The Heart of Redness: A Novel

by Mda, Zakes

  That, in fact, is where the fire started, a tottering old woman informs him.

  The wind is making things worse. It had been a cool and quiet day when they were at the inkundla, but all of a sudden there is a raging wind that is spreading the fire and frustrating the efforts of the people who are trying to put it out.

  “What happened, makhulu?” asks Camagu.

  “Go ask NoGiant,” says the old lady angrily. “It is her carelessness that has left me homeless. And this unpredictable weather of Qolorha! It is because there is a lot of witchcraft here. It is the land of Nongqawuse.”

  The battle against the fire is eventually lost. A number of houses have been burnt to the ground.

  The fire is a setback to the cooperative society. NoGiant has lost everything, including the sewing machine and a pile of material and beads that belonged to the cooperative.

  Camagu regrets ever asking the women to work from home rather than in the room he had allocated for that purpose at his sea cottage. He thought they were being more productive at home. At his cottage MamCirha and NoGiant spent a lot of their time gossiping. Or talking about their cesarean operations. They compared the scars, paying particular attention to their sizes and their shapes. They exclaimed that the scars never really bothered them, even when the weather was bad. “I often hear people say that when the weather is cloudy or cold the scars itch. I would be lying if I said mine did the same,” NoGiant would say. “Mine too. It never itches at all. I always forget that it is even there,” MamCirha would respond.

  At their homes they are on their own. Their husbands toil in the mines of Johannesburg and the Free State, and the children are either at school or in the veld looking after cattle. There is no one to gossip with, so productivity increases.

  The following day Camagu decides to go to Ngcizele to see NoGiant, who is receiving temporary shelter under MamCirha’s roof.

  “I will come with you,” says Qukezwa. “I will show you where she lives.”

  “I know where she lives,” replies Camagu. He really does not want her to come with him. He is still uncomfortable when people see them together and point fingers and giggle. “Remember I went there a few months ago when MamCirha had her misfortune?”

  Misfortune seems to dog the women of Camagu’s cooperative. MamCirha had fallen asleep while breast-feeding her baby, the one who had caused the famous cesarean scar. Her huge breasts had suffocated it and it died. Camagu had gone to her house to pass his condolences, and then later to attend the funeral. He went again with Dalton to talk members of her family into some form of reconciliation when they were accusing her of murdering her own baby so that she would be free to gallivant around making money at the cooperative society. She valued money more than her child, they said.

  “I still want to come,” insists Qukezwa. “They must get used to seeing us together, and talk until their tongues are twisted. Unless you want to chicken out.”

  He does not understand how she is able to read his thoughts so accurately, and to put his fears into words.

  Early in the morning they walk to Ngcizele, a village that lies across deep gorges.

  NoGiant is still very shaken. After insisting that she wants to talk to Camagu alone, without Qukezwa, she tells him how the fire started. Her husband, who was on a brief holiday from the mines, demanded his conjugal rights. She assured him that she was prepared to give him as much conjugal rights as his body was capable of taking, provided he took a bath first.

  That made him furious.

  “You think that just because you now make all this money running around with educated people I am no longer good enough for you?” he yelled.

  He was pouring paraffin all over the rondavel while ranting and raving about her unreasonable demand that he should wash his body. Since when have conditions ever been set before he could enjoy the pleasures of marriage? Where was the bath when he paid his father’s cattle for her? What gives her, a mere woman, the right to pass judgment on the state of his cleanliness or lack thereof?

  He set the house ablaze.

  “Where is he now?” asks Camagu.

  “The police got him. They are charging him with arson.”

  On their way back home, Camagu briefs Qukezwa on the cause of the fire. He tells her he is disturbed that the success of the cooperative society is causing its members so many problems with their families.

  “You should not worry yourself about that,” says Qukezwa. “Men are insecure when women make more money. It makes women more independent. Men will just have to get used to it.”

