Blood Orange

by Troy Blacklaws

  She checks under your desk lid for frogs and things. I sometimes get stung for smuggling a molesnake into class in a jam jar. Though everyone knows that molesnakes are harmless as earthworms, Miss Fish yells as if she just found a deadly mamba in my desk. Miss Fish wants all snakes dead and bottled.

  Miss Fish teaches us about Jan van Riebeeck, the Dutchman who discovered the Cape. He is the founding father. Before Jan van Riebeeck came from Holland a few bare-ass Bushmen huddled in caves painting childish figures on the walls, lazy Hottentots lay in the sun while their cows grazed, and bloodthirsty Zulus and Xhosas wardanced around fires.

  – If it wasn’t for Van Riebeeck you would all still be running around naked like savages waving assegais and kieries, says Miss Fish, waving her ruler.

  When she says things like that, I wish Jan van Riebeeck had not come along from Holland. Then we would run naked with assegais and kieries rather than sitting stiff in desks, writing down words words words from the blackboard. I wish a Zulu assegai would fly through the window and spear Miss Fish dead. Pin her to the blackboard.

  Miss Fish teaches us about Blood River. The Zulus came over the hills in waves, but the Voortrekkers shot them down from behind their wagons. She always gets frothed up about the way the Ncome River turned red with Zulu blood.

  In my mind I see a monkey foetus in a floating bottle in a river of blood. Its mouth gapes an O at me, but no sound comes out.

  One boy called Si puts up his hand:

  – But Miss, I thought blacks had black blood.

  The class bursts out laughing. Even Miss Fish laughs at Si. I feel sorry for Si who does not know blacks bleed red just like us.

  After school, I sell Si a molesnake for fifty cents. Dirt cheap.

  – I’m going to be a missionary when I’m big, says Si, stroking the snake. And you?

  If I was free to be anything, I would be a gardenboy like Jonas, or a cook like Lucky Strike. But these are no jobs for whites, that much I know. Miss Fish taught us that Indians are waiters and shopkeepers, coloureds are fruitpickers and fishermen. I fancy running a café and sucking niggerballs all day, spitting the balls into my hands to see the rainbow colours come out as my gob melts them down. But then you have to be Greek or Portuguese for that.

  Being a farmer, like my father, is hard, for you have to do blood things: brand cows with hot steel until the stink of singed hair fills the sky, clip chinks out of the ears of baby pigs, shoot stray dogs that chase the sheep. You have to hope the Zulu rainmakers make the rain fall and that the black locust clouds do not drift this far south.

  Unless I could be a teacher of just one child, like Grandpa Barter was when he tutored the prince of Siam, I would never become a teacher. I hate the bloodshiver chalk across the blackboard and the dust you breathe in when you tap the dusters clean.

  – Me, I’m going to be a cowboy, jus’ like Clint Eastwood, I tell Si.

  I balance Tomtom’s saddle on my father’s old Honda 125 in the garage. I am a rodeo cowboy in full swing, rocking and yahooing, lassoing the Chev’s tailfins. Then the motorcycle topples over, scratching the Chev. I hope to God my father will not see the scar on his motorcar.

  But he does, and he calls Jonas into the garage and blames him for scratching the Chev. Jonas stands with his hat in his hand, shaking his old grey head.

  – Aikona master, aikona, Jonas says.

  There are milky tears in his eyes. My father does not believe him. He calls Jonas a liar, tells him the money to fix it will come out of his pay. I watch Jonas shuffle away down the driveway.

  Then I go up to my father, my heart in my mouth.

  – It was me Dad, I mumble.

  My father pinches my ear, bends me over the Chev, and beats me bare-handed on my ass until I howl bitter tears.

  – Now you run and tell Jonas you’re sorry. You hear me?

  I nod and run after Jonas, clutching my ass.

  He turns when he hears my feet thupping in the dust.

  – Sawubona, young baas. I see you.

  – I’m sorry Jonas, I sob.

  Jonas puts his hand on my head.

  – Not to worry, young baas. Jonas knows, he smiles toothlessly.

