matter.

  With little else to do in that place, the memoir presents itself as an option. In Nicky’s little room, behind closed doors, she opens the file, flicks through the fragments. Mercia tries to persuade herself that the memoir, so much easier than critical writing, will fill the afternoon hours. As if she does not know better. As if she needs to see the cursor’s tireless flicker at the start of a new blank document to know that no words, by virtue of being about real people and events, exist ready-made for committing to the screen. The words that have to be processed are yet to be found, retrieved from the teeming jumble, the cacophony that carries on in her head. How tired she is of this conundrum, of the unfound words that have fallen to her for processing. Tired too of the long imaginary discussions with Craig, the abject what-went-wrongs, and of Jake and the childhood he cannot throw off. Is she not also tired of the very living she makes, a profession bristling with words that generate more words? With more than enough words in the world, with the many commentaries on commentaries, the stories echoing each other, why the temptation to write another, to reproduce?

  No, she must keep things in perspective. Writing about the dreariness of their lives in Kliprand would be, as she well knows, a redundant act. There is nothing extraordinary about the Murrays; in fact, are there any stories in the world that do not have a counterpart in another culture, that with a small measure of imagination are not easily transposed? Oh, she knows that this harks back to the now discredited notion of universality, but what to do, what to do when Jake, as wayward as he is in real life, won’t be pinned down? Mercia closes the screen. It is a diversion from her work. She is a teacher and a critic, and that ought to do. If she is tired and despondent, unable to progress on her project, that too is a given; it is the condition of people in her profession.

  The little room closes in on her. It is too hot to go out for a walk, and Mercia cannot face the possibility of meeting Sylvie on the stoep or in the garden. If only she had brought along the novel about siblings who return to the place of birth. These days her memory is not what it was; already she could do with rereading the story she remembers as a version of theirs, echoed in another continent. Give or take a few transpositions, the different worlds are not so different, in spite of the genteel northern setting. Mercia having then settled into identification with the story, the chara
cters—a child with a dressing-up box—wonders what it would be like reading the novel now, at home, where she grapples with being back. Although, being here in Kliprand is simply a question of a couple of weeks; bunking down boots and all is not an option. Besides, it is too late. Her father is dead.

  Return has always been a tricky notion, teeming with thorns. Why, people often ask, has she not returned to the country after Mandela’s release? She would shake her head, shrug, would not deign to answer. As if exile were a frozen affair in which you are kept pristinely in the past, one that a swift thaw could restore so that, rinsed and refreshed, you are returned in mint condition to an original time, an original place. Nowadays Mercia does not want to think about Craig’s role in her condition, about how different things might have been had she not been enthralled by him.

  If Kliprand is not home to Nicholas, it cannot be home to his children. They were born there, raised in Namaqualand, but no, they should not think of it as home. Physical geography is not everything; it is important, in the interest of self-improvement, to dispense with the notion of home. It is after all an excessive sense of belonging that leaves the people of Kliprand tied to the place, limited and ambitionless, bound by their past and its unspeakable customs. But they do not have the means to go elsewhere, the children protest on behalf of the people. Nicholas counters with the fact that as a young man he did not have the means to leave the Overberg. Only think of our forebears, he says, the adventurous Scots who left their home and braved the seas to make new lives at the Cape, or the Moravians who founded the mission station at Elim—there are examples of developed minds who were able to shrug off the outmoded, atavistic notion of home, way back in the nineteenth century. Thus his children should not think of this place of their birth, burdened as it is with the arcane complexities of belonging, as their home.

  Instead, belonging is a given; it may be about the space where they live, but the self could belong any place at all where improvement presents itself. Belonging is sanctified not by place, but by blood relations, family. For the children, family is an idea imagined by their parents, bound up with the smell of yeast wafting from Nettie’s baking, the curling wood smoke, the anticipation of warm brown bread on which her freshly churned butter will melt, and the prayer of thanks to God as they gather to eat. The grown-ups have no idea how oppressive the children find that family, that home. Nicholas has no idea how much Jake hates him, what he would give to be in the city where an odorless Duens loaf could be bought from the corner shop.

  In Cape Town there are more Murrays, respectable brothers and sisters who have married well, which is to say spouses with good hair. If Nicholas’s children long for company, for playmates, well there are cousins with whom they could correspond. The fact is that the children here in Kliprand do not wash their hands, he explains.

  South Africa itself is a model, Nicholas claims. We can’t think of this country as ours, because it belongs to white people, even to the English who claim to belong to Europe. Colored people can’t support the Springboks; no, when we sit with our ears glued to the radio, it’s the Lions or the All Blacks whom we cheer. So we are free, above geography. We’re free to belong anywhere.

  The children snort at his distorted idea of freedom. Mercia asks about their indigenous ancestors, the Africans who are their forefathers, but he brushes aside the question. The truth is that he wants to know nothing of them. It is important, he counters, to remember that the Murrays are colored people. But neither does he know anything of the colored revolutionaries of his age, the Dennis Brutuses or Cissie Gools or Alex La Gumas. What he knows is that respectable coloreds have nothing to do with whites and do not bow to such people, but that they do keep on the right side of the law, do not make a fuss. As for black nationalists, what folly from a people who can’t read and write. When Mercia tells him of A.C. Jordan, he laughs. But the man’s name shows that he’s not African at all; he’s colored. No, they are troublemakers, shortsighted people intent on destroying all that is civilized.

