David's Story

by Zoe Wicomb

  He will not risk it again. It is the swaying world—the smell of blood and the loud report of gunshot—that is for real.

  DULCIE believes that there comes a time when physical pain presses the body into another place, where all is not forgotten, but where you imagine it relocated in an unfamiliar landscape of, say, bright green grassland cradled in frilly mountains. In such a storybook place the body performs the expected—quivers, writhes, shudders, flails, squirms, stretches—but you observe it from a distance. It is just a matter of being patient. Of enduring. Until the need to relocate once more.

  Then you can run through the vocabulary of recipe books, that which is done to food, to flesh—tenderize, baste, sear, seal, sizzle, score, chop—so that the recitation transports you into yet another space. Keeping on the move, like any good guerrilla. Which brings a sense of clarity, as if the mind, too, is being held under a blindingly bright light, and clarity is conferred by the gaze of others. And from that distance, that place, with the promise of further travel, it is possible to endure forever.

  They do not speak unnecessarily. For special operations she is blindfolded. They grunt and nod in a shadow play of surgeons, holding out hands for instruments, gesturing at an electrical switch. A woman, who does not always come along, performs the old-fashioned role of nurse—mopping up, dressing wounds. Once, as she left, even lifting the edge of the mattress to tuck in the sheet in a neat hospital fold.

  On the very first visit, one of them, the wiry one who seems to be in charge, spoke: Not rape, that will teach her nothing, leave nothing; rape’s too good for her kind, waving the electrodes as another took off her nightclothes.

  When they speak of her, they do so as people speak of their servants, as if they are not there. Which helps her not to say anything.

  She has a feeling that she knows them, or has known some of them perhaps some time ago, in another place. Yes, the figures in their black tracksuits are familiar; the eyes they cannot always keep averted, the black hands, the white hands, these speak of such knowledge. She thinks that she recognises some of the voices, but recognition hovers just beyond consciousness. She hallucinates, turns them into friends, family, comrades. Which brings a moment of pure terror, of looking into the abyss. It is a superhuman effort that brings her back. Never again does she try to identify them. That is where death lies.

  Why don’t you take off your balaclavas, show yourselves, she said the first time. Won’t that teach me something?

  Her words lolled obscenely in the pocket of silence, conspicuous, scorned, so that she vowed not to speak again. Besides, what is there to say if you do not know to whom you are speaking? At least whether to friend or foe? For there is an ambiguity about these visitors, something that makes them both friend and foe as they tend to the cracks and wounds carefully inflicted on parts of the body that will be clothed. And so how could she expect answers to her questions? What could they say?

  She will not ask for an explanation, will not protest, since they can only offer lies. She has done nothing less than her duty, nothing less than fighting for freedom and justice—even though these words have now become difficult. That too, then, is why she cannot speak. Uttering such tarnished words makes them sound at best foolish, at worst, false.

  From the few muted exchanges between them, it is clear that she cannot be killed; that instead they rely upon her being driven to do it herself. They do not understand that for a woman like her—who has turned her muscles into ropes of steel, who will never be driven into subordination, who even as an eager girl in the bush wars resisted the advances of those in power, resisted her own comrades, having worked out that fucking women was a way of preventing them from rising in the Movement, who has resisted all her life, who has known since childhood that tyranny must be overthrown—for a woman like her, there is no submission. She knows that she is tiring them out, that they are exasperated by her. Thus they tiresomely repeat themselves; the knife above her throat hovers listlessly.

  What they do understand is that she has supernatural powers. It is as if the rumours about her legendary strength, her agility, her incredible marksmanship, her invincibility that have circulated for some time between friend and foe alike have taken root within her, have grown into the truth.

