Zoe Wicomb: October

Mercia imagines Nicky in their apartment in the West End of Glasgow. Or rather, her apartment. There is Craig’s study, left untouched, next to the living room. South-facing and bright, and a good size, the best room, of course, for Craig the poet. But it is unreasonable to be bitter; it was after all her idea, for what better use could have been made of that room?

Now she perches the child on that desk, a child looking up in wonder at the high old ceilings with intricate cornices, the ornate ceiling rose from which hangs a tasteful glass globe of diffused yellow light. She brushes out the image. Whatever is she thinking of? With her fastidiousness and need for silence, how could she have a child in her house? A boy somersaulting over her leather sofas? For there is no question of confining a child to one room, she imagines. Not like a man who keeps put, bent over a computer, his desk faced out toward the window.

Craig took only his books and office chair. Even his favorite Howard Hodgkin print from a recent exhibition is still on the wall above the mantelpiece. A clean break, with nothing to remind him of a life spent with her. Mercia swept in a single movement, and without looking, the girlish paraphernalia from the mantelpiece into the bin, wondering why he had not done that himself. Did he imagine that she would keep it intact? The desk she has left, in the same place, against the window, with the stain of overlapping circles on the right where Mercia, having slipped in quietly, would leave a mug of coffee. Often, as she withdrew her hand, Craig would take hold of her wrist, squeeze absently, before she tiptoed out.

What Mercia ought to do is to turn it into another, cozier living room, have the chimney swept, shift the television into the study, console herself with a fine Ziegler rug. But who needs a second sitting room? Perhaps the apartment is too large for one person. There certainly is room for a child who could transform Craig’s study himself with gaudy, boyish things, who could scrub out the coffee stains, but she supposes a child should choose a room. Together they could go about the apartment, rearrange the entire place, marking out their separate spaces.

Mercia tries to say it out loud, in several formulations: I will take Nicky. Nicky can come and live with me. I will look after Nicky. But this one stops her. How? How will she look after Nicky? The business of raising a child may be no more than commonsensical; still, she flinches at the thought. No, she concludes, it is too much to ask of her. They cannot expect her to make a sacrifice like that. It is one thing having a tolerable or even an enjoyable outing with a child, but quite another to have him for keeps. Of course, she would support the child financially, put him through school and university, but that is as far as she could go, besides, a child should be at home with his mother. That is what home is for. For children, who have no choice in the matter.

That evening Sylvie announces that they will have to move to one of the government’s RDP houses. Jake has not been paying the mortgage and has ignored the bank’s warnings of repossession. Sylvie’s tone is bitter. Jake has no right to do this. The house is not just his to knock down as he pleases; the deposit from Pa, as she now refers to Meester, has also been given to her, Sylvie, security for her and the child, that is what Pa said in her very presence. The pittance they’ll get from the bank will slide straight down Jake’s throat. It’s a disgrace. Whatever will people think of them coming down in the world like this?

There is a colony of RDP houses on the horizon stretching eastward from the town’s rubbish dump as far as the eye can see. Only the Gifberge rise beyond it. What amazes Mercia about RDP housing, or rather about the architects of these dwellings, is that in a country where land is plentiful, houses are virtually butted against each other with barely any space between the boundary fences. There is no question of a small patch where people could grow vegetables, a few mealies and pumpkins to keep the wolf from the door. How strange that the architects of these townships, living as they no doubt do in comfortable houses lost in large gardens, and well out of sight of their neighbors, should imagine that the poor want to huddle together in cramped conditions, that they do not want to grow vegetables, let alone flowers.

Now you must know, Sylvie says, these houses are already falling apart. But what can you expect? The state of the country, with nothing working! The blacks now wanting to kill all the coloreds, even swarming into Kliprand, into the RDP houses. Who knows what will happen to them in such a place?

Precisely, Mercia retorts, if you don’t know what will happen there, there’s no basis for racist assumptions. And people can’t swarm into their own country; they belong here. Namaqualand can also be their home, she hears herself saying.

The girl laughs mockingly. Ooh, you Murrays have such bakgat ideas. Jake also says she should stop talking like a white person, but true-as-God she, Sylvie, knows of a woman who’s been raped even though the family’s keeping quiet, and there was a murder reported only a few months ago. Imagine, a murder in Kliprand!

It is Mercia’s cold stare and exaggerated sigh that make her return to their housing plight. If only Jake would pay the bond, but she supposes now that he has given up, now that he has made himself ill, he can’t. Her voice creaks with self-pity.

Mercia knows that she is required to come to the rescue, and that after all is not as tall an order as taking the child. There is the money from their father’s house, she says, she could do without her share. Jake can have it all to pay off his mortgage; he should have told her. There really is no need to live in RDP housing.

But you don’t understand, Sylvie says. She smiles, evidently pleased with herself as she explains. Jake doesn’t want your father’s money. He wants to live in an RDP house; he wants all of us to live there; he wants to punish all three of us.

Mercia stares at her coldly. She cannot speak with this woman, does not want to hear her analysis. She says, I see, and goes to her room, or rather Nicky’s room, which he has had to give up for her. In that room there are no books. The walls are bare except for a hideous picture on the wall connoting cutesiness — a small blond boy holding his peetie to aim an arc of pee into a flowery chamber pot. It is in an ornate plastic frame of white and gold. What does Nicky make of it? Could it be that he sees himself in the image?

Mercia switches on her computer and stares dolefully at the screen. She wishes herself far away from this place called home. Never again will she complain about the pressures of academic life, the nightmare of trying to write. Being with family is far more stressful. She thinks of the parallel construction, being with child, and winces.

Earlier this year, after Nicholas’s funeral, when she spoke about working on her laptop, Jake asked, Do you call it work, the stuff you do? And a laughing Sylvie interjected, You should come to the butchery on a Saturday morning to see real work.

I’ll do that, Mercia said stiffly, I’m happy to find out about the different ways of working. Mine may not be the chopping up of carcasses, but it’s work all the same. Why, she wondered, has Jake taken to championing the working person? Is that what has driven him to marrying the girl?

So are you trying to make a name for yourself? Jake asked.

Ah, she mocked, I’ve been given a crap name so perhaps that is what I’m trying to do, blazon my name across the world so that its crappiness might efface itself. Then she said soberly, We try to think things through, think about texts and their language and interpret the world, nothing to do with making names for ourselves, and besides it’s such a small world, so many people working in my field — yes, working, she repeated — that it hardly signifies. Actually, nobody reads this stuff. Perhaps a handful of students, if you’re lucky.