Blood Orange

by Troy Blacklaws

  Again I think of Zelda and the twisting of the paper cone filled with peanuts to feed the squirrels. How cool she was to lift her dress on the grass for the sun and my eyes to linger on her bare skin.

  The jay flares and then glows like a spark that jumped the fire. After a while the girl gets careless about closing her legs and the firelight flickers in the hollow below the lip of her skirt.

  The other yellow girl sucks the jay so that it glows again and then lets it drift away into other hands. She stares so long and deeply into the fire that I wonder what she sees. As a child I always made out animals in the fire: flamingos and cobras. I try to see them again but all I see is blue-tinged orange.

  As the fire teases my sandalled toes, I wonder if my untravelled paths are still mapped out in the stars, or if I have defied destiny by jumping the wire. Am I now heading down unmapped roads to a hazy place of exile, beyond the horizon, beyond destiny?

  All the familiar landmarks have gone:

  The sighing stone pines.

  The Dutch house under the bluegum.

  The old palm. Undutch.

  The lemon tree, a ladder to the pumpkin roof.

  St George’s. Sunlight falling red and blue on a stub hand.

  The straycat cowfarm. White mucous hands. Blood-specked sows.

  The frog-green pool at the Groot Drakenstein games club.

  Peejay unzips his bag so that we can both lie on it in his canvas tent. The canvas smells faintly of straydog pee. An old tartan picnic rug covers us and it scratches with blackjacks and burs embedded in its fabric. But it is good to feel Peejay so close while the cold stars stud the black sky through the open flap.

  Peejay is a man in my eyes. He lives life raw and rides fate like a wave. As for me, I duck out of the way and fear fins.

  There were carefree times on the farm and at school, but fear always recurred. Fear of being dragged down by drowned hands, of a rat scraping up my shin, of being baited on the bus or being caned by mamba canes.

  And now, there is the inescapable, gnawing dread of being caught by the sarmajoor. In my mind he has become the hairy, fiery-eyed tokoloshe, hellbent on finding me, on drawing my blood dry.

  Nahoon

  WE DRIVE OUT OF Jay Bay as a misty sun comes up over a moody sea.

  We stop in Port Elizabeth for breakfast on a bleak, deserted beachfront. The wind rips off the sea and seagulls fly into the wind over the rocks without making headway.

  In Port Elizabeth I draw my savings for a standby ticket overseas. I know it is like leaving a spoor in the sand for the police to find.

  I offer Peejay money for the cords and sandals and to chip in for the ride.

  – Forget it. Maybe one day I’ll land on your doorstep, he says.

  I wonder, as we drive along the winding coastal road, where my doorstep will be.

  We go through the Ciskei: gothic aloes stabbing skyward through the stones.

  Outside Port Alfred, a colony of white birds fills a dead black tree standing in a pool of saltwater by the roadside. The water level has dropped through the summer and the tree has surfaced like an unearthed skeleton. A heron weaves on spindly stilts through roots reaching up out of the mud like dead men’s fingers.

  Port Alfred: sulking fishing boats on the Kowie, under a half-moon bridge.

  As we reach the outskirts of East London there is a black man in a black suit walking ahead of a woman who carries a suitcase on her head. On top of the suitcase is a wire cage with two white chickens inside and on top of the cage is a three-legged firepot. The sight reminds me of that German fable about the rooster that stands on the cat that stands on the dog that stands on the donkey.

  We cross the Buffalo River and look down on the string of yachts moored in the harbour and, beyond them, the cargo ships and cobalt sea.

  We park down by the paved seafront walk and get take-away pies and Freezeland milkshakes and watch disillusioned penguins wilt under the obscured sun. An old man in a frayed tweed jacket and bared skinny legs peers into rock pools, like some awkward, earthbound stork. A turbanned Xhosa woman with tobacco-stained teeth sells baskets and beads. I buy beads from her, thinking it will be good to have something tangibly African if I make it to the hazy world of overseas.

  After slurping the milkshakes down, we head down to Nahoon Reef.

  Nahoon: a rock shaped like a tortoise juts out into the Indian Ocean. High dunes spine along the beach to where the Nahoon River runs into the sea. There are a few surfers out by the tortoise head, and as we watch them skim the waves, the sun rips through the clouds and we see dolphins in the glare. On the radio Bob Marley sings Three Little Birds and, for the moment, the barbed wire and ostriches of Oudtshoorn are far, far away.

