You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (12 page)

I note the gaps in her teeth and fear for the slipping through of cardamom seeds. The girls at school who had their two top incisors extracted in a fashion that raged through Cape Town said that it was better for kissing. Then I, fat and innocent, nodded. How would I have known the demands of kissing?

The large woman refuses to be thwarted by criticism of her cooking. The chicken stimulates a story so that she twitches with an irrepressible desire to tell.

‘To think,' she finally bursts out, ‘that I cook them this nice surprise and say what you like, spiced chicken can make any mouth water. Just think, it was yesterday when I say to that one as she stands with her hands on her hips against the stove saying, “I don't know what to give them today, I've just got too much organising to do to bother with food.” And I say, feeling sorry for her, I say, “Don't you worry about a thing, Marram, just leave it all in cook's hands (wouldn't it be nice to work for really grand people where you cook and do nothing else, no bladdy scrubbing and shopping and all that) . . . in cook's hands,” I said,' and she crows merrily before reciting: ‘And I'll dish up a surprise / For Master Georgie's blue eyes.

‘That's Miss Lucy's young man. He was coming last night. Engaged, you know. Well there I was on my feet all day starching linen, making roeties and spiced lentils and sweet potato and all the lekker things you must mos have with cardamom chicken. And what do you think she says?'

She pauses and lifts her face as if expecting a reply, but the other stares grimly ahead. Undefeated she continues, ‘She says to me, “Tiena,” because she can't keep out of my pots, you know, always opening my lids and sniffing like a brakhond, she says, “Tiena,” and waits for me to say, “Yes Marram,” so I know she has a wicked plan up her sleeve and
I look her straight in the eye. She smile that one, always smile to put me off the track, and she say looking into the fridge, “You can have this nice bean soup for your dinner so I can have the remains of the chicken tomorrow when you're off.” So I say to her, “That's what I had for lunch today,” and she say to me, “Yes I know but me and Miss Lucy will be on our own for dinner tomorrow,” and she pull a face, “Ugh, how I hate reheated food.” Then she draws up her shoulders as if to say, That's that.

‘Cheek hey! And it was a great big fowl.' She nudges her friend. ‘You know for yourself how much better food tastes the next day when the spices are drawn right into the meat and anyway you just switch on the electric and there's no chopping and crying over onions, you just wait for the pot to dance on the stove. Of course she wouldn't know about that. Anyway, a cheek, that's what I call it, so before I even dished up the chicken for the table, I took this,' and she points triumphantly to her bag, ‘and to hell with them.'

The thin one opens her mouth, once, twice, winding herself up to speak.

‘They never notice anyway. There's so much food in their pantries, in the fridge and on the tables; they don't know what's there and what isn't.' The other looks pityingly at her.

‘Don't you believe that. My marram was as cross as a bear by the time I brought in the pudding, a very nice apricot ice it was, but she didn't even look at it. She know it was a healthy grown fowl and she count one leg, and she know what's going on. She know right away. Didn't even say, “Thank you Tiena.” She won't speak to me for days but what can she do?' Her voice softens into genuine sympathy for her madam's dilemma.

‘She'll just have to speak to me.' And she mimics,
putting on a stem horse face. ‘“We'll want dinner by seven tonight,” then “Tiena the curtains need washing,” then, “Please, Tiena, will you fix this zip for me, I've got absolutely nothing else to wear today.” And so on the third day she'll smile and think she's smiling forgiveness at me.'

She straightens her face. ‘No,' she sighs, ‘the more you have, the more you have to keep your head and count and check up because you know you won't notice or remember. No, if you got a lot you must keep snaps in your mind of the insides of all the cupboards. And every day, click, click, new snaps of the larder. That's why that one is so tired, always thinking, always reciting to herself the lists of what's in the cupboards. I never know what's in my cupboard at home but I know my Sammie's a thieving bastard, can't keep his hands in his pockets.'

The thin woman stares out of the window as if she had heard it all before. She has finished her chicken while the other, with all the talking, still holds a half-eaten drumstick daintily in her right hand. Her eyes rove over the shopping bag and she licks her fingers abstractedly as she stares out of the window.

