The Madonna of Excelsior

by Zakes Mda

  He did not respond. He just sat there and expanded like a bullfrog. Niki imagined him exploding into smithereens. And her picking up the pieces. A different kind of an explosion to the one that happened whenever their bodies were bound together. She was getting used to a sulky Pule. They had been married for over four years now, and he came home from the mines of Welkom every long weekend. He had gradually lost his humour. His face had become harder and colder with every visit. After being drained by gold, he brought back to Excelsior a body that had gone dry of smiles.

  “I’ll fry you eggs quickly,” said Niki.

  Still he did not speak.

  She pumped the Primus stove and fried him two eggs in an old pan that was twisted and wobbly. She served him the eggs with four slices of bread on a china plate. The white Sunday plate with blue pagodas and blue boats and blue pagoda-trees and blue dragons. Weekday plates were enamel plates. With great deliberation and ceremony he stood up from the bed, went to the “kitchen scheme” table, took the plate of food and smashed it on the floor. Eggs and bits of china spattered all over the cow-dung floor.

  “It is Sunday today,” he shouted. “Every working man in South Africa is eating meat and rice for lunch. And even beetroot. What happened to the meat I brought from Welkom? You are not even ashamed to serve me this rubbish on a Sunday plate! Why am I not eating meat like all decent human beings?”

  “I thought you would be too hungry to wait for meat,” pleaded Niki.

  “For whom were you planning to cook that meat when I am gone back to Welkom tomorrow? For your boyfriends?”

  She did not answer. Instead she reached for a broom and tried to sweep up the mess on the floor.

  “Ja, so it is true! You are hoarding my meat for your boyfriends!”

  Niki was getting irritated. She had always been faithful to Pule. Now he was assigning motives again. That was the major problem in their marriage. Whenever she did something he did not like, however innocently, he assigned a motive for her actions. And however much she denied his accusations, the assigned motive would stick. It would be the gospel truth as far as he was concerned. He never tried to find out from her the reasons for her actions. He knew exactly why she did whatever she did. And the motives he concocted were always sinister. She was always plotting some evil. Anthills became mountains when one was always suspicious of the motivations of the other. Shadows of bushes in the moonlight became assassins.

  Only six months ago, he had promised that he would never do it again.

  Six months ago she had come home late from work. Stephanus Cronje’s unpaid overtime. Pule decided there and then that she was late because she had been sleeping with white men. “Stories are told of black maids who sleep with their white masters,” he said. “You must be one of them.”

  She pleaded her innocence. She tried to hold him in her arms to assure him that she would never do such a thing. But he violently pushed her away and slapped her, shouting, “Get away from me! You smell of white men!”

  She was Johannes Smit in Pule’s eyes. She saw the uncontrollable yellowness of the sunflower fields. There was the overwhelming smell of Johannes Smit in the shack. Tears swelled in her eyes as she packed her clothes and Viliki’s into a plastic bag. She then left with her son to live with relatives in Thaba Nchu.

  Pule remained stewing in misery. He really loved Niki and he missed her. He went back to the mines of Welkom. And then returned to an empty shack. He sent his relatives to Thaba Nchu to plead with Niki to come back. He made endless promises and undertakings that he would never hit her again.

  Niki finally decided to go back to her husband. Till death do us part. There was no one at home. She had her own key. Deep in the night he came home singing spiritedly. A drunken female voice accompanied his song. A woman he had picked up at some shebeen as his provision for the night. Take-aways. One-night stress-relief. Balm to a hurting soul. He opened the door without wondering why he had left it unlocked. He struck a match and lit the candle. He uttered one sharp curse. Niki was sitting at the “kitchen scheme” table. Viliki was dozing on the bed. He was up in no time.

  “I am leaving you, Pule, and this time it is going to be forever,” cried Niki.

  “Please, Niki, don’t go,” Pule pleaded. “There is nothing between this woman and me. I don’t even know her name.”

  “But you were going to sleep with her, weren’t you? On my bed too!”

  “You scoundrel you!” the other woman shouted at Pule. “You didn’t tell me you had a letekatse—a whore—waiting for you at home!”

