You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (19 page)

A
FAIR EXCHANGE

The wood and tin of the door, held together by nails now brittle with rust, creaked and rattled independently. Skitterboud stepped out in time to see the crest of a blood-red sun buckle the horizon.

‘Ooh,' he crowed, ‘in a hurry this morning, there's time enough old girl, time enough to do the blue climb today.'

He liked to rise just before the sun. His hands fumbled with the buttonholes of his shirt. The button must have come off in the night and he remembered dimly a hard disc probing his dreams. Or was it the spear of her elbow as her wiry body turned away from him.

‘Meid,' he called, ‘Meid, the sun's up.'

She clasped her hands behind her head and from the bedclothes followed the slow swell of sun. Now young and fiery, it stuck out its chest to battle against the timid morning. She did not move. Later, when the sun grew pale and quivered with rage, she would not be able to look it in the eye. She knew of a girl in the Kamiesberg who had summoned her eyes to meet the midday sun and something so terrible did she see that no words ever crossed her lips again and the day grew black with thunder. That's how things happen: not blinded but struck dumb. The next day the sun rose as if nothing had gone wrong.

Meid drew the blanket over her head so that the infant on her right murmured and rolled closer to the smell of milk. It tugged lazily at the nipple, its eyelids sealed with sleep. She could hear him outside, still chattering to the sun, to the chickens that tumbled noisily out of the pen, coaxing the fire in the cooking shelter with sweet talk. That was Skitterboud all right with his sweet talk, his chatter to keep the world smiling.

The child rolled the nipple like a boiled sweet in his mouth and complained loudly.

‘Shsht, shsht,' she said, ‘you'll wake the others.' The trickle of milk had dried up and the child opened an eye to question the source. She smiled, rubbing the thick matting of his head.

‘I told you it would dry up in the summer. You're a big boy now, nearly two, you can't go on for ever.' The uncomprehending eye dropped its shutter and the child rolled back, bleating. She thought of the lambs in the veld wagging their tails in vain for milk as their dams stormed off in irritation. Soon they would find a use for that wagging after all, use it to fan away the summer flies until their tails grow heavy with the storage of fat. By then they would have forgotten the udder.

‘Meid, Meid,' he called, ‘what can the matter be with this woman?' as if he could not address her directly through the reeds of the house. Where the mud had flaked off the reeds with heat, the smoke crept through the crevices making her stomach heave. But she sprang out of bed lightly, slipped on the dress which hung from a nail and fumbled for her doekie amongst the bedclothes. In the summer she slept bareheaded but during the day the doekie kept the sun from burrowing into the thick black hair, from worrying at her scalp like lice.

He was mending a wooden stool by the fire. The steel triangle stood stoically over the flames and the flat black pot on it sang. By its side the sound of hissing coffee water issued from the round belly of the three-legged pot brooding over the coals.

‘Where's the mealiemeal?' he asked. Her hands hung limp and her eyes scanned the veld as she replied, ‘Yes I'll get it.' But he jumped up impatiently, ‘I'll go and I'll get the children up as well.' He moved like lightning and for a moment her body was kindled by a smile turned inward. Still Skitterboud, and she thought of how she had walked all those days from the Kamiesberg and arrived on this farm on the night of a dance. How rare such days with a reward at the end of the road, when he laid down his guitar and danced. Under the yellow moon the earth breathed gold dust and she the stranger whispered, ‘Who is he?' His eyes were on her, Skitterboud, the man of shimmering thighs who spun like a top, his thin legs studded with stars.

She sprinkled a film of yellow mealiemeal on to the steaming circle and watched the boiling centre draw in the flour in greedy spirals, down, down, until the circles grew outward once again.

‘You must stir it in,' he said. ‘You're in a dream today. There's nothing worse than lumpy mealiepap.'

Pimples of maize lazing in the slush, she could almost feel them captured between tongue and teeth, and her hand flew to her stomach to stem the nausea. He took the spoon from her. Stirring all the while, ‘I'll bring you some kambroo from Dipkraal. I saw some in the valley last week; some tubers should be ready by now.'

