Читать книгу You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town - Zoe Wicomb - Страница 12
ОглавлениеI am not the kind of girl whom boys look at. I have known this for a long time, but I still lower my head in public and peep through my lashes. Their eyes leap over me, a mere obstacle in a line of vision. I should be pleased; boys can use their eyes shamelessly to undress a girl. That is what Sarie says. Sarie’s hand automatically flutters to her throat to button up her orlon cardigan when boys talk to her. I have tried that, have fumbled with buttons and suffered their perplexed looks or reddened at the question, ‘Are you cold?’
I know that it is the act of guiding the buttons through their resistant holes that guides the eyes to Sarie’s breasts.
Today I think that I would welcome any eyes that care to confirm my new ready-made polyester dress. Choosing has not brought an end to doubt. The white, grey and black stripes run vertically, and from the generous hem I have cut a strip to replace the treacherous horizontal belt. I am not wearing a cardigan, even though it is unusually cool for January, a mere eighty degrees. I have looked once or twice at the clump of boys standing with a huge radio out of which the music winds mercurial through the rise and fall of distant voices. There is no music in our house. Father says it is distracting. We stand uneasily on the platform. The train is late or perhaps we are early. Pa stands with his back to the boys who have greeted him deferentially. His broad shoulders block my view but I can hear their voices flashing like the village lights on Republic Day. The boys do not look at me and I know why. I am fat. My breasts are fat and, in spite of my uplift bra, flat as a vetkoek.
There is a lump in my throat which I cannot account for. I do of course cry from time to time about being fat, but this lump will not be dislodged by tears. I am pleased that Pa does not say much. I watch him take a string out of his pocket and wind it nervously around his index finger. Round and round from the base until the finger is encased in a perfect bandage. The last is a loop that fits the tip of his finger tightly; the ends are tied in an almost invisible knot. He hopes to hold my attention with this game. Will this be followed by cat’s cradle with my hands foolishly stretched out, waiting to receive? I smart at his attempts to shield me from the boys; they are quite unnecessary.
Pa knows nothing of young people. On the morning of my fourteenth birthday he quoted from Genesis III . . . in pain you shall bring forth children. I had been menstruating for some time and so knew what he wanted to say. He said, ‘You must fetch a bucket of water in the evenings and wash the rags at night . . . have them ready for the next month . . . always be prepared . . . it does not always come on time. Your mother was never regular . . . the ways of the Lord . . .’ and he shuffled off with the bicycle tyre he was pretending to repair.
‘But they sell things now in chemists’ shops, towels you can throw away,’ I called after him.
‘Yes,’ he looked dubiously at the distant blue hills, ‘perhaps you could have some for emergencies. Always be prepared,’ and lowering his eyes once again blurted, ‘And don’t play with boys now that you’re a young lady, it’s dangerous.’
I have never played with boys. There were none to play with when we lived on the farm. I do not know why. The memory, of a little boy boring a big toe into the sand, surfaces. He is staring enviously at the little house I have carved into the sandbank. There are shelves on which my pots gleam and my one-legged Peggy sleeps on her bank of clay. In my house I am free to do anything, even invite the boy to play. I am proud of the sardine can in which two clay loaves bake in the sun. For my new china teapot I have built a stone shrine where its posy of pink roses remains forever fresh. I am still smiling at the boy as he deftly pulls a curious hose from the leg of his khaki shorts and, with one eye shut, aims an arc of yellow pee into the teapot. I do not remember the teapot ever having a lid.
There is a lump in my throat I cannot account for. I sometimes cry about being fat, of course, especially after dinner when the zip of my skirt sinks its teeth into my flesh. Then it is reasonable to cry. But I have after all stood on this platform countless times on the last day of the school holidays. Sarie and I, with Pa and Mr Botha waving and shouting into the clouds of steam, Work Hard or Be Good. Here, under the black and white arms of the station sign, where succulents spent and shrivelled in autumn grow once again plump in winter before they burst into shocking spring flower. So that Pa would say, ‘The quarters slip by so quickly, soon the sun will be on Cancer and you’ll be home again.’ Or, ‘When the summer train brings you back with your First Class Junior Certificate, the aloe will just be in flower.’ And so the four school quarters clicked by under the Kliprand station sign where the jewelled eyes of the iceplant wink in the sun all year round.
