Zakes Mda - The Heart of Redness

“Leave our ancestors out of this,” says Zim. “What do you know of them?”

“He knows them all right,” says another elder. “His forebears cooked them in their cauldrons.”

“Yes,” rejoins Bhonco. “This Dalton here. . he is a descendant of headhunters. Yet no one holds that against him.”

“It is not true! It is not true!” shouts Dalton, flushed with shame.

On this matter Camagu is on the side of the elders. He says it is true. In one of his travels abroad he went to the Natural History Museum — part of the British Museum — in London to see the reconstructed skeletons of dinosaurs. He chanced upon some scientists from his university in the United States who had been given access to examine some items that were not on display. He was shocked to discover that there were five dried-out heads of the so-called Bushmen stored in boxes in some back room of the museum.

He has never understood this barbaric habit of the British of shrinking heads of the vanquished people and displaying them in these impressive buildings where ladies and gentlemen go to gloat and celebrate their superior civilization.

“Maybe that is where the head of our great-great-grandfather ended up,” says Zim.

“Yes, the head of the great Xikixa must be in that building,” agrees Bhonco.

There is sudden silence. Everyone is taking in what has just happened. Some stare in disbelief. Believers and Unbelievers have just agreed on something!

“The heads of our ancestors are all over Europe. . trophies collected in military action and in executions,” continues Camagu. “Not only heads. In Paris the private parts of a Khoikhoi woman called Saartjie Baartman are kept in a bottle!”

Bhonco bursts out laughing.

“The Khoikhoi are Zim’s people,” he says, still laughing. “He descends from a Khoikhoi woman called Quxu. They changed her name to Qukezwa so that people would think she was an umXhosa. Zim himself married a woman of the amaGqunukhwebe. And we all know who the amaGqunukhwebe are.”

“The way I see it, it is no laughing matter,” says Camagu.

“It is a laughing matter from where I am sitting,” says Bhonco. “I have an unobstructed view of Zim’s face. I wonder what he plans to do about the femaleness of his great-grandmother that is kept in a bottle in the land of the white man.”

Zim stands up, casts an evil eye on both Camagu and Bhonco, and walks away from the feast.

“Please, Tat’uZim, come back! Do not leave like this!” Camagu shouts after the old man. But he walks on, and does not look back for one moment.

“You see now?” says Dalton to Camagu. “That’s what you get when you dig out the past that is best forgotten.”

“It is not the past,” says Camagu emphatically. “It is the present. Those trophies are still there. . today. . as we speak.”

“Let him go! Who needs him here?” shouts NoPetticoat drunkenly.

“You cannot say that about my guests,” says Camagu sternly. “This is not your feast. You wouldn’t like it if somebody did this at your feast.”

“This child of Cesane, now he is boasting about his feast,” says Bhonco, standing up and uxoriously holding NoPetticoat’s hand. “Why doesn’t someone tell him that it is not the first time we have seen a feast? He can stay with his feast for all we care.”

He helps NoPetticoat up, and leads her away. All the while she is singing an umtshotsho song, and shaking her upper body in the style of the tyityimba dance. Bhonco joins in the song as they stagger away together.

Although the elite stays until late at night, dancing to compact discs that have been brought by Vathiswa, Camagu has lost interest in his own housewarming party. Right up to the end, Xoliswa Ximiya does not stop nagging him about his encouragement of redness in the village. Even when he accompanies her to her house, the harangue continues. Normally he cannot drink enough of her chilled beauty. But at this moment he wishes she would just disappear.

Qukezwa is the best antidote to Xoliswa Ximiya.

Qukezwa. He has not seen her since the silvery night, months ago. He thought he had freed himself from her inebriating power, until she started invading his dreams, as NomaRussia used to do. Orgastic dreams. Dreams in slow motion. Dreams that sweep the NomaRussia water from the river. The riverbed lies naked. Dreams in slow motion. Very messy dreams.

The following day he goes to Zim’s compound under the pretext of making peace with the elder. But Zim is not under his tree. He has gone to the dongas to purge himself of the contamination he got from mixing with Unbelievers yesterday, Qukezwa tells him.

“You are lucky he is not here,” she adds. “He does not even want to hear your name mentioned.”

“I came to make peace with him, even though I do not know what I have done,” says Camagu.

“You do not know? After spreading lies throughout the village that my grandmother’s femaleness lives in a bottle in the land of the white man?”

“I never said such things!”

“Is my father lying then? Is he lying when he says he became the laughingstock of your feast after you made such ludicrous claims about our relative?”

“Saartjie Baartman is not your relative. She was a Khoikhoi woman, but you don’t know if she was your relative! I was merely stating a fact about what white people did to her. What happened to her was not your fault either. I do not know why you should bear that shame.”

Qukezwa is not convinced. “All the Khoikhoi are one person,” she says. “You cannot say the private parts of that woman have nothing to do with me.”

Camagu begs her to come down to the lagoon so that they can talk about this.

She glares at him. She is angry, not only because of the femaleness that lives in a bottle. Of late he has been featuring in her dreams. And she tells him so. She does not like that. He has no business imposing himself on her dreams, performing unsavory acts. Everyone in the village knows he belongs to Xoliswa Ximiya. He must do those dirty things in the headmistress’s dreams.

“I should be angry with you too, because you feature in my dreams,” says Camagu. “It is not for anyone in this village to decide to whom I belong!”

“If I feature in your dreams it is your own fault. Just don’t mess up my dreams.”

“Please,” pleads Camagu, “let’s talk about this. Let’s go down to the sea.”

Mutual dreams. Messy dreams.

She offers him food: fried amaqongwe , or cockles, with maize porridge. Then she says he should go and wait for her at the lagoon.

On the way he meets members of his cooperative society coming up with the day’s harvest. NoGiant and MamCirha tease him that it is too late in the day if he thinks he can catch any mussels and oysters.

“You must learn to wake up early, teacher,” says MamCirha.

“He needs a wife, don’t you think?” asks NoGiant. “I tell him every day that a man of his age needs a good woman who will look after him.”

“Well, he cannot say we did not advise him,” says MamCirha, to the laughter of the other women. “He can’t say there are no eligible young women in this village. There is Xoliswa Ximiya for instance.”

“What is happening to their thing? Is it getting cold?”

“Men are afraid of Xoliswa Ximiya. There is Vathiswa. Vathiswa is a good woman, even though she had a fall.”

He just smiles and waves them away. They have a way of discussing him as if he is just a piece of meat, these business partners. That is how they communicate with him: by completely ignoring him and addressing each other about him, and supplying the answers on his behalf.

He has grown to love them, though. And they love him too. To the extent that their husbands were beginning to get jealous. Until they saw the money their wives were bringing home.