The Madonna of Excelsior (8 page)

The five men welcomed the five women with drinks. One of the women, Niki, said no thank you. Johannes Smit, the man who was offering her a mug, urged, “Come on, Niki, you will see it is much more fun when you are a bit tipsy.”

But another man, Stephanus Cronje, stepped between them and said, “She does not want any of your cherry liqueur, Johannes.”

“Today we must swop, Stephanus,” said Johannes Smit. “Last time you refused to swop. Everyone swops. You can't keep to one partner all the time.”

He was already breathing like someone who had just run a marathon. Niki looked at him as if he was something someone had forgotten to throw into a rubbish bin. She seemed to be the only one of the women who had full awareness of the power packed in her body. And she was using it consciously to get what she wanted. Since the cherry festival, Johannes Smit died of desire every time he thought of her. Especially when he imagined all the things she must have done with Stephanus Cronje. He had hoped that during these partner-swopping orgies, he would have his opportunity. But Stephanus Cronje was obviously becoming un-sportsmanly. As if he had the sole ownership of Niki. And this was the same Stephanus Cronje who had a taste of other men's partners when Niki was not there!

“He will not be allowed here if he does not want to share,” said the Reverend François Bornman, fondling Mmampe's breasts. She had planted herself on his lap.

“If they banish us from here, Niki, we'll just do our thing in the sunflower fields,” said Stephanus Cronje with a tinge of boastful-ness in his voice.

They had “done their thing” in the sunflower fields before. In between the barn romps, which happened only once a fortnight. They had even “done their thing” in Madam Cornelia's bedroom, when she went visiting her parents in Zastron. They had used Madam Cornelia's own metal antique bed that looked like a hospital bed to Niki. On Madam Cornelia's own downy duvet. Niki's head resting comfortably on Madam Cornelia's own fluffy continental pillow. Niki's greatest triumph!

“So what do you want here if you won't play by the rules?” asked Johannes Smit, taking his cue from the man of the cloth and fondling Maria's breasts.

“Rules?” cried Stephanus Cronje. “Whose rules? When did we lay hard and fast rules that we'll swop no matter what?”

“He's always been a selfish boy,” muttered Groot-Jan Lombard. “Even when he was a baby I knew he was going to be a selfish boy.”

“You should say that about your own son, Oom Groot-Jan,” said Stephanus Cronje. “He is the selfish one. Klein-Jan eats his black honey on the sly.”

The woman with the baby placed the child on the floor at the far end of the barn. She sat on Groot-Jan Lombard's lap and ceremoniously took off his shirt. Then she yanked at the hair in his armpits. With each jerk he bleated like a goat. The pleasurable pain was all he would ever get from these sprees. It was before the wonder of Viagra was invented.

Soon naked hairy white bodies were frolicking on the hay with naked smooth black bodies.

The baby played with an empty cherry liqueur bottle.
Da . . . da . . . daaaa
. The baby who was almost white rolled the bottle on the floor and crawled after it.
Da . . . da . . . daaaa
. Brownish hair like young maize-cob filaments. A product of these barn romps.
Daaa . . . da . . . daaaaaa!
Mummy administering such creative pain to a poor old man. Everybody lost in a dizzying whirl of partner-swopping. Everybody but Niki and Stephanus Cronje. They were lost deep within each other.

The single-titled man became a whimpering baby as before. As always.

Once he carried two titles: boss and Madam Cornelia's husband. Now he was just Madam Cornelia's husband, as he had insisted that she resign from the butchery. She was unemployed. But she didn't have a single regret. She earned more money than she did when she worked full-time at the butchery. Once a week she would send Viliki to Stephanus Cronje's house in town. During the day, when Madam Cornelia was busy ringing up the till at the butchery, counting rands and cents—some of which would end up as Niki's share of the spoils—and weighing workers on the black
iron floor scale twice a day. Viliki would knock timidly. Stephanus Cronje would appear at the window. Viliki would give him a note from his mother. He would read it and then put some bank notes in an envelope.

