Читать книгу The History of Man - Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu - Страница 9

In the beginning of the Coetzees’ life together at the foot of the Matopos Hills, there was a happiness that made itself most manifest during the sundowners that Gemma and Johan hosted at their government-issued, bungalow-style house with whitewashed walls and no veranda, where they held captive an audience of their son, Emil, and Johan’s deputies, Scott Fitzgerald and Walter Musgrave.

When they had first arrived at the outpost that was but a stone’s throw from the Rhodes Matopos National Park, Gemma had been worried because Johan had honestly told her that they and his two deputies were the only Europeans within a ten-kilometre radius. The only other Europeans they would occasionally see were tourists, the day trippers and sightseers that came to visit the national park. Even if Johan did not say it, they both thought it – Gemma was the only white woman for miles around. It was 1933, so by then they had both, separately, read or heard about the Black Peril, and they had both, separately, been frightened by it. Keeping a brave front, neither of them voiced their fears to the other. They chose, instead, to focus on finally being able to live together and start a life together.

As it turned out, there had been nothing to fear. The natives in the nearby village paid very little attention to Gemma except when she did something that amused them, like hiding from the sun, standing in the rain, having her servants transport water from the river so that they could do the laundry in the yard (when it could far more conveniently be washed in the river), having cold, raw vegetables served to her family as part of supper, painting her face even when there was no special occasion or ceremony and buying feeding bottles as presents for the pregnant women in the village, bottles she was always upset to see put to other, more practical uses.

On second thoughts, maybe the natives did pay Gemma a lot of attention, but that was because she did much to amuse them. She gave the distinct impression of having things upside down and back to front. She was cock-eyed or rather kokayi, as their tongues had transmogrified the word. It was a word that the villagers who worked in the industries of the City of Kings had brought back with them to the village in the same way that they had brought back mirrors, tins of that greatest creation of all, condensed milk, and the knowledge that the Europeans, using a highly esoteric system, had deemed them to be an inferior species of human. ‘Cock-eyed’ had fast become a familiar term as it was used often by their baas to chastise them and make them feel inadequate, small or lacking. Like most of the things that they brought back from the city, the word was part of a shift in the order of things. Perhaps in an effort to make things right again, ‘kokayi’ was used often by the natives whenever Gemma Coetzee did something out of the ordinary. But if any of them intended to make her feel inadequate, small or lacking, they found that they did not have the power to humiliate her.

Since there was genuinely nothing to fear from the natives save the occasional giggle or shake of the head, Gemma relaxed and became happy. She was, after all, the only white woman within a ten-kilometre radius, and therefore something quite exotic, like a rare bird with exquisite plumage that attracted ornithologists from far and wide. During those Friday sundowners she held three European men and one European boy in her sway. They loved her and she loved to be loved by them. Scott Fitzgerald said that she resembled Janet Gaynor; Walter Musgrave swore she resembled Carole Lombard and, for her part, Gemma was happy to be anywhere between these two points – angel or vixen – because it meant that her beauty was of a screen-siren quality. She found it comforting to be considered so beautiful that the entire world would want to gaze upon her.

Scott Fitzgerald, who had absolutely no desire to be a policeman all his life, made no secret of the fact that he was using Gemma as his muse for what was to be his first novel. Gemma happily allowed him to find inspiration in her because she could readily see that there was poetry in his soul and that, because of this, they were kindred. Walter Musgrave, after he had met Gemma, would spend his days off no longer painting watercolour landscapes of the veld around them or the Matopos Hills, but would, instead, have her sit for him so that he could immortalise her on canvas because she was, according to him, the ideal of beauty and femininity. Gemma contentedly basked in the warm glow of both men’s adoration and felt that life on the BSAP outpost would never be anything but good.

Johan did not mind the unguarded attention that his wife received from his two deputies because he loved his wife and knew that she genuinely loved him too. Several years of fevered and fervoured correspondence had made him confident in their love for each other. Besides, Scott Fitzgerald and Walter Musgrave could not have known of the nights when Gemma, while performing a tantalising striptease, would sing with persuasive breathlessness about how much she wanted to be loved by Johan and nobody else but Johan.

