The Madonna of Excelsior

by Zakes Mda

  More families of farmers and businessmen were arriving. All pillars of the local Afrikaner community. The very cream of Excelsior society. And of other nearby towns such as Tweespruit, Brandfort and Verkeerdevlei. Niki could see their old bakkies or trucks and veteran Chevrolets approach on the one-kilometre stretch of road that was lined with black iron-bark bluegum trees on both sides. Then the cars would disappear, masked by Reverend Bornman’s church that looked like hands in prayer, only to appear again on Adam de Vries’s street behind the church. They parked in the street and the visitors walked in through the gate without giving Niki and Popi a second glance. They joined the sitees—a much slower dance than both the wals and the vastrap. Even with the fuel of the cherry liqueur, the dances had become languid and the laughter louder.

  The rugby-playing children had increased in number and the garden was becoming too small for them. A boy threw the ball too hard. The catcher failed to catch it. It dropped in the street and bounced until it stopped in front of Popi and Niki. The catcher ran out of the gate to get the ball. Niki knew him immediately. Tjaart Cronje. She had not seen him since he was seven. Since the days when he used to insist on being carried on her back, even though he was ridiculously big for that mode of transportation. She would indulge him because he was such a respectful boy. But she stopped when she realised that whenever he was strapped in a shawl on her back, he induced an erection and worked himself up with unseemly rhythmic movements. All that time the boy had been pretending to play horsey-horsey, he had in fact been in venereal heaven at her expense. Now here he was, a gangly lad of twelve.

  Tjaart took the ball and threw it to Popi.

  “Catch!” he said.

  Popi missed it. Tjaart laughed. She ran after the ball and got it. Instead of throwing it, she walked to him and handed it back. He looked at her closely and then at Niki. It was obvious that he no longer remembered who Niki was. Five years can be a lifetime in the memory of a boy. Also, her face had changed. The chocolate-smooth complexion was now marred by black, brown and reddish chubaba patches.

  “Why are you sitting here?” Tjaart asked.

  “I was hoping to get the bones . . . or any leftovers . . . after the party,” she said haltingly. “Something for me and my little girl.”

  “Your little girl? This can’t be your child!” said Tjaart. “She looks like a hotnot child. Like a boesman. You must have stolen her.”

  Then he ran back to his rugby game.

  But soon he came back with a slice of cake, broke it into two, and gave a piece to Niki and another one to Popi. The woman who was dancing with the dominee saw him and hurried to the gate. For the first time, Niki got a good look at her. She was face-to-face with Cornelia Cronje, Tjaart’s mother. Five years had changed her. She looked old and tired. Cornelia recognised Niki too. And glared at her. Niki glared back. Straight into Cornelia’s eyes. Niki did not cringe. She did not cast her eyes down as was expected of her. Cornelia laughed. It sounded hollow and crude. Not rich and full-bodied, like the laughter Niki knew when she worked for Cornelia all those years ago. Then deadly anger flashed in Cornelia’s eyes.

  “What the hell do you want here?” she asked.

  “I can be here, Madam Cornelia,” said Niki calmly. “It is not your house. I never go to your house.”

  “Tjaart!” cried Cornelia. “What are you doing with these people? Come back here at once!”

  Tjaart looked at his mother. And at Niki and Popi. He walked back to the rugby game.

  ALL THESE MADONNAS

  MADONNAS ALL AROUND. Exuding tenderness. Burnt umber mother in a blue shirt, squatting in a field of yellow ochre wheat. Burnt sienna baby wrapped in white lace resting between her thighs. Mother with a gaping mouth. Big oval eyes. Naked breast dangling above the baby’s head. Flaky blue suggesting a halo. Unhampered bonding of mother and child and wheat.

