by Zoe Wicomb
DULCIE washes the sticky red from her hands, watches until the water runs clear and then shakes them vigorously; she does not like wiping them on a towel. When they are dry she rubs olive oil from the little Clicks bottle into her hands, but it won’t be enough; it will never be enough as the skin, washed over and over, laps greedily at the oil. Like Lady Macbeth, some would say, but that would be a poor comparison and there is no point in trying to explain, David says. You would get it wrong, quite wrong; besides, power has never held any lure for her. Or so he believes.
Her hands are beautiful; the fingers, in spite of her large frame, are long and slender. She lifts her left arm gracefully, as they do in the movies, holds it above her head before dropping it slowly onto the table while curving her torso towards it. Her teeth are clenched, her neck stretched; she holds up a face smiling through clenched teeth. She had once, as a child with fantasies of being a ballerina, admired a photograph of a woman in that pose. No one has ever called her beautiful but at times like this—and there are more and more times like this—she tries to think of her body, to recall the grace of an earlier time, and feel the muscles under the loose shirt ripple into beauty. As in the days before she took up slouching and hunching her shoulders and standing with her legs apart like a man.
One day, she muses, someone will take these hands washed clean under running water and kiss each fingertip, a nice man of whom no questions will be asked and who will ask no questions about her left thumb with its neat crisscross-patterned tattoo. She stares at the thumb as if she has not seen it before. The corner of each diamond is marked by a darker point where lines cross and where the fine instrument lingered, burning into the flesh. These points make her long for the lick of a fierce Capricorn sun, long to leave the city, to go north to a peaceful village where the earth is red and tea grows in bright green rows and where sculptors recruit suggestive shapes of wood, turn them into human figures with knives, carve life into them, chisel out the eyes in their shallow sockets, produce the new through gouging and stabbing at wood. Not flesh.
There, on a training mission in the Venda, in a cave, she had watched the sharp black shadows of young women as they entered, crossing from lurid light into darkness. They came in traditional dress, gaudy green shifts under pink crossover pinafores draped over straw bolsters for buttressing the hips and buttocks into exotic insect shapes. When they left days later with piles of wood balanced on their heads, they filed past her searching gaze, their bodies a mere hint of movement within the sculpted shapes, the AK-47s perfectly concealed. Her own body, always in trousers and shirt, lives in the curious past tense of the Venda dress, taking its aspect from the gaze of a viewer who cannot undress it, who cannot imagine the crisscross cuts on each of her naturally bolstered buttocks.
Her back is strong, broad, almost a square depending on where one considers the back to end. This square is marked with four cent-sized circles forming the corners of a smaller inner square, meticulously staked out with blue ballpoint pen before the insertion of a red-hot poker between the bones. The smell of that singed flesh and bone still, on occasion, invades, and then she cannot summon it away. Each circle is a liverish red crinkled surface of flesh, healed in the darkness under garments that would not let go of the blood. One day a nice man of her own age will idly circle the dark cents with his own thumb and sigh, and with her bear it in silence, in the deepened colour of his eyes. Perhaps a man called David, who will say nothing and who will frown when she speaks of a woman in Beloved whose back is scarred and who nevertheless is able to turn it into a tree.
A huge trunk of a tree, and she dries her hands on a towel after all, rubs in more oil, and leaving hurriedly, barely pats her hip and then her right inner trouser leg to check that she has everything.
A windbroek, that’s what you are, what you’ve always been, that’s why you mess around with kaffirs, his father shouted, taken in by kaffir talk.
He had had enough of the fellow’s stubbornness, his madness really. God had seen fit to bless him with one son only, a son who has since turned out to be no blessing at all. A moffie and a windbroek.
