October

by Zoe Wicomb

  A couple of nights later Visagie gave Mercia a lecture on Adam Small, whom he thought to be wrongly dismissed by the commissars of culture. Take Kanna hy kô hystoe he said, no less pertinent to the struggle than the banned Dennis Brutus’s resistance poems. He urged her to read it. Writing in Kaaps, he said, was the way forward to claiming their indigenous culture and valuing their roots. He gave her a dramatic rendering of

  en Moses was ’n hakkelaar

  ja Moses was ’n stamelaar

  en Moses was ’n moordenaar

  maar God was in sy elke aar.

  Mercia thought of the slim book in a brown paper bag hurriedly swept up by Bella on her way out to meet her cousin. She waited for Bella to appear for breakfast and repeated what she could remember of Moses the stammerer, Moses the murderer. Bella blanched, put down her half-eaten boerewors roll to stare in amazement. No, she shrieked, it can’t be, and they fell upon each other with laughter.

  Now the burly security guard dressed up in his paramilitary uniform and patting the gun in its holster looks up from his cell phone with incredulity.

  That is the code, isn’t it? Mercia says.

  He laughs. Yes, man, but it’s mos also my name, so for a second I thought you making fun of me.

  It’s the name of a famous bullshitter, so just you keep on the straight and narrow, she jests, wagging a finger.

  The man does not leave before telling her gruesome tales of attacks on lone women.

  And what makes you think I’m alone? she bluffs.

  He taps his nose and leaves.

  Mercia shuts the door, relieved to be in Bella’s lovely house. She laughs out loud at the memory of Cedric Visagie as the two women turned up together for the next date. How she marveled at his composure. No more than a flash of panic slid across his handsome face before he explained that his job was to recruit both of them. It was simply the way in which the revolutionary movement at times had to achieve its aims. They were clearly not ready for the sacrifices demanded in those difficult times.

  Heavens, how they laughed. But Visagie called after them all the same, Don’t forget to read Kanna.

  Mercia finds it difficult to fall asleep in Bella’s house. She cannot rid herself of Jake’s disclosures, of the injustice done to him. It is on Jake that she must focus. When she drifts off momentarily, she is assailed by nightmares, by lewd images of Nicholas. She wakes up screaming with an image of her own clubbed head, of blood trickling into her gaping handbag, of her father looking on.

  Mercia finds Bella’s old dressing gown; she will not go back to bed. She opens the file on her desktop—Home. Might it not help, as the therapists say, to write up the grim story? If Mercia has no pretensions as a writer, no aspirations to write stories, might a plain telling, a brief account in visible black marks on an illumined screen, not do the trick? With one thing leading to another as is the case with writing—for she does not believe that the writing up of events can be any different in practice to critical writing—one story generating another, she may well find the distance, and thus clarity and the much needed compassion. Memoir might be a misnomer, but why, after all, has she returned from time to time to the file?

  Mercia types the sentence: Nicholas Theophilus Murray was a good man, a decent man. She stops. She does not have the courage to bare her bosom to the screen. She shakes her hanging hands like a shiatsu masseuse so that the toxins might exit via her fingertips. If memoir prides itself on fidelity—for why else would one want to rake up the past?—has Mercia not also seen how an indulged memory grows fat and multiplies, spawning brand-new offspring? But there is no one to tell. Not Bella and not as much as a longing for Craig.

  Mercia stares at the keyboard. This is a father-son story into which she has stumbled, nothing to do with her, and thus not fit for memoir. She cannot find the words; she would have to skirt around their story, around the father, and how then would she avoid the fiction that telling begets? Mercia wants nothing to do with artfulness; besides, having snaked its way into their lives, the thing must be laid to rest. It must not be given the chance to take another shape.

  She shuts down the computer.

  It may be madness, but there is nothing else to do. The decision to come to town has been impetuous; to return in the small hours may be equally rash, but Mercia knows that she has run away in cowardice, that she must return, go home right away to deal with Sylvie and the boy. They are her responsibility, her inheritance.

