The Heart of Redness: A Novel (15 page)

A knock interrupts his thoughts. He opens the door for the house-maid. He goes to the bathroom to take a shower while the woman makes up his bed. All of a sudden she gives a chilling scream that brings him scuttling out of the bathroom.

“What the hell?” he demands.

Even before she can answer he sees a brown snake uncoiling itself slowly on his blankets. The woman darts out shouting for help. In no time a battalion of gardeners, handymen, and even a petrol-pump attendant rush in armed with spades and sundry weapons.

“Wait!” screams Camagu. “No one will touch that snake.”

“He says we must not kill the snake!” shouts the petrol-pump attendant.

“Why? Is he crazy like those Believers who want to protect lizards?” asks a gardener.

“No,” says Camagu. “This is not just any snake. This is Majola.”

It begins to register on the men.

“You are of the amaMpondomise clan then?”

“Yes. I am of the amaMpondomise. This snake is my totem.”

Camagu is beside himself with excitement. He has never been visited by Majola, the brown mole snake that is the totem of his clan. He has heard in stories how the snake visits every newborn child; how it sometimes pays a visit to chosen members of the clan to give them good fortune. He is the chosen one today.

The men understand. They are of the amaGcaleka clan and do not have snakes as totems. As far as they are concerned, snakes are enemies that must be killed. But they know about the amaMpondomise of the Majola clan. They know also that in their upbringing they were taught to respect other people’s customs so that their own customs could be respected as well. As they walk away, they talk of Camagu in great awe.
They did not expect a man with such great education, a man who has lived in the lands of the white people for thirty years, to have such respect for the customs of his people. He is indeed a man worthy of their respect.

Camagu cannot contain his joy as he walks on the sandbank of the great lagoon singing to himself. He has left the snake lying on his bed. It will go on its way when it feels like it. He breaks into a jog, but stops when he runs out of breath. Age has indeed caught up with him. There was a time when he could run for hours. And that was not so long ago.

“Hello, stranger!”

He is startled. He looks around, but cannot see anyone. She whistles at him, and he sees her head bobbing in the water. It is that confounded girl again! The one who sullies crystal-clear water with poisonous juices, turning it into purple slime.

“Is it not possible to be anywhere without you sneaking around?”

She walks out of the water. She struts about in panties and a bra, as if she were a fat model in a top-of-the-range bikini. She reaches for a dress that was left on a rock to dry. Although it is still wet she puts it on, and joins him on the sandbank. He tries very hard to pretend that he does not see the buxom curves that are accentuated by the wet dress that desperately clings on her body and has become see-through.

“Sneaking around? I should think you are the one who is sneaking around. This is my lagoon. I live here. You live in Johannesburg. And if I were you I would go back there and stop bothering innocent people.”

They glare at each other for a while. Then she breaks out laughing. He self-consciously inspects himself, in case his fly is open.

“I shall not let you spoil my day,” Camagu says, walking away. “Today I was visited by my snake. I thought it was going to be my lucky day.”

“So soon?” she asks.

He stops and looks at her.

“So soon?” he repeats, wondering what on earth she means.

“I didn’t think you would see through your thin girlfriend so early in your affair. I agree with you: Xoliswa Ximiya is a snake.”

“I am talking about my totem snake, foolish girl!”

He walks away in disgust. She follows him. He walks faster still. She keeps up the pace. It frustrates him that he cannot get rid of her.

“Honestly, she is a snake. Don’t you see her beauty? It is not normal. When a woman is that beautiful my people say she has been licked by a snake. I know her very well. She was my teacher at Qolorha-by-Sea Secondary School. She has no patience with those who lack beauty.”

By this time Camagu is running. But the girl is keeping a steady pace behind him, all the while yapping about the beauty of Xoliswa Ximiya. In class, the irritating girl continues, Miss Ximiya used to begin her lessons by reading from a newspaper cutting the story of a Taiwanese woman called Hu Pao-yin. She killed her mother-in-law and stabbed her mother with a knife because they were not pretty enough to deserve to live. Hu Pao-yin declared, “I am the most beautiful woman in the world and the existence of other women is unnecessary.”

Exactly Xoliswa Ximiya’s sentiments.

