The Heart of Redness: A Novel

by Mda, Zakes

  The wild fig tree knows all his secrets. It is his confessional. Under it he finds solace, for it is directly linked to the ancestors—all of Twin’s progeny who planted it more than a hundred years ago. Now the trunk is as big as his main hut. As soon as it leaves the ground its branches twist and turn in all directions, spreading wide like an umbrella over his whole homestead. Some branches reach as far as the top of the umsintsi trees—the coral tree that used to be called kaffirboom during the Middle Generations—and the aloes that surround his yard.

  Everyone in Qolorha knows that if you want Zim you will find him under his wild fig tree. He spends most of the day dozing under it, listening to the song of the birds. Neither season nor weather deters him from indulging in this pleasure. He is there in autumn when the tree sheds its leaves, and he is faithful to it even when it remains naked during the winter. When the urge to commune with the tree is strong enough, not even the cold wind from the sea can drive him into the house.

  There are four different kinds of ancestors: the ancestors of the sea, the ancestors of the forest, the ancestors of the veld, and the ancestors of the homestead. They are all regular visitors to this tree.

  Today the spring weather is particularly beautiful. Green leaves are shyly beginning to appear on the tree. The green pigeons, with their red legs and red beaks, are flying around. Soon they will be feeding on the wild figs that will be ready even before summer. The amahobohobo weaverbirds are adding more nests to the city that is already dangling and would be weighing the tree down if it had not gathered so much strength over the generations.

  Hundreds of birds inhabit this tree. Perhaps thousands. People think it is foolish of the Believer to be so close to so much meat without killing even a single bird for supper.

  Zim is musing about NoEngland, and about the joys of belief. He is rudely awoken by a nest that falls on his head. Sometimes a foolish weaverbird chooses a very weak branch on which to build its nest. As the nest grows bigger it gets heavier. The branch breaks and the nest falls. Whenever that happens Zim becomes very distressed. The bird’s labor of many days has been wasted.

  He takes the nest and examines the great craftsmanship. It was almost complete. Now the poor bird will have to start its construction from scratch.

  He puts the nest on the ground and is about to doze off when Qukezwa arrives and angrily wakes him up. She is shouting, “You see the disgraceful things you do, tata? Now people shout at me at work! Do you want me to lose my job?”

  “Why would I want you to lose your job? Dalton gave you that job because he knows you are my daughter,” says Zim. “And where do you get your manners. . . talking to your father like that? What did I do?”

  But Qukezwa walks into the house in a huff, leaving her father wondering what it is that is eating her. It must be something serious, otherwise she would not have disturbed her father in his musings. She knows how the Believer treasures his moments of meditation. After all, she grew up with the green pigeons and the bright yellow weaver-birds.

  She must be angry. In her happy moments she talks with her father in whistles. The Believers talk among themselves in the language of the birds.

  “She is only nineteen but she is as feisty as her mother used to be,” he mutters to himself.

  He wipes his smooth-shaven head and face with a handkerchief. He slowly stands up and drags himself into the house.

  It turns out that while Qukezwa was busy scrubbing the wooden floors of Vulindlela Trading Store, where she works as a cleaner, a group of girls came to buy beads, calamine lotion, and other items that young women use to beautify themselves. When they saw her they giggled and pointed fingers at her. She glared back at them, and dared them to say to her face whatever it was they were whispering about her. Even though most of them were older than her, ranging from early to mid-twenties, she was not afraid of them.

  One girl stepped forward and shouted, “Your mother was a filthy woman! She must be rotting in hell for what she did to that poor girl!”

  “Your friend got what she deserved,” responded Qukezwa, rolling the skirt of her dress into her panties, gearing for a fight. “Next time she will leave other people’s husbands alone!”

  Missis saw what was happening, and shooed them away. The girls ran out of the store giggling.

  “And you, Qukezwa,” said Missis, “if you bring fights in my store I’ll ask Mr. Dalton to fire you.”

  Everybody knows that Missis has never really liked the bumptious girl.

