You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (8 page)

‘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.

‘Your prayer is answered, look, here's Fa-atherrr,' and on the held note he clicks his heels and turns smartly to march off towards his friends.

Father is smiling. ‘She's on her way, should be here any second now.' I take his arm and my hand slips into his jacket pocket where I trace with my finger the withered potato he wears for relief of rheumatism.

‘No more biltong, girlie,' he laughs. The hole in my stomach grows dangerously.

The white platform is now bustling with people. Porters pile suitcases on to their trolleys while men fish in their pockets for sixpence tips. A Black girl staggers on to the white platform with a suitcase in each hand. Her madam ambles amiably alongside her to keep up with the faltering gait. She chatters without visible encouragement and, stooping, takes one of the bags from the girl who clearly cannot manage. The girl is big-boned with strong shapely arms and calves. What can the suitcase contain to make her stagger so? Her starched apron sags below the waist and the crisp servant's cap is askew. When they stop at the far
end of the platform she slips a hand under the edge of the white cap to scratch. Briefly she tugs at the tip of her yellow-brown earlobe. My chest tightens. I turn to look the other way.

Our ears prick at a rumbling in the distance which sends as scout a thin squeal along the rails. A glass dome of terror settles over my head so that the chatter about me recedes and I gulp for air. But I do not faint. The train lumbers to a halt and sighs deeply. My body, all but consumed by its hole of hunger, swings around lightly, even as Father moves forward with a suitcase to mount the step. And as I walk away towards the paling I meet the triumphant eyes of the tall boy standing by the whitewashed gate. Above the noise of a car screeching to a halt, the words roll off my tongue disdainfully:

Why you look and kyk gelyk,

Am I miskien of gold gemake?

A
CLEARING IN THE BUSH

Tamieta, leaning against the east-facing wall, rolls her shoulders and like a cat rubs against the bricks to relieve the itching of her back. Which must mean something ominous, such a sudden and terrible itch, and as she muses on its meaning, on its persistence, the rebellious flesh seems to align itself with the arrangement of bricks now imprinted on her back. She longs for the hot press of the sun that will brand the pattern of narrow new bricks into her flesh, iron the itch out of existence. She will never get used to this Cape Town weather so cold and wet in winter. It's about time summer showed its face; there hasn't been any sunshine for days. As for the itch, who thinks of conditions of the flesh that have just disappeared? When it should be freshest in the memory, that is the time when we do not think of an itch at all.

‘Ag, a person mustn't complain,' she mutters to herself. ‘This is the first morning of spring and even if it's not going to last, there's enough warmth to be soaked up against this wall.'

If only she knew what the omen was, for it's no good disregarding these things; they'll catch up with you all the same. Now, if it had been yesterday – and did she not
yesterday look up at a hesitant sun and toy with the idea of taking her coffee outside, to lean against this nice wall? – yes, if it had been yesterday then she would have been able to exclaim as Charlie's Springbok radio bleeped the news, ‘This is so. An itch of the back early in the morning means there's going to be an assassination.'

And as she drains her coffee grounds into the rough grass she remembers. Beatrice's wool. She promised to get to Bellville South after work to get a couple of ounces from her lay-by at Wilton Wools. Perhaps it's not an omen but a reminder: the itch leading to the bricks leading to the pattern in Beatrice's nimble hands. Knit four, purl one, chanting earnestly as she clicks her bricks into place. And the wool cleverly chosen by Beatrice to build a jersey in the colours of bricks and mortar. Ooh that child of hers is now clever. She can do just about anything with her hands and also her head, of course, because if your hands can do good so must the head. That is what the Apostle says and quite right too since it's all part of the same person.

As Tamieta braces herself for the day of labour in the canteen, her eyes fall on the bricks of this nice new wall and to her surprise must admit that it is not the colour of bricks at all. Really these are a greyish-black, with iridescent blue lights admittedly, but certainly not brick-red or brick-brown. Well, at least it isn't just our people who get it wrong; as far as she can think, people just haven't noticed, or people in spite of the evidence just go on talking nonsense. But she castigates herself for having been duped by a false association. She ought to have seen the futility of a reminder so early in the day when there is no need to remember. And now at this very moment the itch returns with new virulence. Tamieta has never known her flesh threaten to break free of its containing skin; such
an itch must have a marrow-deep meaning.

Raising her head in order to scratch more effectively, she sees the first student settling into a seat on the top floor of the library. She has never been in there, even though it is the block closest to the cafeteria. Here, along these paths linking the four buildings that the government has given specially for our people, this is where Beatrice will walk one day, flying in and out of glass doors in her baby-louis heels and a briefcase bulging under her arm. But her skirts will be a decent length, not creeping above the knees like a few of the girls have started wearing them.

She climbs the steps to the cafeteria kitchen just as Charlie's sing-song voice calls, ‘Tamieta, the mutton is chopped.' He has a voice to match his swagger and her ears twitch for a note of mockery, for it is amazing how that boy persists in thinking of her as a plaasjapie. That's why he slips in handfuls of English words as if she can't understand. Let him go on thinking it's so special to come from District Six.

