by Zoe Wicomb
Why the silence, I ask, why does she not speak out?
Belief. Pride. Pride in belief. The virus of secrecy. Either the very proof of her innocence or the play with secrecy—secrecy turned inside out. Whichever way, they can rely on her; in that world things have different meanings. Just as freedom is not the anaemic thing for us that it is for nice, clean liberals, so violence, too, is not a streaming sheet of blood or gore. That is something you people can’t bring yourself to understand.
We sit in silence. Then his hands slide from his ears as he looks up at me. You know, Dulcie will be alright. She’ll hang in there by the skin of her teeth and she won’t give up a damn thing. Yes, he says slowly, she won’t be sacrificed, by God, she’s a witch alright.
And he leaves, patting the seat of his trousers repeatedly, as if to check for a handkerchief or a gun, or that shrinking of flesh that turns a man into what his father calls a windbroek.
I ought to explain that there is another page, one without words. One that came just after the Kok family tree that he drew for my benefit. I have had it right from the start.
There are geometrical shapes: squares, rectangles, triangles—isosceles and right-angled—hexagons, polygons, parallelograms, and especially diamonds. The cartoonist’s oblique lines that indicate sparkling are arranged about each diamond, but I now see that these have been done with another pen, perhaps added later.
There are the dismembered shapes of a body: an asexual torso, like a dressmaker’s dummy; arms bent the wrong way at the elbows; legs; swollen feet; hands like claws.
There is a head, an upside-down smiling head, which admittedly does not resemble her, except for the outline of bushy hair.
I have no doubt that it is Dulcie who lies mutilated on the page.
CAPE TOWN, 1991
There will be an ANC rally on Thursday in the centre of Cape Town.
As if everybody does not know it, there is this peculiar message on my answer-phone. There are no other messages.
As if the 1960s BBC-received pronunciation still used by SABC newsreaders is not humorous enough, there is something parodic about this newsreader’s voice.
There will be an ANC rally on Thursday in the centre of Cape Town. Buses from the townships will arrive by ten A.M. and toyi-toying to the Parade is scheduled to settle down by midday when the crowds will be addressed by Bishop Tutu and Joe Slovo. You are most welcome to attend.
The sixteenth of June—Soweto Day—Youth Day—Bloomsday—Day of the Revolution of the Word—birthday of freedom. I do not usually attend rallies. Except, of course, the historic moment of Mandela’s release. But I am impressed with this invitation. Has the Movement managed to infiltrate all the media in the official voice of the newscaster?
It is an invitation I cannot refuse.
Ouma Sarie is miffed that David has been home only for a couple of hours, leaving soon after midnight again for Guguletu. Sally, too, will be going with her own organisation, leaving her to come with the children in the neighbourhood bus. Mrs. January from next door and the Diederikses opposite have been instructed to keep an eye on her, and just as well ’cause Ouma’s heart isn’t in this business of stampeding and toyi-toying, like those embarrassing people from the Apostolic Church. The neighbours have, since Sally’s departure at dawn, been in and out of the house, leaving the door and the gate open, organising their communal picnic, chivvying her along, and Ouma, although not ungrateful for the help, can’t but worry about the familiarity of these town people.
No, thank you, she said only yesterday, if you don’t mind, Mrs. January, I’ll just carry on calling you Mrs. January.
It’s just an excuse these younger people have to be disrespectful, so she herself can be you-ed and your-ed and called by her first name. But she must say, even if the woman is now forward, her meat frikkadels are out of this world.
In the bus a young man ties large gold, green, and black rosettes to their jerseys and pretty ribbons around their hats, and although Ouma wishes to nurse her bad temper and her scepticism, the laughter and babble of the children, the guitar and the jolly singing, and Mrs. January pressing her to eat just a teeny-weeny frikkadel before they even get on to the highway, soon lift her spirits, so that in no time she is singing along, the children helping her with the funny black words, so old-fashioned, her little ones, they know everything about the struggle. How nice and jolly it is in the bus. Together the big women lift their arms and sway to the song, happy-y-y like the New Year Coon Carnival she saw on the TV last year—although that lot with their minstrel faces, she remembers in time, withdrawing the private comparison, are just a disgrace. Which for a while makes her compose herself as she concentrates on her dignity. But the mood is too infectious, and by the time they arrive in Castle Street where the buses park, Ouma Sarie tumbles toyi-toying out of the bus like everyone else.
