The Madonna of Excelsior

by Zakes Mda

  Three blue moons shine out of a violet sky.

  Earlier that morning vows were made and papers were signed before the minister, who had taken the opportunity to complain about the leaking roof of the church and the tightfistedness of his congregation. Now opposing sides stamped on the yellow ochre mud. It had rained all morning. Rain always came with blessings. The wedding was blessed. Girls and boys from the groom’s side sang of the blessings. But the blessings were wasted, they lamented tunefully, as the handsome Pule was marrying this Niki, who was world-famous for her laziness. The beautiful round-faced Pule was going to die of hunger as soon as he set up house with this clumsy Niki. They danced around the blessed couple as they heaped scorn on the bride. Boys and girls from the bride’s side responded with their own musical derision. Pule, they sang, was so ugly that when he walked out of the house at midday, the sun was bound to set and the world would be covered in darkness. His was the ugliness that banished the light of day. How could Pule think that he deserved a seponono—a woman of soaring beauty and dimpled smiles—like Niki?

  For the whole day, the bride and the groom’s parties threw verbal mud at each other. Each side had spent every evening for one whole month practising new songs that would excel in mocking the other side. Biting songs under a fluttering white flag that had announced the wedding for weeks in advance.

  After thoroughly disparaging each other, both parties settled down in an old red and white marquee and shared mutton, samp, beetroot, ginger beer and cookies. Boys and girls exchanged addresses. Other weddings could result, since weddings gave birth to more weddings. Just like funerals.

  IN THE WHITES-ONLY pub of Excelsior Hotel, Johannes Smit drank himself silly and cried real tears into his frothy beer.

  That evening, Pule took his new bride to her new home: a brand new shack built of shimmering corrugated-iron sheets a few streets from the old shack she had shared with her drunken father. On a moseme grass mat—the only furnishing in the house—he spread layers of blankets. Grey, purple and fawn. She sank into the store-smelling softness. While the song of the bridesmaids gibed and taunted outside, she sucked him in. He danced inside her like a whirlwind, until they both exploded. The hollowness that had existed since the yellowness dripped with her screams was filled. The stubborn stain was bleached away. Once more she was whole. Once more she belonged to herself. And she gave herself permission to share herself with someone else.

  The following day, Pule boarded the red railway bus back to Welkom. There to be drained by the gold that he extracted from the dust of the depths of the earth.

  JOHANNES SMIT CONTINUED to be a slave to his secret desires. She shooed him away. His unrequited shadow dogged her path. It loomed large even when she got a job at Excelsior Slaghuis, Stephanus Cronje’s butchery. She was one of five women who kept the butchery clean, cut the meat, weighed it and generally served the customers. But, of course, none of them were allowed near the till. Cornelia Cronje herself—Madam Cornelia to Niki and the other “girls”—sat behind the till. Sometimes her husband, Stephanus Cronje, manned it. Niki’s special assignment involved acting as a nanny to young Tjaart Cronje, in addition to her work at the butchery.

  Johannes Smit took to buying meat at odd times. And made a point of being served by Niki. When his deep freeze was full of meat, he took to visiting Stephanus Cronje at work, even though everyone knew that their politics had taken divergent routes. Stephanus Cronje was the secretary of the local branch of the ruling National Party and the mayor of Excelsior. Johannes Smit had recently abandoned the National Party to join the breakaway Her-stigte Nasionale Party, an ultra-conservative political grouping of those Afrikaners who felt that their formerly beloved National Party had become too soft and liberal towards blacks, and was beginning to relax some of the more stringent but God-given apartheid laws.

  Stephanus Cronje thought Johannes Smit was beginning to regret the errors of his ways and wanted to return to the fold. He did not notice that during these visits Johannes Smit always tried to catch Niki’s eye, and would then furtively wave some bank notes at her. Niki would ignore him. She continued to ignore him when he followed her and the other women in his battered bakkie on their way back to Mahlatswetsa after knocking off work. These women, who sometimes included Mmampe and Maria, knew all about Hairy Buttocks and took his misery as something that enriched their lives with laughter.

