Zoë Wicomb - You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town

‘It will be all right.’ I try to comfort and wonder whether he hears his own voice in mine. My voice is thin, a tinsel thread that springs out of my mouth and flutters straight out of the window.

‘I must go.’ I lift the heavy hand off my forearm and it falls inertly across the gearstick.

The room is dark. The curtains are drawn and a lace-shaded electric light casts shadows in the corners of the rectangle. The doorway in which I stand divides the room into sleeping and eating quarters. On the left there is a table against which a servant girl leans, her eyes fixed on the blank wall ahead. On the right a middle-aged white woman rises with a hostess smile from a divan which serves as sofa, and pats the single pink-flowered cushion to assert homeliness. There is a narrow dark wardrobe in the corner.

I say haltingly, ‘You are expecting me. I spoke to you on the telephone yesterday. Sally Smit.’ I can see no telephone in the room. She frowns.

‘You’re not Coloured, are you?’ It is an absurd question. I look at my brown arms that I have kept folded across my chest, and watch the gooseflesh sprout. Her eyes are fixed on me. Is she blind? How will she perform the operation with such defective sight? Then I realise: the educated voice, the accent has blinded her. I have drunk deeply of Michael, swallowed his voice as I drank from his tongue. Has he swallowed mine? I do not think so.

I say ‘No,’ and wait for all the cockerels in Cape Town to crow simultaneously. Instead the servant starts from her trance and stares at me with undisguised admiration.

‘Good,’ the woman smiles, showing yellow teeth. ‘One must check nowadays. These Coloured girls, you know, are very forward, terrible types. What do they think of me, as if I would do every Tom, Dick and Harry. Not me you know; this is a respectable concern and I try to help decent women, educated you know. No, you can trust me. No Coloured girl’s ever been on this sofa.’

The girl coughs, winks at me and turns to stir a pot simmering on a primus stove on the table. The smell of offal escapes from the pot and nausea rises in my throat, feeding the fear. I would like to run but my feet are lashed with fear to the linoleum. Only my eyes move, across the room where she pulls a newspaper from a wad wedged between the wall and the wardrobe. She spreads the paper on the divan and smooths with her hand while the girl shuts the door and turns the key. A cat crawls lazily from under the table and stares at me until the green jewels of its eyes shrink to crystal points.

She points me to the sofa. From behind the wardrobe she pulls her instrument and holds it against the baby-pink crimplene of her skirt.

‘Down, shut your eyes now,’ she says as I raise my head to look. Their movements are carefully orchestrated, the manoeuvres practised. Their eyes signal and they move. The girl stations herself by my head and her mistress moves to my feet. She pushes my knees apart and whips out her instrument from a pocket. A piece of plastic tubing dangles for a second. My knees jerk and my mouth opens wide but they are in control. A brown hand falls on my mouth and smothers the cry; the white hands wrench the knees apart and she hisses, ‘Don’t you dare. Do you want the bladdy police here? I’ll kill you if you scream.’

The brown hand over my mouth relaxes. She looks into my face and says, ‘She won’t.’ I am a child who needs reassurance. I am surprised by the softness of her voice. The brown hand moves along the side of my face and pushes back my hair. I long to hold the other hand; I do not care what happens below. A black line of terror separates it from my torso. Blood spurts from between my legs and for a second the two halves of my body make contact through the pain.

So it is done. Deflowered by yellow hands wielding a catheter. Fear and hypocrisy, mine, my deserts spread in a dark stain on the newspaper.

‘OK,’ she says, ‘get yourself decent.’ I dress and wait for her to explain. ‘You go home now and wait for the birth. Do you have a pad?’

I shake my head uncomprehendingly. Her face tightens for a moment but then she smiles and pulls a sanitary towel out of the wardrobe.

‘Won’t cost you anything lovey.’ She does not try to conceal the glow of her generosity. She holds out her hand and I place the purse in her palm. She counts, satisfied, but I wave away the purse which she reluctantly puts on the table.

‘You’re a good girl,’ she says and puts both hands on my shoulders. I hold my breath; I will not inhale the foetid air from the mouth of this my grotesque bridegroom with yellow teeth. She plants the kiss of complicity on my cheek and I turn to go, repelled by her touch. But have I the right to be fastidious? I cannot deny feeling grateful, so that I turn back to claim the purse after all. The girl winks at me. The purse fits snugly in my hand; there would be no point in giving it back to Michael.

Michael’s face is drawn with fear. He is as ignorant of the process as I am. I am brisk, efficient and rattle off the plan. ‘It’ll happen tonight so I’ll go home and wait and call you in the morning. By then it will be all over.’ He looks relieved.

He drives me right to the door and my landlady waves merrily from the stoep where she sits with her embroidery among the potted ferns.

‘Don’t look,’ she says anxiously. ‘It’s a present for you, for your trousseau,’ and smiling slyly, ‘I can tell when a couple just can’t wait any longer. There’s no catching me out, you know.’

Tonight in her room next to mine she will turn in her chaste bed, tracing the tendrils from pink and orange flowers, searching for the needle lost in endless folds of white linen.

Semi-detached houses with red-polished stoeps line the west side of Trevelyan Road. On the east is the Cape Flats line where electric trains rattle reliably according to timetable. Trevelyan Road runs into the elbow of a severely curved Main Road which nevertheless has all the amenities one would expect: butcher, baker, hairdresser, chemist, library, liquor store. There is a fish and chips shop on that corner, on the funny bone of that elbow, and by the side, strictly speaking in Trevelyan Road, a dustbin leans against the trunk of a young palm tree. A newspaper parcel dropped into this dustbin would absorb the vinegary smell of discarded fish and chips wrappings in no time.

The wrapped parcel settles in the bin. I do not know what has happened to God. He is fastidious. He fled at the moment that I smoothed the wet black hair before wrapping it up. I do not think he will come back. It is 6 a.m. Light pricks at the shroud of Table Mountain. The streets are deserted and, relieved, I remember that the next train will pass at precisely 6.22.

A lady must never be seen without her handbag. So Aunt Cissie always says. Which must be why she has wedged the unwieldy object between her stomach and the edge of the dinner table. Visibly relieved, she pushes back her chair and releases the bag in order to rummage for the letter. Her eyes caper at the secrets awakened by her touch in that darkness, secrets like her electricity bill, so boldly printed in words and figures, protected from their eyes by the thin scuffed leather. They wait with the patience of those who expect to hear nothing new while her fingers linger over something deep down in the bag before she draws out the blue envelope. Then she reads aloud from Uncle Hermanus’s letter written in the careful English he never spoke:

‘I haven’t seen the ground for so many weeks now that I can’t believe it’s the same earth I’m walking on. Here is hard snow as far as the eyes can see. This really is the land for the white man.’

‘That’s Canada hey!’ and she pats the folded letter before slipping it back into the bag on her lap.