Yes, Gemma was happy because she was the jewel in the crown, the apple of every European eye that fell upon her in the outpost. She did not mind that her days were usually taken over by an easy ennui because it happily unshackled itself on Fridays and gave way to a frenzied furore as Gemma reinvented herself as something she had fantasised being, but had, in reality, been too busy to be: a flapper girl.

In their collective imagination, Gemma became the quintessential 1920s carefree, daring and modern woman. And this image that they had of her was true … to an extent. She had danced the Charleston in wild abandon at Durban’s Kenilworth Tea Rooms on more than one occasion, and because one could not dance the Charleston in wild abandon at the Kenilworth Tea Rooms and expect to be taken seriously without the proper attire, Gemma had bought herself, for her twentieth birthday, a bright red cloche hat and, to complete the look, her mother, during a rare act of motherliness, had bought her a black chiffon and lace drop-waist dress that came to her knees. So, despite the fact that she had spent most of the 1920s in a long courtship with Johan and helping Mrs Williams cater to her tenants’ needs, Gemma had felt herself to have been carefree, daring and very modern through it all. She felt in her heart of hearts that she still possessed these qualities at the foot of the Matopos Hills and proved this by donning her red cloche hat and black chiffon and lace drop-waist dress and dancing with abandon at every sundowner on the patch of grass that masqueraded as a lawn and stood where a veranda should have been. The 1930s were not like the 1920S – 1929 had seen to that and sobered the world – but those on the outpost did not have to let go of the heavenly 1920s, not as long as they had Gemma to play the happy, wild and enticing flapper girl.

Gemma’s gesticulations amused the natives to no end because they knew that she considered the enthusiastic flailing of her arms and legs dancing, which it most certainly was not. Nevertheless, as she danced to ‘You’re the Cream in My Coffee’, Gemma’s European audience was enthralled. Sometimes Johan, not much of a dancer himself, became so enraptured by the thrill in Gemma’s movements that he would join her in a foxtrot promenade, a dance that Emil would always remember in beautiful and brilliant Technicolour.

Life on the outpost would have continued uninterrupted on this steady path that showed every sign of leading to only more happiness … if a native girl had not arrived on the patch of grass that masqueraded as a lawn and stood where a veranda should have been. But the native girl had arrived carrying a baby boy with skin the colour of tea with milk in it and a generous spray of curly sand-coloured hair and their arrival changed everything.

The native girl had asked for Walter and this – not the presence of the native girl or the existence of the brown baby in her arms, but the fact that she had simply asked for Walter – was what struck Gemma the most. She had not asked for baas, or Mr Musgrave, or Mr Walter – just Walter. The native girl had not cast her eyes down as she spoke to Gemma, as the short history lived together with the Europeans had taught most natives to do. Uncharacteristically, and rather defiantly, the native girl had looked Gemma in the eye, shifted the baby on her hip and said, ‘I ask to see Walter.’

Instead of responding, Gemma clutched at her throat, which made a gurgling sound as she stifled a primitive and primal scream. The omnipresent heat had, at that moment, become unexpectedly oppressive. Gemma felt the back of her neck grow very hot before she suddenly became light-headed. In the confusion of her light-headedness she became determined. She had been born in Africa; there was no way the unforgiving heat would affect her. She raised her chin rebelliously and tilted it against the heat before falling on her kitchen floor in a fainted heap.

