Zakes Mda - The Heart of Redness

Beautiful things are hard to come by.

It is in the midst of the elder’s brooding on this dearth that Xoliswa Ximiya visits the homestead. He can sense that she is despondent, even though she wears a brave face. She tells her parents that she is earnestly looking for a job in the government.

“We thought you had forgotten about that,” says Bhonco.

“I thought I had forgotten about it too. I was resigned to staying here and building my school. But this place is not for me. There can be no growth for me here.”

“This place is for you. This is your village. You were born here. Your forefathers walked this land. If anyone must go, it is that Camagu!” shouts Bhonco.

“It has nothing to do with Camagu!” Xoliswa Ximiya shouts back.

“She wanted to go to the city long before Camagu came here,” agrees NoPetticoat.

“But she was no longer talking of it, NoPetticoat. She was no longer talking of it until that Camagu cast his evil shadow on our village.”

“Maybe she is right, Bhonco,” pleaded NoPetticoat. “Maybe we should allow her to go. Many young women from our village have gone to work in the cities. And they are not half as educated as Xoliswa.”

“You cannot allow me to go, mother. When I want to go, I will go. I am not a child anymore. I was not asking for your permission. I was informing you. When the school closes next week I am going to Pretoria to make personal applications. Many of my former schoolmates are high up in the ruling party. They will lobby for me. I must go because it works out much better when one is there. It is high time I went to live in more civilized places.”

“Do you hear what she is saying, NoPetticoat? And this is what you support?”

“She is a big girl, Bhonco. Let her go.”

Bhonco, son of Ximiya, storms out screaming, “The Believers have won again! They are taking my child away from the place where her umbilical cord is buried. . where she has made her name as the principal of the secondary school.”

“You have upset your father,” says NoPetticoat calmly.

“I can see that.”

“This Camagu, did you really love him?”

“It has nothing to do with Camagu, mother.”

“He is not worth it, you know?”

“He is not my business. My only concern is that he is taking this village back to the last century, and many people now seem to agree with him.”

“Maybe we have judged him too harshly,” says NoPetticoat deliberately. “Maybe there are indeed many different paths to progress.”

“How can you say that, mother?”

“The clothes that they make at the cooperative. . they are so beautiful. The isikhakha skirts. The beaded ornaments. The handbags.”

“They are the clothes of the amaqaba, mother — of the red people who have not yet seen the light of civilization.”

“Oh, how I miss the beautiful isiXhosa clothes of the amahomba!”

Xoliswa Ximiya stares at her mother in disbelief. NoPetticoat has that distant look that speaks of a deep longing for what used to be. The silence is broken by Bhonco’s screams outside. Both women rush out.

The bees that have built their hive on the eaves of his four-walled tin-roofed ixande house are attacking him. The women shriek and open the door of the rondavel for him. He rushes in and they shut the door. He has numerous stings on his skin. His whole face is swelling fast and his eyes can no longer see. His scars are itching. He sits on the chair and moans, “How can the ancestors do this to me?”

“It is the bees, father, not the ancestors,” says Xoliswa Ximiya. “We’ll just have to take you to the clinic.”

Education has made this girl mad, thinks Bhonco. Has she forgotten that, according to the tradition of the amaXhosa, bees are the messengers of the ancestors? When one has been stung, one has to appease the ancestors by slaughtering an ox or a goat and by brewing a lot of sorghum beer.

“It must be that scoundrel Zim,” moans Bhonco. “He must have talked our common ancestor into sending me these bees. And the headless old man complied! Don’t they know? Bees are not for playing games of vengeance!”

But at this moment Zim’s thoughts are drifting a distance away from schemes of vengeance. They are with NoEngland, who resides in the Otherworld. He has been thinking of NoEngland for some days now. He misses her. He thinks that things would have been different if she were here. If she had not hurried to the world of the ancestors, leaving her husband and children in a world that has been so defiled by lack of belief. NoEngland has been in his mind all the time lately, to the extent that he has not touched his food. He just lies under his giant tree. He does not even hear the ululants and the hecklers. They are becoming discouraged because they are not making a dent in his indifference. They don’t know that nothing can penetrate his mind now, for it is occupied by NoEngland.

He does not even notice when Camagu comes and greets him. Camagu does not know what to do. He thinks that perhaps the old man is asleep. Yet his eyes are wide awake. And there is a smile on his face. He greets again. And again.

“I have come to see Qukezwa and the baby, old one,” Camagu says aloud, so that his voice can rise above the cacophony of ululations, heckles, and amahobohobo weaverbirds. The women who are fussing over Qukezwa and Heitsi in the rondavel hear him and appear at the door.

Ah, at last some people who might help. It is a week now since the new Heitsi was born to ululations and heckles. A week of searing loneliness for Camagu. He has been languishing alone in his cottage, pining for Qukezwa, and reflecting on what this place has done to him. It has rendered him unrecognizable to himself. He used to be a man-about-town. A regular at Giggles. But he hasn’t had a tipple since he came to Qolorha-by-Sea. He has also found himself losing interest in cigarettes. Even his famous lust has deserted him. Since coming here he has only known a woman — in the biblical sense, that is — in his messy dreams. His old self would have taken advantage of the raw talent that he encounters every day in this village. Lots of talent. Vathiswa. Even the waitresses and charwomen at the Blue Flamingo. It is all because of the effect that Qukezwa has had on him. The effect that has even cleansed NomaRussia out of his life, out of his recurrent dreams.

He pined and pined in his cottage, until he gathered enough strength to walk to Zim’s homestead with the intention of pleading to be allowed a glimpse of the woman and her child.

“You cannot see Qukezwa and the baby,” screeches a woman at the door.

“Did she say so? Did she say she doesn’t want to see me?” asks Camagu.

“Don’t you see this reed? It means that no man is allowed into this house.”

She is pointing at a reed that is jutting out from the roof just above the door.

“He grew up in the land of the white man. He does not know that a reed like this means there is a newborn baby in the house and no man is allowed,” observes another woman sympathetically.

“But he is the father of the child,” says another one. “Fathers are not barred from the reed.”

“Who says he is the father? The grandmothers said Qukezwa was a virgin.”

More women come out of the house and join the debate, completely ignoring Camagu, who just stands there looking foolish.

“Even if he is the father,” asserts a toothless wizened hag, “he is not married to this daughter of Zim. When the custom says a father is allowed into the reed it means a father who is married to the mother of the baby.”

“Yes,” adds another one, “it does not mean those men who have just ejected their seed illicitly.”

“It does not mean the eaters of stolen fruit,” shout others.