Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  Ntsina made the introductions, and Piet felt instinctive sympathy for the little girl with her closed eyes and missing hand. It was not a patronizing sympathy; rather a warmth that added to the richness of the red Noni saw when she sensed him. He crouched beside her and she touched his face, felt a nose sharper than anyone’s in Gwadana; and then soft hair, as smooth as grass; quite unlike anything she was used to. This hair made her afraid. She drew back into the protection of her brother.

  The Chief’s children made offerings to their Ancestors and Piet watched, observing that one of the vast trees was their focus. Surely one—at least one—in this grove belonged to no village family. When the ceremony was complete, Kagiso said to Ntsina: “You are to be married.”

  The revelation that his bride was Bela of the Jaxa clan made Ntsina feel light-headed, and then ashamed. It was a strict rule that no young man should take a woman to the mating mat before he is twenty-five years old. He thought of the woman whose caresses he had bought with brandy in Johannesburg, who had given him the infernal itch. It made him feel unworthy of Bela, whose reputation for modesty and sweetness was unrivalled. They took turns carrying Noni on their shoulders, and she moved happily between her brothers and Ntsina as they walked to the village. She warmed to Luvo, whose gentleness communicated itself to her as a soft, warm turquoise, tinged with a colour that shone like the moon. Piet offered to share the burden, but the touch of his hair made Noni scream; so he did not press it, aware of the importance of getting on with little children if one wishes to win favour in their parents’ eyes.

  When they stopped for their first rest, Ntsina drew Luvo some way off and took him into his confidence. He felt an urgent need to confess. “I took a woman to the mating mat,” he said. “More than once. When I was in Johannesburg.”

  “That is a grave sin,” said Luvo.

  “How might I be worthy for my bride?”

  At last! God had sent him the opportunity to relieve a burdened sinner of the weight of his guilt. “Eve introduced Evil into the world,” said Luvo, “when she tempted Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden. Did this woman tempt you, brother?”

  Ntsina thought of the circumstances of their coupling. They had met in a tavern, and the woman he had bought with brandy had indeed been very friendly to him; had jiggled her breasts when she danced near him, and pushed her bottom against him. “Yes, she did tempt me,” he said.

  “Then pray with me that you be spared from future temptation, and forgiven your sins.” Luvo began to say the Lord’s Prayer. Ntsina did not respond, but he did not protest either; and Luvo’s certainty that his crime had been forgiven, which shone through him as he said “Amen,” comforted Ntsina. In his own head, he apologised to his Ancestors for what he had done, and promised never again to be unworthy of them.

  Of Piet, he said to his friends: “There are good mlungus as well as bad. Luvo was raised by some good ones in Cradock, which is a town beyond Butterworth. This mlungu has become my friend. You must treat him kindly. His name is Piet Barol.”

  Kagiso did treat Piet kindly, and bombarded him with all sorts of questions concerning his early life, so that Luvo grew quite exhausted from all the translating.

  —

  A WOMAN WHO HAS a reputation for sweetness must needs have one outlet for the less sweet parts of her nature, and Bela Jaxa’s outlet was her older sister Zandile, whom all called Zandi. At twenty-seven, Zandi was old to be unmarried. When Ntsina’s father first came to fix a bride price, Zandi wept with excitement, convinced he came for her. It was customary in Gwadana for the daughters in a family to be married in order of age. She had dressed her hair with oil and waited patiently, wondering who her bridegroom was to be. All through the negotiations, she had sat in calm anticipation, trusting her father to choose wisely for her. When the knock came, she had risen and faced the door, her head bowed meekly as was proper. They had entered and her father had touched her shoulder—to comfort her, she later thought. For the negotiators had brushed past her and gone into the inner room, in search of her younger sister; since it was Bela for whom they had come.

  Bela, so sweet with her elders, so beloved of the girls of the village, had always been sharp with Zandi. She had a quick eye and a pointed tongue, and Zandi was clumsy in aspect and affect. Bela maintained the strictest ideals of Xhosa womanhood—meekness, kindness, modesty, beauty. The effort it cost her to be correct in public, never to gossip unkindly or to say a harsh word, meant that bile built within her; and she relieved it by teasing Zandi, and pressing home her advantage when it was clear that her words wounded.