The very first lump in my throat he melted with a fervent whisper, ‘You must, Friedatjie, you must. There is no high school for us here and you don’t want to be a servant. How would you like to peg out the madam’s washing and hear the train you once refused to go on rumble by?’ Then he slipped a bag of raisins into my hand. A terrifying image of a madam’s menstrual rags that I have to wash swirls liquid red through my mind. I am grateful to be going hundreds of miles away from home; there is so much to be grateful for. One day I will drive a white car.
Pa takes a stick of biltong out of his pocket and the brine in my eyes retreats. I have no control over the glands under my tongue as they anticipate the salt. His pocketknife lifts off the seasoned and puckered surface and leaves a slab of marbled meat, dry and mirror smooth so that I long to rest my lips on it. Instead my teeth sink into the biltong and I am consoled. I eat everything he offers.
We have always started our day with mealie porridge. That is what miners eat twice a day, and they lift chunks of gypsum clean out of the earth. Father’s eyes flash a red light over the breakfast table: ‘Don’t leave anything on your plate. You must grow up to be big and strong. We are not paupers with nothing to eat. Your mother was thin and sickly, didn’t eat enough. You don’t want cheekbones that jut out like a Hottentot’s. Fill them out until they’re shiny and plump as pumpkins.’ The habit of obedience is fed daily with second helpings of mealie porridge. He does not know that I have long since come to despise my size. I would like to be a pumpkin stored on the flat roof and draw in whole beams of autumn’s sunlight so that, bleached and hardened, I could call upon the secret of my glowing orange flesh.
A wolf whistle from one of the boys. I turn to look and I know it will upset Pa. Two girls in identical flared skirts arrive with their own radio blaring Boeremusiek. They nod at us and stand close by, perhaps seeking protection from the boys. I hope that Pa will not speak to me loudly in English. I will avoid calling him Father for they will surely snigger under cover of the whining concertina. They must know that for us this is no ordinary day. But we all remain silent and I am inexplicably ashamed. What do people say about us? Until recently I believed that I was envied; that is, not counting my appearance.
The boys beckon and the girls turn up their radio. One of them calls loudly, ‘Turn off that Boere-shit and come and listen to decent American music.’ I wince. The girls do as they are told, their act of resistance deflated. Pa casts an anxious glance at the white policeman pacing the actual platform, the paved white section. I take out a paper handkerchief and wipe the dust from my polished shoes, a futile act since this unpaved strip for which I have no word other than the inaccurate platform, is all dust. But it gives me the chance to peer at the group of young people through my lowered lashes.
The boys vie for their attention. They have taken the radio and pass it round so that the red skirts flare and swoop, the torsos in T-shirts arch and taper into long arms reaching to recover their radio. Their ankles swivel on the slender stems of high heels. Their feet are covered in dust. One of the arms adjusts a chiffon headscarf that threatens to slip off, and a pimply boy crows at his advantage. He whips the scarf from her head and the tinkling laughter switches into a whine.
‘Give it back . . . You have no right . . . It’s mine and I want it back . . . Please, oh please.’
Her arm is raised protectively over her head, the hand flattened on her hair.
‘No point in holding your head now,’ he teases. ‘I’ve got it, going to try it on myself.’
Her voice spun thin on threads of tears, abject as she begs. So that her friend consoles, ‘It doesn’t matter, you’ve got plenty of those. Show them you don’t care.’ A reproachful look but the friend continues, ‘Really, it doesn’t matter, your hair looks nice enough. I’ve told you before. Let him do what he wants with it, stuff it up his arse.’
But the girl screams, ‘Leave me alone,’ and beats away the hand reaching out to console. Another taller boy takes the scarf and twirls it in the air. ‘You want your doekie? What do you want it for hey, come on tell us, what do you want it for? What do you want to cover up?’
His tone silences the others and his face tightens as he swings the scarf slowly, deliberately. She claws at his arm with rage while her face is buried in the other crooked arm. A little gust of wind settles the matter, whips it out of his hand and leaves it spreadeagled against the eucalyptus tree where its red pattern licks the bark like flames.