  She has taken her training as a revolutionary seriously—the vows, the beliefs—without, some would say, the necessary pinch of salt. Has her life not been devoted to resisting tyranny? Ah, she knows that she has done it too well for a girl, a woman, but she would, and she clenches her teeth, do it again and again. Resist. No matter how rickety the boat, how choppy the sea, she would remain alive to resist tyranny, to cling with idealism—she knows it to be embarrassing—to that which they wish to break down.

  She believes that they know nothing of her secret, her friendship with David.

  Marinaded in pain, viewing herself from an unfamiliar place, she would hear a voice repeating the name of Chapman’s Peak. Where the familiar road bends sharply to the left—it would take no effort at all, no decision as such, simply a matter of not turning the wheel but rather of carrying straight on, flying off into the unspeakable beauty of the blue below, the bay cradled in mountains. Where she would feel that macerated flesh grow weightless in the water, dissolve in the white spray that beats against the rock. Atomised at Chapman’s Peak.

  And so each morning as they leave, as a matter of pride and despair, she summons all her strength to get dressed and drive to the sea. Along the coastal road she drives at breakneck speed with the sea roaring below, and slows down only for the baboons who have, through the early hours, come to think of the road as their own. They scurry by with little ones clinging to their backs, the males snarling defiantly by the roadside, and only then would the voice recede, would she wake from the trance, only yards before the beckoning bend in the road, to remember that she will resist, as she has done all her life.

  She likes to believe that it is the thought of David that resurrects her at that moment. It seems equally likely that the voice is dispelled by the comic behaviour of the baboons.

  Sometimes after minor sessions—there are, after all, limits to what can be done to the human body without destroying it—she gathers her magical strength to chase after her visitors, and on such occasions her legendary marksmanship does not fail.

  On such days she knows that the next session will surpass all punishment.

  On such days her hands are raw with washing.

  Ag no, man, says Ouma Sarie, you mustn’t say such things about your own husband. Saying is bad luck, and if you’re just sucking it all out of your thumb, well then, you should pull yourself together and stop brooding over nonsense. There’s nothing that a hymn and a prayer won’t put right in the end. Men, she snorts, you can’t trust them, but it’s just a matter of being firm; press them into doing the right thing and don’t put up with any nonsense. Did you find anything in his pocket, lipstick on his collar, something like that, hey? Tell me, why do you say such things?

  Oh, I don’t know, Sally admits. I did go through his pockets, many times, but there was nothing at all. Except he’s behaving strangely, doesn’t seem to be himself these days, and then there is that woman.

  She had seen him at a meeting looking at the woman, and she knew at once. Caught the woman’s eyes several times resting on him, even on her, Sally. And so she knew.

  No, he isn’t spending more time than usual away, and yes, she has checked up once, twice that he was indeed where he had said he’d be, but she knew all the same.

  Is it that he doesn’t, does not … But Ouma Sarie cannot find the words, so she fishes the bottle of rooi laventel from the folds of her many skirts. Here, she says, have a swallow of this. Nothing like the old Dutch remedies. Next time I’ll bring buchu essence, now that’s the thing to clean the blood; you must try to find a shop here in town that sells the old medicines. Nowadays you people have it so good, it makes you wasteful, throwing away the crusts of the bread, spreading your bread twice, with
margarine under the jam, and then wasting your energies on idle thoughts about ungodly things. No, man, you must pull yourself together, keep yourself busy—you don’t need castor oil, do you?—and thank God for each day that passes without troubles.

  Ouma Sarie has always felt, as the moon rose and the darkness came with the dipping of swallows, as she gathered together the lamps—never a smudge to be found on her glass funnels, oh no, she cleaned them every morning, polished the glass with newspaper—the weariness peeling off like an apron, the yellow lamplight licking over the wounds of the day. Except, of course, at the time of Sally’s disappearances—then she heard the fearful twittering of the swallows and cupped in her hands the paraffin-plump belly of a lamp, dawdled in fear of light, until the darkness would stand no more, before striking the match. Then they ate their bread and drank their buttermilk in silence, under the greedy flicker of the flame. It was then that she stopped polishing the glass, did not want the bright light. The moon and stars will have to do, she said to Joop, who complained about the lamps. Only when Joop finally took it upon himself, with his large, clumsy hands, to rub newspaper inside the glass, which he would surely have cracked did she take it from him and, thank God, pulled herself together. They were, as Joop said, the lucky ones. How many had got through these times without losing their children, their loved ones, seeing them swatted to death like flies, or missing forever, in these years of struggle?

