The Heart of Redness: A Novel (37 page)

Camagu is despondent. The only bright spot in his life is that soon Qukezwa’s people will bring her to his cottage. Qukezwa and Heitsi. He has claimed Heitsi as his child, even though the elders were insisting that since he was born out of wedlock he, according to custom, belongs to Zim and not to Qukezwa’s new family. It will be wonderful to have an instant family. He never thought he was cut out to be a father. His ways were wild and carefree. They were ways that were in constant search of the pleasures of the flesh. Any flesh. Until he came to Qolorha-by-Sea. And was tamed by a nondescript daughter of Believers. Heitsi. He will be a good father to him. Heitsi. He who is named after Heitsi Eibib, the earliest prophet of the Khoikhoi. Heitsi. The son of Tsiqwa. Tsiqwa. He who tells his stories in heaven. Heitsi. The one who parted the waters of the Great River so that his people could cross when the enemy was chasing them. When his people had crossed, and the enemy was trying to pass through the opening, the Great River closed upon the enemy. And the enemy all died.

Camagu smiles to himself when he remembers how he learned all this from Qukezwa when she was teaching him about the sacred cairns.
He also learned that the Khoikhoi people were singing the story of Heitsi Eibib long before the white missionaries came to these shores with their similar story of Moses and the crossing of the Red Sea.

A messenger breaks his reverie. Qukezwa will not be coming. At least not for a while. As soon as Camagu and Dalton had left after negotiating the lobola, Zim had declared that he could now go in peace, for his work was done. Then he just sat there staring at nothing. Since then he has not said a word. He does not hear anything. It is as if the world outside does not exist. Qukezwa feels that she cannot leave her father in this state. She will try to nurse him back to good health. Only then will she join her husband.

But Zim remains in this state for many days. And then for many weeks. Nothing seems to help. After a while, Camagu is allowed to visit his wife. He is seen at Zim’s homestead at least every other day. He is puzzled by what is happening to Zim.

Qukezwa arranges that they put his father on Gxagxa, his favorite horse, and lead him to Intlambo-ka-Nongqawuse—Nongqawuse’s Valley. They place him before Ityholo-lika-Nongqawuse, the bush where Nongqawuse first saw visions of the Strangers who gave her the message of salvation. Qukezwa hopes this will help to jog his spiritual memory back to the world of the living. But it does not help.

An igqirha—a healer and diviner—is called and puts her finger right on the problem. Only after she and her acolytes have eaten the goat that was slaughtered for them, of course.

She says the daughter of the amaGqunukhwebe—by which she means NoEngland—is calling Zim. But Qukezwa is holding him with her heart. She does not want her father to die. She is selfishly holding him very tightly. There is a tussle between the two women who love the elder. He therefore remains in limbo between the world of the living and the world of the ancestors.

“NoEngland will finally win, for she is in cahoots with very powerful ancestors,” says the igqirha. “Qukezwa is only a girl, although her heart is powerful enough to hold the elder for so long.”

Qukezwa is angry when the elders plead with her to release the poor man so that he may go in peace. Why does everyone want her father to die?

While the relatives are waiting for NoEngland’s grand victory over Qukezwa, a woman is brought to Zim’s homestead on a triangular wooden sleigh pulled by two oxen. She is very sick. But her beauty shines through the illness. She is covered in a gray donkey blanket, and lies calmly on a mattress on the sleigh. Only her head is showing. She wears a bright-colored doek. Her eyes are downcast and speak only of shame.

The sleigh is parked just outside Zim’s door, and the man who brought her unyokes the oxen. The Believers who are surrounding Zim hear the commotion outside and are amazed to see the woman on the sleigh and the man driving his oxen out of the homestead.

“She is my daughter,” explains the man. “She insists that I leave her here. It is the only thing that will cure her.”

And he is gone.

No one knows what to do with the woman until Qukezwa arrives. She takes one look at her and screams.