Gemma must have hit her head on the concrete floor because she woke up with a bump on her forehead and a migraine. The now oppressive heat was still there. The native girl and the baby boy were also still there. The only thing new was Walter Musgrave walking towards her carrying a glass of water in one hand and gesturing towards the native girl and the baby boy with the other. ‘I see you have met Lili and my son,’ Walter Musgrave said casually, without the slightest hint of the mortification he surely must have felt on such an occasion and at having been thus discovered. ‘Somewhat incorrigible is our Lili,’ Walter Musgrave went on, offering Gemma the glass of water. The water in the glass was steady, suspiciously so. Gemma examined the hand that carried the glass of water and noticed that it did not tremble. The hand was as steady as the heartbeat of a saint. ‘She does not think that the rules of propriety apply to her,’ Walter Musgrave said with something very much like indulgent affection in his voice. Gemma stared at the mouth that had uttered these words, the very mouth that had told her that she was the epitome of beauty and femininity, and finally understood its treachery.

‘Get out!’ Gemma snarled before hitting the glass of water out of Walter Musgrave’s hand and onto the wall. With a little satisfaction, she watched the glass shatter and then litter the floor with tiny, dangerous pieces that gleamed like diamonds in the dust. That was all she had energy for before she crumpled back into a forlorn heap.

Gemma had been too distraught throughout this entire scene to notice her son watching it unfold from within the shadows of his room. Maybe she would have acted better had she known that she had an audience.

Nothing was the same after that. Walter Musgrave was sent to another outpost and evidently had taken the native girl, Lili, and the light-brown baby boy, his son, with him.

‘While he just refuses to do the proper thing, he says he knows that he is doing the right thing,’ Johan explained to a still dejected Gemma.

‘Somewhat incorrigible is our Walter,’ Gemma replied, trying to sound as nonchalant as she could not feel. ‘He does not think that the rules of propriety apply to him.’ To her deep dismay, she noticed that her hands were trembling uncontrollably as she said this.

Just like that, the roaring sundowners became a thing of the past. Gemma spent most of her days in bed feeling blue and complaining about the oppressive heat, which just would not abate. There goes madam, hiding from the sun again, the natives said, amused, after not having seen Gemma for days on end. She will be out when the rain falls, they collectively conjectured and then carried on with their lives. So, when the rain finally fell and Gemma hid from it too, the natives were not amused. The natives were worried. They had heard stories of madams who had been driven mad or been killed by the very climate that had nurtured them for centuries.

Their madam had appeared to be made of sterner stuff than these storied madams but perhaps she was not and perhaps they should have been wary of the easy way in which she had immediately appeared to be at home amongst them. They began to appreciate that, quite possibly, there was more to the ways of Europeans than there appeared to be on the surface.

For his part, Johan was eager to make Gemma happy again, but all his efforts were in vain because he could not successfully do anything about the heat that she now found stifling. He bought a fan and a refrigerator, both at great expense to himself, but neither ameliorated the situation. He made a request to the BSAP to have extra windows added to the house. Predictably, the request was denied because government-issued homes could not be modified.

Since nothing could be done about the fact that she was baking herself mad in a government-issued oven, Gemma wanted to live elsewhere. She wanted to live in a house that belonged not to the government but to Johan Coetzee, a house that she could modify to suit her needs and tastes, a house that she could make herself comfortable in. The house that belonged to Johan began to take shape in Gemma’s mind. It was a colonial-style house with French windows, a red wraparound veranda and an English rose garden. Gemma spent most afternoons in bed furnishing this imagined house with the best ball-and-claw furniture, the finest delicate china and the most modern kitchen appliances that money could buy. The house was so perfect and so very much theirs that Gemma began to yearn to live in it. She was convinced that the happiness and love they would feel in this house would be everlasting because they would not be government-issued emotions but, rather, the proud property of the Coetzees.

The house of Gemma’s imagination became such a concrete thing that Johan began to see it and long to live in it as well. Still, even in his dreaming, Johan was practical enough to know that they could only live in such a house if he got a promotion, and so he applied for one, a year before he was eligible. Unfortunately, the BSAP, at this particular moment in its history, was being audited and investigated for corruption and thus, having to be seen doing everything by the book, had no choice but to soundly reject Johan’s application.