  Now Ouma Sarie, hearing again the swoop of swallows, stumbles to the light switch. No, my girl, the trick is to keep faith.… You musn’t say such things.… Saying is bad luck, makes unlikely things come true.

  Just the sort of nonsense one expects from old people, Sally thinks. Why on earth can she not keep anything to herself? Why say anything to her mother, of all people, who has no idea of the world? Foolish to bother her, and who knows how the clumsy words will scatter and settle in the various fixed compartments of her stories—among the swallows, the lamps, the red malva, the tiles of the Logan Hotel. Thank God, and she winces at the aftertaste of rooi laventel, thank God her mother hadn’t managed to ask about that. Imagine having to explain that, no, there was nothing wrong at all with their private life. In fact, David has never shown such interest in her before, not even in those heady days of not knowing when they would see each other. Now he comes back late and no sooner presses against her warm, soft behind.…

  DULCIE’s is a story about an obsession with our hero, who cannot, as a man of honour, submit to that which he has produced in her. That is how she views it. That he has lured her into something that has disturbed her equanimity for the worse but upon which he will not act and of which he will not speak. She understands the question of honour, but what she cannot endure is his silence, the primitive fear that to speak of something will bring it into being, let loose the tokolos. Or the converse: that to not speak of something will divest it of its reality, undo it. Strictly speaking, she is not as obsessed with David as she is with his lack of speech. That makes her storm about with rage. Like a man, she says in moments of bitterness; like a man, he has beckoned her into something which he now pretends does not exist, and worse, he pretends that she does not know he is pretending. Why, then, she would argue triumphantly, should she care at all for such a windbroek, for such a person who is all pretence? That question is not pursued and doubt sets in, for what if she were altogether wrong? Perhaps he is unaware of that which he has produced in her; perhaps she simply has imagined their charged moments of intimacy, in which case it is a matter of folly rather than humiliation on her part. And so Dulcie would swing obsessively between positions. She is enraged that after years of avoiding what is known as love, of not allowing herself to be touched, and after years of resistance, of fighting tyranny, of keeping in control and making her measured way to the top, she is left tortured with uncertainty about a phantom lover. David has made her question her own senses, has produced in that strong, fearless body a poisoning doubt that in his absence tinctures everything.

  Obsessively she rakes over every exchange between them, checking again in her memory the shift of a facial muscle, the softening of a syllable, the nuanced movements of his articulate hands bound by restraint, only to confirm that which his behaviour the very next day would cast once more in doubt. She knows every word of their conversations by heart, can summon every ambiguity, every inflexion of his voice. She treasures in an ashtray by her bed a stained, gritty sachet from which he had dribbled sugar into her coffee. Every day she promises to throw it away.

  When Dulcie reaches the limits of endurance, as she regularly does, she hardens her heart, talks herself into cold indifference, meets him with a brisk politeness. Oh, but then he is distraught, finds an excuse to see her, begs for her return with eloquent eyes until she succumbs. And all without uttering a word, for it is utterance that will translate it into the material and thus for him into infidelity. All is in shadow play, in mime, in a comic strip where speech bubbles taper into think dots that just miss their mouths. She is resigned to the dilation and contraction of her heart, knows that this wordless flurry is the limit, that she can expect nothing more, that perched on a wheel going round and round she is doomed to her obsession.

  Dulcie has become an adolescent once more.

  There is a fresh crop of pimples on her chin.

