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

Father licks his bone conscientiously and says, ‘Ja-nee’ with the sense of the equivocal born out of watching rainclouds gather over the arid earth and then disperse. ‘Ja-nee,’ he repeats, ‘that’s now a place hey!’ and with a whistling extraction of marrow from the neck of the goat, he laughs the satisfied laugh of one who has come to see the hidden blessings of drought.

‘And then they have to eat frozen meat as well,’ he adds, and they all roar with laughter.

Uncle Gerrie shakes his head and points to Bakenskop in the distance. ‘No man, there, just there you can bury me.’ He turns abruptly to me. ‘Sies! What you want to go to these cold places for?’

Father hangs his head. The silence squirms under the sound of clanking cutlery and the sucking of marrow bones. I herd the mound of rice on my plate, drawing into line the wayward grains so that Uncle Gerrie says, ‘Just so foolish like Uncle Hermanus. What you eating like that with just a fork? Take your knife man; you were brought up decent.’

On this eve of my departure I will not invite discussion. I say nothing and think of Great Uncle Hermanus on the poop deck.

The horn sounded, a rumbling deep in the belly of the ship, and we searched among the white faces for that of the old man. When he had finally found his way to the deck it was not hard to spot the dark crumpled figure whose right hand signalled its staccato wave like the mechanism of a wind-up toy gone wrong.

Just before boarding he had said, ‘Man, there’s no problem; we’re mos all Juropeens when we get to Canada.’ His rough hand fluttered delicately to his mouth as if to screen a cough. And then he vomited. A watery stream with barely masticated meat and carrot splattered on Cousin Lettie’s new patent-leather shoes and excited relatives in bestwear stood back and the old man, bewildered in the ring created by his own regurgitation, staggered a grotesque dance around the puddle, looking confusedly at us in turn so that Aunt Cissie stepped into the ring and pressed him to the eastern slope of her enormous bosom, mindful of the mess still clinging to his mouth.

‘Ag Oompie, you’re so lucky to be going to a decent place. Mary and Andrew are there waiting for you; you haven’t seen Mary for three years now and shame, there’s a new grandchild hey! The Cloetes are in Canada also; all those old faces waiting to see you,’ consoled Cousin Lettie looking up from her once again shiny shoes. ‘And the journey won’t take long at all. I’m sure there’s some nice Coloured person on the boat. Look out for the Van Stadens from Wynberg; I think they’re also emigrating today.’

Uncle Hermanus lowered the left corner of his mouth in grim pursuit of a smile. Then he kissed his goodbyes to all of us who had now moved in curved formation, shielding him from the pool of vomit. One of the children who audibly muttered ‘Sies’ was smacked and sobbed all the while we waited for the final wave, so that an uncle said, ‘Never mind, one day you can go and visit him in Canada.’

He made it to the deck where he peered from under a hand shading his eyes at the gay tangled streamers, the coloured fragility of the ties that would snap as the boat wriggled away. In his pocket Great Uncle Hermanus found the two neat rolls of streamers, fumbled with the perfectly secured edges and, fishing for meaning in the threadbare convention, flung the little rolls triumphantly to the quay where one was caught by a sixteen-year-old white girl in beatnik dress. Behind the stirring ship Table Mountain, whose back I have woken up to for so many years in the Southern suburbs, stood squarely.

‘So we’ve sent you to college, your very own college that this government’s given you, just so you can go away and leave us to stew in ignorance. I know,’ Uncle Gerrie continued, ‘that here in the veld amongst the Griquas is no place for an educated person, but we all thought you liked Cape Town. The most beautiful city in the world you know, and the richest. There’s a future for you here.’

I do not give a fig for the postcard beauty of the bay and the majesty of the mountain, the pretty white houses clinging to its slopes and the pines swaying to the Old Cape Doctor. A city of gleaming lavatories with the smell of disinfectant wafting from its pines. And the District Six I do not know and the bulldozers, impatient vultures, that hover about its stench. But I say nothing. At the base of this hollow edifice of guilt rattles the kernel of shame. I am grateful to Aunt Cissie who explains, ‘Ag, Gerrie, you know this child’s always been so. Everybody goes to Canada so she wants to go to England where there’s nobody, not a soul from South Africa. She’s stubborn as a mule; always pulls the other way.’

But she laughs her clear laugh of running water and pats my back. I note the alarm in Father’s eyes and the lie comes effortlessly.

‘Mrs Beukes, my landlady, has a cousin who lives in London. I’ve arranged to live with her. And her family. They’re quite a large family.’

They are pleased at the thought of a family, comforted at the Beukeses’ ability, in common with the rest of the animal kingdom, to reproduce themselves. But Uncle Gerrie is not prepared to let me off.

‘And why are you sailing at the devilish hour of midnight? Respectable people are fast asleep in their beds by then.’

An image of Uncle Gerrie as a young man flickers before me but I grope in vain for something to pin my dislike on.

‘A good time to sail, New Year’s Eve,’ I say, attempting to sound gay. ‘I think there might be one or two decent people still dancing at that hour.’

‘Friedatjie,’ Aunt Cissie says, and I stiffen under the gravity of her tone. ‘You must be very careful, my child. Behave yourself at all times like a lady and remember honesty is always the best policy. Let me tell you, it’s at dances that temptation comes in all sorts of disguises.’ And dropping her voice in the interest of decency she adds, ‘Mrs Karelse tells me in her letter how the people behave on the ship where there’s no laws or police. Just poor whites, you know, so remember you’re an educated girl. There are skollies amongst the English as well. And if you’re good and careful, you’ll always be happy. D.V. And remember to pray every day.’

Anxious to seal the topic of lust and temptation, Uncle Gerrie licks his fingers loudly and appeals to Aunt Cissie, ‘You must cut us the piece about Boeta Sol Geldenhuys’s daughter’s wedding in Beaufort.’ Aunt Cissie laughs her running-water laugh and launches into the story. They fill in the minor details while she develops a new theory on those events of three years ago. Father cannot resist pipping her at the post with the last line, ‘And the bridegroom jumped into the motor car and was never seen again.’

They cut their stories from the gigantic watermelon that cannot be finished by the family in one sitting. They savour as if for the first time the pip-studded slices of the bright fruit and read the possibilities of konfyt in the tasteless flesh beneath the green. Their stories, whole as the watermelon that grows out of this arid earth, have come to replace the world.

I would like to bring down my fist on that wholeness and watch the crack choose its wayward path across the melon, slowly exposing the icy pink of the slit. I would like to reveal myself now so that they will not await my return. But they will not like my stories, none of them, not even about the man in the train last night. When I should have said to the guard, ‘Sir,’ I should have said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but this is a women’s compartment.’ But of course he knew. Deference at that midnight hour might have worked. But how my voice would have quivered ineffectually, quivered with reluctance and come out sounding matter-of-fact anyway.