So he knew. After three children he could not fail to detect that she was with child. The kambroo would steady her stomach.

‘Tata, Tata,' the little girl called, ‘I want to come to Dipkraal.' He swung her on to his hip and the leather of his face cracked into so wide and relieved a smile that she turned to her brother and from the lofty position chanted, ‘Eehee, Eehee, I'm going to Di-ipkraal.' For a moment he thought of taking her. She would cool the hours in the stony hills stretching before him, but the sun was already paling with heat and the day would be very long. So like her mother little Blom, his favoured second born, and he put her down to explain to the coalblack eyes how Baas Karel wanted the sheep rounded up for a count. He, Skitterboud, had not seen the merinos for a few days; they may well have been impounded by Baas Coetzee. Stony hills then miles of red sand to cover, through the knee-high bushes dripping their sticky milk. And nowhere to hide from the sun.

‘Boohoo,' she cried, ‘boohoo, you took Dapperman to Dipkraal.' He packed the bread and filled the canvas bag with water from the bucket.

‘But that was in spring and Dapperman is older and stronger.' He patted her head.

‘Yes,' said the steam engine that was Dapperman, puffing energetically, his cheeks blown taut with concentration as he snaked spitefully around her, puffing, puffing through her amplified boohoos. He narrowly missed his mother's clout and leapt deftly over the pressed thornbush wall that formed the circle of the cooking shelter. The little one inside had woken up and his cries fiddled to Blom's boohoos, thickening the morning air, spreading into the vast expanse of open veld around her so that she dug recklessly into the jute sack hanging above their reach for the new enamel plates that she had meant to save for later that day. Pretty plates to catch the tears. What did it
matter which set of tears, there would be plenty that day; there would always be snot and tears until the bodies grow strong enough to stifle the sobs and the sun dries up those wells.

‘Blom, Blom,' she reprimanded, dishing with her back to them the mealie porridge into the new dish and, turning, saw the scrunched face first slacken then light up with pleasure. Blom's finger circled the white enamel edge around the steaming porridge. ‘And white sugar,' she crowed. They waited for Meid to explain these luxuries but her face was locked as she reached for the baby on Skitterboud's knee.

‘You should be going.' But he held on to the child; he did not want to go. He would give the little one his porridge today. The child flailed its arms wildly and kicked at the proffered plate. ‘No,' it shrieked, ‘my dish,' so that the porridge had to be transferred to the old dented tin plate. Now he was happy; he murmured in accompaniment to the beat of the spoon on tin.

‘Ooh,' cried Dapperman and Blom together and, laughing, they shoved down the porridge to complete the picture that peeped in brilliant flashes of red and green from the brief paths made by the spoons. And there it was. A full-blown rose and a train painted on the white enamel. Dapperman, the steam engine, puffed and snaked once again around her, she crosslegged with face of bursting rosebud. ‘And now my turn,' so that he collapsed, rose head lolling as Blom beat out a train-dust around him. Neither had ever seen a rose or a train. Dapperman said that roses were printed on, no, grew between the carriages.

The dishes had newly arrived in the shop. Last week on the monthly outing to the village she watched the boy stacking them on the counter and she strained to see the
colour shifting under the tissue paper in which they were wrapped. The picture leapt out at her from the last plate. In his haste to unpack, the boy had pulled the paper right off.

With her provisions packed carefully in a bag for balancing on her head she held on to the concrete pillar on the stoep of Baas Piet's store. She could not leave. Round and round she swung so that her body stretched like toffee in the heat, wrapped itself around the pillar, wanting what she could not have. It was then that she felt the new life twitch in her belly so that she swung the bag defiantly over her shoulder and went back into the shop. Baas Piet, who had long since despaired of discouraging the farm workers from colonising his stoep, looked eager and read aloud from the back of the plate: Made in China. A rose and a train made so far away in China for her children. She wished that she could take them far, far away. Someone had once told her that Chinese people did not look so unlike them, the Namaquas, except of course for the hair, long straight black hair, smooth as a horse's tail. And Baas Piet? People say that once there were no white people in these parts, that they too came from far, far away, but then she knew that people say all sorts of things as they wait for the purpling hills to swallow up the last of the light. She looked at the Boer as if his face would tell the truth but his eyes were fixed with such intent on the knot she was undoing in her handkerchief that she fumbled with the coin and remembered that he had of course not addressed the Made in China to her.