  Niki grabbed Viliki’s hand and made to go. Pule closed the door with his huge frame and begged her not to go. The other woman, sensing victory, added her own view that she should indeed go.

  “I’ll stay only if you hit your girlfriend,” Niki finally said.

  Both Pule and the other woman looked at Niki in astonishment.

  “Come on, beat her up,” Niki demanded.

  “Beat her up? But she has not done anything.”

  “I had not done anything either when you slapped me,” said Niki calmly.

  “I can’t just beat her up, Niki,” protested Pule.

  “You just try to beat me up, you’ll see the eyes of a worm,” threatened the other woman. She was nevertheless reversing towards the door.

  Pule slapped her twice. She ran out screaming that people were trying to kill her for nothing. She stood outside, a safe distance from the shack, and hurled insults at the couple, for all the neighbourhood to hear. She was emphatic that it was Pule’s loss, because not even in his dreams would he ever taste what she had been going to give him. When it seemed no one was paying her any attention, she finally walked away, still yelling things about their private parts that would render the innocent deaf.

  Pule had on that night promised he would stop blaming her for things she knew nothing about. And so she and Viliki had stayed.

  But Pule did not keep his promise. Here he was again assigning motives.

  “Now you tell me that I have boyfriends. Did you give them to me?” asked Niki in a sarcastic tone.

  Viliki led Tjaart into the house, enticed by the prospect of war.

  “They are going to fight,” said Viliki to Tjaart.

  “Who is going to win?” asked Tjaart, looking forward to a good boxing match.

  “Papa is going to win. Then we’ll leave him and go to Thaba Nchu where we’ll stay in a real house and not a shack,” said Viliki, looking forward to another long journey.

  He felt very important. Very superior. After all, he allowed the big white boy to share his mother. The big white boy could boast about his bicycle, which he promised to let Viliki ride when he grew older. He too had something to boast about: his mother. When he grew older, he would ride Tjaart’s bicycle while Tjaart rode his mother. And now here was another thing to feel superior about: he was going to entertain Tjaart to the spectacle of a fight between his parents.

  “Why did you bring this boertjie boy here?” exploded Pule.

  “Please children, go and play outside,” said Niki, pushing the reluctant boys out.

  “It is not enough that you spend all your time attending to the whims of these people, now you have to bring their brat here!” cried Pule.

  Niki did not respond. She resumed sweeping the floor.

  After cleaning up all the mess, and throwing it into the dustbin outside, she poured some sunflower oil into the pan and fried three big chunks of meat. The pan wobbled on the Primus stove as the hot fat splattered on the table. She looked at the pan with undisguised contempt. It had been used by Pule’s first wife, until they divorced. Then it was used by a string of girlfriends. Now it was her turn to use it. The pan yoked her to all the previous women in his life.

  She said under her breath, “One day, I’ll go and leave him with this pan.”

  THE BIG SKY IS BEREFT OF STARS

  IT WAS BEFORE Popi’s time. So these are things that she heard from those of us who saw them happen, even thou
gh today she relates them as if she herself witnessed them. She is no sciolist. She can indeed experience them in the immortal world that the trinity has bequeathed us. She is able to become part of whole lives that are frozen and rendered timeless. A memoir that conveys our yesterdays in the continuing present.

  She experiences how the villagers, to their utmost sadness, discovered that there were no stars in the sky. Men and women stood outside their skewed yellow houses one blue night, and raised their eyes to the big sky. They pointed up and lamented that the sky was bereft of stars. A lonely full moon rose behind distant hills. Fumbling in a sky that had no stars. A yellow moon fluttering its cloudy wings above yellow hills.

  The villagers stood outside their black-roofed houses, listening to the restlessness of the night. And to the sweeping rhythms of their clustered houses that leaned in directions that were determined by fickle winds. Then a giant with a boyish face appeared. A giant in a red hat and red boots and yellow overalls. He carried over his shoulder a big star attached to a stick. He jumped over the roofs of the houses bringing the star to the village, flooding the skewed houses with titanium white light.

