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

I reel off the words. ‘In autumn the trees lose their leaves so that camouflage gear would be as conspicuous as party dress. I collect leaves from Sherwood forest, beech, oak, bracken, and soak them in glycerine.’

His first smile, wry. ‘Why?’ he asks.

‘To heighten the colour, preserve them, before pressing for ornamental use.’

It is true that I once pressed some leaves but then I did not know about the preserving qualities of glycerine. I found the leaves months later in the Yellow Pages but the urgency of my search for a plumber made me drop them and they crushed under my feet.

‘Hm,’ he says, ‘your breasts are as lovely as they were fifteen years ago.’

Propped up on my right elbow, my blouse has slipped down that shoulder. The top button has come undone and what can be seen of my breasts is moulded to their advantage by the supporting pillow. I sit up briskly, appalled by his presumption. But he jumps up to sit next to me, his hand smoothing the stripes of the fabric between us. He soothes with his voice.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve forgotten how shy you are.’

I see no advantage in pointing out that his regret is ill-focused; I do not necessarily believe his regret.

His hand moves to my ankle and a finger hovers over a scratch that I had not noticed before.

‘How did it happen?’

I am grateful for the provision of something to focus on. The scratch is deeper than it appears and I am surprised that I do not know its origin. I concentrate until the neat line of dried blood knitted purlwise into the healed flesh unravels under the insistent movement of his thumb. So that the blood seeps afresh from the gash. A crisp winter’s morning cracks open to reveal a uniform world encased in fire-white frost. I pick a sprig of parsley and twirl it between my fingers. Shit, shit, shit, I shout. I have come to expect parsley to survive the English winter. I kick the stems of the plants into the frozen ground, angry as a child.

‘Nice morning,’ a voice breaks from the neighbouring rooftop. I look up into the face of a man in white overalls watching me with a rooftile held in his raised hand. He grins maliciously. I retreat, back into the hoary hawthorn hedge. The thorn drags through the flesh of my right ankle but I press against the untrimmed hedge. The man repeats, ‘Nice morning,’ then incomprehensibly, ‘Gonna get the kettle on love?’ I bolt. I cannot hear what he shouts. Drops of blood glow for a moment on the grubby kitchen floor before they disappear into the dirt of the tiles.

‘Tell me,’ he says again, ‘about England.’

His hand has travelled the length of my leg, my thigh. I keep still. I do not understand the source of his confidence. His eyes swivel on stalks as they travel the perimeter of my body. Dark as a reptile’s they dart about my still outline, as if following the frantic flight of a trapped fly.

‘England,’ he says musingly, by way of encouragement, ‘sounds green and peaceful.’

‘The telly will give you a better idea than I can. Mine will always be the view of a Martian.’ He composes his face for pleasantries so that I add, ‘I don’t want to talk.’

He would like to fuck me without my noticing. I will not allow him that luxury; my cowardice does not stretch to that. Fear seeps into the striped cotton cover crossed by the dark imprint of my sweating body. Somehow, I expect, it will be translated into desire, the assuagement of guilt. I follow his movements carefully. His hand creeps up my thigh. He leans over me and I do not draw away. But he merely wipes the sweat from my forehead. The profusion of sweat unnerves him. Or perhaps it is the urgency of the bulge as he deftly unzips his trousers and flicks out the terrifying thing of which I catch a glimpse only. I relax at his haste and correctly predict that it will not take long. My body registers a fleeting disappointment so that I have every reason to be pleased with the transaction.

He rests his head on my chest for a while before I go to the lavatory to clean up the mess. On the seat I inhale deeply and contract my stomach muscles to expel the stubborn semen. His voice is soft against the crackle of cheap toilet paper. ‘Have you seen your friend, Olga?’

‘Who?’

‘Olga Simson.’

Then I remember. I assume he has done his trousers up, that he is leaning against the wall, toying perhaps with his mirror shades.

Adolescent Olga, who had giggled upon meeting him, said too loudly, ‘That’s not the Henry who writes those letters?’

‘No,’ I whispered, ‘don’t be silly. Would I be writing to a native?’ and looked round for the last time into the wounded eyes that had seen it all.

When I come out of the lavatory I look into his mirrors and say briskly, ‘No, I lost touch with that set when I started college, long before I even left this country. All that was a long time ago.’ I can do no more. I have always miscalculated the currency of sex.

Father stoops over a young peach tree. Its leaves have curled up into stubborn little funnels. He puts down the spray can and beams, ‘Just in time for a nice cup of coffee hey.’

The kitchen is hot. The gingham curtains are drawn against the wrath of the afternoon sun. He bangs the gauze door to and asks, ‘What does van Zyl say?’

Why does he have to shout? I answer quietly under the clatter of cups and coffeepot. ‘Didn’t wait in the end. I met this bloke, Henry Hendrikse, you may remember him. He beat me a few times at primary school, came top of the class. Anyway I met him and went for a walk when I got fed up of waiting. Hmm,’ I conclude with a cry of delight as he produces a little pot of cream, ‘this is heaven.’

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘that boy turned up out of the blue about six months ago and then just disappeared again. People say that he works for the government, that he gets paid a lot of money for being a spy. People talk such blinking nonsense; what would the government need spies for?’

The wood and tin of the door, held together by nails now brittle with rust, creaked and rattled independently. Skitterboud stepped out in time to see the crest of a blood-red sun buckle the horizon.

‘Ooh,’ he crowed, ‘in a hurry this morning, there’s time enough old girl, time enough to do the blue climb today.’

He liked to rise just before the sun. His hands fumbled with the buttonholes of his shirt. The button must have come off in the night and he remembered dimly a hard disc probing his dreams. Or was it the spear of her elbow as her wiry body turned away from him.

‘Meid,’ he called, ‘Meid, the sun’s up.’

She clasped her hands behind her head and from the bedclothes followed the slow swell of sun. Now young and fiery, it stuck out its chest to battle against the timid morning. She did not move. Later, when the sun grew pale and quivered with rage, she would not be able to look it in the eye. She knew of a girl in the Kamiesberg who had summoned her eyes to meet the midday sun and something so terrible did she see that no words ever crossed her lips again and the day grew black with thunder. That’s how things happen: not blinded but struck dumb. The next day the sun rose as if nothing had gone wrong.

Meid drew the blanket over her head so that the infant on her right murmured and rolled closer to the smell of milk. It tugged lazily at the nipple, its eyelids sealed with sleep. She could hear him outside, still chattering to the sun, to the chickens that tumbled noisily out of the pen, coaxing the fire in the cooking shelter with sweet talk. That was Skitterboud all right with his sweet talk, his chatter to keep the world smiling.

The child rolled the nipple like a boiled sweet in his mouth and complained loudly.