At the end of his tether, Johan suggested to Gemma that she take Emil to Durban until such a time as he could provide her with the life she so desperately wanted. However, since The Williams Arms was now being run by her mother and Anthony Simons, and Gemma did not relish spending time with people who had not only cheated her of her rightful inheritance but had also always made her feel as unwanted as an unwelcome guest, Johan’s suggestion was not taken up.

Gemma stopped listening to the jazz that had made her so happy and returned to her roots, the blues. The sombre tones of Bessie Smith’s voice travelled through the His Master’s Voice gramophone and enveloped Gemma in a melancholic sadness that gave her purpose. She spent entire days exploring the many byways of her heavy moods and emotions. She did not have to do anything but feel blue and she did so wholeheartedly, minutely examining every emotion for sufficient blueness and heaviness. The byways that she travelled inevitably led back to that first letter she had received, seemingly a lifetime ago now, the letter that had arrived on BSAP stationery, the letter that had been written with a bleeding pen. Gemma saw now what she had not seen then – that the letter had not been written with much care, and that there was something she desperately needed that the letter writer could not provide. She was not altogether sure what that something was but she was sure that the missing of it was making her blue.

She did not stop loving Johan, though – he looked too much like Douglas Fairbanks Jr for any woman in her right mind not to love him. She just saw him with clarity now and that clarity made it near impossible for her to get out of bed every morning.

Not knowing the inner workings of his mother’s mind, Emil, at eight, believed that the reason his parents no longer danced to ‘You’re the green in my coffee; you’re the salt in my shoe’ at sundown on the patch of grass that masqueraded as a lawn and stood where a veranda should have been while he sipped on lukewarm lime cordial had everything to do with the fact that he had ‘gone native’ as his mother now often screamed to him that he had.

Although he kept this to himself, Emil knew that he had grown a little wild because of a recurring dream … a nightmare, really. This nightmare of a dream had regrettably taken the place of his favourite dream, the one about the hunt. In the nightmare he would come home, from the government school for natives that he attended, to find the government-issued, bungalow-style house with whitewashed walls and no veranda empty. Emil would put his rucksack on the kitchen table and the eerie emptiness of the rest of the house would fill his body with apprehension. He would enter and thoroughly check all the rooms of the house and in each room his parents would not be there. When the apprehension turned to fear, he would return to the kitchen to find the native girl and the baby boy with light-brown skin sitting at the very table where his rucksack lay, and the native girl would ask him what he was doing in her house. When he opened his mouth to tell her that he lived in the house with his mother and father, instead of words coming out, the howl of a wounded animal would escape from his throat. The native girl, seeming to perfectly understand the animal sound, would respond and tell him that she and her baby had always lived there. Emil, not knowing what else to do, would howl an apology and run out of the house, instantly regretting that he had left his rucksack behind. He would loiter outside the house waiting for Walter Musgrave to arrive so that he could explain the situation to him. No longer trusting that he would reliably find his voice, he would repeat his name over and over again – Emil … Coetzee … Emil … Coetzee … Emil … Coetzee – until he felt assured that he was still capable of language. But then a question would rudely present itself: what made him so sure that the house belonged to Walter Musgrave?

When Emil woke up from this dream, he struggled to breathe. He was afraid of both the emptiness that his parents created by not being there and the presence that the native girl and baby boy with light-brown skin created by being there. His situation became so dire that sometimes he did not have to dream that emptiness or that presence; he just had to conjure it up and his throat would tighten up and he would start to wheeze.

This recurring dream unsettled Emil and made him feel disconnected, as if he did not belong. It threatened to rob him of that deep love, so much like reverence, that he had breathed in through his first memory. Before, he had gone exploring because of the beauty of the land that lay all around him, but now he did so because he only felt at peace when he glanced down at the black shadow that he cast over the veld and felt it connect him to all that surrounded him. And so he spent more time in the veld than he did in the government-issued, bungalow-style house with whitewashed walls and no veranda. After all, it was there, in the middle of the yellow, green, red and brown savannah grasslands, that he truly belonged. It was there that he was at home.