The Madonna of Excelsior

by Zakes Mda

Serenity had now descended upon Niki. She spent her mornings collecting cow-dung. And her afternoons sitting on a grass mat, watching worker bees fly in and out of the two hives that she had constructed in her backyard. Her face was scarred and cracked like a dried-up swamp experiencing a prolonged drought. Her cheeks had become very hard and discoloured even as serenity set upon her. Black and blue chubaba patches blotched the rough terrain. The hair that peeked from under her doek was grey and spiky. The whites of her eyes had lost their whiteness and turned yellowish-brown.

  Serenity rested on her shoulders like a heavy log.

  IMMERSIONS

  THESE BROWN PEOPLE ARE less distorted than the trinity’s usual people. Perhaps it is because they carry a load of sorrow contained in a blue coffin. A small coffin that two brown men hold in their arms close to their chests. Dark brown jackets. Light brown pants. Their eyes are closed and their brown-haired heads touch as they bow above the coffin. They have to walk sideways stepping carefully on the brown ground with their bare feet. A small crowd of brown women and children follow them. Eyes closed. A barefoot girl in a brown blanket. An older girl in a blue dress. A young woman in a white dress. Two women in brown blankets. One wearing a blue doek. A grandmother in a brown blanket and blue dress. Age has cut her height to that of the barefoot girl. The brown and blue roofs of township houses stretch to the light brown sky behind the funeral crowd.

  Popi’s voice rose above all voices. Its undulations carried from the cemetery to the houses of Mahlatswetsa Location a kilometre away, sending tremors of comfort even to those who had not bothered to attend the funeral. Those who had become nonchalant about funerals. They needed to be comforted, too. It was their death as much as it was that of the little boy who lay in the coffin, and of the bereaved mother who sat on a mat next to the mound that would cover her son, listening to the pastor of the Methodist Church reading the last rites.

  Death lived among the people of Mahlatswetsa every day. In days gone by, a funeral was a rare occasion that everyone talked about. That everyone attended. Death was something that happened to the men who worked in the mines of Welkom, who were brought home in pine coffins after their lungs had been eaten by phthisis. Or after “the table” had collapsed on them in the dark holes where they ferreted for the gold that made white women beautiful and glittery. Death was something that happened to the aged who had lived their time on earth.

  But these days death was, as the Basotho people put it in their adage, the daughter-in-law of all homesteads. Young men came home to die after being eaten by AIDS. Young women infected their unborn babies, who died soon after reaching toddlerhood. The little boy for whom Popi was singing had been more fortunate. He had reached the age of six before the disease had reduced him to a living skeleton that could not move from the bed. It was a relief for his mother when he finally gave up and breathed his last. She knew too that soon it would be her turn. Like him, she would be reduced to bones. She would be laid to rest in this very cemetery. And hopefully Popi would sing for her as well.

  Popi was indeed kept busy singing at funerals. Sometimes in a single Saturday there would be three funerals, one after another. And she would sing at them all. She did not sing only at the funerals of the Methodists. She sang at Roman Catholic funerals. And mastered their hymns, which she thought lacked the liveliness and the danciness of Methodist hymns. She sang at Dutch Reformed Church funerals. And at the funerals of the Zionist Independent Christian Churches. Once she even sang at a funeral for white people. A whole family had been wiped out. Father, mother, a son and two daughters. It was one of the tragedies that had become part of the Afrikaner tradition, in which the father—faced with financial ruin and unpaid Land Bank loans—killed his whole family and then himself. Lizette de Vries, who since becoming mayor had been working closely with Popi, took her to this funeral. All eyes were on the coloured “girl” who sang Afrikaans hymns with such a heavenly voice. The Reverend François Bornman, who conducted the funeral service, stared at her and remembered Stephanus Cronje. What would he have made of this sweet-voiced creature?