  Bela’s perfection of conduct was a byword. She herself found her beauty an obligation as much as an advantage. A girl as beautiful as she was—and she knew the quality of her looks—was a woman beloved of the Great Goddess. Bela was as fat as a pedigree veal calf nourished on wholesome food, and plenty of it, for the Jaxa clan, though poorer than the Zinis, kept a generous table and had a goat once each moon. Her skin was lustrous brown, her breasts at once heavy and pert. It was not for nothing that she had entered unawares into Sukude’s daydreams, until he could no longer conceive of a life in which he did not have her. Bela’s hair was springy and luxuriant, her hands dainty. She did her share of the housework but no more, leaving Zandi to cultivate domestic expertise as a means of standing her ground against her dazzling sister.

  It was Zandi who saw the young men approaching from the forest. She knew it was wrong for a groom to visit his bride, and yet also that such transgressions are overlooked by indulgent parents. Ntsina was with the Chief’s children and—she felt her heart flutter—a Strange One. Was he a government inspector? She had superb long-range vision, though things blurred when she held them in her hand. She could not understand the easiness of the men and called her mother, who drew her away from the window.

  Under her father’s eye, Bela wrapped a blanket about her shoulders and prepared to meet the man whose children she would bear and whose porridge she would cook until the end of her earthly life. It was in the nature of her beauty never to need preparation. She was as entrancing on waking in the morning, her hair disarrayed, as she was when dressed for the most sumptuous festival. Her breasts were bare and she drew the blanket over them, taking care nevertheless to leave enough exposed to make it clear that delights worth having were beneath.

  “You may greet him, but no more,” said her father. “I have always been able to trust you, Bela.”

  “You may trust me now,” she said. And walked with light elegance away from him, towards the farmyard gate.

  —

  IT WAS THE NIGHT after a full moon, and a silvery light blinded the stars. Luvo, Kagiso, Piet and Noni hung back, and Ntsina advanced alone. He knew Bela only from a distance. His father’s selection of her made him think more warmly of the old man. This warmth made him happy, for it is hard on a boy to distrust his own father.

  Bela was standing behind the gate. The arrangement of her blanket was perfection. The glimpse it offered of her breasts in the moonlight, the way the light shone on her strong, smooth neck, the shadow thrown by her bottom, made Ntsina stop and draw breath. The image of his wife banished all recollection of his joyless romping in Johannesburg. The rash, the itch, the consequences of sex with strangers who give themselves too readily—all this was gone forever.

  The way Bela was standing—the openness and submission of her posture, combined with a rare, fetching dignity—touched Ntsina to the quick. He yearned to protect her. He thought of making children in her, and his cock throbbed, straining against the buttons on his trousers. He did not wish to approach her for the first time unwashed after a day in the forest. He paused, and saw that the moonlight had thrown his silhouette in shadow onto the ground. He hastily put his hands in front of himself.

  But Bela had seen the shadow, and felt a tingling over her whole body.

  She had never given herself, not the smallest part of herself, not a brushed hand or a touched cheek, to any man. G
lances, of course, for the homage of youths was delightful to her. She was especially gifted in the matter of glances, and glanced towards her future husband, lifting her eyes from the ground in a manner that set Ntsina’s soul aflame. Despite himself, he advanced. He came within a few feet of her, and she caught his smell on the night breeze, and she, like every other girl in Gwadana, liked it.

  “I see you, my soon-to-be husband,” she said.

  “I see you, my soon-to-be wife,” said Ntsina. And he bowed and retreated, and then ran back to his friends in a soaring euphoria.

  —

  THEY SLEPT NEAR Bela’s homestead, on a piece of flat turf beside the vegetable patch. An elaborate pretence that Bela’s parents did not know they were there was maintained, but Zandi came out to offer them potent pink beer that tasted of sour milk. Piet did not care for it, but he understood that it would be a rejection of friendship to refuse it. So he drank two clay bowls full, and a pleasant, sated kind of drunkenness crept over him. It was clear to him that the woman serving the beer had conflicting feelings about the gorgeous teenager who had retreated to the house as the strangers entered the yard. “Are they sisters?” he asked Luvo. And when he received his answer he felt that his instincts would be as sure here as they were everywhere else.