She read this story to her class before every lesson. At the end of the story she would remark breathlessly, “Isn’t it romantic?”

Camagu cannot run forever. He sits down on a rock, completely out of breath. Qukezwa stands in front of him, arms akimbo, and says, “She read the story of Hu Pao-yin over and over again, until the newspaper cutting went yellow with age. She wished she could have the courage to do what the Taiwanese woman did. In the long run we couldn’t stand it. We stole the newspaper cutting and destroyed it. She was never the same after that.”

“Never the same?”

“The way you see her now. A frozen statue.”

“You are a nuisance, you know that? You even slander your former teacher. What kind of a child are you?”

“Child? Is that all you see in me? Child? I am nineteen, you know. I am going to be twenty in two months’ time. Many of my age-mates are married with children.”

“To me you are a child.”

“It’s because you are an old man. Old. Finished and klaar. A bag of old bones. A limp that cannot be saved even by Viagra. I don’t know what you’re doing chasing young children like NomaRussia!”

Ouch!

Camagu decides he cannot compete with this girl’s acerbic tongue. Get her on your side, he tells himself. She can be a deadly enemy. Get her on your side. She may even lead you to NomaRussia. It is obvious that she knows her.

“Listen, I don’t want to exchange insults with you,” he says. “What did I ever do to you? I don’t want to be your enemy. Let’s be friends, okay?”

“Don’t pretend to be nice to me. I can’t help you. I do not know the NomaRussia you are looking for.”

The witch!

“Did I tell you that I passed Standard Eight? I may not be an ‘Excuse Me’ from Fort Hare like your thin girlfriend, but at least I can read and write.”

“Well, congratulations!” He spits the words out, making sure that she does not miss the sarcasm in his voice.

But she is no longer paying any attention to him. She is clapping hands for a group of five women who are walking rhythmically on the sandbank, singing and ululating. Each woman has a bundle of mussels and an
ulugxa
, a piece of metal that they use to harvest
imbhaza
and
imbhatyisa
—as mussels and oysters are called—from the rocks when the waves have uncovered them. Some of the women are wearing gum-boots while others walk barefoot. Two of them, NoGiant and MamCirha, are also holding plastic bags that are full of oysters. They stop to talk with Qukezwa.

“Yo! This child of Zim! You have not gone to work today?” asks NoGiant.

“This child of Zim has wonders! That Dalton lets her do what she likes,” adds MamCirha.

“Hey, Qukezwa! Why don’t you ask your friend to buy our harvest?”

“There is plenty of imbhaza here to last him for many meals.”

“And imbhatyisa too. Men love imbhatyisa!”

They all giggle knowingly.

Camagu is curious. He inspects the bundles of mussels. He is not one for seafood, and was not aware that the amaXhosa of the wild coast eat the slimy creatures from the sea. Qukezwa explains that they sell the
best of their harvest to the Blue Flamingo Hotel, or to individual tourists. Male tourists like to buy imbhatyisa and eat them raw on the spot. Those imbhaza and imbhatyisa that have not been bought, the women take home to their families. They fry them with onions and use them as a relish to eat with maize porridge or samp. Although this is very tasty and healthy food, children are not allowed to eat oysters because they are an aphrodisiac. They make men frisky. That is why they are called imbhatyisa—that which makes one horny.

NoGiant and MamCirha try to persuade Camagu to buy some of the oysters, seeing that now he has the attention not only of the headmistress but of Qukezwa as well. One giggles and whispers to the others, “A man needs all the strength he can get.”

They burst out laughing. Camagu appreciates the joke, although he is a bit embarrassed by it. He laughs with them.

NoGiant says, “Seriously, though, you don’t have to eat imbhatyisa raw. When you have fried it, it is such wonderful meat! Once you taste it you will never leave it again.”

But Camagu tells her that he is staying at the hotel, where all his cooking is done for him. If he bought their harvest he would have nowhere to cook it. The women bid them good-bye, and continue their boisterous and songful walk to the village.

“You could have asked your thin girlfriend to cook it for you,” says Qukezwa.

“Don’t you start with me again,” pleads Camagu.