  Brown madonnas with big breasts. A naked madonna lying on a bed of white flowers. Her eyes are closed and her lips are twisted. Her voluptuous thighs are wide open, ready to receive drops of rain. A black pubic forest hides her nakedness. Her breasts are full and her nipples are hard. Under her arm she carries a baby wrapped in white lace. A naked madonna holds a naked child against a blue moon on a purple sky. The mother is kissing the back of the child’s head. Another madonna kneels, her head resting on the ground near the child in white lace, and her buttocks opening up to the sky. Ready to receive drops of rain. The fattest of the madonnas stands among red flowers, looking at yellow fields that cover large patches of the red and brown and green land, and that stretch for kilometres until they meet a blue and white sky. The madonna of the cosmos and sunflowers and open skies. Like all the others, she is naked. Tightly to her chest, she holds a baby wrapped in white lace.

  After twenty-five years, these naked madonnas still live. Popi tells us that they will live forever because such things never die. So will her memory of the excited trinity surrounded by canvases of naked madonnas on easels, with a naked Niki sitting on a stool holding a naked Popi. Popi thought these madonnas looked nothing like Popi-and-Niki of the flesh, even though Popi-and-Niki of the flesh had modelled for them. They were distortions of Popi-and-Niki of the flesh.

  It did not matter to Niki that the trinity failed to capture their real images. It was boom time for madonnas. Mother and child had been modelling every day for a month. Mother and child would not need to sit outside another garden party for a long time.

  Initially, Niki had been embarrassed to be seen naked by this old white man. But the trinity was gentle. At first he allowed her to pose fully clothed as he painted the madonna in a blue shirt. And the blue mother. The one with an angelic face and flowing locks like Popi’s, holding a baby who wore nothing but white socks. Then the trinity eased Niki into taking her clothes off. She cringed in shame. But when she remembered the mortifying garden party, her garments fell on the floor, one by one, until her smooth body glowed before him in all its glorious blackness.

  It was not the first time a white man had seen her naked. But this one was different. He did not seem to see her nakedness, even though he painted it.

  IN THE VERY BEGINNING,

  THERE WERE THREE NAÏVE GIRLS

  HERE IN THE Free State the sky is big. A red sun oozes out of the sky. It drips down on the yellow fields. It melts everything it touches, eliciting a feast of colour.

  Thirty-five years ago, the sky was just as big. The sun dripped on the yellow fields. Colour ran amok. But the trinity’s world was of dark and sombre tonal values. Charcoal on white. Figures in tight embraces. Naked women being observed by floating heads. Flowing figures in squiggles that become lace. Three birds of prey perched on the naked buttocks of a woman. Naïve women and children in a naïve black and white world. A world of sinless doodles.

  Even then the trinity’s was clearly a male gaze. We do not forget that one of his threeness is a man.

  Three naïve girls walked out of the trinity’s naïve world. Each carried an empty sisal sack. They walked among the cosmos flowers that grew between the fields and on the edge of the road. They had no cares in the world and were singing and humming joyously. They sang about the red railway bus that took fathers, brothers and lovers to the gold mines of Welkom, leaving only the dust in Excelsior. Every time the girls came across dry cow-dung, they picked it up and put it in their sacks. And moved on in a rhythmic step in time to their song.

  One of the girls was Niki. She was eighteen years old and looked pretty as a doll in her brown pleated Terylene skirt and white frilly blouse. The only outfit she owned both for happy and sad days. She wore blue rubber sandals that we called “flops” because of the noise they made, especially when one was walking fast. Her body had the fullness of the moon. We thought she was blooming into such a unique flower, and we exclaimed so whenever we saw her. A rare flower in the middle of the desert that was Mahlatswetsa Location. Her skin was chocolate brown and smooth. It was not glossy, for she applied Pandora matt cream generously, which gav
e her face a ghostly finish. Her hair was rich and sheeny. Only the previous night she had used a red-hot stone to straighten it.

  Niki was the only one dressed in her Sunday best. She had just returned from church when her two friends, Mmampe and Maria, came to ask her to join them in a cow-dung collection expedition. She didn’t hesitate because she was running out of the essential dung that was used as fuel to cook food and warm the single-room corrugated-iron shack she shared with her father. Also, such expeditions were great fun. Girls got to enjoy the freedom of the big sky and to share the latest titbits on the ups and downs of boy-girl relationships.