Tamieta's energetic leap up the steps makes me wriggle in my seat. Large and slothful I sit pressed in my carrell on the top floor of the library making no progress whatsoever with the essay on
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
which should have been handed in yesterday. Failure to do it will lose me the right to take the end-of-year examination yet I have been unable even to start the thing. At the very moment yesterday as I strained for an excuse, trembling at the thought of a visit to Retief's office somewhere along a carpeted corridor, a pet abdominal tapeworm hissed persuasively into the ear of its Greek host, whose trembling hand grew still for a second to aim a fatal shot at the Prime Minister. Today I arrived early and hid here on the top
floor amongst large botanical tomes since a tapeworm cannot protect me for ever. Along the margin of this blank sheet of foolscap I have drawn triangles and parallelograms, clean geometrical lines. I have no talent for likenesses and it is Retief's I wish to capture in this margin, someone to whom I can address the wormy tangle of questions that wriggle out of reach each time I pick up my pen. The Parker pen, a solemn gift from Father, lies before me, capped, uncooperative. I read through Retief's notes once more. A pity in some respects that I did not get to see his room. James, who once was in the same position, except that his mother's illness offered a legitimate excuse, says that close up Retief's skin is not white at all, rather a liverish-yellow with fine red veins, and that his speaking voice is hardly recognisable to a student who only hears him lecture in the large theatre. And what, I wonder, would I have interrupted in that room? In that functional cubicle of new uncluttered design the rugby-playing Retief will barely be able to stretch his legs while he copies out in long hand the lecture notes of the correspondence university to which we are affiliated. Pressed against the door I would have said, through a plate glass of awe and fear, something, something credible, so that he would draw up his long legs in attentive sympathy and say in a strange voice, ‘But there is absolutely nothing to worry about, of course I understand my dear Miss . . . er . . .'

I could say anything to him and it is a relief to know that it does not matter in the slightest how I deliver my lie, for he does not know me, doesn't know any of us, and will not recognise me the next day.

I uncap my pen and read through Retief's dictated lecture. His pigeon head bobs up and down in empathy with the bowed heads of students before him as he pecks at
his words in clipped English. The novel, he says, is about Fate. Alarmingly simple, but not quite how it strikes me, although I cannot offer an alternative. The truth is that I do not always understand the complicated language, though of course I got the gist of the story, the interesting bits where things happen. But even then, I cannot be sure of what actually happens in The Chase.

Wessex spreads like a well-used map before me, worn and dim along the fold-lines, the lush Frome Valley and the hills so picture-green where Persephone skips sprinkling daisies and buttercups from her clutched apron, caring not two hoots about the ones that fall face down destined to die. The scuffed green strip is The Chase where God knows what happened. Seduced, my notes say. Can you be seduced by someone you hate? Can trees gnarled with age whisper ancient ecstasies and waves of darkness upon dark lap until the flesh melts? I do, of course, not know of these matters, but shudder for Tess.

Beyond these pale buildings gleaming ghostly in the young spring light there is a fringe of respectably tall Port Jackson and bluegum trees that marks the clearing of university buildings from the surrounding bush. These raggle-taggle sentinels stand to tin-soldierly attention and behind them the bush stretches for miles across the Cape Flats. Bushes, I imagine, that send out wayward limbs to weave into the tangled undergrowth, for I have never left the concrete paths of this campus. Even summer couples may step out arm in arm to flaunt their love under the fluffy yellow flower of the Port Jackson, but never, surely, do they venture beyond. Somewhere beyond the administration block where today the flag flies half mast, they say there is a station where the train stops four times daily on the way to and from the Cape Flats. Skollie boys sit all day long on the
deserted platform, for there is no ticket office, and dangle their legs above the rails while they puff at their dagga pils. But even from this height there is no visible path winding through the bush. The handful of students who use the train must daily beat like pioneers a path through the undergrowth.

Along the top of my page enclosing the essay title, ‘Fate in Tess,' I have now drawn an infantile line of train carriages. I cannot start writing. I have always been able to distinguish good from bad but the story confuses me and the lecture notes offer no help.

Murder is a sin which should outrage all decent and civilised people.

The library is beginning to fill up and a boy I vaguely recognise as a Science student passes twice, darting resentful looks at me. No doubt I am in the seat that he has come to think of as his very own. Perhaps I should leave. Perhaps he can't work for being in a strange seat.

Through the window I watch James in his canary-yellow jersey, his jacket tucked under his arm, trotting to the Arts block for the English lecture. I shall get the notes from him. James is a good friend; he is not like other boys. It is the distant sound of the nine o'clock siren that makes my courage fountain and the opening sentence spill on to the page in fluent English: ‘Before we can assess the role of fate in the novel we must consider the question of whether Tess is guilty or not, whether she has erred in losing her virginity, deceiving her husband and killing her lover.'

Exhausted by my bold effort I can go no further. Outside, the pathways are deserted. English I students are by now seated in their row, shoulders hunched over Retief's dictation. The surly boy walks past me once again with a large volume under his arm. The hatred in his lingering
look is unmistakable. I pack up my things hurriedly and before I reach the door the boy leaps up from his exposed seat at a central table and lurches indecently into the carrell so that I blush for the warm imprint of my buttocks which has not yet risen from the thin upholstery. It should be more comfortable on the first floor where I usually work amongst familiar faces, but by the time I reach the bottom of the stairs a reckless thirst propels me out, right out of the library towards the cafeteria where Tamieta's coffee pots croon on the hot plate.