The Heart of Redness: A Novel

by Mda, Zakes

  There is Gxagxa standing outside Zim’s door, neighing endlessly.

  Then there is NomaRussia.

  While Zim is busy dying, she sits in a vigil on the sleigh outside his hexagon. She pleads with him in a feeble voice through the cracks of his door, “Tell her when you get there . . . tell NoEngland to release me . . . to make me well again . . . to take away the pain . . . to take away all this flow.”

  “He can’t hear you,” says a kindly old lady. “He is between the worlds.”

  From time to time her friends—those who had harassed Qukezwa all over the place—bring her food and water. They sit with her and try to comfort her whenever the pain flares up. They repeat what they have always believed: that whoever caused her this is burning in the fires of hell. Their parents have told them that the igqirha who “worked” their friend to be like this cannot be a genuine igqirha. A genuine igqirha does not harm people. An authentic igqirha has been given only those powers that heal. This one who caused NomaRussia to have this constant flow that is now accompanied by pain is an igqwirha—an evil one who only causes harm. He too will burn in the fires of hell.

  When the astounded Camagu found NomaRussia outside Zim’s door for the first time, he was hurt when she did not remember him. But he was not given the opportunity to talk with her any further. Her friends came and fussed over her and told Camagu to leave her alone. So he went into Qukezwa’s hexagon to see her and to play with Heitsi. He was cross with Qukezwa for not revealing the truth about his hopeless quest all those months ago.

  “I followed you. All the way from Johannesburg,” he tells Noma-Russia one day when he finds her alone on the sleigh. “I came searching for you.”

  “You are Qukezwa’s,” she whispers.

  “Yes. I am engaged to Qukezwa. But it is you who brought me here. It is about you that I dreamt. She merely invaded those dreams.”

  “You had no right to dream about me. Do not dream about me. I am like this because my eye roved to a man of this homestead.”

  “Like this? The curse, you mean?”

  “Qukezwa has been talking?”

  “Your friends attacked her in my presence. It is because of the curse?”

  “Yes. The curse has something to do with it.”

  Camagu tries to say something that will comfort the dying woman.

  “That is the river of life. You are the river. It is from this river that men and women have come. Humanity flows from the same mouth that gushes your curse. It is no curse. I do not mind to swim in that river. I can swim in that river for all my life.”

  “You do not know what you are saying. Go away. Even if I were not dying you would not swim in any such river. When I heard there was a strange man looking for me, I thought they were talking of a madman. Now I know that you are indeed mad. I do not want any more curses on what is left of my life.”

  “She is right, Camagu,” says Qukezwa, smiling cynically.

  Camagu almost faints. He was not aware that Qukezwa had been standing at the door listening all the time.

  “At last you will rid yourself of demons that got hold of you in the streets of Johannesburg,” she adds, leading him away into the house.

  Days pass. Zim refuses to die. Amahobohobo weaverbirds fill the homestead with their rolling, swirling song. They miss the man who spent most of the day sitting under their giant wild fig tree. Gxagxa refuses to move from his vigil outside Zim’s door. NomaRussia continues her own vigil.

  Qukezwa is amused by Camagu’s confusion—his hankering after a phantom he had created in his feeble mind.

  “I sought you all over,” Camagu tells NomaRussia one afternoon.

  “Once I was employed here,” she responds. “A man of this home-stead sought me and found me. Look what happened to me.”

  “It has nothing to do with that. You said yourself that the doctors at the hospital in East London say you have cervical cancer. It is a disease that is there and kills many women when it is not found and treated early through radiotherapy or whatever else medical doctors can do. Perhaps if this had been attended to when your bleeding started you would have been cured by now.”

  “They did say you are a doctor.”

  “No. Not that kind of doctor. I know nothing about medicine. But cervical cancer is a well-known disease even among laymen like me—that is, people who are not medical doctors. This is not a curse. Please let me take you to hospital. Okay, they have told you there that it has reached an advanced stage and cannot be cured. But you need care and support.”

  “Do you think just because white doctors have a name for the sickness that it was not caused by NoEngland?”

  “No one can cause someone else to have cancer.”

