Zakes Mda - The Heart of Redness

“It’s laughing! I can hear it laugh!”

“It’s the uxomoyi bird, silly.”

Late in the afternoon Camagu goes to Vulindlela Trading Store. This time his eyes do not wander around looking for something that will ease his pining. He pines no more. He just needs somebody who will help him contain his unseemly effervescence. Dalton will serve that purpose. Dalton’s feet are firmly planted on the ground. Although there are still some traces of tension in their relationship, things are returning to normal between them. He joins Dalton in his office, where he is relaxing with a magazine. Missis is busy with some paperwork.

Camagu bubbles about his discovery of the Jacaranda . But he does not mention his shipboard romance. Dalton tells him the Jacaranda was a Greek cargo ship, which foundered in September 1971. The sailors were drunk, partying all the time. They had not been paid for six months, so they wrecked the ship.

“What were you doing at that remote place?” Dalton asks.

“Just exploring,” Camagu lies. “Just learning more about this lovely country.”

“Just exploring, eh? With that daughter of Zim?” Dalton chuckles naughtily.

Missis gives Camagu a disapproving look. He is by now used to her sneering attitude and does not pay any attention to it. He does not answer Dalton’s question either.

“I don’t know what he sees in that crude girl,” comments Missis, as if to herself.

Still Camagu does not answer. He just smiles politely.

“She is a rotten apple, that one. I am glad she no longer works here. I would have fired her long ago if it were not for John, who seems to be compassionate to the worst of these people,” continues Missis. “Take Xoliswa Ximiya, for instance. Now that’s a lady. Very educated. Polished. I don’t know why your friend dumped her, John.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear from village gossips,” says Camagu.

“You didn’t dump her then?” asks Missis incredulously.

“Hey, let’s not pry into the man’s affairs, dear,” says Dalton.

“There was no reason to dump her in the first place. There was never anything between us.”

He omits to add that Xoliswa Ximiya, like the village gossips, doesn’t seem to think so. She has been sending daily messages that she wants to see him. Cold and distant notes through schoolboys. Summoning him to her presence. One day, a messenger even arrives in the person of Vathiswa. He has been ignoring all these royal commands. And has been avoiding any path that passes near Qolorha-by-Sea Secondary School or Bhonco’s homestead. The messages are becoming more frantic by the day. They no longer sound like orders. They sound like entreaties. If she were not such a refined lady, she would have long since gone to his cottage to rout him out of his snakehole. But she is too proud for that. The last thing she wants is a showdown with that unschooled girl who, according to gossip, now openly frequents the cottage.

“She is a lady, that Miss Ximiya,” observes Missis as she serves them coffee and biscuits that were brought in by a maid. “Not like the red girl. I hear now that one is even cutting down trees.”

“That reminds me,” says Dalton. “How did the case go?”

“It hasn’t ended,” says Camagu curtly.

“She’s a crazy, that one! Fancy cutting down trees!” Dalton laughs.

“I too thought so, John. I thought she was mad. Until I heard her side of the story. She has a point, John.”

Dalton and Missis look at him closely, as if to make sure whether he too hasn’t lost it.

“You are aligned with destructive forces, Camagu,” says Dalton. “I hear that your women of the cooperative killed a swarttobie bird, the black oystercatcher. They said it was competing with them for mussels.”

“That was wrong,” admits Camagu. “I warned them against it. I told them that the African black oystercatcher is an endangered bird and they must never kill it again. It is just ignorance, John. I think we all need some education on these matters. All of us. Even you, John. Then we will understand why Qukezwa chopped down those trees.”

Camagu suggests that instead of having his verandah television play old movies that have no relevance to the people of Qolorha-by-Sea, he should consider playing videos on developmental issues. Documentaries that will encourage community dialogue. It is important that people should start talking about things that affect their lives. The problem, of course, is where to find such videos.

Camagu is not aware that while he is busy drinking coffee with the Daltons, things are happening at Zim’s homestead. Hecklers and ululants have gathered once more, and are creating such a din that even the amahobohobo weaverbirds are reeling about and flying against one another.

Bhonco has resumed his offensive! To the abayiyizeli, the women whose greatest joy in life is to ululate, he has added the hecklers. They are young men whose greatest pleasure is to heckle at the slightest provocation. They have perfected heckling to the extent that they can heckle even when no one is talking. They have only to look at a person, imagine his speech in their heads, then heckle him. Bhonco has promised them beer brewed by the expert hand of NoPetticoat at the end of each day of heckling.

At this very moment, Qukezwa is giving birth in one of the rondavels. She is surrounded by the grandmothers who are village midwives. She is heaving and screaming. Ululants are ululating outside. Hecklers are heckling. Zim sits at the door of the rondavel, his head buried in his hands.

The gathering of the hecklers and ululants sees his pain and increases the volume.

“Try again, my child,” says a grandmother. “Push!”

“The head is already appearing,” says another grandmother.

She pushes once more. She hears the yelping laughter that Camagu insisted was not the baby’s but the giant kingfisher’s. The bloody thing crashes its way out. It immediately starts screaming. It is as though it wants to compete with the ululation outside, and the heckling.

“It is a boy,” says a grandmother.

“A boy,” says Qukezwa, forgetting the pain. “His name is Heitsi.”

“Heitsi!” shout the grandmothers in unison. “What kind of a name is that?”

It is ages since rivers of salt have run down the gullies of Bhonco’s face. Beautiful things have become estranged from his life since Camagu, son of Cesane, imprecated himself upon this village and became the bane of the Unbeliever’s family. And then the abaThwa came and took their dance, wrenching away the cord that connected him to essential pain. How will the Cult of the Unbelievers survive without the dance? The Unbelievers cannot afford to be marooned in this world, without occasionally traversing misty mountains and plains to the pains of the past.

And then there is Zim and his despicable Believers. Zim whose medicine has turned influential people like Dalton and the detestable Camagu to his side. Zim whose daughter has cast a spell on the spineless Camagu, wresting him away from the esteemed daughter of the Unbelievers. The very daughter who lives and is prepared to die for civilization. Zim who will soon be driven crazy by ululations and heckles, until he plunges down a cliff. Zim. Zim. Zim. It is a name that buzzes in his vengeful head.

And then there are the hadedah ibises that have now taken to loitering outside his pink rondavel, sharing corn with the hens and their broods. Although the ibises are bigger and uglier birds, the hens are no longer bothered by them. Three or four of the accursed birds still follow him whenever he ventures out of the homestead. They hover above him clumsily, emitting their raucous laughter.