David's Story

by Zoe Wicomb

  As for predicting Lord Rosmead’s death, the Chief had seen in the early hours of the morning a vision of that English gentleman sailing home and literally being hauled over the coals by God for leaving him, Le Fleur, in prison, knowing that it was wrong, knowing that justice had not been done. The very morning of the dream, Rosmead, feeling faint, had to be carried on to the deck, where he died within the hour—yes, died within sight of an unusually mist-free coast of England with his fair lady waiting on the pier, waving a sad white handkerchief.

  Again, Ouma, tell it again, the child whined. He liked to wince at the story of Rosmead dancing on red-hot coals, crying out for the splash and sizzle of a wayward wave while the ocean swayed calmly all around him.

  Okay, said Ouma Ragel, listen carefully and when you’re a big boy you can write up these stories. She took off her doek and ran her fingers through the landscape of her head, scratching ferociously along the paths between the network of plaits before tying up the cloth once more into the old-fashioned double knot on top that the child so loved.

  You won’t believe it, she whispered, looking round as if assassins lurked in the shadows. It was an ugly thing, but twice, you know, twice those grand white people from over the waters hired cheap political skollies to kill the Chief. They just didn’t understand that he had vision, that he could see through things and repeat to them their very own words: By hook or by crook Le Fleur must be wiped out. Just imagine such shameful behaviour. Not that his life was really threatened, because bullets just shot past him and the assegais bent against his word.

  KOKSTAD 1991

  The young receptionist, packing her things into a bag of many compartments, much like a filing cabinet—a nuisance to get one’s eyebrow pencil all mixed up with ballpoint pens—is pleasantly surprised by David’s friendly greeting as he enters the hotel lobby. So she cannot resist mentioning the dance that night, which is free for guests; no harm in it, he doesn’t know anyone here, and who knows—although she just has a feeling that she will not go even if he were to ask her, but no, he doesn’t. She should have known that this broomstick-up-the-arse guy isn’t up to having a good time, but then, with old-fashioned country formality, he shakes her hand by way of taking leave, which quite makes up for not being asked to the dance. But he has not even asked her name, and there, she supposes, is the proof of his indifference.

  David, raised in a squat, flat-roofed house, takes a childish delight in climbing stairs. Each narrow step of the creaking staircase is steeped in adventure, a notion collaged from a number of films. Alone in the room he revels in the luxury of doing as he pleases; he can even choose not to eat tonight and so save himself a few rand, which will go some way towards soothing his guilt about this trip, with Sally and the children never getting away. Tonight he makes notes—or rather, writes down words in minute writing, hardly notes—for a meeting, to be held when he returns, on the role of the army during the transition period. He cannot think without writing things down, a longstanding defiance of rules, but he has developed his own set of rules for the transgression that renders it safe as houses: he uses the smallest possible slip of paper, which he always removes from its pad to ensure that there is no imprint; it is never left unattended; he shoves it into his mouth at the slightest interruption; improvised and inconsistent codes and abbreviations make it, in any case, difficult to read; and the note exists only as long as he is busy writing—he destroys it as soon as he arrives at conclusions. And if he should suddenly be seized by a heart attack, well, he knows that he would instinctively stuff the paper into his mouth and spend his last breath chewing it, ensuring that the letters dissolved in a wash of blue.

  His room is above the ballroom, which occupies most of the ground floor, and the thump of the music is distracting. His thoughts flutter about the transgressive act of thinking on paper, so that he loses his thread and finally tears the slip of paper into the lavatory bowl, flushing away his first thoughts on how to maintain an army whilst officially dismantling it. A pity that such deception has to be practised, but civilians simply do not understand, and it is in everyone’s interest that energy not be wasted in debating matters about which there can be no debate.