  Bees were swarming on a bush, and the naïve girls kept their distance, even though next to the bush was a pile of dry dung. Swarming bees could be dangerous if they were disturbed. These were contemplating creating new brood chambers under the rocks next to the bush, so as to be near the nectar and the pollen of the sunflowers and cosmos.

  “Eeii!” screeched Mmampe.

  “What is it?” asked Niki.

  “You want to provoke the bees!” cried Maria at the same time.

  “Hairy Buttocks,” said Mmampe softly.

  It was Johannes Smit. He had materialised before them with a whip in his hand. He cracked it and laughed. Niki was scared. She wanted to run away, but the squat hairy gorilla blocked her way. Mmampe and Maria giggled. They had played this game with Johannes Smit before. Niki only knew of the game from fireside stories. She was not looking forward to it. She had heard of white farmers whose great sport was to waylay black girls in the fields. They chased them around and played harrowing games with them. She had never experienced these games herself. And now it seemed it was her turn. Hairy Buttocks was standing in front of her brandishing a whip.

  She knew Johannes Smit vaguely as the farmer her father sometimes worked for. Her father was a handyman who did “piece-jobs” for the farmers and traders in the district.

  The hirsute man with a beer belly smiled benevolently, searched the pockets of his khaki shirt, then of his khaki shorts, fished out some bank notes and gave the girls one rand each. Niki hesitated. But when she saw her friends gleefully grabbing the money, she took it too.

  Johannes Smit gave Niki another one rand note.

  “This is for your mother,” he said in Sesotho.

  Niki took it, even though she expected Johannes Smit to know that her mother had died many years ago. Surely her father must have told him when working for him.

  He gave her yet another one rand note.

  “This is for your father.”

  The two naïve girls gave Niki knowing winks.

  “He wants you,” whispered Mmampe.

  Johannes Smit cracked the whip in Niki’s direction.

  “Follow me,” he commanded.

  Niki just froze.

  “Don’t be foolish, Niki,” said Maria. “He will give you more money.”

  “Then why don’t you go with him yourself?” asked Niki.

  “He wants you, not me,” said Maria.

  “He chose you,” added Mmampe.

  Johannes Smit grabbed Niki by the arm and dragged her into the sunflower field.

  “You wait there and whistle if you see people approaching,” he barked to the two girls.

  Deep in the sunflower field, Johannes Smit pulled off Niki’s Terylene skirt. She tried to hold on to it, but he had the strength of ten demons. He threw her on the damp ground. Then he pulled down her panties and took them off. He sniffed them, which seemed to raise more demons in his quivering body. He stuffed the panties into his pocket.

  Yellowness ran amok. Yellowness dripped down with her screams. He slapped her and ordered her to shut up. Her screams were now muffled with his hand on her mouth. His pants were at his ankles. He lay on top of her and pleaded, “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. But if you make noise, people will come and spoil our fun.”

  Niki wept softly as his hardness touched her thighs. Intense heat sucked out his slimy seed before he could penetrate her. He cursed his pipe as it leaked all over her. He damned its sudden limpness. He just lay there like a plastic bag full of decaying tripe on top of her. She heaved him off her body and jumped up. She grabbed her skirt and ran like a tornado, destroying a swathe of sunflowers in her wake. Johannes Smit’s accomplices called after her, “Niki! Niki! Wait for us!”

  At home she got under the blankets and cried for a long time, until she fell asleep. She woke when her father arrived in the evening, drunk as usual. He was fuming because she had not cooked any food. She tried to explain that she was not feeling well. And in any case, there was no food to cook because he had not left her any money. But he was not prepared to listen to any lame excuses. He was going to beat the laziness out of her. He was going to lash her buttocks with a belt until they were sour. To placate him, she ran to the tuck shop and used Johannes Smit’s money to buy her father a loaf of bread and a big can of pilchards in tomato sauce.

  There was a lot of change left over.

  MARIA AND MMAMPE CAME the following day. They were eager to lap up every morsel of gossip.

  “How did things go with Hairy Buttocks?” Maria wanted to know.