  Niki, on the other hand, found this attention irritating. Inside her another life was ticking. She wanted to think only of its expected kicks in a few months’ time, and not of things that reminded her of her humiliation.

  BLUE AND RED dominate. Three women are surrounded by white light. White against a blue wall and a blue skewed window. One has a blue face and wears a blue doek on her head and a blue shawl over her shoulders. The second woman has a red face with tinges of grey. She wears red lipstick and a red and blue blanket. A blue woollen cap sits on her head. The third woman has a black face and red eyes from which flow red tears. She wears a red T-shirt and a red beret.

  The three women are standing next to the bed on which recline the figures of a blue-faced woman and a newly-born baby. Both she and the baby wear blue woollen caps. Their heads rest peacefully on a fluffy white pillow. The mother is covered in a red and blue blanket and the baby is in white. Next to the bed is a side table on which rests a red clay pot and a white bottle. The mother and child are fast asleep while the three women stand guard over them.

  The baby boy was Viliki, a product of whirlwinds and explosions.

  SHE IS HOLDING THE SUN

  SHE IS HOLDING the sun entwined in her arms. It is blazing red. With streaks of yellow. She is all impasto black and blue and yellow. The sun glows through her body, giving it patches of fluorescent red. She sits like a Buddha embracing the sun. She is wide awake, for night has passed. The whites of her eyes are milky white and the pupils are black like the night. Everything around her is fiery red. The sky is red. The ground is red. Rivers of white run on the red ground. Broad strokes. She is dark and sinister. And beautiful. Under her impasto sun, plants are wilting.

  Johannes Smit was distracted by an infernal drought that was incinerating parts of the Free State. And the aphids that were having a field day on his spring wheat crop. These destructive partners were surely going to lessen the yield. An average of only four bags per hectare instead of the usual eight. Subterranean rivers were drying up, and the veld was turning into a smouldering desert. A westerly wind was blowing. A sure sign that the drought was in no hurry to go. To add to his woes, a freak hailstorm hit the area, causing further damage to his crop.

  Like Johannes Smit, all the farmers in the district were crying. And when the farmers cried, the people of Mahlatswetsa cried too. Their livelihoods depended on the grace of weather. Perhaps in December the rains would come. A promise of a good maize harvest. In the meantime, farmers shed what they considered to be excess workforce. Johannes Smit focused on how he was going to repay the Land Bank loan and forgot about Niki.

  Niki survived the scorching sun because Tjaart had grown addicted to her back. Viliki toddled by her side. Viliki wondered why he was not the one strapped on his mother’s back. Why the big white boy—five times his size—was the one riding his mother and shouting, “Horsey! Horsey!”

  THE PAN

  THERE IS NOTHING muted about these reds and yellows and blues. An impasto world glares at you noisily. But this is not the kind of noise that turns your insides. It is not discordant. It does not grate on the eye. It is a saintly noise.

  People walk out of the skewed houses that form a circle. A blue church completes the circle. The houses are pink with cobalt blue doors. People are floating to the church. People with black faces, each holding a giant white flower. Blank faces. A man in a crimson jump suit, brown shoes and brown conical Basotho hat. A woman in a crimson dress and brown beret. She has no feet. A man in a pink jump suit and brown woollen cap. Footless women in blue skirts and red blouses. Their faces are just black blob
s. A woman in a long white dress and white veil leads the procession into the church. The procession glides augustly on the raw sienna path. Blazing light surrounds the solemn procession. Absorbing the devout into a halo of yellowness.

  Three giant white flowers grow in front of the church. The blue tower is capped by a black spire that pierces the purple sky into heaven. The sky has streaks of pink and yellow clouds. And a dull yellow ochre sun with a broad black outline.

  We saw Niki walk past the church. Viliki was trudging behind her. Three-year-old Viliki. All spruced up in his black shorts and khaki shirt and shoeless feet that had acquired a pink colour after being freshly scrubbed to remove thick layers of black dirt.