  The fact that the first person from the village he had met was the Chief’s son struck Piet Barol as a confirmation of the good graces of the Universe. He exerted himself to be pleasant and succeeded. Kagiso was not often treated as a wise man, a fact that had begun to irk in his twenty-second year. He looked forward to commanding the attention of the council when he reported on this Strange One. Luvo’s interpretation had been accurate, but no accuracy could succeed in conveying to Kagiso the city Piet Barol had come from—half a world away, with rivers for streets. He knew the stories of the Strange Ones who had come hundreds of years before, in great sea creatures with many legs, and set the Bantu against one another. He reminded himself of this knowledge as he and Piet spoke by the fire, draining Luvo’s energy as Ntsina stared dreamily at the moon. He had to remind himself because he could not help liking this mlungu, who answered so freely and asked so many questions. Kagiso had not gone to the mines, but he had for a time worked in a timber shop in Butterworth. He had never known a white person display such an unfeigned interest in his family and the circumstances of his village.

  The night was bitterly cold, but the fire was warm. A sense of nearing his journey’s climax kept Piet awake till dawn. The trees exerted their spell on him. He must have them, and move the villagers’ ancestors to different quarters. He asked Kagiso if his father’s word was law, and was reassured when Kagiso said yes—for it is easier to persuade one man than every resident of a village. He could not know that Kagiso had said this out of pride, and that it was by no means true. A Xhosa Chief is first amongst equals: a great power but by no means an absolute one.

  As he inched closer to the fire, Piet felt sure of victory.

  —

  HAVING SECURED THE HAND of the most beautiful woman in Gwadana for his son, Sukude Zini could not wait to organize Ntsina’s wedding. This demanded the invitation of the bridegroom. With great fanfare, and a corruptible witness, he had gone to Butterworth, to its very post office, and gone inside for fifteen minutes. The witness, whose name was Lundi, was a member of the Chief’s Council and a man whose word could not easily be questioned. Sukude had gone to great lengths to keep secret his clandestine funding of Lundi’s adventures in King William’s Town, where he was well known at the taverns and whorehouses of the native location. They were not known to be friendly, and it was for this reason that Lundi was useful to Sukude.

  Lundi swore that he had seen Sukude pay a clerk to write and then send a telegram to his son at the Crown Mine. With it, he said, had gone a postal order for a train ticket—a sum of money he had taken for himself, as the price of his compliance. It was Lundi’s duty to travel to King William’s Town in a week’s time, and from there to send a regretful telegram from the bridegroom, saying that he could not leave his work and suggesting that the wedding take place by proxy.

  This telegram was important, for reading was one of Nosakhe’s many mysterious powers.

  Between Sukude and his mother-in-law a complex respect had established itself over the years, its foundations more solid than they would have been had they felt any affection for one another. Sukude, with his bull strength, was not Nosakhe’s first choice for her daughter, but the child had insisted on him and she had not refused. He had been conscious of the honour it did him, a poor farmer, to be raised into the household of the descendants of the Great Founder, and he had done well by them. He had not beaten his wife, nor taken to drink, nor gone whoring in King William’s Town when the Chief had chosen him to join his delegation to the Council of Princes. Since his wife’s death, he had performed the sacred rituals Nosakhe assigned him, and only once half asked for permission to wed another woman. The look in Nosakhe’s eyes on that occasion had given him her final answer. He had now decided to claim his prize in his own way.

  Sukude began the arrangements for the feast before receiving the telegram explaining that Ntsina could not be present. It would have been suspicious to do otherwise; and the truth of it was that the closer he came to sexing Bela Jaxa, the longer each hour that separated him from having her was. Ntsina must have a marriage feast worthy of his family’s deeds. Nosakhe had been saving since the time of Ntsina’s initiation into manhood, and now had a sizeable collection of the scraps of paper for which Strange Ones hand over goods of real value. This store was also the family’s capital, and Sukude applied himself to the task of giving the most lavish feast in the cheapest possible manner.

  It is the golden rule of Xhosa hospitality that no matter how many come, supplies must never run out. Sukude knew every one of the seven hundred and thirty-eight men, women and children of Gwadana; knew who the secret and not-so-secret drinkers were, which wives went crazy at a party, and drew a careful provision list. He set six cattles aside, but would slaughter more if the need arose.

  Nosakhe watched these proceedings, and tended daily the pile of hair and toenail clippings in the corner of her hut, willing her grandson home.