I cannot hear their words. But far from being penitent, the tall boy silences the bareheaded girl with angry shaking of the head and wagging of the finger. He runs his hand through an exuberant bush of fuzzy hair and my hand involuntarily flies to my own. I check my preparations: the wet hair wrapped over large rollers to separate the strands, dried then swirled around my head, secured overnight with a nylon stocking, dressed with vaseline to keep the strands smooth and straight and then pulled back tightly to stem any remaining tendency to curl. Father likes it pulled back. He says it is a mark of honesty to have the forehead and ears exposed. He must be thinking of Mother, whose hair was straight and trouble-free. I would not allow some unkempt youth to comment on my hair.
The tall boy with wild hair turns to look at us. I think that they are talking about me. I feel my body swelling out of the dress rent into vertical strips that fall to my feet. The wind will surely lift off my hair like a wig and flatten it, a sheet of glossy dead bird, on the eucalyptus tree.
The bareheaded girl seems to have recovered; she holds her head reasonably high.
I break the silence. ‘Why should that boy look at us so insolently?’ Pa looks surprised and hurt. ‘Don’t be silly. You couldn’t possibly tell from this distance.’ But his mouth puckers and he starts an irritating tuneless whistle.
On the white platform the policeman is still pacing. He is there because of the Blacks who congregate at the station twice a week to see the Springbok train on its way to Cape Town. I wonder whether he knows our news. Perhaps their servants, bending over washtubs, ease their shoulders to give the gossip from Wesblok to madams limp with heat and boredom. But I dismiss the idea and turn to the boys who certainly know that I am going to St Mary’s today. All week the grown-ups have leaned over the fence and sighed, Ja, ja, in admiration, and winked at Pa: a clever chap, old Shenton, keeps up with the Boers all right. And to me, ‘You show them, Frieda, what we can do.’ I nodded shyly. Now I look at my hands, at the irrepressible cuticles, the stubby splayed fingernails that will never taper. This is all I have to show, betraying generations of servants.
I am tired and I move back a few steps to sit on the suitcases. But Father leaps to their defence. ‘Not on the cases, Frieda. They’ll never take your weight.’ I hate the shiny suitcases. As if we had not gone to enough expense, he insisted on new imitation leather bags and claimed that people judge by appearances. I miss my old scuffed bag and slowly, as if the notion has to travel through folds of fat, I realise that I miss Sarie and the lump in my throat hardens.
Sarie and I have travelled all these journeys together. Grief gave way to excitement as soon as we boarded the train. Huddled together on the cracked green seat, we argued about who would sleep on the top bunk. And in winter when the nights grew cold we folded into a single S on the lower bunk. As we tossed through the night in our magic coupé, our fathers faded and we were free. Now Sarie stands in the starched white uniform of a student nurse, the Junior Certificate framed in her father’s room. She will not come to wave me goodbye.
Sarie and I swore our friendship on the very first day at school. We twiddled our stiff plaits in boredom; the First Sunnyside Reader had been read to us at home. And Jos. Within a week Jos had mastered the reader and joined us. The three of us hand in hand, a formidable string of laughing girls tugging this way and that, sneering at the Sunnyside adventures of Rover, Jane and John. I had no idea that I was fat. Jos looped my braids over her beautiful hands and said that I was pretty, that my braids were a string of sausages.
Jos was bold and clever. Like a whirlwind she spirited away the tedium of exhausted games and invented new rules. We waited for her to take command. Then she slipped her hand under a doekie of dyed flourbags and scratched her head. Her ear peeped out, a faded yellow-brown yearning for the sun. Under a star-crammed sky Jos had boldly stood for hours, peering through a crack in the shutter to watch their fifth baby being born. Only once had she looked away in agony and then the Three Kings in the eastern sky swiftly swopped places in the manner of musical chairs. She told us all, and with an oath invented by Jos we swore that we would never have babies. Jos knew everything that grown-ups thought should be kept from us. Father said, ‘A cheeky child, too big for her boots, she’ll land in a madam’s kitchen all right.’ But there was no need to separate us. Jos left school when she turned nine and her family moved to the village where her father had found a job at the garage. He had injured his back at the mine. Jos said they were going to have a car; that she would win one of those competitions, easy they were, you only had to make up a slogan.