  With Table Mountain now a ghostly cutout shape behind her, Mercia drives through the city’s silence to pick up the national road that will take her back home. She does not register tiredness; instead, the questions mill through her head:

  What kind of person am I? What kind of woman am I? The answer cannot be refuted. The kind of person who finds it hard to think and feel beyond her own loss. The kind of woman who does not forgive another woman for being a victim. And should self-knowledge not bring release from such self-absorption? Apparently not. But for all her desire to remove herself from them, from her people, from the place of exile called home, she cannot, and it irks. Has she gone crazy, driving right back to that place? To that desert she had thought of as dead, but where like any suburban home swathed in shamefaced lace curtains blood has been racing and pounding, and boundaries have been ruthlessly trampled. Worse, more wicked, for offending in the veld—God’s own country, mythopoetic home of wholesomeness, home to kalkoentjies bursting blood red into a new vernal world, home of healthy, simple pleasures seasoned with the plentiful salt of this earth.

  The schoolgirl’s song of spring echoes in her head: Al die kriekies kriek daar bu-ite, Elke springkaan spri-ing. Such Edenic pleasures at home, where simple people are supposed to live wholesome, frugal lives amongst frolicking crickets and harmless locusts. But there is no such thing as simple people. The good folk of Gray’s elegy have long since departed, doubly dead; besides, that knowledge, rich with the spoils of time, has neatly sidestepped the carnal. And Mercia should have known that bucolic innocence, the stuff of the pastoral, is refuted in country matters that blindly pursue their own carnal laws. The lamb with his fleece as white as snow is the issue of a thrusting ram, a tupped ewe. The coming of the Lamb of God—his mum up the duff.

  Mercia glances at the speedometer. She must slow down. She must not think of it. But for all her years, she is a child. The concupiscence of the parent—let alone this, this business—it is not for the ears and the eyes of a child. Sylvie was a child. For all Mercia’s atheism, it is the word SIN that lodges itself in her thoughts. He, Nicholas, her father, has sinned against the girl whilst his God turned a blind eye. And the iniquity of the father will be visited upon the children until the third and fourth generation. Dear little Nicky’s burden—and rage engulfs her on behalf of the child. She may have thought of it as Old Testament nonsense, but how will the child avoid suffering his grandfather’s sin, the wrath of an unjust God?

  At least Mercia has done with crying. She may feel relief at not having to tell Craig, but if he had still been there, would she have told him about the shame that now is hers? Could she tell anyone that this home has been burned to the ground, that she would rather choose to suffer the dark and icy north with its plentiful water for washing away the sin that now is hers? Ag, she resorts too readily to melodrama. Why bother with the idea of home, a notion that has been turned inside out, like an old garment in preparation for mending? Thank heavens there is no longer any need to explain herself or, as they piously say these days, the need to share. She says out loud, dipping her voice: Allow me to share my shame with you.

  If Mercia is past crying, it is also no time for irony. As for Jake, poor Jake for whom it has been so much worse, who has thus far borne it on his own, will there be a second chance? This poison is more potent than alcohol. If only she could carry some of that burden for him. She should feel rage on his behalf, but it is too late; she does not hold out much hope for his recovery.

  Thank God for the ease of driving in
the small hours. Mercia tells herself that she will overcome her self-pity, that the mind will strike a deal with the heart, allow it to throb to a new beat of compassion. She is on her way back to Kliprand. She does not want to see Sylvie, but she will; she must try to make amends. As for the problem of the child, who surely should be removed from the poison of the past . . . well, she doesn’t know. He ought to be taken away, ought to be relieved of the burden of home and the legacy of shame. She ought to give him a new life in the gloom of Glasgow where he could warm his hands at a hearth glowing with the uniform pellets of smokeless fuel. She does not see her way clear to doing so.