  He dabs a handkerchief at his eyes and then shuffles on again, bent as the old lemon tree.

  cobras and crocodiles

  GRANDPA RUDD CAME OUT from Scotland to South Africa to seek his fortune in 1930. It was a poor, gloomy time overseas. One brother went to university in Edinburgh. The others had to find their own way in the world. Another brother went to New Zealand. He was captain of a boat that was sunk by the Germans during the war. My grandpa did not fight Hitler. He stayed up in Zebediela in the far north of South Africa and farmed oranges.

  In his cravat and long khaki shorts, he smokes a pipe all day long, blowing cherry-scented smoke at the sky. He has read all the books by the wise men of the world. He is forever mumbling Latin to himself.

  He tells me, his wee warrior, about wonderful things, things you never learn in school: that the Latin word for the hoopoe bird that goes hoo hoo hoo is upapa epops. (The lollipoppy sound goes around and around in my mouth: upupa epops upapa epops upapa epops.) He tells me: in India the he-lions hunt, not like the lazy lion of Africa who has his wives kill buck for him; that a marathon is 26 miles, the distance from Marathon to Athens; that clownfish can change their sex if the female in the school dies; that Charles Lindbergh in 1927 was the first man to fly alone across the Atlantic; that Roger Bannister in 1954 was the first man to run a mile under 4 minutes; that there is a man called Mandela in jail on an island.

  – The man who reads needs no teachers, my wee warrior, he tells me.

  Granny Rudd was born in Durban and her father shot himself in the head when she was a girl. In her young days in Durban, when she was still beautiful, she used to play tennis on sand courts and go to balls. Men would book a dance with her by writing their names on her fan. Those days are gone. Still, every time she sees a jacaranda flower fall in the breeze it reminds her of the fancy ball gowns.

  In the tangled yard of Granny and Grandpa Rudd’s house in Zebediela, a butcherbird spikes frogs and lizards on thorns to dry out in the sun, a pomegranate drops ripe, split fruit in the dust. Black ants crawl into the bleeding, jammy red juice. There is a crazy cock that pecks hens and little kids like us. If you outrun the cock and reach the barbed wire, you can climb into Africa. Over the fence Old Hopalong, a pegleg hermit, keeps a zoo: puffadders in glass tanks flicker forked flames of blood as they melt mice in their looping, pipey guts. Lizard-eating spiders. Nile crocodiles.

  The story goes that one of his crocodiles bit Old Hopalong’s foot off. If he catches you, he will feed you to his crocodiles and it’s bye-bye blackbird.

  Zane and I are always on edge there, caught between the eye-pecking cock and Old Hopalong. The crocodiles look dead lazy in the sun, but dart like spit if they want you. If you escape their razor teeth, they whip you with their tails. The crocodiles hiss at the frenzy of the chickens Old Hopalong flings in. Then, with a long, gassy sigh, they glide into the moss-green water. They surface to snap a jawful of squawking feathers, then sink again to shake the life out of them. Yo u may still hear a warped kwaak kwaak from under the water before the chicken dies.

  Grandpa Rudd tells us that in winter the crocodiles slow their heart-beat down to two beats a minute. Something no human beings, other than a few Indian holy men in caves, can do. I wonder if Nelson Mandela has slowed his heart beat down to survive jail.

  In winter the crocodiles hardly flinch if Old Hopalong jabs his peg at them. They hiss and half-heartedly clack their teeth at the sky.

  My other grandpa, Grandpa Barter, is from the Forest of Dean in England. He studied at Bristol and Oxford. I don’t think he had to study hard – he just read English. After Oxford, he went out to Siam to teach Prince Vadoowasevi.

  Granny Barter, from the same Forest village in England, sailed out to Siam to marry Grandpa when he wrote to her. She says Grandpa’s
writing was so romantic, she had no choice.

  – You see how wonderful words are, Gecko my boy, Grandpa Barter tells me. Spin a few magic words and you fetch a wife to Siam, spin again and you are in Marrakesh, sipping ice-cold orange juice while cobras sway to the pipes of the snakecharmer, and voodoomen cast a spell on you.

  Upon her arrival in Siam, Granny Barter climbed into a tall clay jar of water to cool down. Once in the jar, she could not wiggle out, so she cried for help. Siamese boys came running and gaped eavesdropping eyes through the gap under the roof.

  Another time in Bangkok, Granny uncovered two cobras entwined in her linen drawer. Grandpa shot them through their hooded heads, and you can still see the scattered holes in the bottom drawer of Granny’s wardrobe. My father says it is just woodworm, not birdshot.