Then there was our move. Pa wrote letters for the whole community, bit his nails when he thought I was not looking and wandered the veld for hours. When the official letter came the cooped-up words tumbled out helter-skelter in his longest monologue.
‘In rows in the village, that’s where we’ll have to go, all boxed in with no room to stretch the legs. All my life I’ve lived in the open with only God to keep an eye on me, what do I want with the eyes of neighbours nudging and jostling in cramped streets? How will the wind get into those back yards to sweep away the smell of too many people? Where will I grow things? A watermelon, a pumpkin need room to spread, and a turkey wants a swept yard, the markings of a grass broom on which to boast the pattern of his wingmarks. What shall we do, Frieda? What will become of us?’ And then, calmly, ‘Well, there’s nothing to be done. We’ll go to Wesblok, we’ll put up our curtains and play with the electric lights and find a corner for the cat, but it won’t be our home. I’m not clever old Shenton for nothing, not a wasted drop of Scots blood in me. Within five years we’ll have enough to buy a little place. Just a little raw brick house and somewhere to tether a goat and keep a few chickens. Who needs a water lavatory in the veld?’
The voice brightened into fantasy. ‘If it were near a river we could have a pond for ducks or geese. In the Swarteberg my pa always had geese. Couldn’t get to sleep for months here in Namaqualand without the squawking of geese. And ostriches. There’s nothing like ostrich biltong studded with coriander seeds.’ Then he slowed down. ‘Ag man, we won’t be allowed land by the river but nevermind hey. We’ll show them, Frieda, we will. You’ll go to high school next year and board with Aunt Nettie. We’ve saved enough for that. Brains are for making money and when you come home with your Senior Certificate, you won’t come back to a pack of Hottentots crouching in straight lines on the edge of the village. Oh no, my girl, you won’t.’ And he whipped out a stick of beef biltong and with the knife shaved off wafer-thin slices that curled with pleasure in our palms.
We packed our things humming. I did not really understand what he was fussing about. The Coloured location did not seem so terrible. Electric lights meant no more oil lamps to clean and there was water from a tap at the end of each street. And there would be boys. But the children ran after me calling, ‘Fatty fatty vetkoek.’ Young children too. Sarie took me firmly by the arm and said that it wasn’t true, that they were jealous of my long hair. I believed her and swung my stiff pigtails haughtily. Until I grew breasts and found that the children were right.
Now Sarie will be by the side of the sick and infirm, leaning over high hospital beds, soothing and reassuring. Sarie in a dazzling white uniform, her little waist clinched by the broad blue belt.
If Sarie were here I could be sure of climbing the two steel steps on to the train.
The tall boy is now pacing the platform in unmistakable imitation of the policeman. His face is the stern mask of someone who does not take his duties lightly. His friends are squatting on their haunches, talking earnestly. One of them illustrates a point with the aid of a stick with which he writes or draws in the sand. The girls have retreated and lean against the eucalyptus tree, bright as stars against the grey of the trunk. Twelve feet apart the two radios stand face to face, quarrelling quietly. Only the female voices rise now and again in bitter laughter above the machines.
Father says that he must find the station master to enquire why the train has not come. ‘Come with me,’ he commands. I find the courage to pretend that it is a question but I flush with the effort.
‘No, I’m tired, I’ll wait here.’ And he goes. It is true that I am tired. I do not on the whole have much energy and I am always out of breath. I have often consoled myself with an early death, certainly before I become an old maid. Alone with my suitcases I face the futility of that notion. I am free to abandon it since I am an old maid now, today, days after my fifteenth birthday. I do not in any case think that my spirit, weightless and energetic like smoke from green wood, will soar to heaven.
I think of Pa’s defeated shoulders as he turned to go and I wonder whether I ought to run after him. But the thought of running exhausts me. I recoil again at the energy with which he had burst into the garden only weeks ago, holding aloft Die Burger with both hands, shouting, ‘Frieda, Frieda, we’ll do it. It’s all ours, the whole world’s ours.’