  When Mercia arrives in Kliprand after five a.m. she feels for the first time the exhaustion of having driven all that way and back. Even the car seems to sigh deeply when she turns off the engine. She gets out quietly, stretches, and tiptoes to the stoep. There is the same stirring sky of her childhood, with fading stars and a paper pale half moon bowing out to the faint glow of the day’s arrival—the surge of light that tugs at her heart. The view of flat-topped mountains in the distance is the same as that of the house in which she grew up. She ought to be sipping coffee, her mother’s mixture of coffee and chicory that Mercia imagines the Huguenots to have brought to the Cape centuries ago. In this house there is only cheap instant coffee, and Mercia has thought it impolite to buy her own. It would only have confirmed Sylvie’s view of her as a snob. Better to say that she does not drink coffee.

  In the morning air there is a strange smell of cold ash that makes its way to her mouth, so that she imagines tasting it. It is the spent smell of cinders; it belongs to the outside grate where Sylvie does her braaivleis and baking, where yesterday’s fire for grilling roosterbrood has died down. Mercia has an inkling that she has somehow offended Sylvie, but really there is no point in pondering where and how their words clash or miss each other.

  As the red deepens and the sun appears on the horizon, Mercia unlocks the front door and tiptoes in. How strange that Sylvie, an early riser, is not yet up. Mercia goes to the kitchen; she will die without a cup of coffee. Or so it comes to her, the fear of facing Sylvie, so that she puts on the kettle, searches for the jar of instant coffee. The sound of the lavatory flushing through the house makes her brace herself for what lies ahead.

  It seems like an age before Sylvie comes in. She sits herself down at the table in silence, as if for an interview. Mercia has her back to her, holding an empty coffee mug. Thank God for Nicky, who stumbles into the kitchen in his pajamas.

  You’re back from Cape Town? he asks, evidently pleased.

  I’m back, she says, and turning round, smiling at the boy, says that she’ll make coffee for them, that she needs another mug. For an instant her eye catches Sylvie’s.

  So Sylvie knows. Knows that she knows. Mercia fears that Sylvie will speak, offer explanations or details, but of course the child is there. The girl bows her head while Mercia chats with Nicky, but then she rises, supported by her left hand placed flat on the table. She looks up, willing Mercia to look at her.

  How will all this be paid for, this treatment of Jake’s? she asks.

  Mercia assures her that she will deal with it. In fact, she says under the girl’s frank gaze, what they should do today is open an account in Sylvie’s name so that she could handle the expenses herself. Mercia will make monthly payments into the account. There will be enough for Sylvie to see to the mortgage, to ensure that they do not get evicted.

  Sylvie sits down once more, stretches her legs, leans with her elbow on the corner of the table. She stares listlessly ahead at the shafts of sunlight slanting above the lower door. She lifts her arm, then lets it fall, a guillotine through the swirling, dazzled motes of dust. Mercia waits until, eventually, Sylvie speaks. The girl is strangely composed, her face youthful, luminous, as she looks up unflinchingly, into the sunlight.

  She would rather not have anything to do with money, Sylvie says with quiet dignity. If Mercia could arrange to settle Jake’s bills herself, she would be grateful. It is best not to rely on her to make payments. So there is no need for an account in her name. She would rather not have that responsibility. For herself and Nicky there is no problem. She’ll manage. As for the house, she knows that Jake will not come back, either to her or to that house, so there is no need to secure the house on her account. She and Nicky will manage all right.

  Mercia cringes at the thought that it is Sylvie who so definitively has washed her hands of them, the Murrays, that she does not expect compassion, that she won’t be bought off. Indeed, Sylvie rises swiftly, light-footed, as if divested of her burden, rolls up her sleeves, and says that Jake’s room has not been cleaned for the entire two weeks that he took to his bed.

  Mercia would like to show that she understands. A better person would put her arms around the girl, but that she cannot do, that is not possible. She turns to the child, pulls him onto her knee and with her arms around him says that she understands. That she will stop off in town to arrange the payments for Jake’s care. Sylvie says that not once has that window been opened, that Jake’s room is disgusting. With a broom and mop, she sets about it, whilst a chastened Mercia sets about packing her bag. There is nothing else to do. She wants to support them, not only out of guilt, she realizes; rather, because they belong to her, because this girl who has risen above abuse and misery without any help demands her respect. Sylvie is her inheritance, but she cannot insult Sylvie with further offers.