  “Then how come your white doctors didn’t understand how I got this terrible thing at such a young age? How come they said mine was an unusual case?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have a lot to learn, doctor.”

  “All I want is to help you. Please let me help you. I am prepared to pay for you at a hospice where they will take good care of you. They will relieve your pain and make your life a bit more comfortable.”

  “No, I will sit here . . . at this homestead that brought this on me. I will die here. Let my death hang on their necks for the rest of their days. Now leave me alone and go to your wife,” she says, smiling ruefully at him.

  She can still smile in the middle of such pain.

  Days pass. Zim refuses to die. Once more, relatives come from far and wide to make appeals to Qukezwa. “Please leave the elder alone! Let him go in peace!”

  Her anger at being accused like this has dissipated. She assures the relatives that she is not holding Zim. They see her earnestness. Perhaps they should look elsewhere for Zim’s stubbornness against the call of the Otherworld. Twin. Zim’s son who went to Johannesburg and never came back. Perhaps the elder does not want to leave without saying good-bye to Twin. People must be sent to Johannesburg to track Twin down.

  “Where will they find Twin?” asks NomaRussia when her friends tell her about the plan. “He is dead. I sang at his wake in Hillbrow.”

  Everyone is shocked to hear for the first time of Twin’s death. Women wail when they are told that he died in the streets of Hillbrow drunk and frustrated.

  Twin had been frustrated for a long time. No one was buying his carvings anymore, for he carved people who looked like real people. No one wanted such carvings. Buyers of art were more interested in twisted people. People without proportion. People who grew heads on their stomachs and eyes at the back of their heads. Grotesque people with many arms and twisted lips on their feet. Twin refused to create things that distorted reality. He could only carve realistic figures the way that Dalton had taught him to. He starved and died a pauper. He was mourned by the aged and forgotten in a tattered tent on top of a multistory building in Hillbrow. He was also mourned by NomaRussia and Camagu.

  “You were dressed like a makoti. . . like a newly married woman . . . yet you are not married,” wonders Camagu.

  “To put men off,” explains NomaRussia.

  Qukezwa laughs and says, “Obviously it didn’t work. Here is a man who came running after you even though he could see you were someone’s daughter-in-law.”

  “What was NomaRussia doing there?” people want to know.

  “In my desperation I went to Johannesburg to see Twin,” she tells them. “I did not know how he could help. I only remembered that after NoEngland discovered the truth about her husband and myself, Twin was the only one who continued to speak to me. He was the only one who did not harbor any bitterness against me. The igqirha had told me that only NoEngland could reverse my misfortune. NoEngland was dead. Maybe I could reach her through Twin. Maybe Twin would know how to appeal to her sense of mercy.”

  But she was too late. When she arrived in Johannesburg, Twin had died that very week. The loving farewell that she sang at his wake was a plea to NoEngland to release her from the curse. She was hoping th
at Twin would take the message to his mother.

  People of the village are amazed at the lack of taste of the people of the city, who don’t like carvings that look too real. Even so, the Believers blame John Dalton for teaching their son to be true to life in his sculpture.

  “It is Dalton’s fault,” Qukezwa wails. “He is the one who taught my brother to create beautiful people who looked like real people. He pretends to know everything, so he should have known that people of the city who have money to buy carvings don’t like beautiful people. Twin could have been successful with his original stumpy bottlelike people.”

  Camagu agrees that perhaps Twin’s original work could have had a market because of its quaintness and folksiness.

  That night Zim is told of Twin’s demise. For the first time he gives a wan smile. And dies. He dies smiling. NoEngland is victorious. No wonder her call was so strong. Her son had been helping her in the tussle with Qukezwa.

  When people wake up the next morning they find that Noma-Russia has also died. This fuels further anger among the Believers. This unscrupulous woman would not leave Zim alone, they fume. Even when he was called by his wife, she forced her way to accompany him. Now Zim has taken his mistress with him to the world of the ancestors. There is going to be a big war between her and NoEngland. They send for her father to fetch the body of his daughter for burial.