  Niki was well-scrubbed herself. At twenty-two, she drowned the hearts of Mahlatswetsa in a vortex of desire. But she was unreachable. She could not save them from certain death. She was Pule’s wife. Pule, whose very name spoke of many rains. Old Pule who had been married before. And was deserted. Or did he desert?

  Shame. Niki was loved so much. You could see it even from the way she walked. Like someone who is loved. Shame. She had a husband who dressed her so well. She glowed in a red two-piece costume with blinding silver buttons and a Terylene cream-white blouse. Her face glowed from Super Rose skin lightening lotion. She had long discarded the cheaper Pandora matt. One of the perks of being married to a man who burrowed in the earth for the white man’s gold. Her hair gleamed with braids of very thin lines. A style known as essence because it was first seen on models that appeared in an African-American magazine called Essence. Shame. Pule spoilt his young beautiful wife. There was no way she could dress herself and braid her hair like that from her earnings at Excelsior Slaghuis. We all knew how tightfisted the Boers of Excelsior were.

  This was our church. It was Niki’s church. She belonged here. As she passed, she could hear seeping through the porous walls a hymn about God’s amazing grace that distinguished itself by its sweetness. If she had been inside she would also be singing about the amazing grace, while Viliki would be snuffing out with his little thumb termites that traced their path across the aisle up the pew in front of him. She would slap his hand and he would stop. But soon the massacre would resume. Viliki was always bored by solemnity.

  She knew by heart what would follow the hymn. The minister would speak of how the meek would inherit the earth and the poor in spirit would see the kingdom of heaven. How those who were oppressed and persecuted would get their reward in heaven. They were the salt of the earth and the light of the world. But in the meantime, he would plead, while they were still on earth preparing for their inheritance in heaven, it was necessary that the leaking roof of the house of the Lord be repaired. Was it because of the congregation’s meanness of spirit that even though over the years appeals had been made for funds to repair the roof, very little had been raised? How did the congregation think the Lord felt about being praised in a dilapidated building with a leaking roof and cracked walls with peeling paint? The congregation would respond with amens. But only small brown coins would find their way into the collection plate.

  It was like that every Sunday.

  Today Niki was going to another church, the one in town. A distance of twenty minutes at an easy pace. Fifteen minutes if she didn’t have someone slowing her down. The Reverend François Bornman’s beautiful church built of sandstone and roofed with black slate. Everyone said it was shaped like hands in prayer, but Niki did not see any of that. Often she had tried to work out how exactly the strange architecture translated into hands in anything, let alone prayer.

  She got there just as the final bell was tolling. She was right on time for the service. Worshippers in colourful floral dresses and grey suits were scurrying into the church. Some betrayed the fact that they were first-time visitors by pausing to read the inscription on a marble panel next to the door: Tot Eer van God is hierdie steen gelê dew Ds J.G. Strydom, Jehova Shamma, Die Woning van God, Ezfich 48–35B. In honour of God, this stone was laid by J.G. Strydom—the Lion of the North who was the Prime Minister of South Africa from 1954 to 1958, and made certain that he did not make equal what God had not made equal. He who confirmed to his people: As a Calvinist people we Afrikaners have, in accordance with our faith in the Word of God, developed a policy condemning all equality and mongrelisation between White and Black. God’s Word teaches us, after all, that He willed into being separate nations, colours and languages. The house of God.

  Niki and Viliki stood outside the gate where they would remain for the rest of the service. It was the nagmaal service, so named after the days when Afrikaners trekked from their distant farms into the towns every few months to attend the evening service in which rites of the Last Supper—the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine—were revisited. Niki was able to catch waves of what was going on inside the church, and she became part of it. She joined the Afrikaners in singing about God’s amazing grace that was also very sweet. The red amaryllis—belladonna lilies indigenous to this part of the world—attested to this grace. And so did the clean paved surroundings, sanctified by the organ that backed the angelic voices. The amaryllis bowed their heads along the knee-high wrought-iron fence that surrounded the church. Niki and Viliki bowed their heads too. They stood up when it was time for standing up. They sat when it was time for sitting. She listened attentively to the Reverend Bornman’s booming sermon. She was uplifted by St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Praise the Lord that the door had been mercifully left open so that her ears could feast on His Word!