  – A good omen, tunes Peejay.

  Does he mean the dolphins, or the three little birds, or the sun?

  While Peejay surfs I walk along the beach and climb the dunes where those stubby plants grow that you rub on a bluebottle sting. On the dunes I just catch the sound of Creedence Clearwater seeping through the radio static of the waves. I unbutton the lumberjack shirt and cords and lie there in army-issue underpants and Peejay’s sandals and doze in the sun.

  Dolphins weave through the sky above the sighing stone pines. Then I see that the pines are full of Egyptian geese and the branches bend under the birds. The geese face north and then, as if a gun sounded, they begin to lift into the sky. The geese eclipse the sun and the unearthly whistle of their wings fills my head. They fly so low over me that sometimes the tips of their wings brush my face.

  I awake to find a silhouetted boy twiddling a feather in his fingers.

  – I thought I should wake you before you burnt, he says.

  He lies close by on a towel with a motif of oranges and lemons.

  – I am Michelangelo.

  – As you see, I am not David, I remark as I pull on my cords.

  Michelangelo smiles at my shame over my bizarre tan.

  – You travelling? He wonders.

  – Yes.

  – Lucky you. I’m still at school. When I get out I’m going to study drama at Rhodes. Then I’ll go into film. This English teacher, Mister Ford, got me hooked on acting. He cast me as Nick in a play he wrote, based on The Great Gatsby. Do you act?

  – No.

  Michelangelo lip-ices his lips. Bubblegum flavour.

  – Some afternoons I went over to Mister Ford’s flat. He filmed me being Nick. Daisy was a mop and Jordan a golf bag. He made me act just in my Speedo. At first it felt weird in front of a teacher, but he sensed I had to kill my fear. That’s how intuitive Mister Ford is. In the end it felt so destined.

  He digs his toes down under the sand.

  – Destined.

  – I met a girl not so long ago and it felt like destiny. Now I’m not so sure.

  – So what happened to her?

  I waver, then gamble on telling him.

  – I got my call-up.

  – Oh, so that’s why you have a panda tan.

  – And that’s why I’m wearing these army underpants.

  – Oh. I just thought you had no taste.

  – Thanks.

  Michelangelo offers me a Camel and I cup it in my hands to light it in the breeze. I dangle it casually from my lips like my father does with his Texans but just get smoke in my eyes.

  – Hey, says Michelangelo. If you could do anything, anything in the world, what would you do?

  – I would live on the edge of the sea with Zelda, the café girl.

  – You’re a deserter. Aren’t you? says Michelangelo, changing tack.

  – I am.

  – Was it so bad? says Michelangelo, pinching his toes.

  – It was for me. Anyway, I jumped the wire and got a lift to East London. I hope to get a flight out of South Africa tomorrow.

  – Shit, so this is like your last day on the beach?

  – My last day under the sun.

  I bury my feet in the sand.

  baleka baleka
/>   PEEJAY DRIVES ME UP Beach Road to the highway. There, amid the shreds and strips of bamboo of the roadside basket weavers, we say goodbye.

  – Adios, says Peejay, with a hug and a rub of my head.

  – So long, I say.

  He waits in the Beetle in the shade, to make sure I get a lift. I hear snatches of Juluka from the motorcar radio. I have barely begun to hitch when a dented Dodge pulls up. The driver is a big black man in a Bogart hat and a Hawaiian shirt that pulls taut over his bongo drum of stomach.

  – How far?

  – Durban.

  – I can get you through the Transkei.

  – Thanks.

  I turn to wave to Peejay.

  In the Dodge: Elvis dangles from the rearview mirror. Fake cowskin hides the seats. Turns out the man is called Jomo.

  Jomo loves my story of my fiddlefooting it out of Oudtshoorn. He bids me tell the part of the sarmajoor and the bulb over and over again. When we get near the Transkei border, he hides me in the boot under a doghair blanket.

  The Dodge comes to a halt at the border post. In the boot I lie dead still. A scared foetus in a dry steel womb. The stink of dog in my nostrils and the bang of blood in my skull.