On that long walk home with the month's mealiemeal swaying on her head she squirmed at her extravagance. Skitterboud would be angry. She tried to be a good wife but there were so many people a woman had to please that she no longer knew what to do. As for the children – and she
smiled as she thought of the enamel plates – they had seen neither train nor rose.

Ounooi Annie had a rose bush, right there in the middle of the veld, so that when she arrived at the big white house she had not minded so much after all. That was what a woman had to do. Baas Karel said shortly after she had come to stay that the place for his shepherd's new woman was in Ounooi Annie's kitchen. She knew that that was right, but oh, how she had hoped that Skitterboud's smile and sweet talk would keep her out of that farmhouse so far away from their own pondok.

But as she approached, there was the rose blazing red in the sun so that she smiled as she pored over it, its breath on her cheek until she looked up to see Ounooi Annie smiling at her and yes, she thought, it would not be so bad after all, not so bad surrounded by these pretty things. For the curtains flapping in the window sent their printed pink posies spilling out on to the veld. Ounooi smiled, ‘Pretty roses hey! You can look after them if you like.' And she, Magriet, plunged both hands into the rosebush to cup for a second the scented redness so that the Ounooi shrieked, ‘Meid, Meid, pasop!' and she watched red blood trickle through her fingers thinking, That is my new name, baptised in blood.

Once her mother had told her of the name Magriet, a flower in the garden of Ounooi Visser whom she worked for until her death. White with a yellow-sun centre. How fervently she had whispered those words to the wind. Seeds, she had been taught at mission school, could travel for miles in the wind and she waited for the stray marguerite to root in the veld. But the wind whistled by in a flurry of dust; the name did not sound real. It was bound to be reclaimed some day. And so she became Meid.

Ounooi was sorry but she had plenty grounds for complaint. Cleanliness was next to godliness and Meid did not clean with the thoroughness expected in a Boer house. She was too often caught dreaming and she neglected even to water the rose. This was true. On the gleaming sideboard in the parlour she lavished all her care on a brass bowl of artificial carnations. She wrapped the cloth tightly around her little finger and, wetting it with spittle, carefully crept into the crevices of the waxy pink petals with their impossibly frilled edges. They made her smile. Whatever will these Boers have next? She could stare for hours into the glass front of the sideboard but best of all were the carnations. She wondered what would happen if she watered them.

Ounooi said to Skitterboud as he waited in the kitchen for his wages and the weekly bottle of wine, ‘She's lazy, you'll have to take her away and train her and then perhaps we could try her again some time.' Lowering her voice she added, ‘She'll be better, more willing to learn, if you married her. It's not right, you know, even if you Bushmen will not think of God, He doesn't forget you. He looks upon your sins and weeps.'

Meid could swear that Skitterboud wiped away a tear as Ounooi gave details of the document that would console God. She watched him crumple his hat in both hands and dimly did she hear the sound of his tin guitar twang out of tune. She could not remember the excuse she made for going back to the parlour where under their very noses she plucked a plastic carnation from its brass bowl. A ridiculously long stem but she would weave it through her doekie, for a marriage surely meant dressing up as for a dance.

Was it the marriage that brought all the children? God's
blessing? Her girl was to be named after a flower, but a flower she would know, something she could shout to the wind: the Namaqua daisy that breaks out of the stones washed white by winter rain, so that the hills hum with colour in the sun. Just Blom, plain flower, a name that no one could take away from her. She would never take her to the big white house.