  Nicky, who has wriggled off Mercia’s lap, helps her pack. He searches his pockets frantically, then rushes off to consult his mother, who arrives with his good trousers. From their pockets he extracts a piece of string, a glass marble and a pigeon’s tail feather, whilst his mother looks on smilingly. Here, he says, he has found these presents for Mercia, but if he had known she was going so soon, he’d have got her something special like the porcupine quills he left at his ouma’s house.

  Mercia says that these are the best presents she has ever had. She swallows back the unexpected tears as she kisses him goodbye. It won’t be long, she promises, before she’ll be back for those porcupine quills. Then she remembers the camera. Here, she says to Sylvie, this is to make sure that you send me photographs of the two of you. She shakes Sylvie’s hand, slides into her seat and is about to drive off when the woman puts a restraining hand on her arm.

  You will, she asks in a strangled voice, take care of Nicky?

  Yes, of course, Mercia finds herself saying, bewildered, not knowing what it means, what she means. Look, I’ll be in Cape Town for a few days. We could talk on the phone, later. Then she amends it. Listen, I have to be back in two months to see to Jake. That gives us all time to think things over. I’ll keep in touch. I’ll let you know.

  How bloody awful. How the woman must wish she were a fucking tortoise. Summoning from God knows where the courage, the dignity, to free herself from them, the poisonous Murrays, only to be thrown back once more into their clutches—for the sake of her child. Is that what mothers have to do? Eat humble pie? Prostrate themselves for the sake of their children? Sell themselves? How wretched, how absolutely wretched for Sylvie.

  Home at last. The taxi stops behind her car, parked exactly where she left it two weeks ago. Mercia drags in the suitcase, shivers, and switches on the central heating. She wanders through the ice-cold apartment, sparse and elegant after Sylvie’s cramped rooms. Something is wrong, a disturbance of some kind, as if someone has rearranged everything ever so slightly, so that she can’t put her finger on it, can’t say with conviction that the coffee table has shifted an inch to the left. Which is, of course, nonsense.

  Is this where she lives? Is this her home? What does she do with all these things, all this space? What would any single person do with all this space? At the time Craig had argued for a smaller apartment, but she would hear none of it. The place had been a bargain at the price, and one room less would not have been significantly cheaper. She stands in the doorway of the vast living room with its ornate
cornices and wall of tall windows. Her grand nineteenth-century Glasgow apartment, built by sugar and tobacco lords from the spoils of slavery.

  Before her very eyes panning across the rug, the elegant leather sofas, the glass and chrome table, all these things assume the ghostly shapes of objects covered in dust sheeting, all wrapped up and parceled like a Christo project. Mhairi, the cleaner, had once asked her what the Corbusier chaise longue was for. Mercia shudders, shakes her head to free the furniture parcels of their wrapping. This is her home with the marble fireplace and mantelpiece at the far end. The cold hearth smells of Sylvie’s outside grate. She will not light a fire.

  Still clutching her coat, Mercia goes to Craig’s room, sits down at his desk at the window, where she can see the man across the road sitting at his own window, reading a newspaper. A man for whom Craig had constructed an entire life in prize-winning free verse. The terra-cotta boxes on his window ledge cling to the corpses of summer flowers—a brown tracery of once-blue lobelia persists, and dead petunia stalks sit bolt upright in rigor mortis. There they will stay until next year, she remembers, lashed by winter wind and snow into bare, spindly stalks. Until spring comes babbling like an idiot, scolding the old roots. Until one Saturday morning in late April when the man will fuss about the window boxes with new trailing lobelia, new petunia plants that in good time will produce their blue and purple flowers. Just like every year that they have lived there, when spring comes down the hill. In April, not October. Would the man recognize himself in Craig’s verse? There is something comforting about not knowing him, knowing nothing about him except for the business with window boxes.