David patted his trousers foolishly as if to beat down pockets of air that turned him into a windbroek. Yes, he was slim-hipped and his legs were perhaps already beginning to grow thin, but he had naturally not thought of himself as a windbroek. Perhaps he was called that by his colleagues at school, where he would not be promoted, would never achieve his father’s ambition of having a school principal for a son. As for the implications of moral turpitude or cowardice, well that was just plain absurd. He was one of the bravest comrades, whose skill and stamina had soon earned him an honourable position—but that his father would not hear of, would find infuriating. That Oliver Tambo himself had held his hand in both his own and called him my son ought to be enough for anyone. Why did he go on caring what his father thought of him? If it were not for the Movement, which occasionally brought him to this Namaqua dorp, he would, perhaps, not come to see old Dawid at all. How was it possible that a reactionary old man could make him quiver with an unnameable feeling, turn him into the stuttering child in short khaki trousers, anxiously waiting for approval? Perhaps his father was right; perhaps his son was a windbroek after all.
They sat in the sitting room crowded with shiny dark furniture. In the corner, his mother’s display of treasures, her altar to finery. A bench across the corner housed her brass knickknacks: a pair of scales with brass weights, a brass vase with wax-red carnations now faded and askew, and a little bell with which to imagine the summoning of guests to a grand dinner table. These were arranged on a linen cloth embroidered with irises and poppies strung gaily on a green chain of leaves. On a second tier were her china ornaments of shepherdesses, ladies in crinolines, his favourite jug with the pattern of crowded yellow and orange nasturtiums. A ragged fern draped itself over Ouma Ragel’s painted plate, bearing the maxim, De môrgenstond heeft goud in den mond—the dawn holds gold in its mouth—so much nicer a message, his mother said, than the English version of an early bird with a mouthful of fresh worms. Leaning against the lower bench was a framed magazine print of a Swiss landscape of tall, snow-clad peaks and fir trees, which cooled her down in the Namaqua heat.
The old man has added to this collection her tin of buttons, on which Queen Elizabeth’s youthful face had grown leprous with rust. She would never have left it there, the functional tin, and David itched to take it away. Never mind being poor, you can still keep the place nice. In that room it was impossible not to hear her, not to be again the boy to whom she took the strap in fear of spoiling him—God will punish the parent who does not chastise the child—but whose hand she held tightly and called Mamma-se-boklam—Mamma’s darling—and to whom he swore obedience. The old man sat in her chair, surrounded by the aura of his dead wife, by the order of her treasures, willing her voice to whisper sense into the ears of her son. That is where he has taken to receiving David, in that room where he read his Bible at night and listened to the news on the radio. A good boy he had always been, no trouble at all, obedient and anxious to please. The old man shook his head at the memory of her death last year, when David couldn’t be found, had disappeared clean off the face of the earth; it was then, on his return from God knows where, that he confessed to working for the Movement. But the father would not listen to that rubbish, would not be replaced by new loyalties.
It’s people like you who give coloureds a bad name. What do you think I worked so hard for, getting us out of the gutter, wiping out all that Griqua nonsense, just so a windbroek like you can tumble the family right back into the morass? No one could have set you a better example, a life of decency and sacrifice so you could have an education. And what are you throwing it away on—politics! Going against the law, getting up to all sorts of terrible things and associating with people who are not our kind. What has been the fruit of my labour but shame? Yes, it’s like a tree in the front garden just laden for all to see with the shiny apples of my shame. Your Unc
le Hennie, whose children never went to college, now sits through the sunny afternoons in an armchair with his grandchildren playing all around him. Oh yes, those motor mechanics and factory workers have time for their fathers; they’re not too busy with politics, they don’t lecture old people on keeping their independence, on the privacy of their lives, no, they’ve opened their doors to their fathers while I have to make excuses for you, about what a busy and important person you are when you’re wandering about God knows where, disappearing like a vagrant, a drunk. You, you, he stuttered in rage, you—a bladdy communist who hasn’t been to church for years and who went missing when your mother died. Do you know what your principal said? The man had to look out the window to say, Mr. Dirkse, I’m sorry to say your son is one of those who needs a lot of time off; we’ve been covering up for him for years, keeping his, shall we say, keeping it from the officials.…
His father summons the scene every time David visits, summons the school principal turning to the window, stroking his thin goatee, but has from the start excised the word condition, the unspeakable stab of the man’s fading voice: Keeping his condition from the officials. It is a thing Dawid has fought against all his life: the coloured condition—drunk, lawless, uncivilised.