  She leads him down to the sea; this, she says, is the shortest route between Qolorha and Ngcizele. But what she wants him to see is a shipwreck, the Jacaranda. She tells him that it got lost at sea many years before she was born, and crashed against the rocks of the wild coast. All the white people from the boat were saved. But they spoke no English, nor any other language known to the people of Ngcizele. Her father believed it was a Russian ship, which was more than a century late. It was during the sufferings of the Middle Generations, when people were looking to be saved.

  She clambers up the skeleton of the ship, and perches herself on what remains of the railings of the deck. He is scared that they will break and she will have a rude fall. But she is in too reckless a mood to care. A gust of wind almost blows her over. She lets go of her red blanket. It splashes into the water and starts sailing away on the waves. She screeches in laughter as she remains in her flimsy dress. It is clinging to her body for dear life. Her body is full. Her stomach is fuller.

  He stands at the keel and appeals to her to come down before she hurts herself. She dares him to come up.

  A bird laughs: wak-wak kiririri! They laugh with it, competing to see who will produce the closest imitation. Their eyes search for it. But they can’t find it.

  “That is uthekwane, the hammerkop,” says Qukezwa.

  “No, that is uxomoyi, the giant kingfisher,” says Camagu.

  “Man of the city, what makes you think you can argue with me about birds?”

  The bird hovers over them, and perches on the mast. It is a long-beaked bird with fine white spots on black. The breast is brown on white. It certainly has no hammerhead, for it is the giant kingfisher.

  “How did you know? It does sound like uthekwane!”

  “I have the best of teachers: you.”

  She loves to hear this. She laughs so much that the kingfisher flies away yelping its own laughter.

  “You are cleverer than you look, man of the city. Come here and kiss me. Don’t be such a coward.”

  He gathers courage. He might as well be reckless. He makes his way up the skeleton of the ship and joins her on the railings. He kisses her. Just a shy peck. She takes his hand and places it on her belly. Blood pumps fast and hot in his body.

  “What do you feel?” she asks.

  “It’s kicking like there is no tomorrow.”

  “It’s laughing! I can hear it laugh!”

  “It’s the uxomoyi bird, silly.”

  Late in the afternoon Camagu goes to Vulindlela Trading Store. This time his eyes do not wander around looking for something that will ease his pining. He pines no more. He just needs somebody who will help him contain his unseemly effervescence. Dalton will serve that purpose. Dalton’s feet are firmly planted on the ground. Although there are still some traces of tension in their relationship, things are returning to normal between them. He joins Dalton in his office, where he is relaxing with a magazine. Missis is busy with some paperwork.

  Camagu bubbles about his discovery of the Jacaranda. But he does not mention his shipboard romance. Dalton tells him the Jacaranda was a Greek cargo ship, which foundered in September 1971. The sailors were drunk, partying all the time. They had not been paid for six months, so they wrecked the ship.

  “What were you doing at that remote place?” Dalton asks.

  “Just exploring,” Camagu lies. “Just learning more about this lovely country.”

 
“Just exploring, eh? With that daughter of Zim?” Dalton chuckles naughtily.

  Missis gives Camagu a disapproving look. He is by now used to her sneering attitude and does not pay any attention to it. He does not answer Dalton’s question either.

  “I don’t know what he sees in that crude girl,” comments Missis, as if to herself.

  Still Camagu does not answer. He just smiles politely.

  “She is a rotten apple, that one. I am glad she no longer works here. I would have fired her long ago if it were not for John, who seems to be compassionate to the worst of these people,” continues Missis. “Take Xoliswa Ximiya, for instance. Now that’s a lady. Very educated. Polished. I don’t know why your friend dumped her, John.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear from village gossips,” says Camagu.

  “You didn’t dump her then?” asks Missis incredulously.

  “Hey, let’s not pry into the man’s affairs, dear,” says Dalton.

  “There was no reason to dump her in the first place. There was never anything between us.”