  Mercia reminds her father of his sermonizing about Moses, who led his people out of slavery. Why did he not think people should work toward the overthrow of a government that oppressed them? Nicholas thinks her contrary. Moses was led by the voice of God. I am who I am, he says, ambiguously, pounding his chest.

  Many years earlier, and shortly after Mercia announced her decision to throw in her lot with Craig, Nicholas wanted her to accompany him to Elim, the Moravian missionary station where Nettie had grown up. He said that Nettie had of late appeared to him in his dreams, that he could not rest until he had visited her old house and the church in Elim. It was important too that Mercia knew the place, that she did not lose sight of those roots.

  Mercia was happy to go. They stayed the night with cousins in Cape Town, where Jake failed to turn up, and drove the next morning to Elim. Nicholas had been there only once before, many decades ago. He stood in the square orientating himself in the autumn sunlight, his head swiveling back and forth with amazement at time’s tricks. The church, remembered for its cathedrallike proportions, turned out to be tiny. Beautiful, of course, in its simplicity, and above all, the purity of whiteness. There were the freshly whitewashed walls, and even the wooden pews, the austere pulpit, were painted white, and the sun streamed in through tall windows, bathing all things in brightness and purity. So that Nicholas fell to his knees and with tears streaming, prayed loudly to God, prattled about sin and forgiveness, prayed that Nettie, who now sat with the angels, too would forgive him.

  Embarrassed by his display of piety, Mercia left to explore the square, where to her surprise she came across a monument celebrating the emancipation of slaves. She had not known of any such monument, of any acknowledgment of slavery in colored communities, and the inscription of 1938, some century after the actual emancipation, was puzzling. When Nicholas finally emerged, spent and presumably cleansed, he was embarrassed by the monument. No, he had known nothing of it, and no, Nettie had never spoken of it. These things he felt were best laid to rest. Let bygones be bygones. Would she, Mercia, not rather spend some time in the church? They were all sinful creatures, and never had he seen such a pure place, every inch of it white and dazzling with God’s love so that having strayed from the straight and narrow they could bank on forgiveness. It required only humility to be folded in the arms of God.

  Mercia did not say that the beauty of the church was for her spoiled by the talk of sin, dirty talk like muddy footprints across the ethereal white. She would rather cross the road and look at the church from a distance. Nicholas followed. What a pity, he said, that here where the majority of houses were so lovely in plain whitewash, some people spoiled it all by painting theirs in that salacious dark pink. Or, farther along the row, in a vulgar, bright blue.

  Mercia disagreed. Yes, the white houses with their traditional thatched roofs were beautiful, picturesque, but really, one couldn’t blame people for not wanting uniformity, for refusing to turn their village into a museum to be gawped at by strangers. There is nothing wrong, she said brusquely, with a bit of color.

  Later, Nicholas was reminded by a denizen, leaning over his garden gate, that the pews had always been of dark wood, that they had only been painted latterly. By newcomers with their fancy ideas, the old man complained. Oh yes, he said, he remembered the Malherbes. Stuck up, they were, so that Nicholas said sternly that people could not be blamed for wanting to better themselves.

  No, the old chap said, and paused, no they definitely can’t be blamed, and he shook Nicholas’s hand gratefully for the insight.

  Across the square the village hall was buzzing with activity. As it happened they had hit upon a Saturday bazaar. Nicholas was struck by the orderliness, cleanliness, the inventiveness of produce for sale. Melon konfyt in pretty little baskets made of colored card and crinkled paper; bottles of homemade ginger beer; cupcakes artfully decorated with icing—nothing of the slovenliness of Kliprand here, so that Mercia sprang to its defense.

&
nbsp; Actually, she countered, he had no idea how people lived there, he did not go to the village celebrations, where much the same stuff was made for sale.

  No, he said, those people don’t wash their hands; one can’t risk eating their food. Here, Elim certainly had its share of poor people, but they at least were clean.

  Mercia laughed at the poor-but-clean usage. How shocked her father would be by the filth of the well-off. How shocked she was visiting fellow students’ flats in Europe, and then their family homes, where she found it hard to drink coffee from stained cups hastily rinsed under a tap. Cleanliness seemed inversely proportionate to privilege, as if people no longer able to pay others to look after them had failed to learn to clean themselves. Perhaps it was an inevitable outcome of social mobility that those who in the past had cleaned, women, were no longer prepared to do it for themselves or for others. It had been a source of contention between her and Craig. Mercia would have a cleaner; she worked too hard to do it herself. What could possibly be wrong with giving work to an unemployed person as long as you paid her a decent wage? But Craig was embarrassed, finally giving in on condition that his own room was left untouched.

  The cleanliness of Mercia’s childhood was nothing short of oppressive. If people complained of the ubiquitous sand that threatened to invade their houses, of the grit that stung their legs when the wind rose in the afternoons, then sand was also their salvation. For all its being the antithesis of the scarce commodity of water, the two elements cooperated in cleaning rituals. Pots blackened by primus flames had to be scrubbed first in rough sand, then polished with steel wool, inside and out, before being rinsed with hard-to-come-by water. A daily war was waged against soot that had to be scoured, first of all with sand, from the Jewel stove. In the damp riverbed they scrubbed their feet and smoothed their cracked heels with sand.