  Thus she became part of the Great Fellowship.

  All this solemnity bored Viliki. He broke away from the holy rites. While Niki sang the Afrikaans hymns, he clambered on the sandstone column near the gate, and traced with his forefinger the names engraved on the marble panel. Under the heading: Eeufees Ossewatrek 22 Oct. 1938 was a list of the names of the distinguished citizens of Excelsior who had participated in the wonderful commemoration of the centenary of the Great Trek. They were among a group of Afrikaners who re-enacted the great event of 1838 by trekking from Cape Town into the interior of South Africa with ox-wagons. Viliki’s reading skills were not advanced enough to decipher some of the prominent surnames in the district.

  Niki sat, stood and bowed her head—as the ceremony demanded —through the Bible readings and the paeans and the sharing of bread and wine. In spirit she devoured the body of Christ and imbibed His blood. She listened to the announcements and sang the final hymn.

  Then the church’s hands opened up, and spilled a flood of rejuvenated worshippers onto the fulfilled paving. Niki could see the Reverend François Bornman shaking hands with his flock, who were obviously congratulating him on an inspiring sermon. The Reverend Bornman in his shimmering black suit and snow-white tie. There was Johannes Smit in an ill-fitting brown suit cracking a joke with the doddering farmer, Groot-Jan Lombard. Smit did not seem to be aware that his beer belly had grown bigger and that he therefore needed clothes a few sizes larger. Niki was glad that he no longer bothered her. Maybe he had found someone else to be obsessed with. There was Sergeant Klein-Jan Lombard and his wife, Liezl, shaking hands with the Reverend. There was Adam de Vries and his wife, Lizette, walking out of the gate to their house, which was just behind the church.

  Adam de Vries always had a kind word for everyone. As he passed Niki, he smiled and asked, “Did you enjoy the service?”

  “It was good, my baas,” responded Niki.

  There was Stephanus Cronje, his wife, Cornelia, and their son Tjaart. Seven-year-old Tjaart looked like a grown-up in a navy blue suit, white shirt and grey tie. He saw Niki and Viliki at the gate, and ran to join them.

  “So, what are we going to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Niki. “You’ll think of something.”

  “I know!” said Tjaart excitedly. “You can carry me on your back.”

/>   “No, I will not do that.”

  “Come on, Niki! Horsey-horsey!”

  “Never!”

  The boy sulked. Viliki wondered why his mother had lost interest in Tjaart’s horsey-horsey game and why she never played it with her own son.

  After shaking hands with the Reverend, and with a few friends, Stephanus Cronje and Cornelia went to the gate.

  “It was a beautiful service, wasn’t it?” said Stephanus Cronje.

  “It was very beautiful,” said Niki.

  “We are grateful you agreed to look after Tjaart even though it’s a Sunday,” said Madam Cornelia.

  “We’ll make it worth your while,” added Stephanus Cronje.

  They walked to their Chevrolet across the street and drove away to a volkskongres—a people’s congress—which was going to be addressed by a cabinet minister in the neighbouring town of Clo-colan.

  PULE SAT on the bed motionlessly, staring at the door. Like a wild cat waiting to pounce on its prey. His head almost touched the roof because the bed had been raised with big paint cans filled with soil to make it more imposing than it really was. And to create enough room under it for the two suitcases that were full of clothes and bedlinen. The double bed with a velveteen-covered headboard dominated the room, making a green “kitchen scheme” table with three chairs cower at one corner, and a small pine cupboard with plates, pots and utensils crouch at another.

  Even as Niki entered, leaving the boys to play outside, she was apologising for being late. Three o’clock and he had not eaten lunch yet. She had had to go to the church in town because her employers wanted her to look after their son, she explained. She had had to go to Stephanus Cronje’s house first to feed Tjaart and to make him change his church clothes. She was supposed to look after the boy at his home. But she just had to come back because she knew that her husband would be hungry too.