  I make out Jomo’s undulating voice, in Afrikaans. And another Afrikaans voice, blunt and laconic. I hear a tinny clang. Maybe a shoe against a hub. I wait for the boot to jaw apart and hard hands to jerk me out into torchlight. Instead, the motor coughs to life again.

  On the other side of the Kei River, after a long curving climb away from the border post, Jomo frees me from the boot and laughs full and deep at having outwitted the South African Police.

  As my fear subsides, I look out over the dashboard of the Dodge on the falling darkness and think of how fruitful the Groot Drakenstein valley is against this grazed-down land where the rains gouge dongas out of the earth.

  – Like the scars of childbirth on a woman’s hips, Jomo tunes, then laughs at my discomfort.

  I know I am the reason for the pink wavy lines on my mother’s hips. Lines with sheen to them, like mother-of-pearl.

  – Have you never had a woman?

  – Once. On the beach in Muizenberg.

  – A lekker white girl on your white beach, hey?

  His bongodrum stomach jellies with laughter. He is enjoying himself, old Jomo.

  Just on the other side of Umtata, an oncoming motorcar flicks its headlamps at us. Damn, a roadblock. My heart beats wildly.

  But again Jomo is in fits, for it turns out it is just another motorcar with a Kokstad numberplate. Just being friendly.

  When Jomo drops me outside Kokstad, he tunes:

  – Run boy run. Baleka baleka. But you will not escape Africa. It is in your bones and your blood.

  A white couple from the town pick me up in an old avocado-green Benz. They are heading for Zinkwazi Beach along the south coast road and will drop me off in Durban. To avoid having to tell my story I feign sleep while a felt dog nods his head in the back window. Through squinted eyes I read the signs: Ifafa Beach. Umkomaas. Amanzimtoti. Durban.

  deck chair

  DURBAN. TAXIS, BICYCLES AND rickshaws and the cries of papersellers. Neon lights in rain-shimmer streets. My last night in the land I was born in, perhaps forever. Two hours inland lies the farm. Is Beauty still living in the backyard hut? Is Jamani still at school with all the unrest and the burning of black schools? For a moment I wish I could be papoosed tutuzela tutuzela on Beauty’s back again, or that I could be with Zane inside the woodstove kitchen while Lucky Strike weaves the magic strands of his stories. I wish I could smell my mother and hear my father say:

  – Bona wena kosasa. See you tomorrow.

  I wish I had Grandpa Barter’s pocket knife in my pocket. All I have is the string of Xhosa beads I finger. The beads carry me into the past: I am again the barefoot, clay-smeared boy hunting lizards and catching fish in the likkewaan river with Zane and Jamani. I hear the nkankaan cry ha ha haaa. I hear Lucky Strike call: Fly fly fly, young baas.

  The chug and rev of engines, the laughter of hatted figures dodging the falling rain, tugs me back to reality.

  In the charged, humid nightfall, folk head for flickering bars and fizzing cafés, for theatre and romance.

  My way winds down to Point Road and I walk along it until hotels and flats give way to warehouses. Cranes and masts crisscross in a blurred frieze in the rain. Grandpa Barter once said my mother went to the Cliff Richard dance looking like a Point Road whore, so I look for girls who match the image of a whore in my head: high heels, black fishnet stockings and painted lips, but I see none like that.

  There is a pale girl, hair gone all stringy in the rain, eyeing me. I cannot tell how old she is. Maybe nineteen. I stand still in the humid rain, and she stares her haunting eyes at me.

  – Hey sweetie. Want a fuck or a suck?

  She says it so lazily that she might just as well have said: Want a Fanta or a Sprite?

  I climb narrow stairs after her, up and up into an attic room with faded pink wallpaper and a red blanket on the bed that reminds me of Grandmama Rudd’s bloodred gown. The room feels bleak to me and the memory of Grandmama does not make me feel sexy. There is no music to create a mood, just the rain against the window.

  – What’s your name, sweetie?

  I lie, as if she might be dragged into the dock by the sarmajoor to witness against me if she knew my name.

  – Mine’s Doris, she says as she deftly undoes my cords so that they flop down to my sandalled feet.