  He omits to add that Xoliswa Ximiya, like the village gossips, doesn’t seem to think so. She has been sending daily messages that she wants to see him. Cold and distant notes through schoolboys. Summoning him to her presence. One day, a messenger even arrives in the person of Vathiswa. He has been ignoring all these royal commands. And has been avoiding any path that passes near Qolorha-by-Sea Secondary School or Bhonco’s homestead. The messages are becoming more frantic by the day. They no longer sound like orders. They sound like entreaties. If she were not such a refined lady, she would have long since gone to his cottage to rout him out of his snakehole. But she is too proud for that. The last thing she wants is a showdown with that unschooled girl who, according to gossip, now openly frequents the cottage.

  “She is a lady, that Miss Ximiya,” observes Missis as she serves them coffee and biscuits that were brought in by a maid. “Not like the red girl. I hear now that one is even cutting down trees.”

  “That reminds me,” says Dalton. “How did the case go?”

  “It hasn’t ended,” says Camagu curtly.

  “She’s a crazy, that one! Fancy cutting down trees!” Dalton laughs.

  “I too thought so, John. I thought she was mad. Until I heard her side of the story. She has a point, John.”

  Dalton and Missis look at him closely, as if to make sure whether he too hasn’t lost it.

  “You are aligned with destructive forces, Camagu,” says Dalton. “I hear that your women of the cooperative killed a swarttobie bird, the black oystercatcher. They said it was competing with them for mussels.”

  “That was wrong,” admits Camagu. “I warned them against it. I told them that the African black oystercatcher is an endangered bird and they must never kill it again. It is just ignorance, John. I think we all need some education on these matters. All of us. Even you, John. Then we will understand why Qukezwa chopped down those trees.”

  Camagu suggests that instead of having his verandah television play old movies that have no relevance to the people of Qolorha-by-Sea, he should consider playing videos on developmental issues. Documentaries that will encourage community dialogue. It is important that people should start talking about things that affect their lives. The problem, of course, is where to find such videos.

  Camagu is not aware that while he is busy drinking coffee with the Daltons, things are happening at Zim’s homestead. Hecklers and ululants have gathered once more, and are creating such a din that even the amahobohobo weaverbirds are reeling about and flying against one another.

  Bhonco has resumed his offensive! To the abayiyizeli, the women whose greatest joy in life is to ululate, he has added the hecklers. They are young men whose greatest pleasure is to heckle at the slightest provocation. They have perfected heckling to the extent that they can heckle even when no one is talking. They have only to look at a person, imagine his speech in their heads, then heckle him. Bhonco has promised them beer brewed by the expert hand of NoPetticoat at the end of each day of heckling.

  At this very moment, Qukezwa is giving birth in one of the rondavels. She is surrounded by the grandmothers who are village midwives. She is heaving and screaming. Ululants are ululating outside. Hecklers are heckling. Zim sits at the door of the rondavel, his head buried in his hands.

  The gathering of the hecklers and ululants sees his pain and increases the volume.

  “Try again, my child,” says a grandmother. “Push!”

  “The head is already appearing,” says another grandmother.

  She pushes once more. She hears the yelping laughter that Camagu insisted was not the baby’s but the giant kingfisher’s. The bloody thing crashes its way out. It immediately starts screaming. It is as though it wants to compete with the ululation outside, and the heckling.

  “It is a boy,” says a grandmother.

  “A boy,” says Qukezwa, forgetting the pain. “His name is Heitsi.”

  “Heitsi!” shout the grandmothers in unison. “What kind of a name is that?”

  10

  It is ages since rivers of salt have run down the gullies of Bhonco’s face. Beautiful things have become estranged from his life since Camagu, son of Cesane, imprecated himself upon this village and became the bane of the Unbeliever’s family. And then the abaThwa came and took their dance, wrenching away the cord that connected him to essential pain. How will the Cult of the Unbelievers survive without the dance? The Unbelievers cannot afford to be marooned in this world, without occasionally traversing misty mountains and plains to the pains of the past.