  Popi sang at funerals only on Saturdays. Or on Sundays, when they spilled over to the next day. During the week she immersed herself in the work of the council. Especially the library. When there were no council meetings, she spent all her days in the library, paging through books and caressing them. She took it as a blessing that she was no longer a member of the Movement since Sekatle had finally succeeded in getting her and Viliki expelled for bringing the Movement into disrepute. The Movement’s patience with the Pule Comrades had finally run out when they had voted Lizette de Vries into the mayorship. After an investigation had been conducted by the big guns of the provincial executive council, Popi and Viliki were both kicked out of the Movement, without any hearing where they could defend themselves. The Pule Comrades became plain Pule Siblings, for comradeship was reserved only for those who belonged to the Movement.

  The Pule Siblings would, however, remain town councillors until the next local elections. Not that Sekatle had not tried to get them kicked off the council as well. Unfortunately, the constitution of the land did not allow him to do so. Only the people who had elected them to the council could remove them through the ballot box. Popi thought it was pathetic the way Viliki insisted that he was still a member of the Movement, whether Sekatle and his allies liked it or not. He had worked for this Movement to make it what it was in the rural areas of the Free State. He was going to die a member of the Movement.

  “Why would you want to remain a member of an organisation that does not want you?” she asked.

  Popi felt free now that she did not have to attend branch meetings and caucuses. On the council, she and her brother were able to vote with their consciences rather than having to toe some political line. Without the demands of the Movement, she could even indulge in the occasional cow-dung gathering expedition with Niki.

  While Popi was immersed in books, cow-dung and funerals, Viliki was immersed in the Seller of Songs. His body sang deep inside hers. And hers to his. Until they broke into sharp arias that sounded close to pain. Although the sharpness disturbed the neighbours and passers-by, it was celebratory in its exhilaration.

  Everybody in Excelsior was immersed in something. Even Tjaart Cronje. He was immersed in anger. This was an immersion he shared with Popi. She, of course, denied that there was any anger in her. Tjaart Cronje was more honest. He did not make a secret of his anger. His people had been sold out by their leaders, he lamented. The ageing matriarch, Cornelia Cronje, joined him in his laments. She was immersed in an anger of her own. And in loneliness. The affirmative action people, as mother and son called them, were entrenching themselves in power and becoming more confident. Some would say more arrogant. Even though the mayor was a true-blooded Afrikaner woman, she was a quisling who trod lightly and didn’t want to offend “these people”. She was obviously being misled by Popi Pule, with whom she was seen on many occasions. This Popi must be the one who was advising her to defer to the interests of the people of Mahlatswetsa Location. Only when he got home in the evenings did Tjaart Cronje receive relief from this burning anger. In his castle, the Afrikaner was still the boss. And Jacomina was the soothing balm.

  It was true that Her Worship the Mayor of Excelsior seemed to rely very much on Popi’s counsel. It was Popi who had suggested that it would do Excelsior a lot of good if the town had a festival of its own. Small towns were thriving on festivals that promoted a local product. Even the dusty towns of the faraway Eastern Cape. Barkly East, for instance, had a Trout Festival. Some of these festivals gained fame nationally, and even internationally, like Fick-burg’s cherry festival. Although the organisers of this festival liked to claim that it belonged to the rest of the eastern Free State, it really benefited Ficksburg more than any other town. It put Ficksburg on the map. Not Fouriesburg. Not Clocolan. Not Ladybrand. And certainly not Excelsior.

  Excelsior needed a festival of its own, Popi argued. Why, even neighbouring
Clocolan had an event that drew farmers from all over southern Africa: the Clocolan Tractor and Farm Implement Show. Excelsior must have its own festival.

  “Of what?” asked Lizette de Vries. “What are we going to promote?”

  “I don’t know,” said Popi. “We need to think of something.”

  “Perhaps we should visit some of these festivals,” said Lizette de Vries. “We might get some ideas.”

  When the time came, Popi Pule and Lizette de Vries took a casual drive in Lizette’s Isuzu bakkie to Clocolan, fifty-five kilometres on a shimmering bitumen road lined on both sides with cosmos of different colours. Among these grew yellow sunflowers that had adapted to a life of wildness. They had developed small heads as a result, in order not to appear bigger than the cosmos that were hosting them. Every year, the heads of these roadside sunflowers became smaller.