“What do you want here? Are you not satisfied with what you did to my mother? Have you come to put the final nail in my father’s coffin?”

“Please, Qukezwa,” the woman whispers wanly, “have a heart. I am dying. This is the last appeal that I can make to NoEngland. I heard that Zim is in the process of dying and that you are holding him. I am glad you held him until I arrived. Perhaps he can take a message to No-England that she remove the curse. I have been to doctors of all sorts. They are unable to stop the flow. Only NoEngland can stop the pain that is racking my body.”

The doctors at the hospital in East London gave her disease a name, she tells the men and women who are now surrounding her. Cervical cancer. They told her it was incurable. They gave her tablets to ease the pain. There was nothing new in what they said. She already knew that it was incurable, whatever one chose to call it. The igqirha himself had said so. Only the person who had caused it could reverse it. And that igqirha should know. He was the one who had “worked” her underwear for her to be like this in the first place.

NoEngland cannot be woken from the dead to remove the curse. But at least Zim can ask her to remove the pain when they meet in the Otherworld. The woman says she will not move from where she is until she is given an audience with Zim.

“You set your friends on me . . . to harass me wherever I went!” a callous Qukezwa yells at the hapless woman.

“I will not move until Zim’s spirit departs from his body,” insists the woman.

Everyone looks at Qukezwa as if the woman’s salvation lies with her. As if Qukezwa was responsible for her fate. She runs back to her rondavel, where she breaks down and cries. She is angry that they want to hasten her father’s death just so that he can carry their messages to NoEngland. She is determined more than ever to nurse him back to health. But the sick woman is just as determined to keep vigil outside Zim’s door. She is grateful for the bread and tea that merciful relatives of Zim serve her. But she will not be moved to any of the houses. She wants to wait outside Zim’s door.

Camagu comes the following day to see Qukezwa and Heitsi, and to find out if there is any change in Zim’s state. He sees the woman on the sleigh. He takes one look at her and his heart beats faster. His palms sweat. He is out of breath, as if he had been running.

“NomaRussia?” he wonders softly.

She lifts her eyes wearily.

“NomaRussia!” he calls excitedly.

“Who are you?”

“At the wake . . . in Hillbrow . . . you sang so beautifully.”

“So I did.”

“We spoke. Don’t you remember?”

“There were many people there. I do not remember you. All I want is for the pain to go away.”

People were dying. Thousands of them. At first it was mostly old people and children. Then men and women in their prime. Dying everywhere. Corpses and skeletons were a common sight. In the dongas. On the veld. Even around the homesteads. No one had the strength to bury them.

Twin and Qukezwa were determined to keep Heitsi alive at all costs. Twin had extricated himself from his lethargy. While he joined raiding parties that stole food from both Believers and Unbelievers, Qukezwa boiled up old bones that she picked up on the veld and in the dongas. Although the bones had been bleaching in the sun for years, she hoped to get some broth from them. She and Heitsi drank it as soup.

Twin’s raiding parties went as far as East London. They broke into the colonists’ stables and stole their horses. They slaughtered them and shared the meat. Qukezwa would see her husband approach from afar with a whole leg of a horse on his shoulders. She would rejoice, for there would be plenty of meat that day. The people could no longer afford to be disgusted about eating horsemeat. They forgot that they used to laugh at the Basotho people who regarded horsemeat, especially its biltong, as a delicacy.

Sometimes, even before he reached home, Twin would be attacked by hordes of hungry people who would grab the meat and run away with it. Or, while Qukezwa was cooking it, hungry thieves would steal the whole pot, right from the fire, and run away with it. It was a dog-eat-dog world.

And to their utter shame they did actually eat dogs. They stole the well-fed dogs of the colonists and cooked them for supper.

But death continued unabated. The colonists protected their animals from marauders with barricades and guns. Many Believers just sat in their homes and waited for death. Helpless mothers watched as children fell, never to rise again. Dying wives watched as the family dogs ate the corpses of their husbands. They knew that sooner or later they too would end up in the dogs’ stomachs. But then the dogs themselves would end up in some hungry families’ stomachs. It was a dog-eat-dog world.