It is a perfect winter’s day with a jewel of a sun in a bright blue sky. If she had earlier doubted the wisdom of coming along, she now knows that God himself is smiling up there, for would he not have churned up the streets with proper Cape wind and rain if he had not approved? But this day is a sign that the young people have been right after all, that what the government these long years have told them was the straight and narrow path was all the time the ways of the devil. How could such a fine-looking gentleman like Nelson Mandela—she just knows that he must have good coloured blood in him—not be the voice of truth and justice. And so she toyi-toyis gaily up Buitenkant Street, where a contingent from one of the black townships joins in so that they all get mixed up together, actually holding onto the bony waist of a sisi—and oh, how good it is, with everyone out in the warm winter sunshine today.
What a pity her Joop is not there to see how the world has turned out, how they are all together like Jesus said, singing and dancing, and when the sisi in front of her—very neat and clean she must say—falters and faints, she whips out to administer the rooi laventel she had the presence of mind to stuff hastily into her bosom. With that and a bite of Mrs. January’s frikkadel, the old woman is soon revived, and they all take the opportunity to rest on the shimmering granite wall of the old Standard Bank building, defying the steward who tries to shoo them along. Ouma Sarie, a country woman who in her youth only dreamt of being a nurse in crisp white uniform, is quite the centre of attention as she ties a scarf tightly around the stomach of a retching little boy and massages the ankle of an old man, with the Zambuk ointment she carries along for the children, until the tendon springs back into place. Her face is aglow with well-being, and emboldened by the events of the day, she tries to take the children into the grand Standard Bank building in search of a toilet. But as she stands at the threshold, a child in each hand, looking at a familiar tiled floor, a geometric pattern of blue, white, and terra-cotta, her heart tilts, and for a moment she is not surprised to find that the heavy doors before her are being firmly shut.
Then Ouma beats at the carved doors and shouts, To hell with the Logan; to hell with the Farquhars. This is now Mandela’s tiled floor, Mandela’s bank, Mandela’s toilets.
The children, trained in chanting, shout after her, Mandela’s floor, Mandela’s toilet. Another child takes over, Kill the Boer, kill the farmer, kill the bubbi in his pyjama, but he is soundly beaten over the head by a man in an old-fashioned red fez. All of which confuses Ouma, who has to be helped down the marble steps. Memories of 16 June 1976 and of Sharpeville before that buzz like persistent flies around her head, a memory of shooing everyone indoors in case the three black men employed by the Logan Hotel were to go on the rampage. She swats Sharpeville aside decisively, intent on a new vision of peace and justice and harmony, just as Sally explained.
She may not catch all of the speech making, but knows that they are very, very good. Bishop Tutu, say what you like, is a fine, fine speaker, cutting a grand figure in his purple frock, a colour straight from heaven as she has always said, his voice like the engine of a train through a hilly landscape, just gathering steam
and beauty as he speaks of those very good things, of rebuilding the country, of food and health and housing for all, of the forthcoming elections and, oh, even her Joop would not have minded his swaying and clapping like an Apostolic, for there comes a season, a time and a place, when even Apostolic behaviour must be overlooked. And what a sensible white man that Mr. Slovo is in his communist socks; she can only hope that he changes them from time to time, even though it’s winter, ’cause since he’s been back in the country the TV has been speaking nonstop about these red socks. Anyone can see his name in his oupa’s own language means the word—she read that somewhere—for the words that come tumbling out of his mouth are like the clear mountain stream of the Word which was with God and the Word that was God, a new beginning of light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Before her very eyes the Word becomes flesh, full of grace and truth, so that the whole city, crammed into the Grand Parade and spilling over into the streets, beholds the glory of justice and freedom finally come, and she blushes for the white people’s lies, Boer and English lies fed over the years and foolishly swallowed by her, and then her eyes fill with tears of shame for the poor Mrs. Slovo, a pretty woman, too, blown to bits, they say for standing up against those lies, even if they weren’t married—why else would she be called by some other name?—but what does she, old Sarie, care any more about such things in the face of abomination; she will honour the woman with the fine married name she deserves. That the man is a saint and not a communist at all is as clear as this wondrous day that God has given them to celebrate freedom.