  The Clocolan Tractor and Farm Implement Show was one of the highlights of the year for the eastern Free State farming community. The Show Grounds turned green, yellow and red with old and new tractors, ploughs and trailers on display. There were yellow Caterpillar Challenger tractors, red Massey Ferguson tractors and green John Deere tractors. There were also the newfangled Fiat and Volvo tractors that were smaller, and which were catching on fast with trendy farmers. Although there was also giant equipment on display, such as harvesters and irrigation equipment, the crowds were drawn more to the tractors. On this occasion, the showpiece was a 1930 John Deere Model D tractor. Popi and Lizette de Vries joined the crowd that surrounded the veteran John Deere.

  “Since when have you become a farmer, Lizette?” asked a voice.

  She turned quickly to find herself staring into the smiling eyes of Johannes Smit. She had not seen him for quite some time. He had not been socialising much with the likes of Adam de Vries and his wife, given that he believed that they belonged to the group of Afrikaners who had sold the Boere out to the communists. A group that had been misled by one F.W. de Klerk, who had capitulated to one Nelson Mandela as soon as the Afrikaners had elected the said de Klerk President of South Africa. Johannes Smit kept his distance from such Afrikaners. And immersed himself in his farming. Occasionally he visited Tjaart Cronje at his house or at the butchery to complain about how the affirmative action people were messing up Excelsior. Soon the town would be bankrupt, the two agreed. Sewerage would run in the streets. Everything would collapse. Things would be so bad that the Afrikaner would seize power again to put things in order. He was eagerly waiting for that moment. Perhaps the election of Lizette de Vries to the mayoral position, after the affirmative action people had failed to run the town efficiently, was a step in that direction.

  “Johannes!” cried Lizette de Vries. “It is wonderful to see you.”

  Johannes Smit looked at Popi for a long time. Until she began to fidget.

  “This is Popi Pule,” said Lizette Vries. “She is the town councillor in charge of libraries.”

  “Of course,” chuckled Johannes Smit. “But she won’t find any books here. Except for tractor manuals.”

  “I am not looking for books here,” said Popi.

  “Of course you wouldn’t be looking for books here,” said Johannes Smit coldly. “You look for them in the white library in town to take to your white elephant library in the township. You slash the budget of the library in town in order to stock the township library.”

  “There is no white library in town,” said Popi, smiling condescendingly. “The library in town and the one in Mahlatswetsa Location both belong to all the people of Excelsior.”

  Lizette de Vries laughed and commented that she would never have imagined the day when Johannes Smit would be interested in libraries and their budgets. Popi walked away to take a closer look at the showpiece.

  “She is as feisty as her mother,” said Johannes Smit.

  “You remember her mother, then?” asked Lizette de Vries.

  “I would not have known she was Niki’s daughter. But you see, she looks like Stephanus Cronje. A beautiful version of Stephanus Cronje.”

  Then he added as an afterthought, “When he died, he was more or less the age she is now.”

  Popi made her way back to join them, and Lizette de Vries felt uncomfortable with the subject. She asked if Johannes Smit had anything on display. He led them to his brand-new John Deere six-cylinder turbo-charged green and yellow tractor. He insisted that Popi climb up onto the seat and showed her how to start the engine. She turned on the ignition and pressed the accelerator. The engine roared. She laughed the laughter of the peals of little bells. The second chin of the bald-headed round-bellied man with a sagging face shook with laughter. Lizette de Vries smiled and shook her head in wonder.

  The next time Lizette de Vries and Popi met Johannes Smit was at the cherry festival in Ficksburg two months later. The two women were still exploring various festivals, hoping that a bright idea for the great Excelsior Festival would strike them. Although they were only at this festival for one day, they were able to sample some of the entertainment and to join tour groups to cherry and asparagus farms. Johannes Smit invited them to his stall and treated them to his cherry liqueur. An old black couple at a table nearby stared at them. The name of Stephanus Cronje and something about the Excelsior 19 escaped their lips. They thought they were whispering between themselves. But their whispers had the quality of stage whispers. They found their way to Johannes Smit’s stall, and to Popi’s ears.