  She does not know why or how, but notes nevertheless: that this pretence of a relationship coincides with the visits by night; that the coincidence carries a meaning that she has not yet fathomed; that one is a recursion, a variant of the other: the silence, the torture, the ambiguity; and that in such recursions—for if on the edge of a new era, freedom should announce itself as a variant of the old—lies the thought of madness madness madness.…

  Dulcie longs for the comfort of the quotidian. For warm whole wheat bread with the little square Duens label stuck to the crust. For bacon and boerewors, kidneys and brains, minced liver and lung—but that would have been her preference before the visits. Coloured people prefer to eat something that once had a face: she thinks of the saying with both revulsion and loss.

  Coloureds had no stomach for blood. They had no traditions and family commitment dating back centuries, or loyalties forged by centuries of war as the black people had. No, the Brigadier thought, the Gentleman was a pure African, and one who dedicated his life to fighting the government.

  Thabo Shenge Luthuli, The Spilling of Blood

  CAPE TOWN 1991

  What a toad, I say speculatively, why hire such a creep to try and trip you up?

  We are sitting on the slopes of Table Mountain, eating a less than hearty breakfast of muffins and coffee at the café at the Rhodes Memorial, the kind of place that David does not like to be seen in or perhaps genuinely hates. White-middle-class-moffie-wholefood-places, they are known as. But he was so eager to talk with me, adamant that it should not be at my house, that when I suggested Rhodes, he agreed.

  No, he says, Thomas is okay, not a creep at all, rather talented, I think, only a bit undisciplined, too theatrical. They don’t always find such interesting material, the usual fare is the dull-as-dishwater student of politics or social science, an earnest, bearded young man or a pretty girl, preferably blonde. White students, because we are supposed to be particularly receptive to whites who support the Movement. As if everyone doesn’t these days. Try and find anyone who voted for Apartheid and you wonder if you’ve spent your life chasing phantoms.

  There is still no question of explaining the they; I am not sure whether David himself knows and it is better not to ask, not to spoil the mood.

  David speaks obsessively about his stay at the Crown Hotel. He wants me to be clear about every detail he chooses to disclose. We have met several times since his return. It is inconvenient that he can no longer speak on the telephone now that his tinnitus has returned. There is, he says, a disturbing squeal in the background when he uses the telephone; he fears that his tinnitus will not go away this time. But, using the most transparent excuses, I somet
imes call him all the same. The truth is that I cannot help myself, that his contempt binds me to him, that my desire for his story has become rapacious, and it would seem that he, in turn, has been infected by me.

  I have become as dependent on seeing David as he is on speaking to me. I abjectly accept his shifts between sullen and less guarded moods, perhaps because I hope that important gaps in the story are going to be filled. Whatever the case, I feel uneasy when he does not keep in touch; I find myself staying in in case he drops by. Today—and I can barely bring myself to confess this—I have taken the morning off in the hope that he would want to meet. Just a hunch, and I thrill with the reward of his terse telephone call.

  Perhaps he will speak about the missing day of the trip, the day on which he was supposed to telephone home, unless he assumes that I’ve not worked out the loss of twenty-four hours.

  David proves to be right about this place. He is about to tell me why he has come when the entire black staff assembles at the doorway to sing a hymn, first in English and then the final verse, authentically, in Xhosa. They clap and sway and tilt their heads in unison.

  Let’s go, I say.

  Shall we wait to see what else the proprietors have thought up for the New South Africa? David asks. Perhaps they’ll come out to perform the final hallelujah with their workers.

  After this display I do not have the stomach for my second muffin, even though the homemade jam is nothing short of memorable. We nevertheless wait respectfully for the ditty about Jesus to come to an end. But we do refuse to put a penny in the hat they bring round to each of the tables, curtseying, for a mission station that would train others to put on shows like this one.

  David will not speak of our business in the car. So we wander off to the memorial, beyond the grand Doric columns, down to the bronze horseman called Physical Energy.