  The great to-do about the “poor girl” who, according to Qukezwa, has learned never to take other people’s husbands again, began three years ago when NoEngland bought an old Singer sewing machine from Missis and learned to sew school uniforms. She received an order from Qolorha-by-Sea Secondary School for a number of uniforms, and employed the girl as an assistant to put the dresses together and sew the buttons.

  NoEngland and the girl worked together in one of Zim’s three hexagons, and became close friends. But the girl had a roving eye which landed on Zim. This interest was quite mutual, for it boosted Zim’s ego. Here he was, an undistinguished aging man, the object of desire of a twenty-two-year-old girl of exceptional beauty. His thirst knew no bounds, and he found himself drinking occasionally from the forbidden well, especially on those days when NoEngland went to Butterworth to buy more material.

  But the girl became too greedy and selfish. She was not satisfied with the occasional tryst. She wanted Zim for herself alone. So she went to a famous igqirha—a diviner—who would give her medicine that would make Zim leave NoEngland and love only her.

  “Bring any undergarment of the other woman,” said the diviner. “I’ll work it, and the man will love only you.”

  The girl stole NoEngland’s petticoat and took it to the igqirha. As soon as he saw it he knew who it belonged to. Instead of “working it” he took it to NoEngland.

  “Yes, it is my petticoat,” said an astounded NoEngland, “I have been looking for it all this time.”

  She felt betrayed, and was angry that the girl to whom she had opened her heart was trying to steal her husband. But the diviner told her, “I can deal with this girl for you. Get me an undergarment of hers and I’ll work it.”

  NoEngland contrived to steal a pair of the girl’s panties, and gave it to the igqirha. He “worked it” with his medicine.

  Since that day the girl has never been able to have another tryst with anyone. Lovers have run away from her because whenever she tries to know a man—in the biblical sense, that is—she sees the moon. Things come in gushes, like water from a stream.

  Even now, long after NoEngland’s death, the punishment on the hapless girl continues. She has seen a host of diviners, herbalists, and doctors of all sorts. They have tried and failed to help. The famous igqirha has told her, “This can only be reversed by the person who caused it in the first place.”

  Hence the anger of her friends. It is the anger that many women of the community shared when they first heard of the scandal. Some blamed both women for trying to damage each other just because of a man. Ukukrexeza—having lovers outside marriage—is the way of the world, they said.

  “What can we do about it?” they asked. “Ukukrexeza has been here since creation. We cannot change the way men and women behave today.”

  Now everyone has forgotten about it all. Except the girl herself. And her friends who know the sufferings she is enduring, and want to take their anger out on Qukezwa.

  Zim tries to talk sense into his daughter’s head. “Listen, my child,” he says, “you cannot keep on blaming me for things that happened more than two years ago.”

  She loves her father. And normally they are such great friends. But the taunts of the village girls are becoming too much to bear.

  “We are not supposed to talk ill of the dead, but your mother was not so innocent in this matter,” continues Zim. “How do you think the igqirha knew that was her petticoat?”

  And what would prompt the igqirha to betray a
paying customer? Qukezwa now begins to wonder.

  “Missis threatened to fire me because of those girls,” sobs tata’s little girl.

  “No, she won’t,” says Zim adamantly. “I’ll talk to Dalton about this.”

  He knows that he usually gets his way with John Dalton. For some reason, the trader has a soft spot for Zim and his family. He is the one who set his son Twin on the road to the untold fortunes that people who have been to the city of Johannesburg talk about, but that neither Zim nor Qukezwa have seen with their eyes.

  Twin liked to do carvings from wood. He made bottlelike figures with turbaned heads, and took them to Dalton, hoping that the wealthy man would buy them. Dalton saw that the boy had a talent which could be developed. Although he was not a carver himself, he explained to Twin how he should carve the arms, hands, legs, and feet, and how he could make the face more realistic by carving detailed ears, eyes, noses, and mouths.

  The following week Twin delivered male and female figures, carved exactly as Dalton had shown him. Dalton bought a number of the wooden figures and displayed them on his glass counters. Even today there are hundreds of them in the store, and tourists who come to see where the wonders of Nongqawuse happened buy them.