  Old people had a tendency to remember things that happened thirty years ago whenever they saw Popi. And to think of people she knew nothing about. For no one had ever given her any history lessons on the events that had shaped the town of Excelsior. She knew vaguely that there had been a scandal. Snippets of gossip about her origins had drifted her way throughout her twenty-nine years of existence. She never asked Niki anything about it and Niki never volunteered anything. Popi did not want to know. She was Pule’s child.

  THEY SAY our mothers no longer want to talk about these things. Our mothers have learnt to live with themselves. Niki lives with the bees. She is immersed in them. She is immersed in serenity.

  AN OLD LOVE AFFAIR

  SOMEONE’S PORTRAIT. A much more naturalistic head in a battered black hat. Perhaps the trinity wants to show that his range extends beyond distorted figures. That he can paint real people. People who look like those we see in our daily lives. This face, however, is not likely to be seen in our daily lives. It belongs to the days of ox-wagons and trekkers. Although the man does not look at you directly, his eyes are deep and penetrating. The face is as weather-beaten as the hat, with deep furrows of wisdom roaming fervently across it. A black pipe hangs loosely over the white beard. A blue neckerchief appears above the collar of a heavy brown coat.

  When Viliki was not immersed in the Seller of Songs, he visited Adam de Vries at his office to engage in what de Vries quaintly called “chewing the fat”.

  Viliki walked into the reception room and looked at the portrait of the lawyer’s bearded ancestor that hung on the wall next to a flag of the old South Africa. He was a regular visitor to this office, yet he always wondered why de Vries displayed this painful flag when he professed to be of the new South Africa. In fact, he actually claimed that he had brought about the new South Africa. He often told Viliki about a congress he had once attended in 1982 in Marquard, another eastern Free State town thirty-four kilometers north of Clocolan. He had been one of the 260 delegates of the National Party. He could see the waves of the right-wing, he said. He had bravely stood up and told the congress that the government had no option but to negotiate with the Movement and unban it.

  “They nearly crucified me,” said de Vries, obviously enjoying the memory. “It was long before people like EW. de Klerk came onto the scene and released Mandela. In fact, in those days de Klerk was one of the right-wingers. I referred the delegates to the Bible and they could have eaten me alive. I told them that in the Bible the Lord often punished His people . . . He often used heathens to punish His
people. ‘The Lord may punish us too,’ I said. ‘The Lord may use the Movement to punish us.’ ”

  Viliki sat on a bench under a bold sign with the dictum: A customer is always right. Sometimes confused, misinformed, rude, stubborn, changeable and even downright stupid. But never wrong!!! And then a picture of a donkey sitting human-style on a stool.

  Adam de Vries’s white-haired prim and proper secretary was typing something on a rickety typewriter at a small desk behind the long reception counter. After a while, she noticed him.

  “You know that Mr de Vries is busy,” she said in her school-marmish voice. “You like to visit him during office hours. He is not idle like you town councillors, you know. He has clients to attend to.”

  “I’ll wait until he’s free,” said Viliki, raising his voice so that it would sneak into Adam de Vries’s office.

  “Is that Viliki?” shouted Adam de Vries from his office. “Tell him I’ll be with him just now.”

  Viliki contemplated the portrait on the wall. The old codger was stern-faced. And pensive. Yet Viliki imagined him bursting into laughter. A long self-fulfilled laughter. Until tears ran down the furrows of his salty face. A laughter of sorrow. But the ancestor remained unmoved. And stared as he had been staring over the years.

  A young Afrikaner woman in blue denim jeans and her son of about four, walked out of Adam de Vries’s office. She greeted Viliki in the polite singsong voice of Basotho women, “Dumelang.” Viliki responded, “Dumela le wena, mme.” Greetings to you too, mother.

  In Sesotho, every woman is “mother”. Even when she is younger than your younger sister.

  “You can come in now, Viliki,” shouted Adam de Vries.

  Viliki looked at the schoolmarm and gave her a triumphant smirk. She frowned and went back to pounding the keys of the old Remington typewriter. He walked into the office. Adam de Vries pointed him to a chair.