“Give this to your mother,” he would say in Sesotho. “And be careful, boy, don't lose that envelope.”

Viliki would run like the wind all the way to Mahlatswetsa Location and proudly give the envelope to his mother.

Viliki and Niki were living a wonderfully comfortable life, what with Pule's relentless remittances! And the few coins Niki earned once in a while when Madam Cornelia sent for her to look after Tjaart when the regular nanny had not turned up—attending her grandmother's funeral for the tenth time. Occasions that Tjaart relished because for him there was never going to be anyone who could take Niki's place. Occasions that Niki relished because they kept her in touch with Madam Cornelia. If only to give Madam a self-satisfied smirk. And to rejoice in Madam's blissful ignorance.

The romps on the hay deteriorated into moans. Moans relayed from one pair to another. Simultaneous moans. A barnful of moans. And howls of enjoyable pain. The baby cried. But no one paid attention. The baby bawled and bawled. The Brahmins outside went berserk. With their big ears, they had very keen hearing and were sensitive to strange noises. The Brahmin bulls bellowed and raised dust. No one paid any attention to them. A cacophony of moans, howls, baby cries and the deep bellowing of the bulls.

In the middle of it all, Niki suddenly felt the weight of a chilling ball of iron somewhere between her stomach and her lungs. It was not Stephanus Cronje's heavy body on hers. It was the weight of a memory that was determined to come between her and ecstasy. She had filed the fact that she had missed her times in some dark compartment of her mind. Now it was forcing itself back in the cacophony. More than a month had passed without her visiting the moon. To add to her woes, most mornings she was nauseous. And had a strong desire to eat damp soil.

She wondered what Stephanus Cronje would say when she told
him. And what murder Pule would commit when he got to know of it.

She pushed Stephanus Cronje with both her hands, and shoved him away from her body. Just when his was getting hard and rigid.

He watered the hay.

A
MAN IN
blue pants, blue shirt and red beret stands on the black roof of a skewed house one blue night. He lifts his arms to the heavens in a supplication that is reminiscent of the five women in their prime. The roof almost caves in from his weight. Wide-eyed heads appear in the blue and white and yellow sky. Milky-white eyes with pitch-black pupils staring at the man. Penetrating the house with their amazed gaze. Disembodied heads like twinkling stars in the blue night. White cosmos grows wild around the house.

Bright eyes in the sky see everything. They see a newly-born baby wrapped in white linen. An intrusive star of Bethlehem has sneaked in through one of the two skewed windows and shines on the baby's body. It fills the room with light and yellowness. Two humans kneel on either side of the sleeping baby, hands clasped in prayer. One is a man in a blue suit and blue beret. The other is a woman in a blue nun's habit. The big star of Bethlehem suspends itself above her buttocks.

It had not been easy for Niki, although this was a second childbearing. The water had broken. The contractions had flooded her body. Fewer and fewer minutes apart. It should have been
smoother. But the baby had other ideas. It gave the village midwives its back, and remained stuck in the passage of life. The Vaselined hand of a midwife forced its way into the channel, trying to turn the baby, so that its head should come to the fore instead. A hundred razor-blades were cutting the very depth of Niki's being. Making incisions that bled profusely and throbbed with a pain that she believed would be etched in her memory forever. She moaned and wailed. The midwives softly admonished her: a true woman accepted her lot with bravado. A true woman hid her pain inside her chest and presented an unflinching face to the world. It was a disgrace for any woman to yell like that at the agony of bringing a new life to the world. Even more shameful in a second confinement.

She was tired of pushing. Yet they egged her on. They cajoled and threatened. They mocked and ridiculed. They burnt herbs near the bed, and filled the room with incense. Until the baby turned around. After many hours. After one whole day and one whole night. Just when she thought she was giving up on her life and the baby's, the baby's head mercifully erupted like red molten lava onto the midwives' exhausted hands.

