Читать книгу The Camp Whore - Francois Smith - Страница 11

Lebitso la ka ke Ntauleng.

I have spoken! I have told Mamello what my name is. Ntauleng. I can speak again! And she clapped her hands in gratitude and bent down and laughed and cried lilililili and quickly ran down the hill to call Tiisetso. He came and stood in the cave with his knobkerrie held high and said: Kêna ka kgotso, Ntauleng. Come inside in peace, Ntauleng. I think he means that I should come inside from wherever I have been. Mamello starts fussing with the calabash, but Tiisetso just stands there staring at me, the handle of his knobkerrie held next to his ear. Perhaps he knows about the nights, how I lie awake in the dark, strangled by fear and struggling to breathe, and that I am always listening, to every little sound. Sometimes I hear a horse’s teeth against a bit, or a stamping hoof, then something wing-like passes over me, or a crowd of women with black dresses and big black hoods walk slowly through the veld and the dresses touch one other with a scraping sound, and from their bodies comes the smell of dassie droppings, the excrement fermenting in crevices, and from the corners of the women’s mouths bitterness drips down the jagged rock.

They started singing, Tiisetso with a high voice for a man, and Mamello’s also high, but flatter, as smooth and flat as the rock where they slaughter. And while they sang, I said the words that came into my head, just because I could speak again, I said them. Just because I could speak again.

Whore! I’d said. Whore! And again: Whore! I heard myself say it, the word just came out. It’s actually the only word that came out. The two black people sang, stood next to each other and sang with their bodies swaying to and fro as if they were being tugged by the wind, and I lay there and it felt as if I were being bled dry like a sheep with a slit throat.

Now I know where the word comes from. The man who caught me like a sheep between the tents and pulled me by my leg to the place of slaughter while I kicked and kicked and kicked. He said it. He said it to me. That is what I am. Look, I throw her down onto the bed, and those who fornicate with her – look, I am the one who inspects kidneys and hearts, who sticks my hand into innards and rips them from the carcass – cast her into the outer darkness, feed her to the dogs whose jaws work lewdly throughout the night.

The blacks sing, but it is of no help, it takes nothing away. They can do with me what they wish. I am worthless.

The Lord will spit me out of his mouth. Whore is my name! And from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun that shineth in her strength, as the sun that shineth in her strength.