  At first Niki did not want to speak to them. She accused them of being traitors. They must have knowingly led her into a trap. They, of course, denied having been Hairy Buttocks’ agents. They bubbled with excitement until they melted her anger.

  “Did it enter?” asked Mmampe.

  “No . . . it just . . . it just . . .”

  The two girls shook the corrugated-iron shack with shrieks of laughter.

  “It never enters,” said Mmampe.

  “His desire is only in the heart,” explained Maria, “but his manhood always fails him.”

  “It happens like that with all the girls he has seduced with money,” said Mmampe.

  “Perhaps we should call him Limp Stick in addition to Hairy Buttocks,” suggested Maria.

  “Or Sleeping Horn,” said Mmampe.

  “Lame Horn.”

  “Horn of Sorrow.”

  Niki was not amused. “I am going to report him,” she cried. “I am going to tell the police about what he has done to me.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Niki,” admonished Mmampe. “Do you think the police will believe you had nothing to do with it? You took his money, didn’t you? They will arrest you and charge you with the Immorality Act. Haven’t you heard of black women who are in jail for sleeping with white men?”

  “But he forced me! You were there! You saw it happen!”

  “He will deny everything,” said Mmampe. “And we didn’t see either. We were not in the sunflower field with you. Don’t be stupid, Niki. You can make a lot of money from this foolish white man. Just give him what he wants and eat the money.”

  “For sure he’ll be back,” added Maria, laughing. “Just take the money and let the man water your thighs.”

  HE CAME BACK. That very afternoon. A child came in and said there was a white man in a battered bakkie outside, looking for Niki’s father.

  “Tell him he is not here,” said Niki. “He can go and search for him in all the shebeens of this location.”

  The child came back again.

  “He is calling you.”

  “Tell him to go to hell.”

  But Johannes Smit did not go to hell. He walked into the shack instead.

  “What do you want?” asked Niki.

  “I am returning your broeks,” said Johannes Smit, throwing her panties at her. She did not catch them. They fell on the cow-dung floor.

  “If you try anything, I’ll scream,” threatened Niki.

  “Is that the way to welcome your lover?” demanded Johannes Smit.

  He leapt at her. She jumped away and ran out of the door.

  JOHANNES SMIT WAS a persistent man. His offers of cash mounted with her stubbornness, until her good friends prevailed on her. After all, it would not enter, they assured her. A full stomach at bedtime and new leather shoes under the bed would be wor
th the filth on her thighs. She relented. On every occasion in the yellow fields, she just lay there and became a masturbation gadget. Then she went home and secretly wept while she bathed him off her body. But he was an obstinate stain.

  To his utter amazement one day he entered her, rupturing and haemorrhaging her maidenhood. He howled that he was dying such a beautiful death. She tried to vomit him out. Only the last meal and bitter bile came out. For many days she tried. For many days, only half-digested food came out.

  She vowed: never again!

  His thirst for her could not be quenched, while she imagined the most cruel death for him.

  THE WEDDING

  THE BRIDE is in turquoise calf-length taffeta. The scrappy palette-knife-created white lace that hangs from her head right down to her powder-blue shoes makes her look very delicate. She wears a crown of purple and white cosmos blooms. A shoeless full-figured woman is giving the bride a cuddle. She is saved from total nakedness by a pink giant cosmos that covers her jewel like Eve’s leaf of shame. Another giant cosmos grows out of the fissure of her buttocks. She also wears a crown of cosmos. Big feet. At last the toes!

  The round-eyed groom is in brown overalls and yellow woollen cap. His face is well fed and is round like his eyes. He steps gingerly on the yellow ochre mud in his black rubber boots. A naked bridesmaid embraces him tightly. Her thick thigh is raised to his stomach. Another naked bridesmaid is tickling his ear with a pink cosmos. Full figures. Round stomachs. Each of the women wears a white lace veil that flows to the ground and has pink cosmos attached to it. The frills are tattered. The women’s bare feet are attached to elephantiasis legs. They stamp on the yellow ochre mud with stern dignity. They too have toes!