  Bhonco, son of Ximiya, is enraged when he hears that Zim is dead. Zim was always one up on him. Now he will reach the world of the ancestors before him. He is going to become an ancestor before him. When Bhonco finally dies and goes to the world of the ancestors, Zim will have been there for a long time. When Bhonco is a newcomer, Zim will be familiar with all the corners of the Otherworld. And in the meantime, while Bhonco is still on earth, who knows what lies Zim will tell about him to the other ancestors? Who knows what havoc he will create in the homesteads of the Unbelievers? Zim will be a very unfriendly ancestor. A vengeful one who will not be appeased even by slaughtered goats and oxen. The Believers have won one more time. A final victory that Bhonco will never top as long as he lives. His scars itch woefully.

  During Zim’s burial, graveside orators say that when a soldier falls, another one rises. Heitsi’s generation will carry forward the work left by those who came before. Another orator says Zim’s is a family well beloved by the ancestors. A family of death. First it was NoEngland. Then it was Twin. Now it is Zim himself.

  A month after Zim’s funeral, Qukezwa has not yet joined Camagu at his cottage. She can join him only after the isizathu, the ceremony for the dead that happens months after death. At the isizathu women wear the best of their isikhakha skirts and the beads of the amahomba. A beast is slaughtered and beer is brewed. Men and women dance the umxhentso dance together, in memory of the dead.

  Camagu is at Zim’s homestead, where he spends a lot of time playing with Heitsi. He sees a number of villagers going down towards Nongqawuse’s Valley. They tell him that the government people are here to survey the place. The construction of the holiday paradise and gambling complex will be going ahead. The war has finally been lost.

  At Nongqawuse’s Valley he finds a group of men talking with the surveyor, a scrawny white man in a khaki safari suit. Bhonco, son of Ximiya, is at the center of the group, which includes Chief Xikixa. There is another group a short distance away, looking dejected. Camagu recognizes them immediately as those people who have stood with him in opposing the gambling complex.

  The surveyor is excitedly showing Bhonco’s enthusiastic crowd his new equipment. It is a tellurometer, he says. And guess what? It was invented here in South Africa. It can pinpoint a location with great accuracy, beyond the capability of any other instrument. So they must not worry. He is going to finish the surveying in a very short time, and soon their wonderful gambling city will rise in all its crystal splendor and glory where wild bushes and trees once grew.

  “Well, son of Cesane, you and your Believers have lost in the end,” says Bhonco.

  “Did you allow this?” Camagu directs this question to Xikixa.

  “It is not for me to allow it, son of Cesane,” says the chief. “The government wants this development. It may be good for the village after all. The wheels of progress are grinding on, son of Cesane. No one can stop them.”

  With a flourish the surveyor begins his work. Bhonco and his followers cheer. Camagu and his followers look on hopelessly. They are about to leave when John Dalton arrives in his four-wheel-drive vehicle. He is hooting all the way. He halts abruptly next to the surveyor, and majestically steps out of his bakkie brandishing some papers.

  “And what do you think you’re doing, my friend?” he asks.

  “What am I doing? Surveying, of course. Surveying the site that will have the gambling city and the tarred road that will lead to it,” responds the surveyor animatedly. “You see over there? That’s where we’ll have all the rides. And then the cable car . . .”

  “I am afraid there won’t be any gambling city, my friend.” Dalton hands him a piece of paper. It is a court order forbidding any surveying of the place. It is accompanied by a letter from the government department of arts, culture, and heritage declaring the place a national heritage site.

  “No one is allowed to touch this place!” Dalton shouts triumphantly.

  People cheer and lift Dalton to their shoulders. He is the savior of their village. They ululate and sing songs of victory. Bhonco, however, is like a raging bull. His followers try to calm him down. He shouts insults at everyone in sight, both friends and foes. Once more he is defeated.

  Dalton also gives Camagu a victorious sneer. He has won his people back from the clutches of the overeager stranger from the city of Johannesburg. That is why he had not told anyone that he had applied for a court order to stop the developers, or that he personally drove to Pretoria to get the government letter. That is why he had insisted to the sheriff of the court that he serve the court order himself. That is why he had kept the government letter and the court order until the last minute. To win his people back.

