Zoe Wicomb: October

On Sunday nights before supper their father held aloft the aapstert whilst he reiterated the sacred duty of chastising his own flesh and blood. That was what the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob commanded. Nicholas did not relish this task, but in addition to whipping them at the time of actual transgressions, he would beat both children for the secret sins accumulated through the week, for those that only God knew of. Mercia complained that she did not even have a peetie, which earned her an extra blow; they were not to speak of the organs.

Nettie thanked the Lord when Jake grew bored with his peetie. She suggested that they now could drop the Sunday thrashings, but Nicholas explained that that would be wrong, that it would encourage other secret sins. Jake, who retained no memory of the peetie days, did his best to justify the punishment, and with hearty laughter boasted of his misdemeanors. Thus his mother came to understand the necessity of the aapstert, even if she thought the instrument brutal. Would a stick not do, she asked, but Nicholas said no, that animal hide, used also by the police, was the material for correction, that they were the unfortunate parents of a miscreant.

Nettie worried about the boy’s waywardness, and in the short week that it took for her to die, got Nicholas to promise that Jake would be shepherded through school and sent to university to study medicine, that he should start by teaching the boy Latin. Which Nicholas hoped to achieve by keeping up the regular beatings of both children.

Jake was eleven years old when he completed primary school, and took the aapstert to the cemetery behind the hill. He checked the graves, mounds of baked red earth studded with white stones, and the rough wooden crosses with names of the departed and dearly beloveds in crooked writing. There he found Antoinette’s, away from the rest, where the veld was left to encroach. Jake pulled out his mother’s cross, and alongside her grave, covered with soutslaai and vygies, used it to dig a long, slightly curved channel in which he laid out the aapstert. With his bare hands he scraped together the red earth to mark the curve of the grave.

The very name, aapstert, was proof of his father’s folly. The whip was of course not the tail of an ape, who would have bared his teeth and hissed rather than part with his tail; rather, it was the cured hide of a common donkey’s tail, a stupid obedient animal that bowed to its fate. Jake would not wait for the earth to settle. He collected white stones from the hill and arranged them to write the letters along the curved grave: DONKIESTERT. He remembered just in time to replant Antoinette’s wooden cross. The very next day an unseasonal rainstorm washed much of the mound away, but the leather switch lay snugly in its grave, under the mangled letters of dislodged stones.

That Sunday night Nicholas looked behind the door where the aapstert was kept, found it gone, and found Jake with arms folded, looking him squarely in the eyes. It’s dead and buried, you’ll never find it, he said calmly. Nicholas clenched his fists, shook his head, and proclaimed: Gods water oor Gods akker. Mindful perhaps of Nettie’s misgivings, he asked no questions and never again mentioned the aapstert. Jake could have sworn that, for all the show of disappointment, Nicholas was relieved. But, if the Sunday-night ritual was stopped, Nicholas did not now hesitate to remove his belt and thrash the offending child within the proverbial inch of his life.

Not even a full day has Mercia been here in Kliprand, and already she would like to wash her hands of these people who are her own, would like to pack her bag right away and leave. But that is not possible. One does not walk away from family. Patience and kindness, that is what family lays claim to. Which may mean that one should not come to see them in the first place.

Mercy, that was what her father called her. You’ll be a professional, an angel of mercy, called to minister to the sick and needy, he pronounced. Nice and smart, that nurse’s uniform of starched whites and good brown walkers, perfect for an angel of mercy. Of course, being a clever girl, you’ll be promoted to matron in no time. Which sounded fine until Mercia reached her teens and thought with distaste of a matron’s headdress, clearly modeled on that of a nun.

Nonsense, Nicholas said, nursing was not only a good profession, it was also a noble vocation. Mercia’s argument that a vocation could by definition not be imposed by another did not sway him. What did was the confident assertion that she’d be a doctor instead. Nicholas had expected Jake to be a doctor, that’s what he promised dear Nettie, but really, he had his doubts about the reprobate boy. Anyway, so much better if there were two of them. And if Mercia’s Matric results showed her to be outstanding in languages, she allowed herself to be bullied into registering for a science degree. After a BSc her father said, she could transfer to medicine at the white university.

It was less than halfway through the year that a disheartened Mercia gave up. Could she not start again the following year on an arts degree of English and history? Nicholas tried once more to sell the noble vocation of nursing, before giving in.

When Mercia gained her doctorate her father shook his head: a doctor of literature who could not even cure a headache? He hoped she would not go about calling herself doctor, making a fool of herself. Doctoring books, he said wistfully, well, what good could that do? He supposed if one day it brought a steady, well-paid job. .

It was shortly after her mother’s death that Mercia announced that she would no longer answer to the name of Mercy.

Jake complained. No man, Mercy man, it’s too late now. How would a person remember to call you by that mouthful of a name? Anyway what’s in a name? In that little add-on?

Everything, she said, and stuck to her guns until everyone learned to say Mercia. An entirely new name was really what she had had in mind: how much better something plain, like Mary or Jane; she hated both Mercy and Mercia. But her father exploded, an outrage it was to her mother’s memory, so that she abandoned the idea.

Now that she is an older woman, she ought not to care. That label after all supersedes a name, wipes out presence itself, as she has found even in her privileged position. An older woman is not only left, but left behind, which she supposes refers to reproduction, as if that is what every woman wants. Here, back home, it is clearer than ever that a child would have been a horrible mistake. Not that she has ever had any doubts. But then, once upon a time she was sure of Craig, sure enough not to marry — oh it does not bear thinking about.

And once, in bygone days, Mercia was a place, an English region, the name for border people, which she supposes has its own resonance for certain South Africans like them, or for that matter her own liminal self. Nicholas and Nettie would not have known these meanings, on that dry Namaqua plain would not have known of the lush Trent Valley, the land of the Mercians. No, more likely they were guided by the word mercy, guided by a cry that must have issued from every soul who set foot in that godforsaken place. But Mercia cannot take her cue from mercy, since there is for her no deity who will or will not, according to his caprice, dispense the stuff. Given the Christian fondness for abstract nouns, the virtues as names, she supposes that she has come off lightly after all. Imagine being called Charity, Prudence, Sobriety, or Virtue itself. Names for girls. Names that boys happily escape.

Mercia — she has always hated the name, and attached to Murray it sounds too foolishly alliterative, an aural joke, thus a good enough reason to marry and take a stranger’s name. Which she now supposes she may well have done had there been children, but not having the stomach for reproduction, and with Craig’s claim that he didn’t care for children, it seemed too self-loathing to take another’s name. Abbreviated to Mercy, the name puzzled the child, for whom words, if not names, had meanings. What was the child to make of Mercy? That as an embodiment of mercy she, like a god, would be the one to dispense it? Or was she to inspire mercy in others, which gave her license to offend? Would she have wanted mercy from Craig? That too does not bear thinking about.