Big eyes in the sky saw Niki's relief. The midwives heard her sigh and joined with their own unison of sighs. The struggle was over. The baby uttered one good yelp. They cut the umbilical cord and clamped the piece that hung from the baby's stomach with a clothes peg. Niki fell into a deep sleep, while the midwives buried the placenta in the ash heap at the back of the shack.

She owed her body a dream-free slumber.

When she woke up, they showed her a beautiful baby girl. A flood of love overwhelmed her. She wanted to hold her tightly against her breasts. And to protect her fiercely against anyone who would dare question her reason for existing. The midwives said the baby looked like a porcelain doll. They jokingly called her Popi, another word for “doll”. And that became her name.

When we finally got to see Popi, we were not in the least taken aback that she looked almost like a white woman's baby. The
midwives who attended to Niki were not astonished either. Of late they had been helping quite a few black women from Mahlatswetsa Location and the neighbouring farms, who had been giving birth to almost white babies. Or to “coloured” babies, as they were called. As if they were polychromatic. Or as if everyone else in Mahlatswetsa was transparent. Some barn women were already cuddling their own coloured offspring, while others' stomachs were expanding by the day. It was a bursting of forbidden sluices that we were all talking about in Excelsior.

After the baby had been cleaned and wrapped in a soft white blanket, she slept peacefully in her mother's arms. The baby was obviously exhausted after the long struggle. The midwives snickered and whispered among themselves that she shared features with Tjaart Cronje. She had Tjaart's eyes. She had Tjaart's fingers. She had Tjaart's ears. She had Tjaart's nose. She had Tjaart's rosy cheeks.

Niki heard every word, for she was not asleep after all. She had just closed her eyes, enjoying the softness of the baby's body against hers, careful not to hold her too tightly against her breast, lest she squeezed all life out of her tiny body. She wondered how the midwives had suddenly gained such great expertise on the shape of Tjaart's body parts. Her child had nothing of Tjaart's, she convinced herself. The midwives were seeing what they wanted to see. Their ill-gotten knowledge of barn escapades made them reinvent her beautiful baby in the image of Tjaart Cronje.

The image of Tjaart Cronje began to haunt her restful state. It transformed itself into a daymare. Tjaart Cronje. All of seven years old, yet his crush on Niki had persisted. Exacerbated by her naked body that continued to loom large upon the floor scale of his imagination. Exacerbated even more by her big round belly.

Madam Cornelia had continued to use her services as Tjaart's part-time nanny until the very last month of her pregnancy. Part-time in name only, for her services were demanded almost daily, as the boy wanted only Niki, and none of the regular nannies employed to look after him.

It was an unspoken covenant of mutual enjoyment. Tjaart enjoyed caressing her protruding stomach that stretched her maternity dress to its very limits. And laughing at the violent kicks of the baby. Niki secretly enjoyed the calming effect of the little hand. Madam Cornelia meanwhile enjoyed teasing her about “her people” who were always having children in spite of the overpopulation of the world.

“You people never know when to stop,” she would observe. “You must ask your husband to take you to the hospital to close you up.”

She obviously had forgotten that this was only going to be Niki's second child.

Madam Cornelia's greatest concern was for Tjaart. Who was going to look after Tjaart when the time came for Niki to give birth? And after that, how was she going to look after a new baby and Tjaart at the same time?

P
ULE HAD NOT
returned to Excelsior for almost a year. When he came back, he found a coloured baby in his house. In Welkom, he had heard rumours of his wife's pregnancy. He had written to Niki, trying to find out the truth of the persistent stories. But she had not responded. He had then stopped sending her money, after warning her that if she did not come up with a reasonable explanation concerning her alleged condition, he would stop wasting his hard-earned cash on her. The money that was enabling her to gallivant around was dripping with his sweat, he added. He was indeed true to his word. Hence Niki's willingness to act as Tjaart's nanny, even when she was very heavy with child. She needed the cash.