  And then there is Zim and his despicable Believers. Zim whose medicine has turned influential people like Dalton and the detestable Camagu to his side. Zim whose daughter has cast a spell on the spineless Camagu, wresting him away from the esteemed daughter of the Unbelievers. The very daughter who lives and is prepared to die for civilization. Zim who will soon be driven crazy by ululations and heckles, until he plunges down a cliff. Zim. Zim. Zim. It is a name that buzzes in his vengeful head.

  And then there are the hadedah ibises that have now taken to loitering outside his pink rondavel, sharing corn with the hens and their broods. Although the ibises are bigger and uglier birds, the hens are no longer bothered by them. Three or four of the accursed birds still follow him whenever he ventures out of the homestead. They hover above him clumsily, emitting their raucous laughter.

  Beautiful things are hard to come by.

  It is in the midst of the elder’s brooding on this dearth that Xoliswa Ximiya visits the homestead. He can sense that she is despondent, even though she wears a brave face. She tells her parents that she is earnestly looking for a job in the government.

  “We thought you had forgotten about that,” says Bhonco.

  “I thought I had forgotten about it too. I was resigned to staying here and building my school. But this place is not for me. There can be no growth for me here.”

  “This place is for you. This is your village. You were born here. Your forefathers walked this land. If anyone must go, it is that Camagu!” shouts Bhonco.

  “It has nothing to do with Camagu!” Xoliswa Ximiya shouts back.

  “She wanted to go to the city long before Camagu came here,” agrees NoPetticoat.

  “But she was no longer talking of it, NoPetticoat. She was no longer talking of it until that Camagu cast his evil shadow on our village.”

  “Maybe she is right, Bhonco,” pleaded NoPetticoat. “Maybe we should allow her to go. Many young women from our village have gone to work in the cities. And they are not half as educated as Xoliswa.”

  “You cannot allow me to go, mother. When I want to go, I will go. I am not a child anymore. I was not asking for your permission. I was informing you. When the school closes next week I am going to Pretoria to make personal applications. Many of my former schoolmates are high up in the ruling party. They will lobby for me. I must go because it works out much better when one is there. I
t is high time I went to live in more civilized places.”

  “Do you hear what she is saying, NoPetticoat? And this is what you support?”

  “She is a big girl, Bhonco. Let her go.”

  Bhonco, son of Ximiya, storms out screaming, “The Believers have won again! They are taking my child away from the place where her umbilical cord is buried . . . where she has made her name as the principal of the secondary school.”

  “You have upset your father,” says NoPetticoat calmly.

  “I can see that.”

  “This Camagu, did you really love him?”

  “It has nothing to do with Camagu, mother.”

  “He is not worth it, you know?”

  “He is not my business. My only concern is that he is taking this village back to the last century, and many people now seem to agree with him.”

  “Maybe we have judged him too harshly,” says NoPetticoat deliberately. “Maybe there are indeed many different paths to progress.”

  “How can you say that, mother?”

  “The clothes that they make at the cooperative . . . they are so beautiful. The isikhakha skirts. The beaded ornaments. The handbags.”

  “They are the clothes of the amaqaba, mother—of the red people who have not yet seen the light of civilization.”

  “Oh, how I miss the beautiful isiXhosa clothes of the amahomba!”

  Xoliswa Ximiya stares at her mother in disbelief. NoPetticoat has that distant look that speaks of a deep longing for what used to be. The silence is broken by Bhonco’s screams outside. Both women rush out.

  The bees that have built their hive on the eaves of his four-walled tin-roofed ixande house are attacking him. The women shriek and open the door of the rondavel for him. He rushes in and they shut the door. He has numerous stings on his skin. His whole face is swelling fast and his eyes can no longer see. His scars are itching. He sits on the chair and moans, “How can the ancestors do this to me?”

  “It is the bees, father, not the ancestors,” says Xoliswa Ximiya. “We’ll just have to take you to the clinic.”