  Zim was proud of his son’s talent. He felt that it would work in the Believers’ favor in their war against the Unbelievers. He repeated the history of Twin to everyone who cared to listen.

  “This child,” he said, “worked in Centani selling petrol at a filling station. Then he got very ill with fits. He was also delirious. His ancestor, Twin, visited him in his dreams, and told him to carve people out of wood and he would get well. He carved the beautiful people that you see in Dalton’s store, and got well.”

  But Twin did not live up to his father’s expectations. He became a renegade who refused to follow Zim in the battle to preserve the rituals of the Believers. He decided to think like all ordinary people, to follow trends set by others, and to share the same ambition as all the young men of the village: to work in the gold mines of Johannesburg and the Free State.

  Zim lost the battle and let him go. He has not seen him since. He has heard that his son has left the mines and is now living in the city, in a building that reaches the sky, where he has accumulated wondrous fortunes from his wood carvings.

  Rumor has it that it is because of Xoliswa Ximiya that he has never come back to Qolorha-by-Sea. People have not forgotten that the two were in love many years ago when they were both at primary school. But as time went on, Xoliswa Ximiya outgrew Twin as she became more educated.

  He gave up on education in Standard Six. But he never gave up on Xoliswa Ximiya. For many years he hankered after her. That was why he left for Johannesburg, so the gossip goes, to mend his broken heart far away from her. Villagers, however, still hope to this day that the two will eventually marry and bring about peace between the two families.

  “Dalton is a good man—although a person is only good when he is asleep . . . or dead,” says Zim, blowing out a cloud of smoke and ejecting a jet of spittle onto the floor. “He will not expel you on account of loose tongues. You were just doing your work and those girls came and provoked you. Listen, tomorrow I am getting my nkamnkam. I’ll buy you anything you want.”

  “You do not need to bribe me, tata. I am working for myself now,” says Qukezwa proudly.

  Indeed, the next day is nkamnkam day. The aged and their hangers-on stream to Vulindlela Trading Store in their finery.

  Bhonco and NoPetticoat are among the first to arrive.

  He wears his usual brown overalls, gumboots, and skullcap. Loose strands of beads known as isidanga hang around his neck. They are completely out of place since they should normally be worn when one is beautifully attired in isiXhosa costume. They make him look like a slob. Over his shoulder hangs a bag made of rock rabbit skin, in which he keeps his long pipe and tobacco. Today NoPetticoat’s nkamnkam check is also in this bag.

  NoPetticoat is one of the amahomba—those who look beautiful and pride themselves in fashion. She is wearing her red-ochred isikhakha dress. Her neck is weighted with beadwork of many kinds. There are the square amatikiti beads and the multicolored uphalaza and icangci. Her face is white with calamine lotion, and on her head she wears a big iqhiya turban which is broader than her shoulders. It is decorated with beads which match her amacici beaded earrings.

  To the amahomba, clothes are an art form. They talk. They say something about the wearer. But to highly civilized people like Xoliswa Ximiya, isiXhosa costume is an embarrassment. She hates to see her mother looking so beautiful, because she thinks that it is high time her parents changed from ubuqaba—backwardness and heathenism. They must become amagqobhoka—enlightened ones—like her. She has bought her parents dresses and suits in the latest European styles. She might as well have bought them for the moths in the boxes under their bed.

  When Zim arrives, heads turn. He is resplendent in his white ingqawa blanket which is tied around the waist and is so long that it reaches his ankles. Around his neck he wears various beads such as idiliza and isidanga. Around his head he wears isiqweqwe headbands made of very colorful beads. He is puffing away at his long pipe with pomp and ceremony.

  The aged and their hangers-on are all puffing away, filling the store with clouds of pungent smoke. Women, especially, look graceful with their pipes, which are much longer than men’s.

  “Tell them to stop smoking, John. We can’t even breathe in this smoke,” complains Missis in English.