As the food is shared around and the children dart about like dassies, Ouma zealously holds her left fist up, stamps her feet, oblivious of the beer being smuggled under her very nose. There is a wonderful smell of herbal smoke in the air, much nicer than cigarettes; there is singing and dancing, and when the bishop sets free clutch after clutch of coloured balloons, lifted by the breeze and kept hovering just out of reach, Ouma, overcome by the beauty of it all, feels, first in her heart, the transformation, turning her inside out, turning her into a princess—yes, nothing short of a princess, waving her fist like a magic wand in this fairyland.
Nkosi sikilele iAfrika / Malu apanyiswe lumu lwayo.
Their voices swoop like summer swallows, weaving up through the balloons to circle the very top of Table Mountain.
The sun is a ball of fire and the sky is streaked with the holiest reds and gold by the time they are finally settled in the bus. Yes, what a business getting themselves together, all these people tired, lost, and jostled, as they must be even in fairyland, where she explains to the whining children, patience also must be practised. But now, as the engine starts up, they fall asleep with heavy bladders, the beauty of the day stamped on their chocolate-smudged faces.
There is no time the next day to shake her head over the newspapers that describe the rally as a day of chaos, pandemonium, of looting and burning by dagga-drunk skollies. David has disappeared. Comrades ring to see whether he has turned up; no one has seen him since early evening, when the crowd dispersed. He was supposed to drive to Comrade K’s house for a short meeting, but nothing has been seen or heard of him since that arrangement was made. Sally refuses to take the harmansdruppels mixed with rooi laventel that her mother puts before her, so that Ouma is forced to slip it into her coffee.
A rally may be no place to practise walking, but I have been too lax. I have fallen down or have been tripped up in the crush, so that, trampled underfoot by toyi-toyiers, my bones are all but broken and my body spectacularly purple with bruises. I try to ring David but his telephone stays engaged. I must confess to feeling a certain fear at this turn of events. When I return from the hospital there is a message on my answer-phone in the same old-fashioned SABC voice.
For broken bones take two teaspoons of harmansdruppels mixed with one spoon of rooi laventel. Avoid taking with coffee. We repeat …
I cannot believe the childishness of this message.
The view coming around the bend at Chapman’s Peak would have been breathtaking before dawn, at that darkest hour, the bewitched hour when those bewildered by the worlds they have shaped touch the amulets around their necks and grind their teeth. There would have been no baboons, no cars parked in the lay-by, no lone figure firing a camera at the picturesque water and towering rock, no need to slow down at all. There are the tyre marks of a screeching halt, as if he had decided only at the last minute to stop. There is a note on top of the pile of carefully folded clothes on the passenger seat. It is for Sally and the children: there is no explanation, only an apology and an assurance of his love.
In his trouser pocket there is a five rand note, some coins, and a freshly crumpled photograph of himself sitting at a white wrought-iron table, his head bent conspiratorially towards a round-faced, bespectacled man, who listens with a half-smile. They are surrounded by lush tropical vegetation; a palm frond brushes the side of the table, as in an elaborate studio photograph.
The body washed up a few days later is heavy with water; the staring eyes are glassy green bulbs, doll’s eyes dropped carelessly into the ashen mahogany of his bloated face.
I am sitting at my desk, looking out onto the lovely walled garden, and hear again the words of the red-faced estate agent: A nice little sun-trap, a very special feature of this place. Actually, he called it a home.