‘Lekker hey!' the large one repeats, ‘the children will have such a party.'

‘Did Master George enjoy it?' the other asks.

‘Oh he's a gentleman all right. Shouted after me, “Well done, Tiena. When we're married we'll have to steal you from madam.” Dressed to kill he was, such a smart young man, you know. Mind you, so's Miss Lucy. Not a prettier girl in our avenue and the best-dressed too. But then she has mos to be smart to keep her man. Been on the pill for nearly a year now; I shouldn't wonder if he don't feel funny about the white wedding. Ooh, you must see her blush over the pictures of the wedding gowns, so pure and innocent
she think I can't read the packet. “Get me my headache pills out of that drawer Tiena,” she say sometimes when I take her cup of cocoa at night. But she play her cards right with Master George; she have to 'cause who'd have what another man has pushed to the side of his plate. A bay leaf and a bone!' and moved by the alliteration the image materialises in her hand. ‘Like this bone,' and she waves it under the nose of the other who starts. I wonder whether with guilt, fear or a debilitating desire for more chicken.

‘This bone,' she repeats grimly, ‘picked bare and only wanted by a dog.' Her friend recovers and deliberately misunderstands, ‘Or like yesterday's bean soup, but we women mos know that food put aside and left to stand till tomorrow always has a better flavour. Men don't know that hey. They should get down to some cooking and find out a thing or two.'

But the other is not deterred. ‘A bone,' she insists, waving her visual aid, ‘a bone.'

It is true that her bone is a matt grey that betrays no trace of the meat or fat that only a minute ago adhered to it. Master George's bone would certainly look nothing like that when he pushes it aside. With his fork he would coax off the fibres ready to fall from the bone. Then he would turn over the whole, deftly, using a knife, and frown at the sinewy meat clinging to the joint before pushing it aside towards the discarded bits of skin.

This bone, it is true, will not tempt anyone. A dog might want to bury it only for a silly game of hide and seek.

The large woman waves the bone as if it would burst into prophecy. My eyes follow the movement until the bone blurs and emerges as the Cross where the head of Jesus lolls sadly, his lovely feet anointed by sad hands, folded together under the driven nail. Look, Mamma says, look at those
eyes molten with love and pain, the body curved with suffering for our sins, and together we weep for the beauty and sadness of Jesus in his white loincloth. The Roman soldiers stand grimly erect in their tunics, their spears gleam in the light, their dark beards are clipped and their lips curl. At midday Judas turns his face to the fading sun and bays, howls like a dog for its return as the darkness grows around him and swallows him whole with the money still jingling in the folds of his saffron robes. In a concealed leather purse, a pouch devoid of ornament.

The buildings on this side of the road grow taller but oh, I do not know where I am and I think of asking the woman, the thin one, but when I look up the stem one's eyes already rest on me while the bone in her hand points idly at the advertisement just above my head. My hands, still cradling my belly, slide guiltily down my thighs and fall on my knees. But the foetus betrays me with another flutter, a sigh. I have heard of books flying off the laps of gentle mothers-to-be as their foetuses lash out. I will not be bullied. I jump up and press the bell.

There are voices behind me. The large woman's ‘Oi, I say' thunders over the conductor's cross ‘Tickets please.' I will not speak to anyone. Shall I throw myself on the grooved floor of this bus and with knees drawn up, hands over my head, wait for my demise? I do not in any case expect to be alive tomorrow. But I must resist; I must harden my heart against the sad, complaining eyes of Jesus.

‘I say, Miss,' she shouts and her tone sounds familiar. Her voice compels like the insistence of Father's guttural commands. But the conductor's hand falls on my shoulder, the barrel of his ticket dispenser digs into my ribs, the buttons of his uniform gleam as I dip into my bag for my purse. Then the large woman spills out of her seat as she
leans forward. Her friend, reconciled, holds the bar of an arm across her as she leans forward shouting, ‘Here, I say, your purse.' I try to look grateful. Her eyes blaze with scorn as she proclaims to the bus, ‘Stupid these young people. Dressed to kill maybe, but still so stupid.'