  Obladi, oblada, life goes on, yeah, the band blares, and David finds himself trying to summon the original, which amounts to focusing on the deviation, that which jars in its difference, so that the Beatles’s rendition just escapes him. The timing, the timbre, the tinny quality of the guitar, these seep in and take root, until he fears that the original is forever lost. David, who prides himself on the ability to concentrate on one thing whilst appearing to be involved with another, is forced to give up. He could look at the chapter he has photocopied at the library, but with all the noise there is no point. Better to go to the dance—or rather, to hang around the dance room, since the very thought of jazzing across a floor, dancing coloured style, as the comrades say, makes him feel foolish. Not that he hasn’t, in the old days of watchfulness, hastily grabbed a woman and dived into the centre in order to escape attention. He puts on the shirt that Sally has so expertly ironed and folded for the occasion and slips on his jacket and goes down the stairs he had ascended with such anticipation.

  The man at the door rests his eyes on David’s well-ironed but unbuttoned collar. He puts out a hand to restrain him, then turns round and, as if he had been given the nod by someone—someone who identifies him as guest?—wishes David a very pleasant evening in a manner that suggests the delay was all about conventions of politeness. The breakfast waiter, with no trace of his earlier obsequious manner, hurries by and nods at David, a professional tower of plates on his arm. There is something familiar about the shaven-headed man, something that lies just underneath the red-and-black waiter’s uniform, that he cannot put his finger on, that draws him to the man, whose figure he follows with his eyes across the candlelit room. He loses him and the band plays ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.’

  The bar is like any other, inviting patrons to lean on it with one elbow, so permitting the body to swing both towards the barman and round to make peremptory conversation with whoever else wishes to linger there. Most patrons return at once to the tables decorated with candles and little glass vases, each hosting a pink carnation. Ebrahim, the manager, attaches himself to David, who leans against the bar. He is a rotund man whose Terylene trousers follow the sagging curve of his belly, and whose trousers would not have deserved a mention were it not for his irritating, intrusive line of conversation. David is adept at chattering companionably without answering too many questions, which drives the man to telling jokes—Hear the one about Van der Merwe and De Klerk, or the one about Gammatjie and the liberation struggle?—desperate stories for loosening the tongue. David laughs good humouredly and wishes he could tell jokes; Ebrahim laughs uproariously and, although he has given up on drawing out his guest, repeats the questions.

  So just a little pleasure trip, hey, a bit of business here and there and also to relax? And on your own too; perhaps a nice lady on her way, hey? Listen, you can always change rooms, you know, there’s a nice little love nest at the end of the corridor, lovely view. I would’ve given it to you from the start but it was taken. Business, you know, and he winks.

  No, I’m fine, I’m on my own, David says. Just visiting, doing a bit of research in the school break. I’m a teacher, you see, working on a history project. The grandeur of the word research appeals to him, helps him to chatter, to fantasise. I’m thinking of enrolling part time for a degree in history, but you have to be sure of what you want to study, it’s no good just taking a degree for the sake of the salary like so many teachers do. So I’m finding out about the Griquas, looking at the museum, the newspapers, and so on. And he surprises himself with the additional, unnecessary lie—My people were from Kokstad. Originally, that is.

  Ebrahim fiddles with his keys and explains how all his people have degrees, even from the white universities, that there is nothing like education to uplift yourself, show you the way, and list
en, by the way, have you heard the one about Gammatjie and Mandela in the bookshop? But David does not hear the rest. A young woman at one of the tables in the centre of the room waves at him, unmistakably at him, so that he waves back, and Ebrahim is reminded that what the event lacks is a good dose of dry ice to improve the atmosphere.

  The woman rises and walks towards him. Her hair is piled high on her head; her neck is long and slender and she teeters on dangerously high heels, holding her head very still to prevent the tower of hair from tumbling down. It is the girl from the reception desk. She holds her hand out by way of inviting him to dance. Better, he supposes, than sitting with old Ebrahim, whom he watches talking to the shaven-headed waiter, who then disappears. With the noise of music and laughter it is difficult to follow the woman’s chatter about the band from Umtata, about how her cousins had arrived and persuaded her to come just as she was settling down with a good book. The library in Kokstad is not bad, even though she sometimes finds halfway through a book that she has read it before, but then they do tend to be about the same things, stories, don’t they?