“When things are like this, people will end up eating one another,” said Twin as he sat with Heitsi near the fire where Qukezwa was cooking some grass that they were going to eat before they slept.

“Only mad people can do that. Even at the worst of times we would never be reduced to cannibalism as the Basotho were during the Difaqane wars and migrations,” replied Qukezwa.

“Some people are mad already,” said Twin. “Hunger has made many people raving mad.”

“The prophets have failed us,” lamented Qukezwa. “We must move. We must seek refuge, or even go to the colony and seek help from our cónquerors.”

“The prophets have not failed us,” declared Twin. “We have failed them. We have failed ourselves. The fault is not with the prophecies, but with the Unbelievers, who failed to obey Nongqawuse! The dead will yet arise!”

“You can sit here, Father of Heitsi, and wait for the dead to rise. I am taking my child away.”

“Where will you go?”

“I will go to the land of the amaMfengu. I heard that they have given refuge to quite a few of the starving amaXhosa.”

“You can’t desert the prophets now!”

“Desert the prophets?” laughs Qukezwa mockingly. “They deserted us. Where are they now? Mhlakaza is dead. The girl-prophets were arrested. Your prophets lied to us. The god of your people is weak. He failed to protect his people. I am going back to the god of my people, the Khoikhoi people.”

Indeed Qukezwa went back to the god of her people. She begged his forgiveness for abandoning him. Qukezwa, daughter of the stars, returned to worshipping the seven daughters of Tsiqwa, the one who told his stories in heaven, the one who created the world and all humanity. The prodigal daughter communed once more with the bright stars that were also known as the Seven Sisters.

In the same way that she had led the sons of Xikixa to the land of plenty a few years before, she led Twin and Heitsi to the land of the amaMfengu. But this time there was no Gxagxa to ride. They walked on foot, their hunger belts tightly tied around their stomachs. There was no Twin-Twin and his many women and children. There were no cattle to drive. No pigs. No chickens. Just the three emaciated souls with calloused feet.

On the way they came across many dead bodies lying on the road. Some of the bodies had not finished dying yet. Their sunken eyes showed a little glimmer of life. Their cracked skin looked like land that had been thoroughly punished by drought. Their skin clung desperately to their bones. Twin and Qukezwa knew that they would be very fortunate if they themselves were not eventually counted among the roadside dead.

Although they looked like people risen from the grave, they arrived in the land of the amaMfengu, and found many Believers who had taken refuge with various families. They were provided with shelter in exchange for their labor. They looked after cattle, hoed the rich fields, and did guard duty for their amaMfengu hosts. This was very humiliating to many Believers who came from some of the noblest families of the amaGcaleka clan.

Twin and Qukezwa were quarreling all the time. He was unhappy that she had led them to the land of the amaMfengu, who were known traitors in alliance with the British. They had ignored the prophecies of Nongqawuse and had become rich by buying cattle cheaply from the
Believers. Now they were slaughtering cattle and feeding the
amafaca
, the emaciated ones.

“Would you rather we had died at Qolorha?” asked Qukezwa.

He could not answer that, but continued to moan about the treacherous nature of their saviors. He threatened that as soon as he got strong enough he would leave. He would go back to the land of his forefathers.

“You have nothing. What will you do there?” Qukezwa reasoned.

“I will find Twin-Twin,” he said. But there was no conviction in his voice. “Or I will go to Lesotho or to the land of the amaMpondo and the amaMpondomise. Many Believers have taken refuge there. It is not as humiliating as it is here.”

Qukezwa just chuckled and said that maybe Twin-Twin would welcome him with open arms after all the mischief that Twin had done against him. Then she went to feed Heitsi with umphokoqo maize porridge and creamy
amasi
sour milk.