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

‘No, not his letters, that wouldn’t be right,’ I said. And my memory skimmed the pages of Michael’s letters. Love, holy love that made the remembered words dance on that lined foolscap infused with his smell. I could not, would not, share the first man to love me.

‘Is he getting on OK in Durban?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I expect he still has many friends there. I’m going up just after the finals and then perhaps he’ll come back to Cape Town. Let’s see if we can spit two pips together and hit the fence at the same time.’

So we sat in the dark, between swotting sessions, under the tree with yellow loquats lustrous in the black leaves. Perhaps she mimicked his Durban voice, waiting for me to take up the routine of friendly mockery. I try in vain to summon it all. I cannot separate the tangled strands of conversation or remembered letters. Was it then, in my Durban accent, that I replied with Michael’s views about the permanence and sanctity of marriage?

‘Ja-ja-ja,’ Moira sighs, pulling out a chair. And turning again to check a pot on the stove, her neck is unbecomingly twisted, the sinews thrown into relief. How old we have grown since that night under the loquat tree, and I know that there is no point in enquiring after Desmond.

‘Do you like living here?’ I ask instead.

‘It’s OK, as good as anything.’

‘I was thinking of your parents’ home, the house where I stayed. How lovely it was. Everything’s so new here. Don’t you find it strange?’

‘Ag Frieda, but we’re so new, don’t we belong in estates like this? Coloureds haven’t been around for that long, perhaps that’s why we stray. Just think, in our teens we wanted to be white, now we want to be full-blooded Africans. We’ve never wanted to be ourselves and that’s why we stray. across the continent, across the oceans and even here, right into the Tricameral Parliament, playing into their hands. Actually,’ and she looks me straight in the eye, ‘it suits me very well to live here.’

Chastened by her reply I drum my fingertips on the table so that she says gently, ‘I don’t mean to accuse you. At the time I would have done exactly the same. There was little else to do. Still, it’s really nice to see you. I hope you’ll be able to stay tomorrow.’ Her hand bums for a moment on my shoulder.

It is time for dinner. Moira makes a perfunctory attempt at clearing the table, then, defeated by the chaos, she throws a cloth at me.

‘Oh God, I’ll never be ready by seven.’

I am drawn into the revolving circle of panic: washing down, screwing lids back on to jars, shutting doors on food that will rot long before discovery. Moira has always been hopeless in a kitchen so that there is really no point in my holding up the bag of potatoes enquiringly.

‘Oh stick it in there,’ and with her foot she deftly kicks open a dank cupboard where moisture tries in vain to escape from foul-smelling cloths. In here the potatoes will grow eyes and long pale etiolated limbs that will push open the creaking door next spring.

Her slow voice does not speed up with the frantic movements; instead, like a tape mangled in a machine, it trips and buzzes, dislocated from the darting sinewy body.

The children watch television. They do not want to eat, except for the youngest who rubs his distended tummy against the table. We stand in silence and listen to the child, ‘I’m hungry, really hungry. I could eat and eat.’ His black eyes glint with the success of subterfuge and in his pride he tugs at Moira’s skirt, ‘Can I sit on your knee?’ and offers as reward, ‘I’ll be hungry on your knee, I really will.’

Something explodes in my mouth when Desmond produces a bottle of wine, and I resolve not to look at his chin, not even once.

‘I’ve got something for you girls to celebrate with; you are staying in tonight, aren’t you? Frieda, I promise you this is the first Wednesday night in years that Moira’s been in. Nothing, not riots nor disease will keep her away from her Wednesday meetings. Now that women’s lib’s crept over the equator it would be most unbecoming of me to suspect my wife’s commitment to her black-culture group. A worthy affair, affiliated to the UDF you know.’ The wine which I drink too fast tingles in my toes and fingertips.

‘So how has feminism been received here?’ I ask.

‘Oh,’ he smiles, ‘you have to adapt in order to survive. No point in resisting for the sake of it, you have to move with the times. but there are some worrying half-baked ideas about. muddled women’s talk.’

‘Actually,’ Moira interjects, ‘our group has far more pressing matters to deal with.’

‘Like?’ he barks.

‘Like community issues, consciousness raising,’ but Desmond snorts and she changes direction. ‘Anyway, I doubt whether women’s oppression arises as an issue among whites. One of the functions of having servants is to obscure it.’

‘Hm,’ I say, and narrow my eyes thoughtfully, a stalling trick I’ve used with varying success. Then I look directly at Desmond so that he refills my glass and takes the opportunity to propose a toast to our reunion. This is hardly less embarrassing than the topic of servants. The wine on my tongue turns musty and mingles with the smell of incense, of weddings and christenings that his empty words resurrect.

Desmond is in a cooperative mood, intent on evoking the halcyon days of the sixties when students sat on the cafeteria steps soaking up the sun. Days of calm and stability, he sighs. He reels off the names of contemporaries. Faces struggle in formation through the fog of the past, rise and recede. Rita Jantjes detained under the Terrorism act. ‘The Jantjes of Lansdowne?’ I ask.

‘It’s ridiculous of them to keep Rita. She knows nothing; she’s far too emotional, an obvious security risk,’ Moira interjects.

‘No,’ Desmond explains, ‘not the Lansdowne Jantjes but the Port Elizabeth branch of the family. The eldest, Sammy, graduated in Science the year before me.’

I am unable to contribute anything else, but he is the perfect host. There are no silent moments. He explains his plans for the garden and defers to my knowledge of succulents. There will be an enormous rockery in the front with the widest possible variety of cacti. A pity, he says, that Moira has planted those horrible trees but he would take over responsibility for the garden, give her a bit more free time, perhaps I didn’t know that she has started working again?

Moira makes no effort to contribute to the conversation so diligently made. She murmurs to the little one on her knee whose fat fingers she prevents from exploring her nostrils. They giggle and shh-ssht each other, marking out their orbit of intimacy. Which makes it easier for me to conduct this conversation. Only once does he falter and rub his chin but I avert my eyes and he embarks smoothly on the topic of red wine. I am the perfect guest, a deferential listener. I do not have the faintest interest in the production of wine.

When we finish dinner Desmond gets up briskly. He returns to the living room and the children protest loudly as he switches off the television and puts on music. Something classical and rousing, as if he too is in need of revival.

‘Moi,’ he shouts above the trombones, ‘Moi, the children are tired, they must go to bed. Remember it’s school tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ she shouts back. Then quietly, Thursdays are always schooldays. But then Desmond isn’t always as sober as I’d like him to be.’

She lifts the sleeping child from her lap on to the bench. We rest our elbows on the table amongst the dirty dishes.

‘He gets his drink too cheaply; has shares in an hotel.’ Moira explains how the liquor business goes on expanding, how many professional people give up their jobs to become liquor moguls.