She is right. Not about my clothes, of course, and I check to see what I am wearing. I have not been alerted to my own stupidity before. No doubt I will sail through my final examinations at the end of this year and still not know how I dared to pluck a fluttering foetus out of my womb. That is if I survive tonight.

I sit on the steps of this large building and squint up at the marble facade. My elbows rest on my knees flung comfortably apart. I ought to know where I am; it is clearly a public building of some importance. For the first time I long for the veld of my childhood. There the red sand rolls for miles, and if you stand on the koppie behind the house the landmarks blaze their permanence: the river points downward, runs its dry course from north to south; the geelbos crowds its banks in near straight lines. On either side of the path winding westward plump little buttocks of cacti squat as if lifting the skirts to pee, and the swollen fingers of vygies burst in clusters out of the stone, pointing the way. In the veld you can always find your way home.

I am anxious about meeting Michael. We have planned this so carefully for the rush hour when people storming home crossly will not notice us together in the crush.

‘It's simple,' Michael said. ‘The bus carries along the main roads through the suburbs to the City, and as you reach the Post Office you get off and I'll be there to meet you. At five.'

A look at my anxious face compelled him to say, ‘You can't get lost in Cape Town. There,' and he pointed over
his shoulder, ‘is Table Mountain and there is Devil's Peak and there Lion's Head, so how in heaven's name could you get lost?' The words shot out unexpectedly, like the fine arc of brown spittle from between the teeth of an old man who no longer savours the tobacco he has been chewing all day. There are, I suppose, things that even a loved one cannot overlook.

Am I a loved one?

I ought to rise from these steps and walk towards the City. Fortunately I always take the precaution of setting out early, so that I should still be in time to meet Michael who will drive me along de Waal Drive into the slopes of Table Mountain where Mrs Coetzee waits with her tongs.

Am I a loved one? No. I am dull, ugly and bad-tempered. My hair has grown greasy, I am forgetful and I have no sense of direction. Michael, he has long since stopped loving me. He watched me hugging the lavatory bowl, retching, and recoiled at my first display of bad temper. There is a faraway look in his eyes as he plans his retreat. But he is well brought up, honourable. When the first doubts gripped the corners of his mouth, he grinned madly and said, ‘We must marry,' showing a row of perfect teeth.

‘There are laws against that,' I said unnecessarily.

But gripped by the idyll of an English landscape of painted greens, he saw my head once more held high, my lettuce-luscious skirts crisp on a camomile lawn and the willow drooping over the red mouth of a suckling infant.

‘Come on,' he urged. ‘Don't do it. We'll get to England and marry. It will work out all right,' and betraying the source of his vision, ‘and we'll be happy for ever, thousands of miles from all this mess.'

I would have explained if I could. But I could not account for this vision: the slow shower of ashes over yards
of diaphanous tulle, the moth wings tucked back with delight as their tongues whisked the froth of white lace. For two years I have loved Michael, have wanted to marry him. Duped by a dream I merely shook my head.

‘But you love babies, you want babies some time or other, so why not accept God's holy plan? Anyway, you're a Christian and you believe it's a sin, don't you?'

God is not a good listener. Like Father, he expects obedience and withdraws peevishly if his demands are not met. Explanations of my point of view infuriate him so that he quivers with silent rage. For once I do not plead and capitulate; I find it quite easy to ignore these men.

‘You're not even listening,' Michael accused. ‘I don't know how you can do it.' There is revulsion in his voice.

For two short years I have adored Michael.

Once, perched perilously on the rocks, we laughed fondly at the thought of a child. At Cape Point where the oceans meet and part. The Indian and the Atlantic, fighting for their separate identities, roared and thrashed fiercely so that we huddled together, his hand on my belly. It is said that if you shut one eye and focus the other carefully, the line separating the two oceans may rear drunkenly but remains ever clear and hair-fine. But I did not look. In the mischievous wind I struggled with the flapping ends of a scarf I tried to wrap around my hair. Later that day on the silver sands of a deserted beach he wrote solemnly: Will you marry me? and my trembling fingers traced a huge heart around the words. Ahead the sun danced on the waves, flecking them with gold.