  “Those who want to smoke must go outside!” shouts Dalton in his perfect isiXhosa.

  “And they must not spit on the floor,” moans Missis. “They spit everywhere, these people.”

  “Don’t spit inside the shop. It’s not good manners. If you want to smoke and spit, go outside!”

  “And lose our place in the queue? Not on your life,” says one stubborn graybeard.

  “You will smoke when you have received your money then. We are not going to serve anyone who smokes in the shop.”

  Nkamnkam day is a very busy day at Vulindlela Trading Store. The aged and their hangers-on—daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and sundry relatives—have their checks ready to be cashed by Dalton and Missis. The salespeople are busy behind the counters, for today grannies are buying sweets, biscuits, and corned beef for their favorite grandchildren.

  Qukezwa drags a big bathtub full of little black notebooks from behind the counter, and puts it on the floor. Each pensioner looks for his or her own book, and gives it to Dalton behind the counter.

  Even though the pensioners are illiterate, they know their books very well. And so they should, for in the books their personal ityala is written. Throughout the month they have bought groceries on credit at the store, and Dalton and Missis have diligently recorded their debt in the little black notebooks.

  Now Dalton adds up the debt, deducts it from the amount of the check, and gives the balance to the pensioner. For those who have been careless during the month there will be no money. The whole pension check will be swallowed up by their ityala. The next month the vicious cycle of debt will continue.

  Bhonco and NoPetticoat are about to reach the bathtub when Zim begins to sing aloud, “Hayi. . . hayi. . . bo . . . Even those who don’t have a book in the bathtub are here . . .”

  People laugh. They know that he is referring to Bhonco. Everyone knows that Bhonco receives no nkamnkam.

  Bhonco, son of Ximiya, responds with his own song, “Hayi . . . hayi. . . bo . . . Those whose daughters are not secondary-school principals but sweep the floors of white people should stop talking nonsense . . .”

  People laugh again. Qukezwa, who was helping an old lady find her book, glares at Bhonco. And so does Zim.

  “Don’t you two start your senseless quarrels again. At least not in my store,” warns Dalton, who knows from experience that this may lead to a physical fight.

  “Don’t look at me,” protests Bhonco. “That Believer started it. Doesn’t he know? It is
because his ancestors forced the amaXhosa people to kill their cattle. That is why we are suffering like this. That is why I don’t even have nkamnkam.”

  “Tell the Unbeliever that it is because his ancestors refused to slaughter the cattle even when prophetesses like Nongqawuse, Nonkosi, and Nombanda instructed them to do so. That is why life is so difficult. That is why he has no nkamnkam.”

  The war of the Believers and Unbelievers!

  Afterwards, both Zim and his daughter feel a bit exercised by the tiff at the store. They are in Nongqawuse’s Valley. Qukezwa is riding Gxagxa, her father’s brown-and-white horse, while Zim walks next to it, holding its reins. They are moving slowly towards Nongqawuse’s Pool.

  Today the clouds are low, and the mountaintops are wearing them like mourning hats.

  “It was all your fault,” Qukezwa bursts out. “You embarrassed me, tata. You invited the eyes of the people on me.”

  They are walking past usundu palms among the wild irises that grow in the valley. It is a cool afternoon, and the Namaqualand dove is cooing softly. In Nongqawuse’s Pool a variety of eels, springer fish, and river otters are engaged in various antics, showing off to the visitors.

  “There used to be aloes around this pool. In the days of Nongqawuse there were aloes,” says Zim, talking in whistles.

  “Don’t change the subject, tata. You heard what I said.”

  “Even when we were growing up, there were aloes. Also reeds. Reeds used to cover this whole place. Only forty years ago . . . when I was a young man . . . there were reeds. In the days of Nongqawuse the whole ridge was covered with people who came to see the wonders.”

  He talks passionately about this valley. When he began to walk, he walked in this valley. He looked after cattle in this valley. He was circumcised here. His grandfather’s fields were here. His whole life is centered in this valley. He is one with Intlambo-ka-Nongqawuse—Nongqawuse’s Valley.