  The friendly giant transformed the blues and yellows into a scintillating light-filled land of promise. A world conceived of beautiful madness. Had he lived here, the trinity once surmised, Vincent van Gogh would have gone mad even earlier.

  Niki was mad for a different reason. A different kind of madness. Many months had passed without Pule coming home from the mines of Welkom. White man’s gold in the earth held him in its bosom, making him desert his family in Excelsior. Although he hadn’t really deserted it. He sent Niki money every month. “She will see my money,” he told his mates while sweating in the dark tunnels, “but she will not see me until such time that she learns to appreciate me. You are right, my friends, I have spoilt her by going home every long weekend.”

  Mmampe and Maria applied a soothing balm to her loneliness by making her aware that Pule’s conduct was quite normal. Most men came home only once a year. Those with a higher sense of responsibility came twice a year. It was abnormal behaviour to come home every long weekend. It was the behaviour of a man possessed by demons of jealousy. A man who didn’t trust that his wife could be left to her own devices for any length of time without getting into miscliief. It was not his love, but his tight leash on her that had made him come home so often. Niki should just be happy that, unlike many other men, Pule supported his family.

  And he sent not only money. He sent clothes for Niki and Viliki as well. Two-piece costumes with broad figure-belts. Genuine leather shoes and school uniforms. Things for the house too. Floral duvets for the bed and plastic tablecloths for the “kitchen scheme” table. He even sent a china dinner set, with a note that he was replacing the Sunday plate that he had broken in a fit of temper months before. It was blue and white like the broken plate. But it didn’t have pagodas. He couldn’t get one with pagodas. It had flowers instead. Now Niki had a whole set of Sunday plates.

  Mmampe and Maria became wary of visiting her because every time they came, she showed them new things that Pule had sent. Or that she had bought with money sent by him. It became a great strain to sit through these crass displays of wealth.

  We thought Niki would resign from the butchery, sit down and eat Pule’s money. But she continued to work at Excelsior Slaghuis and to look after Tjaart. Even after shameful things were done to her.

  CORNELIA CRONJE HAD started a new custom of weighing workers twice a day to make sure they were not stealing any of her meat. The morning clock-in weight had to tally with the afternoon clock-off weight. Any discrepancy meant that there was some chicanery somewhere.

  Niki clocked in one morning and stepped on the black iron heavy-duty floor scale. Her weight was recorded at 61 kilograms. A good weight for a mother of one who still kept the body of her maidenhood.

  It was at the end of the month. Workers had received their wages and pensioners their old-age pensions. The butchery was a necessary stop-off whenever people had bank notes burning in their purses and pockets. So, it was a busy day for Niki and the other workers. She could only eat her lunch at four o’clock in the afternoon, an hour before knocking off. She was very hungry. She stuffed herself with a lot of pap and meat, generously supplied by the Cronjes to all their workers every lunchtime.

  At five it was time to go. As usual she stepped on the scale while Cornelia Cronje recorded her weight. It was 62 kilograms.

  “You are hiding something,” said Cornelia Cronje.

  “It is not true, Madam Cornelia,” protested Niki. “I am not hiding anything.”

  “Your weight was 61 kilograms in the morning. It can’t just increase by a kilo for nothing. You must be hiding meat under your dress,” insisted Madam Cornelia.

  Curious workers crowded around them. They wondered among themselves: how could Niki be so foolish? Didn’t she know that the penalty for theft was instant dismissal? How could she play with her job like this when jobs were so scarce in Excelsior? Was she not aware that the scale would catch her out? The scale never lied.

  Madam Cornelia was determined to teach Niki a lesson. And to teach the other workers by example. She ordered her to strip. Right there in front of everyone. When she hesitated, Madam Cornelia threatened to lock her up in the cold room with all the carcasses, as it was obvious that she loved meat so much that she had now become a meat thief. Niki peeled off her pink overall and then her mauve dress. She stood in her white petticoat and protested once more that she was not hiding any meat on her person. Then she peeled off the petticoat and stood in her pink knickers and fawn bra.

  “Raise your arms,” ordered Madam Cornelia.

  She did.

  No chunks of meat rained from her unshaved armpits.