  —

  THE FOREST ENDED as abruptly as it had begun. The stream they were following ran into a river, which became a lagoon as they stepped beyond the trees. Ahead was a cove of miniature perfection. The sky was grey and tinged with salt. The ocean was a deep aquamarine, the beach as round as the moon. On one side rose a steep hill, at the top of which the forest began again. To their left a promontory in the shape of a sleeping whale guarded the harbor against crashing tides.

  With pleasure, Piet realized that he had prepared sufficiently well for this moment to be able to say exactly the right thing to his companion: “Ubuhle obunje.” Kagiso was touched to the heart to hear these words in his own language—for Piet had said, “What beauty.”

  “Tell the Strange One he has one more hill to climb,” said Ntsina to Luvo. “My homestead has the best view.”

  It was true. But the escarpment was so steep Luvo felt like the last portion of the journey took as much resilience as all that had gone before. The hill seemed never to end. The path was slippery with salt. His pack grew heavier with each step, but the men around him were so strong he could not bear to show weakness. Piet was entranced. “Ask Ntsina when he is to be married,” he said to Luvo. But Luvo pretended not to hear.

  At the top of the escarpment the ground leveled abruptly. Ahead was a stately homestead. Ntsina was proud of the perfection of the goat fence, which unlike so many fences of the village ran in straight lines. They went under the gate. Beyond was a cattle kraal, and beyond that latrines and two vegetable gardens. Several round thatched huts were placed in the enclosure, within a few steps of one another; and right at the back, beyond the gardens, was one larger hut, alone at the edge of the cliff.

  Ntsina took them to the nearest hut and threw open the door. It was a tidy k
itchen. He was calling the word “Nosakhe.” Piet had no idea what it meant, but he heard joy in Ntsina’s tone. Ntsina called and called, going from one hut to another. Then at last he turned to Luvo and said: “The spirits wish me to greet my father first.” And he went to the lonely hut beyond the vegetable gardens, and knocked.

  Stupefaction, then ferocious disappointment, then fear: these were the emotions Sukude went through as he raised himself to his full height and greeted his son. Lundi was already in King William’s Town. At any moment he might deliver a telegram explaining that Ntsina could not be present for his wedding. He tried to decide what precautions he might take, while he bade Luvo and Piet welcome.

  To have a white man incarnated beside his son—a white man who remarked politely how beautiful his house was, and how fine the day was, and asked him how he did, and apologised for his poor pronunciation—brought home to Sukude the strangeness of what was taking place. He knew now that his mother-in-law had cast a spell, not trusting him to ensure Ntsina’s return; and that meant that she might never have been deceived by his elaborate preparations. Up to this point in the venture, he had been safely sanctioned by custom. Were it to become clear to anyone, Nosakhe most of all, that he was thieving the love mate of another man from under him, he knew what the punishment was.

  He felt faint with terror.

  He took them into the kitchen hut, which was the centre of the Zinis’ hospitality, but he rarely ventured into Nosakhe’s domain and did not know where anything was. Fortunately Ntsina did, and soon they were all drinking the beer that the Sondela family delivered to Nosakhe twice a month, free of charge, in gratitude for her healing of their prize bull and the accident that had befallen Mr. Sondela’s former business partner at King William’s Town.

  —

  NOSAKHE WAS WALKING ALONG the barnacled rocks that had cut her feet as a girl, until they hardened into a better fitting boot than any available in the shops of the Strange Ones. She was the kindred of the Sea and she sought the Sea’s guidance. There was knowledge in the endless iteration of Her waves. She made a sound the nesting gulls knew as the call of the hairless ape who roamed their cliffs but did them no harm. It was a sound to summon the Goddess Ma, who knew all about the wicked ways of men. Lundi’s account of how he had seen Sukude send a telegram summoning Ntsina had confirmed Nosakhe’s worst suspicions of her son-in-law. No man who had actually sent a telegram would go to such lengths to provide a witness to the deed. There was a stupidity in Sukude, a brute deafness to the subtleties of life, that was the chief reason Nosakhe had not wished him to be her daughter’s mate. It was this deafness for which she was always on the lookout in Ntsina. She was severe with the boy when he daydreamed and did not hear, being mindful of his parentage. For Nosakhe did not need any Strange One to tell her about the power of heredity: one had only to look at a herd of cattles or a litter of dogs.