  Granny and Grandpa Barter play bridge with my mother and father on the veranda while the crickets go cheep cheep and Dingaan and Dingo snore. Zane is asleep, but I have come out again. I get away with it because Grandpa tells my father not to be so hard on me.

  – Did I ever tell you I shot two cobras hiding in your Grandmother’s linen drawer?

  – You told me a hundred times, Grandpa. Tell me another story.

  – Hmmm. Let me see. That time I shot the cobras, the duckboat man was rowing by on the klong. That’s what they call a canal in Bangkok, a klong. Well, he moored his boat when he heard the shots. When he saw me carry the snakes out onto the veranda, dangling from the barrel of my shotgun ...

  – You never touched them. You made the boy pick them up.

  – Don’t listen to your grandmother. She has the memory of a sieve. Well, where was I?

  – The duckboat man, I remind him.

  – Yes. The duckboat man came along the klong. Along the klong. Ha ha. Rhymes. Along the klong. He begged for the cobras because snake blood gives you good eyes.

  My father shakes his head at this juju talk.

  – And if a man eats snake he can make the girls happy, winks Grandpa.

  – Bart, chides Granny.

  She calls him Bart when he is in a mischievous mood.

  – How can snake make the girls happy? I beg Grandpa to tell me.

  – Bart, snaps Granny.

  – Just Siamese girls or all girls? I nag.

  – I will tell you when the cows come home, Grandpa smiles. There are things in the world you’ve not yet dreamed of.

  Things overseas? I wonder, hoping he will drop a clue, the way he drops cigar ash on his lap. Granny is forever darning his cords where the ash burns through.

  – Two spades, Grandpa bids, ignoring my begging eyes.

  – Three hearts, calls my mother.

  – I wish I had eaten the cobras, then I would not have to bother with specs, mutters Grandpa.

  – Bart, Granny tuts. The stories you tell the children.

  – No bid, calls my father.

  – Four spades, goes Granny.

  This calling of spades and hearts is mumbo jumbo to me. I wish grown-ups would not riddle the truth away from me till the cows come home. I want to know where Lucky Strike goes with the Zulu girls. I want to know why Zulu men pay cows for girls and why snake makes the Siamese girls happy. I want to know what undreamed of things are out there in the world.

  Grandpa tilts another tot of rum into his Coca-Cola.

  Granny and Grandpa Barter stayed in the land of cobras and crocodiles and Siamese dancers and white elephants until the War, when the Japanese came along with their bayonets and bamboo cages. Then they went to Egypt and Grandpa taught English in Cairo. He once ran over an Egyptian’s foot in his black Morris only to discover that the Egyptian, like Old Hopalong, had a peg leg.

  That was the kind of luck he had.

  Then they had to move on again, because of the Italians fleeing Abyssinia. It is thanks to the Japanese and the Italians that my mother was born in Durban, South Africa, and that I was born in Pinetown, a banana boy.

  In the mornings, Zane and I run to the guest room and jump on their bed. Granny laughs with glee.

  – O God, O God, Grandpa grunts, fishing for his teeth in a glass.

  Pink fish under a lemon sun.

  Lemon squeezed on bass. Lemon to draw the sweet out of Coca-Cola. Lemon and Peel’s honey to cure a cold. A slice of lemon to freshen up floating teeth.

  – Language dear, Granny tuts.

  – Tell us about Siam, Granny, Zane and I chorus.

  And she tells us about a rockery that came alive with snakes at twilight and about a toothless sacred crocodile that crawled under the seats of a crumbling cinema in Bangkok.

  Or she invents African stories for Mole and Toad and Rat. How Mole finds a mamba down his hole and is rescued by a mongoose. How Toad outwits a likkewaan by lying still as a stone. How Rat sails downriver in a milk can to see the sea.

  – And what did Rat see? goes Granny.

  – A rainbow of dolphins, a string of seahorses and a flock of flying fish, Zane and I chant.

  – A school of flying fish. A flock of flamingos, a flock of tickbirds, a flock of any bloody thing that flies other than fish, Grandpa mutters.

  A flock of aeroplanes, a flock of kites, I want to say, but don’t dare.

  Grandpa is in a better mood after his rhubarb, Jungle Oats and the Natal Mercury. He tells me about his Oxford days, 1934 to 1936: punting on the Thames, playing hockey for England, jumping from Magdalen bridge into a cold river after a night of wine and girls at the May ball.