Not many small, two-bedroomed houses have such generous gardens. Not that this is small, he added hurriedly, but it is a very nice, a very private garden. Here, lady, you can sunbathe in your bikini or even in the nude without a worry in the world.
I stared at him coldly so that he said, by way of deleting, Yes, lady, and do a little bit of gardening in these very manageable borders.
These very manageable borders are now bleating with the yellow and orange heads of marigolds in their dark green foliage. The fig tree in the corner, leaning against a back wall that cracks under the burden, carries her proud litter of plump yellow figs. Bees buzz around their dripping ripeness. The whitewashed wall is heavily draped with black-eyed Suzies, their pale yellow or deep orange faces beaming like a million miniature suns. Look into any one of those brilliant black eyes and you will find that you have been fooled. Instead of the apparent protrusion of a fleshy cushion of stamens and stigmas, there is only a dark hole, an absence burnt into that bright face, an empty black cone that tapers towards a dark point of invisibility, of nothingness.
I take a break from writing this impossible story with a turn in my unseasonable garden, slipping a backup disk into my pocket as I always do. Especially since, on my return from the funeral, I found several days’ work gone, replaced by a queer message in bold: this text deletes itself.
I part the marigold bushes in search of weeds, inhale the crinkled, bunched yellows of their medicinal scent; I nip off shrivelled Suzies, give the fig tree a shake. It is midday. A day without nuances. The sun is a clear yellow disk in a plain sky. Only when I turn to go back to work do I see her sturdy steatopygous form on the central patch of grass, where she has come to sunbathe in private. She is covered with goggas crawling and buzzing all over her syrup sweetness, exploring her orifices, plunging into her wounds; she makes no attempt to wipe the insects away, to shake them off. Instead, she seems grateful for the cover of creatures in the blinding light and under the scorching sun. Blinking, she may or may not, through eyes covered by the hairy filaments of goggas, see a pair of shoes disappearing comically over the wall, a figure lifting itself over into the public street. She yawns and stretches in the warm sun.
Is this no longer my property? I ask myself. I have never thought of Dulcie as a visitor in my garden.
It is midday. A day without nuances. But it is not like that. Sitting at my desk by the window, with my hands and eyes on the keyboard. I shriek as a bullet explodes into the back of the computer. Its memory leaks a silver puddle onto the desk, and the shrapnel of sorry words scuttle out, leaving behind whole syllables that tangle promiscuously
with strange stems, strange prefixes, producing impossible hybrids that scramble my story. I look out, across at the full fig tree, where a figure leisurely takes his leave, climbing over the wall and crushing my black-eyed Suzies. Is this no longer my house, bought from the red-faced man with the lacklustre sales talk? Will I never know what’s going on? Does no one care what I think? Will I ever be heard above the rude buzz of bluebottles?
My screen is in shards.
The words escape me.
I do not acknowledge this scrambled thing as mine.
I will have nothing more to do with it.
I wash my hands of this story.
AFTERWORD
David’s Story is Zoë Wicomb’s second book. Writing about her first book, a collection of short stories entitled You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987), Toni Morrison said: “Wicomb has mined pure gold from that place—seductive, brilliant, and precious, her talent glitters.”1 The place Morrison refers to is South Africa; more specifically, a small rural settlement in Little Namaqualand in the Western Cape, where Wicomb was born in 1948, and where she lived most of her early life, until leaving for Britain in 1970. Her short stories depict rural life under an increasingly repressive apartheid government, and the growth of organized political resistance in Cape Town.
You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town has often been hailed as the first book of fiction set in South Africa by a woman classified “coloured” under apartheid legislation, but it is pathbreaking in more important ways than this.2 While Wicomb’s writing is given focus by protest against the material and psychological degradations of apartheid, its vitality derives from the daring literary and linguistic play, and from the distinctive positions given her characters in their intricate and subtle rejections of objectification, subordination, and despair. Hindsight helps us see this, of course, but in her short stories history seems to be on her characters’ side.