  12

  She sings in soft pastel colors, this Qukezwa. She sings in many voices, as Heitsi plays on the sand. He is six years old, yet he has shown no interest in the sea. From the day he was born to ululations and heckling, his mother dreamt of the day she would take him to the sea and teach him to swim. His upbringing would be different from hers. Her mother had never allowed her near the sea. Heitsi would swim better than any fish. But, to her disappointment, Heitsi has no interest in the sea. He has come because his mother dragged him along. He plays on the sandbank as Qukezwa paddles at the shallow end of the lagoon and sings in split-tones.

  She sings in glaring colors. In violent colors. Colors of gore. Colors of today and of yesterday. Dreamy colors. Colors that paint nightmares on barren landscapes. She haunts yesterday’s reefs and ridges with redness. And from these a man who is great at naming emerges. He once named ten rivers. Now he rides wildly throughout kwaXhosa, shouting at the top of his voice, declaring to everyone who cares to listen, “Finally I have pacified Xhosaland!”

  Pacified homesteads are in ruins. Pacified men register themselves as pacified laborers in the emerging towns. Pacified men in their emaciated thousands. Pacified women remain to tend the soil and build pacified families. When pacified men return, their homesteads have been moved elsewhere, and crammed into tiny pacified villages. Their pacified fields have become rich settler farmlands.

  Twin-Twin’s sons are back from the Amathole Mountains and have rebuilt their homestead. But it is much smaller than before. He is one of the few people who still have cattle. They are as emaciated as the sunken-eyed ghosts that walk the land. Their milk is thin and watery. It produces amasi sour milk that looks like dirty dishwater. But people eat. Sometimes beggars get the remains.

  Qukezwa is a beggar who will get nothing. Even though her eyes are sunken like those of the other ghosts that walk the land, and her high Khoikhoi cheekbones have been rendered sharper by
famine, she will not even walk close to Twin-Twin’s homestead. She spends all her life at the wild beach. Like those of her people who are called strandlopers. She goes into the sea and gets some shellfish. She eats it raw and takes some to Heitsi. Heitsi is old enough to catch his own. But he seems to have some aversion to the sea. He would rather watch his mother from the safe distance of the rough beach.

  Twin-Twin knows that the woman of the sea that everyone talks about is his brother’s wife. He knows that Heitsi is his own nephew who will be the bearer of Twin’s progeny. He knows that Twin died a raving lunatic at the Kaffir Relief House. He knows. But he does not care. He wakes up every day with yesterday’s anger. His heart is full of bitterness. There are two big regrets that dominate his life: that his brother died before he could gloat over him, and that he never took the chance to strike out at John Dalton, to avenge his father’s head. It is too late for that now. He missed many opportunities when Dalton and he were riding together from village to village, when Dalton was still a magistrate. He is a well-placed trader now. Has built a huge general dealer’s store at Qolorha, on a hill. From this hill he can see down below, a number of miles away, to a mission station where his son is a missionary. It is too late now. It is left to future generations to avenge the headless ancestor. If they think it is worth it. He himself has a lot to lose.

  Bhonco thinks he has nothing to lose. He has already lost everything. The Believers have been victorious at every turn. There is no gambling complex at Qolorha. None of all the wonderful things of civilization that his daughter used to tell him about. Instead there is a tourist place, which started as a backpackers’ hostel but has now developed into a holiday camp. Those villagers who decided to join the cooperative society own it. It is managed by Vathiswa, who learned the ropes at the Blue Flamingo Hotel. To make things worse—from Bhonco’s perspective, that is—this holiday camp is at Zim’s old home-stead. When Qukezwa moved to Camagu’s cottage she gave the homestead to the coop. More chalets in the form of isiXhosa rondavels and hexagons were built. The place now gives the Blue Flamingo Hotel tough competition. Tourists are attracted by the gigantic wild fig tree and the amahobohobo weaverbirds that have built a hanging city on its branches. And by the isiXhosa traditional costumes and beadwork that are created by the coop women who are led by MamCirha, NoGiant, and NoPetticoat. These are displayed in one of the hexagons.