  On the wall, their moving shadows are distorted by candlelight, and he thinks of the bumpy walls of his childhood, upon which the slightest movement of a little finger could turn an ostrich’s head into a fox’s. He gets away with uh-huhs, and if she is aware of his distraction she does not appear to mind. Caught up in the romance of sailing through the swirling clouds of smoke with a stranger, it hardly matters to her how he behaves; she has no expectations of this broomstick-up-the-arse sort of chap. He senses this, and his gratitude, spreading into an affection of sorts, makes him draw her somewhat closer.

  Typical, she thinks, just like a man, and at the end of the dance she asks if he would like to sit at her table. A quick glance at the arrangement of chairs and the cousins settled with their row of beers shows that he will not get a seat facing the door, that he would not be able to keep an eye on that waiter when he comes back.

  No, he says, smiling warmly, we’ll carry on dancing.

  The receptionist lets herself down. He could’ve asked rather than assume her willingness; she should say no, but what the hell, she can’t be bothered arguing with him, and besides she’s seen much worse. At least he’s not drunk and you can tell that he can be trusted, no monkey business with him. But that doesn’t mean, it doesn’t mean—and her body, stiffening with humiliation, keeps its distance. Sensing that he will have to make some effort to keep her longer on the dance floor, from which he can keep his eye on the door, he says belatedly, I should introduce myself. David, David Dirkse, from Cape Town. As if she didn’t know. I’m a teacher, just visiting, doing some research on the Griquas, looking around a bit, checking old newspapers and the museum and so on. Got to study further, you know, they’re cutting back in education, making teachers redundant; you need a degree nowadays. Keeps you out of trouble, he says, trying to be playful. Failing to raise a smile, he carries on, No, it is interesting, fascinating to find out what went on in the good old days. I also want to speak to some of the old people here. Are you a Griqua?

  Course not, what you take me for? There’s a Griqua church here, just like any other church, but I’m Dutch Reformed. Griquas are from the olden times; there aren’t any left now. We’re all coloured here.

  He has no time to apologise, for the waiter has appeared in the doorway.

  Extraordinary looking man. What an amazing profile, don’t you think?

  No, I don’t. Looks kind of ordinary to me.

  He has an efficient air about him. Seems to be quite the man in charge. Is he the head waiter?

  Him? He’s only been here a couple of days. I don’t even know his name, or perhaps he told me but I can’t remember it. These people are so forward these days; that’s the New South Africa for you.

  David decides to let it pass. He steers her back to the table of cousins, who shake hands and invite him to join them, to have a drink, but no, he says, he still has some reading to do that night and, having monopolised their lovely cousin for so long, he had better be off.

  The night air was indeed freezing, and when he returned to his room a couple of hours after leaving the dance he was grateful for the kettle and the courtesy-of-the-management coffee, stirring and stirring a whole sachet of sugar into his plastic cup.

  Two hours? I ask since a couple could mean any number of things, but he waves away the question impatiently. How did he know that someone had been in his room?

  Just, is his reply, just knew.

  But nothing was disturbed. His notes from the museum lay in the same neat pile; there was in any case nothing to find. His gun, as always, he carried on his person.

  The hit list is a cultural variation on sticking pins into a doll or sending a tokolos—a demon—to undermine the intended victim. Except that in such cases the victim would mysteriously sense the evil, be unnerved by moving shadows of something scuttling off, perhaps see what may well be the tail of the tokolos, or in the mind’s eye perceive a flash of the fading self as hapless doll, bristling with pins, before all was swallowed into a morass of fear and darkness. The secrecy, the silence of this operation, where all that is required is for the intended to catch an uncertain glimpse, is replaced in the hit list by stark revelation, by making public, for there in black and white is your name in a column with the names of others.

  Written down, intended to be read, your name becomes the bearer of menace. And so you are separated from yourself through reading your own name and wishing that you were not the signified, the bearer of that name. You are careful not to utter it, although your lips move in silent articulation, as if to verify the writing. A function of literacy: to read your name on a hit list, but silently, as you do the other names.

  In vain he tries to remember when he had learnt to read silently, of how a child is persuaded to give up the loud display; instead he thinks of how Ouma Antjie, in her feeble old voice, had read aloud from the psalms, tracing the words with a trembling finger.