  The name Doris reminds me again of my Grandmama and of times when women were called Doris or Marjorie or Ruby. Doris bids me lie on the red bed. My cords still folded around my feet, I hobble across the scabby carpet.

  I look up into her eyes, feeling guilty that I feel so unsexy. Her unhooked breasts swing against my ribs, and I wish I had paid her to have a coffee with me instead.

  Out of the blue, jazz floats up from a window below and mixes with rain-blurred voices and I close my eyes to float with the music. But I still see her stringy hair and haunting eyes. I want to cry over her old woman’s name.

  As it turns out, my last human encounter in South Africa is as impotent as my life in South Africa has been. I ran into a pole while running away from the police. I went to the army rather than face jail. And now I run from the army into the arms of a woman and my cock goes limp.

  I do up my cords in shame.

  – Never mind, says Doris. Another time.

  Me in the taxi to the airport, running towards my bee-zithering dream of seeing the world at the end of the Atlantic, into the unknown.

  crying for my mother and father, my brother

  guilty for having sinned with a whore

  guilty for leaving behind faceless and furtive encounters with black Africans. My white eyes averted. I never asked Mila how many children he had in the Transkei. I did not know his Xhosa name. Though Nana made my bed for all my Paarl years I never went inside her house. Once, from the door to her house, I glimpsed a museum of thrown-out things from ours:

  a broken riempie stool, resting on bricks

  earless china cups

  a chipped coffee mug with the Paarl Boys’ High emblem

  a deck chair with a gaping hole in the canvas.

  yin yang

  THE TUNNEL IS COLD like death. The man at immigration curt. I tell him I am visiting family, for there are still relic strands of family in Gloucestershire and Edinburgh. He casts his eyes down me and I wriggle my bare toes inside Peejay’s sandals. Flotsam washed up from the colonies.

  The Underground. Rattling through nowhere. And then misted brick houses with small backyards and a horizon of chimneys. And then black again. I play with pound coins in my hand, feel their foreign heaviness. Gloucester Road. South Kensington. Knightsbridge. Green Park. Piccadilly Circus. I surface like a mole and the cold swoops down on me, a bird of prey beating its vast wings about my head.

  As I child I believed there was a carnival circus at Piccadill
y full of dancing bears and clowns and the works. Instead there is just a roundabout and a wall of neon flowers calmly unfurling tropical colours amid the jangle of London: Fosters blue and Coca-Cola red and Carlsberg green. The colours fill my eyes for a moment and then die, then fan out again. Through misted breath I watch the black cabs jam and jockey like gloss-scarabed dung-beetles.

  Some guys in black leather with lime green and pink hair shake up beer cans and spray beer foam at Eros. One guy, with a nose ring like the bull that trod me into the dung, snarls at me when he catches me watching. This is another England from the country Grandpa Barter told me of.

  It begins to rain on a pavement painting of Bob Marley. The colours run and the dreadlock artist gives up, tips a tin of coins onto the pavement and fingers through them. Just as a Zulu sangoma tells the future, by the fall of bones and stones. The artist flips one coin aside, and when he is gone I pick it up. It is Spanish, with a hole in it. I pocket it.

  The chill seeps into my bones. My bare toes ache as if the ice-cold Clifton sea is washing over my feet. My ears burn with cold. I am afraid of the hovering, cruel-beaked cold.

  I escape into a sport and outdoor shop on the Circus and buy wool hiking socks. I hate the scratch of the wool on my skin but the man says wool is just the thing for the cold. He says I will want a fleece. I imagine he means a sheep skin but he gives me a kind of tracksuit top to zip up to my chin. He tells me it has been tried out on Himalayan climbing expeditions.

  The man reckons I will surely need hiking boots to combat the cold, and though I want them I am scared of running out of money, so I say I am fine with my sandals. He wants to know where I am from, and when I say South Africa he nods as if I had said Timbuktu and it explains the sandals and all. Still, he calls me sir when I hand the heavy pound coins to him.

  When I come out of the shop the rain has dried up. I walk down to Leicester Square, dodging puddles so as not to drench my hiking socks. Where I had imagined Leicester Square fringed by arty cafés and bars, there is McDonald’s and Burger King and Häagen-Dazs. A busker mimics the clockwork doll walk of Charlie Chaplin. It makes me smile and then it begins to rain again.