  Granny’s tongue makes sucking sounds, like starving swift chicks. But that just spurs him on. He tells me that not only did he jump, but he jumped in with his dinner jacket on, and not only did he jump in with his dinner jacket on, but he did a somersault from the bridge. Some of the young men came out of the river bleeding, their bare feet cut by the cracked bottles on the riverbed.

  – But not your Grandpa. I climbed up and jumped again. One Scot jumped in with his kilt and you saw it’s true that Scotsmen wear naught under their kilt.

  – Bart, pleads Gran. He’s just a boy.

  – Even girls got cock-eyed, Grandpa goes on. They jumped off in their ball gowns. Or with just their frillies on, he winks at me.

  – Bart. You always go too far.

  monkeyman

  THERE IS A BEATING at the door late at night. I go into the hallway to find my mother at the door and two black men outside. Dingaan and Dingo, instead of going bezerk at the sight of black men at the door, just sniff at their heels. It makes me wonder if they are men who can weave magic. Sangomas, or maskandi, the travelling musicmakers. When they take off their hats, I recognise them as the two men who skinned an ox my father shot. Maybe the dogs snuff after a whisper of blood.

  – Please Madam, where is the baas?

  – He’s out.

  My father is away, fishing in South West Africa. They twist their hats in their hands, their eye whites wide with fear. I pinch the hem of my mother’s skirt.

  – Madam, the police are in the compound. We have no passbook because we come from Mozambique. But the baas gave us a job.

  The cowskinner who mouths the words casts his gaze at me.

  – The young baas knows us. He knows we are good workers.

  I nod to my mother.

  – Why are you in this country? demands my mother.

  I feel ashamed that her voice is so hard. The men look at me. My heart beats in the shelter of my mother’s skirt.

  – We must feed our children, Madam.

  My mother bids them follow her. The men don their hats again. The man who begged my mother bows his head at me and touches his palms together.

  My mother hides them on the veranda, behind the stone columns.

  The police come and this time the dogs go wild, until my mother yells at them. The police have a black man in the back of the van, his fingers through the wire, like a caged monkey.

  – Sorry to disturb, Madam, but we were told two men ran into your garden. You seen no one? one policeman says.

>   – No one, says my mother.

  I have never heard her lie through her teeth before.

  – May we make a search, Madam?

  – If you must, my mother nods.

  Through the kitchen window I see the police shine a torch into Beauty’s face on the step of her rondavel. She shakes her head. They go into the hut and come out again with Jamani kicking and wild-eyed, as if they will eat him. Beauty howls: aaaaaaaaiiiii. They let him go and he rabbits back into the black mouth of the hut.

  Then they walk around the house. As they go past the veranda, the two men from Mozambique shift around the columns. I can see their scared eyes, and they can see me. The policemen shine their torches onto the veranda and my face is caught in a beam. A policeman waves at me and I freeze, praying my eyes will not glance sideways at the hiding men. Just a flicker of my eyes and they will be caged with the monkeyman.

  In the end the policemen give up and drive away. White eyes and monkey fingers in the back. My mother lets the men inside and makes tea for them in the kitchen. Tea bags bleed clouds of red rooibos tea into white china, the china she saves for guests. Beauty and Lucky Strike and Jonas have enamel mugs and plates they keep under the sink. This is something I have never seen. Black and white sipping out of the same cups.

  The men laugh with my mother at having tricked the police.

  – Yo yo, Madam, we will have a story to tell our children at Christmas.

  I long to tell Zane, who has slept through it all as he does through thunderstorms. But after the men have gone, my mother warns:

  – You must not tell Zane or anyone, otherwise the police will come again and take me away in the back of the van. Cross your heart and hope to die.

  – Hope to die, I swear.

  bundu

  THE JUNGLY, TANGLY BUNDU Zane and Jamani and I spend our days exploring is no Oxford. Once we go beyond the fence, caracals or jackals may slink out of the tall grass. A boomslang may drop out of a tree and fang us dead.

  I have an assegai, a javelin from my father’s Pretoria school days. Zane and Jamani have catties. Jamani is so skilled with a cattie he can pot weavers off the telegraph wires. But my father gets cross if Zane or I kill weavers.