I hang my head in shame and when Hennie says, Dawid, this education brings nothing, just loneliness and godlessness, what can I say? Must I just shut my ears and my eyes for the disgrace? No, I say, I want to keep my independence. Siss man, siss, what is this pigshit of independence, ’cause I’m telling you that nothing will take me away from this place now, that this independence shit is now mine whether I want it or not, it’s crept right into my marrow and you can stand on your bloody head but I will look after myself till my dying day. You look after your communist kaffirs.
People in the liberation movement don’t need looking after. We look forward to toppling this government, to a better country where everyone will have a share of the good life. Just a matter of months now, he correctly predicted.
Bladdy communist speeches, is that all you can manage? So you admit you still go around with those kind of people. I don’t know why I even allow you in my house. Just shows that I’ve more decency under my fingernail than you’ll ever have. I’ll tell you something about the kaffirs and the Hotnos, they just don’t want to work. Look what it’s taken your mother and me, sweat and blood, to shake off the Griquaness, the shame and the filth and the idleness, and what do you do? Go rolling right back into the gutter, crawling into all kinds of dirty hovels to speak with old folks about old Griqua rubbish, encouraging the backwardness. Don’t think I don’t hear about these things. Ja-nee, he sighed, his face drawn in self pity, all our sacrifice for nothing. Once a Griqua, always a Griqua. Then, in a fit of irrational rage, And all because of the kaffirs. Your mother must be turning in her grave.
His mother was a gentle soul, who said, It’s best not to ask any questions. Just do as your father says. How he adored that father, a man who could do no wrong, who knew everything there was to know in the world and who would pull a length of string or a twist of wire from his pocket and fix anything at all. You just name it, he boasted, and turning around with bits of bicycle still in his hand, frowned at the black man in a blanket who seemed to come out of nowhere, asking for directions, and if the mister could spare it, also a slice of bread or some pap.
Don’t smile or laugh with them, Dawid instructed the little boy.
Why not, David asked. He looks like Oom Frans, just blacker.
You must do your Christian duty but don’t ever let a kaffir see your teeth. See how your mother keeps her head down.
I watched her hunt for an old tin mug and pour rooibos tea for the man, who kept his own head down and whispered his thanks, and feeling an inexplicable rush of shame for both of them, I dropped my head too.
Later, I came upon him by surprise. The man whom I imagined trudging through the veld in search of the gypsum mines sat propped up behind the kraal wall, sleeping through the afternoon heat. I stepped slowly, putting one foot before the other, gingerly, watching him and not knowing what I wanted, except that the man would tell his story and show that there is no need to keep one’s teeth covered. But when he opened his eyes he looked at me with such an emptiness, his story sealed deep down inside, that I fumbled hurriedly in my pockets and offered him a stone. Only the day before I had found the milky white crystal on the river bank, a precious stone that sure as eggs would bring good luck. The man smiled without showing his teeth. The black pupils softened and he took the gift, gazed at it, nodding, before slipping it into either a pocket or a bag hidden under the blanket. Searching under his blanket, he drew from it a shell with a shiny oyster-pink lining and handed it to me. I took it without a word and dropped it into my own pocket. Then, not knowing what to do as the man once more shut his eyes, I crept away with my secret, which turned out not to be a secret at all.
You liked kaffirs even when you were small, going against my wishes and talking to people I’d told you to leave alone. I should have put my foot down from the very start; I should not have listened to your mother, and you wouldn’t have got into this dangerous business. No respect for your elders, that’s your problem, think your education gives you the right to put aside everything your elders have taught you.
