Zoe Wicomb - October

The word, sacrifice, was firmly attached to God, who sacrificed his own son for the sins of the world, although it was not clear how that connected with grown-ups’ sacrifice for their children. They did not explain how or what they sacrificed. The seven-year-old Mercia thought of a stack of firewood, the smell of a burnt offering, but why did it induce guilt? Besides, her mother did not make sense. How could there be no such thing as an accident? The word existed, and carelessness what’s more was clearly not the same as doing something on purpose.

Was the fire Mercia allowed to go down, having forgotten to feed the woodstove, more deserving of a beating? She had ruined the bread and so was a good-for-nothing, ungrateful child, idle, with her nose buried in Die Jongspan , her mother said. She could not be trusted with anything when there was something to read.

That brought an end to Die Jongspan , which they decided was an unnecessary indulgence that filled a girl’s head with too many stories. Over and over Mercia read the few remaining back issues of the magazine until she knew by heart all the jolly escapades of the boer children, the chicanery of Reinhart the fox, and the adventures of Jakkals en Wolf.

The bus stopped at the zoo, and for a second Mercia toyed with the idea of getting off. Precisely, she castigated herself; it was just as she had always thought — children inspire sentimentality. She kept her eyes down. She did not want to see the woman and child, did not want to host an image of them. No image, no redux.

At the bus station Mercia welcomed the long walk to the National Library. The howling wind would blast the cobwebs out of her head, the unseemly, blubbering mummy-longing, inspired by no less than an incident of vomiting. Christ, a broken heart may demand new directions but there was no need to regress to childhood.

How little she knew of this city only a few miles away. Mercia smiled at the old rivalry, remembering Craig’s joke about the best thing to come out of Edinburgh being the train to Glasgow. Whilst living with Craig, she refused to think of Glasgow as home. Now, rehabilitating, did that not demand that she take a stand? Was there not the risk of being irretrievably lost? between cities? between continents? What a day for being assailed by nonsense. Mercia had to remind herself that she had only been unsettled by a pious mother-and-child display. Grieving for Craig need not turn her into a fruitcake.

What will you do now? Smithy had asked, and she knew exactly what Smithy meant. Had she, Mercia, not been going on for years about Craig being all that kept her in Scotland? That she would have liked to return to South Africa after the demise of apartheid? She only hoped that she had not used the horrible words — her parents’—of “sacrificing herself” for Craig. Said maybe in jest, but horrible all the same. Returning now, as a woman who had been left, smacks of defeat. To smithy mercia said that it was too soon to make decisions. Her work was there at the university; it was no time for further upheaval. she had no intention of missing out on a hard-earned sabbatical.

The rain came suddenly, viciously, and Mercia was wearing unsuitable shoes. She’d had enough of that malarkey, of the bus and its adventurous route; like a grown-up she would get the train back to Glasgow, forfeit the return bus ticket. In fact, she was cold, wet and weary, in need of a coffee, and reluctant to go to the library. There she was, so close to Harvey Nicks. Why not, for once, do the unexpected? Why not get out of the bloody rain, forget about the library, and take in not only a coffee but also some shopping instead?

Mercia felt a little tremor of guilt at wasting her research day, but she would make up for it, has surely already made up for it in the sleepless nights when she worked around the clock. She was contemptuous of the notion of a makeover, especially for the woman who has been left, but she could do with something new. A quick flip through racks of overpriced clothing designed for undernourished children was discouraging. A glamorous assistant came along and said, Yes, her intonation halfway between statement and question. Later, l’esprit de l’escalier provided Mercia with: Glad you’re in agreement/I haven’t yet spoken/Is that a greeting/Yes indeed — but at the time, affronted, she grabbed at a couple of garments and announced, I’ll try these. She stared in dismay at the figure of a fifty-two-year-old in the mirror. Like the favored photograph of themselves that people carry about for decades in their wallets, Mercia had identified with an outdated image of herself. What did it mean when friends said she looked remarkable for her age?

Only a burka would do, Mercia said to the unsmiling assistant as she handed back the clothes.

It was still early enough to get a train back and start work as if the excursion to Edinburgh had not taken place. The train passed through the small towns of Linlithgow, Polmont, and yes, Falkirk too. No escape from home there at the foundries of Falkirk, she smirked, as the train pulled in at the station. The black and white station signs carried a reminder, as did the hanging baskets of petunia and begonia, ugly municipal combinations of pink, orange and purple.

Falkirk was the name stamped in relief on the three-legged cast-iron pots at home, pots manufactured for the colony, for Africans to cook their staple mealiepap over an open fire. Nowadays, for the experience of traditional potjiekos, the three-legged pot straddling its fire has found its way to fashionable braais. Once at a barbecue that Jake had organized, Mercia asked about the word, potjiekos. She had never heard it before. Where did it come from? Who used it?

Jake laughed. Give us a break, man. We’re free in the New South Africa to do as we please, invent if we want. Just look at you, definitely an example of the pot calling the kettle black.

They ate heartily the perfectly ordinary stew from the three-legged pot, the potbellied omphalos of authenticity, itself a potbellied word. And there where it was cast, in the foundries of Falkirk, a sudden burst of sunlight accompanied the rain, so that the water dripping from trees glittered like Christmas streamers as the train pulled out of the station. Jakkals en Wolf gaan trou. That’s what they said at home when rain and sunlight commingled. An unlikely marriage between jackal and wolf, right out of Die Jongspan .

When the train arrived at Queen Street station, Mercia was unable to leave her seat. Her heart seemed to break over and over again, and that when she thought she was well on the way to recovery.

It is midnight. Mercia, sitting at the table in her pajamas, looks up in the dark at Jake, who stumbles into the kitchen. She sees a wounded animal. His disheveled hair has not been cut for months; he is unwashed, an old mangy lion without a tail, dragging his left leg. She jumps up to throw her arms around him, but he pushes her off roughly.

No man, Mercy, leave me alone. If you don’t have a drink for me, just leave, go home, and he turns on his heel, shuffles back to his bed.

When Mercia returns to bed, she closes the chapter she has been working on, and opens the file, Home. If she can’t speak to her brother, she could at least write about him, about growing up in that place. That would be her only way of reaching Jake.

Antoinette, the name of a French queen — whatever possessed her parents?

For people like them, plain folk, names must transcend their condition; a name must ring with grandeur, and so earn respect. A grand English name, as they thought it to be, would cancel out the Afrikaans surname with its reference to madness; it would influence the life of a girl with few resources, and help in the tricky business of finding a husband, for who nowadays would want a Kaatjie or a Grieta. Certainly not a teacher, or rather a principal, for that was what the Malherbes had in mind for their only daughter.