“I doubt if she can even cook. What with her long red nails. . . like the talons of a vulture after ripping open a carcass.”

“I didn’t know you were Zim’s daughter. I would like to meet your father,” says Camagu, trying to change the subject.

“What for?”

“I would like to know why he is against progress.”

Qukezwa laughs for a long time. Then she says, “Your thin girl-friend has been feeding you lies. That’s the only thing she knows how to cook.”

“I was at the imbhizo. I heard him opposing the building of the gambling complex that will create jobs and bring money into the village.”

“Are you aware that if your gambling complex happens here I will have to pay to swim in this lagoon?”

“Why would you pay to swim in the sea?”

“Vathiswa says they made you a doctor in the land of the white man after you finished all the knowledge in the world. But you are so dumb. White man’s education has made you stupid. This whole sea will belong to tourists and their boats and their water sports. Those women will no longer harvest the sea for their own food and to sell at the Blue Flamingo. Water sports will take over our sea!”

“There will be compensation for that. The villagers will get jobs at the casino.”

“To do what? What do villagers know about working in casinos? What education do they have to do that kind of work? I heard one foolish Unbeliever say men will get jobs working in the garden. How many men? And what do they know about keeping those kinds of gardens? What do women know about using machines that clean? Well, maybe three or four women from the village may be taught to use them. Three or four women will get jobs. As for the rest of the workers, the owners of the gambling city will come with their own people who are experienced in that kind of work.”

Camagu is taken aback both by her fervor and her reasoning. She is right. The gambling city may not be the boon the Unbelievers think it will be. It occurs to him that even during its construction, few men from the village, if any, will get jobs. Construction companies come with their own workers who have the necessary experience. Of course, a small number of jobs is better than no jobs at all. But if they are at the expense of the freedom to enjoy the sea and its bountiful harvests and the woods and the birds and the monkeys. . . then those few jobs are not really worth it. There is a lot of sense in what Qukezwa is saying. He is grudgingly developing some admiration for this scatterbrained girl with a Standard Eight education who works as a cleaner at Vulindlela Trading Store.

She walks away.

He follows her unquestioningly. She does not even look back to ask why he is following her. They waddle on the sand, past the holiday cottages and below the part of the village that faces the sea. They walk
silently among tall grasses that are used for thatching houses. Then they get to the rocks that are covered with mosses of various colors. Camagu is fascinated by the yellows, the browns, the greens, and the reds that have turned the rocks into works of abstract art. Down below he can see a hut of rough thatch and twigs. It looks like the nest of a lazy bird. Outside, naked
abakhwetha
initiates are sitting in the sun, nursing their newly circumcised penises. The white ochre that covers their bodies makes them look like ghosts. One shouts at Camagu, asking for tobacco. But he walks on, following the relentless girl.

After about thirty minutes they reach Intlambo-ka-Nongqawuse—Nongqawuse’s Valley. They are greeted by the sight of partridges and guinea fowls running among the cerise bellflowers, and among the orchids, cycads, and usundu palms.

When they reach Nongqawuse’s Pool, Qukezwa speaks for the first time, asking him to throw some coins into the pool. He finds a few two-cent pieces in his pocket and throws them into the pool.

“That is not how things are done,” she says softly. “You cannot throw brown money into the sacred pool. You need to throw silver so that your road will shine with good fortune. Your thin girlfriend should have advised you that when you came to Qolorha for the first time you ought to have come here to throw money into the sea, for that is where the ancestors are—the people that Nongqawuse spoke about.”

“She is not my girlfriend, and she is not thin!”

“And she does not believe in the ancestors! Just like all of you whose heads have been damaged by white man’s education.”

“I believe in the ancestors, dammit! Where do you get off telling me I don’t believe in the ancestors?” he shouts, throwing two shiny five-rand coins into the pool.

A white wild fig tree stands out among the green bushes. Camagu is lost in the antics of the birds that are eating the figs. Qukezwa pulls him by the shirtsleeve to the bank of the Gxarha River where it spews its water into the Indian Ocean. A flock of Egyptian geese takes off from the river. Camagu’s eyes follow the brown, white, and black patterns
until they disappear in the distance, far away, where the sea breathlessly meets the sky.