  “Take them off, Niki,” insisted Madam Cornelia. “Everything! You must be hiding it in your knickers.”

  No meat hiding in her bra. Only stained cotton-wool hiding in her knickers.

  She stood there like the day she was born. Except that when she was born, there was no shame in her. No hurt. No embarrassment. She raised her eyes and saw among the oglers Stephanus Cronje in his khaki safari suit and brown sandals. And little Tjaart. Little Tjaart in his neat school uniform of grey shorts, white shirt, green tie and a grey blazer with green stripes. Grey knee-length socks and black shoes. Little Tjaart of the horsey-horsey game. His father had just fetched him from school. And here he was. Here they were. Raping her with their eyes.

  “Magtig Niki,” said Madam Cornelia, “where did the kilo come from?”

  And she burst out laughing as if it was a big joke. Everyone giggled. Including Niki. But there was no laughter in her eyes.

  She put on her clothes and went tamely home.

  Niki’s triangular pubes loomed large in Tjaart Cronje’s imagination. Threatening pleasures of the future. A sapling looking to the starless sky for a promise of rain. He knew already that it was the tradition of Afrikaner boys of the Free State platteland to go through devirgination rites by capturing and consuming the forbidden quarry that lurked beneath their nannies’ pink overalls.

  For Stephanus Cronje, Niki’s pubes, with their short entangled hair, became the stuff of fantasies. From that day he saw Niki only as body parts rather than as one whole person. He saw her as breasts, pubes, lips and buttocks.

  While the Cronje men were seized by the fiends of lust, anger was slowly simmering in Niki. A storm was brewing. Quietly. Calmly. Behind her serene demeanour she hid dark motives of vengeance. Woman to woman. We wondered why she did not resign from Excelsior Slaghuis after being humiliated like that. But she knew something we did not know. She was biding her time. She had no idea what she would do. Or when. In the starless nights of Mahlatswetsa Location, she was nursing an ungodly grudge.

  THE CHERRY FESTIVAL

  WE HAVE SEEN how the trinity loves donkeys. That is why this long-eared creature foolishly fills the whole space. It wears blinkers and its long tail touches the green
grass on which the ass poses like the monarch of the canvas. The fields are uncultivated. They are brown with patches of green. They stretch for miles, until they reach the small brown hill that peeps over the white horizon. There is no room for anything else, except the red cock that the ass carries in a transparent bag strapped on its back and hanging from its side. The donkey and the cock own the world.

  A blinkered donkey led the floats on a Saturday morning. It was the king of the world for that day. It wore a crown of flowers and ribbons. Red, yellow and blue ribbons. Pink and purple carnations. It was not burdened with a red cock. Instead, a black boy in a colourful Basotho blanket perched on its back. And absorbed in his little body the summer heat of the eastern Free State town of Ficksburg, near the Lesotho border. Eighty-nine kilometres from Excelsior.

  The donkey nonchalantiy led the procession from the Hennie de Wet Park down McCabe Street, into Voortrekker Street, and up Fontein Street.

  All the luminaries of Excelsior were there. They would not miss the cherry festival for anything. There was the diminutive Adam de Vries attired in a grey wash ‘n’ wear suit and grey moccasins. He was the only one of the Excelsior group who was dressed formally. He was also the only one who came with his wife. Lizette was dressed formally as well: a big straw hat shaped like a fruit bowl with plastic bananas, grapes and apples gracing it. A blue short-sleeved polyester dress with yellow flowers. White seamless nylon stockings and blue pencil-heel shoes.

  The couple had to be formal because Adam de Vries was a member of the committee that organised the cherry festival—The Jaycee Cherry Festival Committee—even though he hailed from Excelsior, which did not grow any cherries. Some Ficksburg residents complained about this. Those who wanted to hog the festival and keep it to their district. But His Worship, the Mayor of Ficksburg, told them that people like de Vries worked very hard to make the festival—only in its second year—possible. His legal services had been indispensable. In any case, when the Jaycees had decided to organise a festival around a product unique to this part of South Africa, the intention was to bring to the attention of visitors the charms of the entire region, not just of Ficksburg.