Zakes Mda - The Madonna of Excelsior

Niki did not respond. She resumed sweeping the floor.

After cleaning up all the mess, and throwing it into the dustbin outside, she poured some sunflower oil into the pan and fried three big chunks of meat. The pan wobbled on the Primus stove as the hot fat splattered on the table. She looked at the pan with undisguised contempt. It had been used by Pule’s first wife, until they divorced. Then it was used by a string of girlfriends. Now it was her turn to use it. The pan yoked her to all the previous women in his life.

She said under her breath, “One day, I’ll go and leave him with this pan.”

IT WAS BEFORE Popi’s time. So these are things that she heard from those of us who saw them happen, even though today she relates them as if she herself witnessed them. She is no sciolist. She can indeed experience them in the immortal world that the trinity has bequeathed us. She is able to become part of whole lives that are frozen and rendered timeless. A memoir that conveys our yesterdays in the continuing present.

She experiences how the villagers, to their utmost sadness, discovered that there were no stars in the sky. Men and women stood outside their skewed yellow houses one blue night, and raised their eyes to the big sky. They pointed up and lamented that the sky was bereft of stars. A lonely full moon rose behind distant hills. Fumbling in a sky that had no stars. A yellow moon fluttering its cloudy wings above yellow hills.

The villagers stood outside their black-roofed houses, listening to the restlessness of the night. And to the sweeping rhythms of their clustered houses that leaned in directions that were determined by fickle winds. Then a giant with a boyish face appeared. A giant in a red hat and red boots and yellow overalls. He carried over his shoulder a big star attached to a stick. He jumped over the roofs of the houses bringing the star to the village, flooding the skewed houses with titanium white light.

The friendly giant transformed the blues and yellows into a scintillating light-filled land of promise. A world conceived of beautiful madness. Had he lived here, the trinity once surmised, Vincent van Gogh would have gone mad even earlier.

Niki was mad for a different reason. A different kind of madness. Many months had passed without Pule coming home from the mines of Welkom. White man’s gold in the earth held him in its bosom, making him desert his family in Excelsior. Although he hadn’t really deserted it. He sent Niki money every month. “She will see my money,” he told his mates while sweating in the dark tunnels, “but she will not see me until such time that she learns to appreciate me. You are right, my friends, I have spoilt her by going home every long weekend.”

Mmampe and Maria applied a soothing balm to her loneliness by making her aware that Pule’s conduct was quite normal. Most men came home only once a year. Those with a higher sense of responsibility came twice a year. It was abnormal behaviour to come home every long weekend. It was the behaviour of a man possessed by demons of jealousy. A man who didn’t trust that his wife could be left to her own devices for any length of time without getting into miscliief. It was not his love, but his tight leash on her that had made him come home so often. Niki should just be happy that, unlike many other men, Pule supported his family.

And he sent not only money. He sent clothes for Niki and Viliki as well. Two-piece costumes with broad figure-belts. Genuine leather shoes and school uniforms. Things for the house too. Floral duvets for the bed and plastic tablecloths for the “kitchen scheme” table. He even sent a china dinner set, with a note that he was replacing the Sunday plate that he had broken in a fit of temper months before. It was blue and white like the broken plate. But it didn’t have pagodas. He couldn’t get one with pagodas. It had flowers instead. Now Niki had a whole set of Sunday plates.

Mmampe and Maria became wary of visiting her because every time they came, she showed them new things that Pule had sent. Or that she had bought with money sent by him. It became a great strain to sit through these crass displays of wealth.

We thought Niki would resign from the butchery, sit down and eat Pule’s money. But she continued to work at Excelsior Slaghuis and to look after Tjaart. Even after shameful things were done to her.

CORNELIA CRONJE HAD started a new custom of weighing workers twice a day to make sure they were not stealing any of her meat. The morning clock-in weight had to tally with the afternoon clock-off weight. Any discrepancy meant that there was some chicanery somewhere.

Niki clocked in one morning and stepped on the black iron heavy-duty floor scale. Her weight was recorded at 61 kilograms. A good weight for a mother of one who still kept the body of her maidenhood.

It was at the end of the month. Workers had received their wages and pensioners their old-age pensions. The butchery was a necessary stop-off whenever people had bank notes burning in their purses and pockets. So, it was a busy day for Niki and the other workers. She could only eat her lunch at four o’clock in the afternoon, an hour before knocking off. She was very hungry. She stuffed herself with a lot of pap and meat, generously supplied by the Cronjes to all their workers every lunchtime.

At five it was time to go. As usual she stepped on the scale while Cornelia Cronje recorded her weight. It was 62 kilograms.

“You are hiding something,” said Cornelia Cronje.

“It is not true, Madam Cornelia,” protested Niki. “I am not hiding anything.”

“Your weight was 61 kilograms in the morning. It can’t just increase by a kilo for nothing. You must be hiding meat under your dress,” insisted Madam Cornelia.

Curious workers crowded around them. They wondered among themselves: how could Niki be so foolish? Didn’t she know that the penalty for theft was instant dismissal? How could she play with her job like this when jobs were so scarce in Excelsior? Was she not aware that the scale would catch her out? The scale never lied.

Madam Cornelia was determined to teach Niki a lesson. And to teach the other workers by example. She ordered her to strip. Right there in front of everyone. When she hesitated, Madam Cornelia threatened to lock her up in the cold room with all the carcasses, as it was obvious that she loved meat so much that she had now become a meat thief. Niki peeled off her pink overall and then her mauve dress. She stood in her white petticoat and protested once more that she was not hiding any meat on her person. Then she peeled off the petticoat and stood in her pink knickers and fawn bra.

“Raise your arms,” ordered Madam Cornelia.

She did.

No chunks of meat rained from her unshaved armpits.

“Take them off, Niki,” insisted Madam Cornelia. “Everything! You must be hiding it in your knickers.”

No meat hiding in her bra. Only stained cotton-wool hiding in her knickers.

She stood there like the day she was born. Except that when she was born, there was no shame in her. No hurt. No embarrassment. She raised her eyes and saw among the oglers Stephanus Cronje in his khaki safari suit and brown sandals. And little Tjaart. Little Tjaart in his neat school uniform of grey shorts, white shirt, green tie and a grey blazer with green stripes. Grey knee-length socks and black shoes. Little Tjaart of the horsey-horsey game. His father had just fetched him from school. And here he was. Here they were. Raping her with their eyes.

“Magtig Niki,” said Madam Cornelia, “where did the kilo come from?”

And she burst out laughing as if it was a big joke. Everyone giggled. Including Niki. But there was no laughter in her eyes.