Old people, Father, do not have a right to the respect of the young; they have to earn it like anyone else. Just as those in power do not have a right to that power; the people over whom they rule must not only agree—
The old man interrupted in the thunderous voice of his youth: Don’t you dare preach your politics at me, you who can’t even accept yourself as a coloured person. That’s what we are—decent, respectable coloured people, so to hell with you and your rubbish politics. A bladdy windbroek Griqua, that’s what you’ve become. And, heaving himself out of his chair, he stumbled off, flushed with rage.
David believes that it was his father’s irrational rage that fired his interest in Le Fleur, the Griqua chief who succeeded Adam Kok and founded the settlement in Namaqualand.
Brown people take the cigarette between thumb and index. They prefer wearing glasses and look you quietly and steadfastly in the eye (but not at one another). They are stiff until unexpectedly shaken loose by a spasm of laughter. Nobody blows out smoke through the nostrils anymore.
Breyten Breytenbach, Return to Paradise
CAPE TOWN 1991
Sally has splashed out on a new pair of glasses. She sits reading, or rather pretending to read, The Argus, with her legs folded awkwardly under her, pens-en-pootjies as her mother disapprovingly says. The glasses are large with a fashionable transparent pinkish frame that was not designed for cheekbones of such prominence. They are not reading glasses, so that it is something of a strain flicking through the paper. Which adds to her irritation as she waits for David to say what he thinks, or rather to say how nice they are.
David has always wondered about the way women seem to take refuge in reading. He would say to Sally when the troubled look settles on her face, Have you been to the library? Why don’t you get a book, read a story? It is an indulgence not worthy of a cadre, he privately thinks, but better than knitting, which infuriates him with the click-clack of the needles and, quite out of sync, the waggling of her slippered foot. Her foot has waggled uncontrollably of late, as if it has a life of its own. But now that she is reading he sinks into his favourite chair and shuts his eyes. She allows him five minutes, then rises with a deep sigh and says that the food is ready, that he should set the table.
Like any couple their dramas are played out at the dinner table. They are silent, bent over their plates, over their bredies with potatoes and rice, or on Sundays a roasted chicken. With sweet potato, browned and ginger-sweet. Sometimes curry. Shall we have a lekker chicken curry for a change, she would announce by asking the children, smiling with pleasure. And pudding on Sundays: baked sago with coconut, or this time, because she is listless, just Ouma Sarie’s canned peaches with evaporated milk,
and green jelly for the children. Nice coloured food. Not the stiff pap with meat eaten by blacks. Nor the meagre pasta and pesto favoured in the homes of white comrades, where what seemed to count was the napkins printed with their favoured icon of liberation, the black-and-white stippled guinea fowl.
The children fidget; they don’t want to eat. Do you know how many people have nothing but pap? David asks. We had pokkenkô in Namaqualand, he says, straying from the rebuke, my father called it Hotnos food, but mealie meal’s much nicer in that crumbly form, especially with the crispy fat of kaiings, nicer than sloppy pap.
Sally is disgusted by the nostalgia in his voice. Do you remember how it’s made? she asks.
No, what a pity, he says, unaware of her sarcasm.
Today they are having chicken curry. Sally has fretted and fumed along with the sizzling spices and has tapped too recklessly at a red chili, dropping all its fiery seeds straight into the pot. Which makes the children cry out loud and David gasp with the heat. The dinner table may be the appropriate place for family dramas, but he would rather Sally did not let loose her feelings in this manner. Her mouth is set with resentment; she chews prissily while her knife and fork stab angrily at the meat, at the rose-patterned china, long after he has lain his own down and the affronted children have sailed out of the room, unnoticed, on their bellies. He thinks as one ought to, of the waste, of the hungry and homeless, as she pushes aside the plate of mashed food.