Ingrid Winterbach - It Might Get Loud

Here I am installed, in one of these storage depots, or installation spaces, and who could have guessed that I would end up here at last. That I would find somewhere to rest the sole of my foot, provisionally. Everybody’s uncle, an ordinary daily part of an extremely extraordinary setup — all things considered. More later about me and about the byways that brought me here.

In one of the other halls — hall two — lives Lizeka, and in an antechamber lives Dustin, father of the child of Josias B’s eldest daughter. So, son-in-law of Josias, you might say.

About thirty paces to the right of us, looking towards the mountain, lives the Hlobo clan. (Clan of the Cave Bear.) By this I mean Lucinda, her mother, Victoria, her children Dorothea (seven), Amos (four) and Isaiah (eight months). Also her asthmatic nephew Igor (eleven) and her brother, a handsome young ethnic man who comes and goes. The Hlobos are Sotho-speaking and have spent some time in Egoli among other places. These Hlobos are tough and inflexible, and they look after their own interests very assiduously, make no mistake. Though at times it seems as if they want to wipe each other out.

Grandmother Victoria seems to me like a woman who first had to make her peace with the rough side of life before she could start embracing it. Very controlling. Vehemently so. She and Josias started falling foul of each other quite soon after the settling of the clan; she accused him of making money out of black children. And Josias is not your kind of customer who would reply: lady, with respect, it’s none of your business, could you please accept with simplicity and detach with love. No. The fat was in the fire instantly, and what Josias refers to as a kaffir war was in full cry, and probably still is. No love lost between Josias and the Hlobo clan. Hardly give each other the time of day. Things weren’t helped along by Josias catching Lucinda with a hand in the till, and saw her marching off to Sea Point in knee-high white boots. Sailor beware. We are marching in the light of God.

Two years ago (when I was still a visitor here) Lucinda solicited me shamelessly one evening at a gathering around a fire. Lord-oh-lord, she was pretty irresistible. I didn’t know her from Adam (or Eve), but her blend of worldly wisdom and forthrightness was exciting. With sexy hollow cheeks, almighty kisser, and one eye wandering wildly to the side of her head, she dragged me into the darkness and in well-modulated English whispered against my throat that she had two jobs that didn’t pay well, she had a phone number, did I want her to like me? But of course. Then you have to prove yourself. Arch smile, but good pitch. She’d taken my measure pretty well.

That evening she was a mite pickled, to put it euphemistically. I have never seen her like that again — never again drunk, carnal or sexually aggressive. We have since become good acquaintances. We keep our distance. From neither side any innuendo or veiled suggestion. A few months ago it became known that she was pregnant. She takes a regular job and her face fills out. But no possible father is anywhere to be seen south of the equator, even though Celia, the daughter of Josias by Lucinda, alleges that Lucinda got pregnant to get a hold on the child’s father.

Perhaps I should move in with the Hlobos. Lucinda as the contented homemaker, and Victoria as my African mother-in-law. Living there with three foster children and a foster nephew. Who knows, could be a winning combination. Accepted norms so shattered that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could never put them together again. Liberated at last.

My own blood-related challenged cousin Henkie (son of my own blood-related challenged aunt, sister of my own blood-related challenged father; each after his or her own fashion), would be well advised also to take up residence here in one of the bomb bunkers. Amos can trot around every day with his psychiatric medicine — Ritalin or lithium or whatever they feed such sufferers nowadays. Then everything will get nice and cosy, all ethnic and feudal.

Howsoever, to conclude this preface and preparatory chapter: sixteen years ago Josias Brandt showed up here with his spouse Laetitia. (Him already with a failed marriage or two under his belt. Fuming fathers-in-law in every province; Josias was never your common or compliant son-in-law.) The children must have been small then. With his new young family he occupied the military storage depot (administered by Public Works). He settled in with flair, with flamboyance, with charm, with green fingers, with a deeply rooted faith in the earth mother and in his own natural genius.

He immediately started keeping chickens and goats, built up a veritable props factory and in a jiffy transformed the place into something between a farm, a habitat and a movie set. Any grievance or complaint from the Tamboerskloof bourgeoisie he handled with humour and inflexibility. His fame as champion of the rejected, the evicted and the dejected, person as well as animal, started spreading. Things, plants, animals and human beings were placed in his care here. Rare frog species made their appearance.

The damaged and the endangered of every persuasion started gravitating here. Older children turned up with their younger siblings on their backs (I’ve told you about Nomalizo). More foster children were taken in. Trees were planted. Gardens were laid out. When things started getting out of hand, with children baying at the moon from temporary bamboo towers and shitting in the hedges of surrounding bourgeois residences, the Department of Public Works intervened bureaucratically and flattened the bamboo structures. When foster children were taken in, Welfare naturally started taking note. But all institutional responses were deflected point-blank by Josias — he quite often read the riot act to enraged civil servants. Sir, with respect, go forth and sin no more and keep your nose out of matters that don’t concern you.

And of course Josias made art. Jung would perhaps say that the bomb bunker in which I live (hall one of five) represents Josias’s subconscious as artist and genius. Oddly enough, the basis of our friendship was never our shared artistic interests and activities — not previously and not now.

Strange things happen here, radical transformations are effected. I look at Thamsanqua walking down the street in her school uniform, and I remember a photo of my mother in school uniform and beret in the streets of Johannesburg. My neighbour, Lizeka, returns from work (neo-domestic career that includes walks with the family dog). In Tamboerskloof well-rounded black nannies and domestics promenade with giant wolfhounds and broad smiles. A common sight. Lizeka is an uplifting presence, physically and spiritually inexhaustible, and without a trace of bitterness about her fate in life. She saw her father for the first time at eighteen, and moved on. Her young son is living in Bloemfontein with her parents. He’s a sickly child, born with a hole in his heart. When the weather is thundery, he hides under the bed, not because he’s scared, but — he points to his heart — because the weather hurts him. (As if it shakes up his sensitive heart painfully.) She gets around. On foot, if needs must, and that is indeed as they usually must. Churchwoman or not, one evening at seven o’ clock I came across her on a vibrant corner of Kloof Street, clad in her black tracksuit with white stripes along the legs, cell phone to the ear. We waved at each other and moved on.

It’s young South Africa, the tables have been turned, there goes my neighbour in her black tracksuit with dreaded braids and African cheekbones. But at nine o’ clock her light is out and she sleeps the sweet sleep of the salt of the earth. At the level of relationships there are so many developments that fall outside my existing frame of reference. And at the same time a déjà vu experience of relationships. Familiar territory approached from an unfamiliar angle of incidence. I sometimes see myself as vertical invader, as old John Berger described Picasso way back.