  The hit list, a handwritten sheet of paper left under his chair, is an addition rather than a removal of something, so that in searching for an absence, he is disarmed. David recognises the generic features: the cheap lined paper with a name on every other line; the writing in a girlish hand. The letters are drawn painstakingly, with a flourish, as if she were focusing only on the practicalities of cursive writing, of joining one letter elegantly to another, as if there were a master with a stick to rap the knuckles for any mistakes, for flaws in the light upward and bold downward strokes. Always, alongside the anonymity of the producer is this mock regard for the personal, the individual hand. The list may not be typed, but the writing is of such uniformity as to show that the names themselves are simply a column, of no consequence to the writer. And what, David wonders, if the writer found herself scripting the name of her own flesh and blood?

  The paper is not pink, but then that is not peculiar. The practice is not without variation, not in every aspect repeatable; there is always the possibility of new forms of terror. He had in the course of his career seen a couple before, dismissed them as despicable enemy tactics, had never thought of the effect on those for whom it is intended. Now he, David, is the intended. Like a girl in that twilight time of waiting to be claimed as wife, a time of gazing at the world through windows that are columns of light; a girl clutching at straws, at the fading light, waiting to be told of the truth. Or, he shakes his head in disbelief, the horror.

  The first name on the list is that of a recent victim, Oupa Mtshali. His body was found in a little copse near Khayelitsha—an Unrest Related Death—and the police, after listless questioning, hauled off the black plastic bag with no further ado. David knows a couple of the others as names connected with informers, but it is the one beneath his own that leaps out, as the name of the beloved always does. Just as that name uttered in any crowd leaps out of the murmur, breaking the continuum of sound, and, lifted, is carried on a higher crystal pitch, for all the world as if it were spe
lled aloud. So that for a moment he would stop in midsentence, as if he had been hailed. Here the name in writing takes on a different hue, lifts out from the rest of the girlish script and starts to tremble in a flush of red, the fancy strokes disintegrating, the letters separating as the colour grows deeper and deeper until they disappear entirely in a pool of blood. Dulcie’s blood. He wonders whether she is in the same unit as Oupa Mtshali. Is he, David, responsible for her place on the list? And why, how can he possibly, and he buries his head in his hands with shame or anger or despair, how could he be thinking of her as the beloved!

  David does not know what to do with such a thing, a list of names ordered on paper. Like a shopping list, he supposes, in case you forget that you have run out of peanut butter; the biscuits after all a luxury, last on the list; a piece of paper for the housewife’s eyes alone. What to do with such a thing, instrument of terror masquerading as aide-mémoire? Should he stuff it into his mouth, flush it away in the lavatory bowl? He stares at the writing on the page, the names that swim towards each other, coupling them in an intimacy that surpasses the charged and awkward moments of their chance meetings, an intimacy of death that displaces all. And if he has never considered such a thing, the possibility of infidelity, it is the schoolgirl writing of her name beneath his own that has driven them into this naked embrace, for which he blushes.

  For a moment he wonders, hopes that it might have come from Sally, driven to such bizarre measures by anger and jealousy. But no, he knows that she is not capable of such a thing, that she, his wife, loves him.

  And Comrade Dulcie, he decides briskly—he can only guess at her rank—would not be in need of his protection.

  DULCIE after a tortured night sets off speeding through the streets of Woodstock onto the highway, where she sees over the top of the distant mountain her own heart rise over the city, its light in her eyes, and the cracked ribs, the bleeding nipples are nothing, nothing at all, as her swollen heart hovers on the horizon then bursts to bathe the world in soft yellow light, her body lightened of the burden of that sentimental heart now beating out the two dear syllables so that she will no longer accelerate through the iron railing and hurl herself into a death of crushed steel and fire, how could she with that light pushing as tenderly as freedom above the hills, urging her to wait, wait, and see with mundane curiosity whether David, wherever he might be, for she has discovered that he had left town, would see that heart in the eastern sky and feel his own drawn into its embrace of light.