It was a short report on how a Coloured deacon had won his case against the Anglican Church so that the prestigious St Mary’s School was now open to non-whites. The article ended sourly, calling it an empty and subversive gesture, and warning the deacon’s daughters that it would be no bed of roses.
‘You’ll have the best, the very best education.’ His voice is hoarse with excitement.
‘It will cost hundreds of rand per year.’
‘Nonsense, you finish this year at Malmesbury and then there’ll be only the two years of Matric left to pay for. Really, it’s a blessing that you have only two years left.’
‘Where will you find the money?’ I say soberly.
‘The nest egg of course, stupid child. You can’t go to a white school if you’re so stupid. Shenton has enough money to give his only daughter the best education in the world.’
I hesitate before asking, ‘But what about the farm?’ He has not come to like the Wesblok. The present he wraps in a protective gauze of dreams; his eyes have grown misty with focusing far ahead on the unrealised farm.
A muscle twitches in his face before he beams, ‘A man could live anywhere, burrow a hole like a rabbit in order to make use of an opportunity like this.’ He seizes the opportunity for a lecture. ‘Ignorance, laziness and tobacco have been the downfall of our people. It is our duty to God to better ourselves, to use our brains, our talents, not to place our lamps under bushels. No, we’ll do it. We must be prepared to make sacrifices to meet such a generous offer.’
His eyes race along the perimeter of the garden wall then he rushes indoors, muttering about idling like flies in the sun, and sets about writing to St Mary’s in Cape Town.
I read novels and kept in the shade all summer. The crunch of biscuits between my teeth was the rumble of distant thunder. Pimples raged on my chin, which led me to Madame Rose’s Preparation by mail order. That at least has fulfilled its promise.
I was surprised when Sarie wept with joy or envy, so that the tears spurted from my own eyes on to the pages of Ritchie’s First Steps in Latin. (Father said that they pray in Latin and that I ought to know what I am praying for.) At night a hole crept into my stomach, gnawing like a hungry mouse, and I fed it with Latin declensions and Eetsumor biscuits. Sarie said that I might meet white boys and for the moment, fortified by conjugations of Amo, I saw the eyes of Anglican boys, remote princes leaning from their carriages, penetrate the pumpkin-yellow of my flesh.
Today I see a solid stone wall where I stand in watery autumn light waiting for a bell to ring. The Cape southeaster tosses high the blond pigtails and silvery laughter of girls walking by. They do not see me. Will I spend the dinner breaks hiding in lavatories?
I wish I could make this day more joyful for Pa but I do not know how. It is no good running after him now. It is too late.
The tall boy has imperceptibly extended his marching ground. Does he want to get closer to the policeman or is he taking advantage of Father’s absence? I watch his feet, up, down, and the crunch of his soles on the sand explodes in my ears. Closer, and a thrilling thought shoots through the length of my body. He may be looking at me longingly, probing; but I cannot bring my eyes to travel up, along his unpressed trousers. The black boots of the policeman catch my eye. He will not be imitated. His heavy legs are tree trunks rooted in the asphalt. His hand rests on the bulge of his holster. I can no longer resist the crunch of the boy’s soles as they return. I look up. He clicks his heels and halts. His eyes are narrowed with unmistakable contempt. He greets me in precise mocking English. A soundless shriek for Pa escapes my lips and I note the policeman resuming his march before I reply. The boy’s voice is angry and I wonder what aspect of my dress offends him.
‘You are waiting for the Cape Town train?’ he asks unnecessarily. I nod.
‘You start at the white school tomorrow?’ A hole yawns in my stomach and I long for a biscuit. I will not reply.
‘There are people who bury dynamite between the rails and watch whole carriages of white people shoot into the air. Like opening the door of a birdcage. Phsssh!’ His long thin arms describe the spray of birdflight. ‘Perhaps that is why your train has not come.’
I know he is lying. I would like to hurl myself at him, stab at his eyes with my blunt nails, kick at his ankles until they snap. But I clasp my hands together piously and hold, hold the tears that threaten.
