The Heart of Redness: A Novel (10 page)

Camagu’s eyes are glued on Xoliswa Ximiya. He does not remember seeing anyone quite so beautiful before. Her beauty exceeds that of the hungry women who are referred to as supermodels in fashion magazines. It is the kind of beauty that is cold and distant, though. Not the kind that makes your whole body hot and charges it with electric currents, like NomaRussia’s. If only she could bring herself to smile a bit. Her colleagues are now full of boisterous cheer, most of which is obviously induced by the spirits. Yet she remains collected, and throughout maintains her no-nonsense demeanor. Her uncompromising eyes penetrate you when she is addressing you. Deep inside them lurks a sorrow that cannot be remitted.

NoPetticoat enters to find out if the guests need anything. She is introduced to the visitor from Johannesburg. He can see the source of Xoliswa Ximiya’s good looks. When he met Bhonco outside, Camagu’s eyes could salvage beauty from his aging face. Now here is the mother of the homestead, coming with her own loveliness and grace. She is a sonsy woman, though, not willowy and grave like her daughter.

“You are a family of beautiful people,” says Camagu when NoPetticoat has left the room. “Your father, your mother, and you.”

She does not thank him for the compliment. Perhaps, thinks Camagu, she has no time for such pettiness as acknowledging compliments or admiring beauty. But then why has she taken the trouble to enhance her own beauty by braiding her hair in such trendy extensions? Her whole mode of dress is elegant. Severe but elegant.

Xoliswa Ximiya is more fascinated by the fact that the stranger was on his way to the United States of America. She informs him that he will be happy in that wonderful country. She herself has lived there, empowering herself with the skill of teaching English as a second language. It is a fairy-tale country, with beautiful people. People like Dolly Parton and Eddie Murphy. It is a vast country that is highly technological. Even though Camagu comes from Johannesburg, he will be fascinated by America. A city like New York is ten times the size of Johannesburg. She
remembers when she went to Washington, D.C., and saw the White House, and the Capitol, and the memorial of one historical figure or another. She also remembers when she traveled in a subway in New York. Then she goes on to explain that a subway is a train that moves underground. Very much unlike the Johannesburg–East London train which crudely moves above the ground where every moron can see it.

Before Camagu leaves he must remind her to give him a few pointers on how to survive in America, she adds with a flourish.

America, wonderful America!

Her colleagues are beginning to fidget. Obviously they have been subjected to this harangue before. Camagu is embarrassed on her behalf.

“For how long were you in America?” he asks.

“Six months! I was at a college in Athens, Ohio.”

“Athens, like in Greece!” adds a woman who was earlier introduced as Vathiswa. She is sitting next to Xoliswa Ximiya, and is obviously her great fan. She nods vigorously at everything the principal says. Camagu has no heart to tell her that Athens is a college town that is even smaller than the nearby town of Butterworth.

“You must have loved it,” says Camagu.

“It is the best country in the world. I hope to go back one day. You are lucky to be going there. I envy you. Are you going for a course—or a conference maybe?”

“No. I am going to work. I can’t find a job in South Africa.”

She is amazed by his temerity to think that he can just fly to a great country like America and find employment when he can’t even find it in South Africa.

“What makes you think you’ll find a job in America?”

“Well, I have worked there before. I have a good track record with the organization I worked for.”

There is a hint of anger in her eyes.

“You’ve been in America before?”

“I lived there for thirty years. Practically grew up there. I went there as a teenager.”

Now she is really angry. Her colleagues are enjoying this, although they are discreet in their glee, lest they be on the receiving end of her displeasure. Camagu is uncomfortable. He does not know how he can
show her that he had no intention of embarrassing her in front of her colleagues. Her subordinates, in fact.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t ask me, miss!”

“I am not miss! My name is Xoliswa.”

“Ximiya,” adds Vathiswa.

She decides that she is now going to ignore Camagu and focus on her other guests, who are arguing aloud about the new developments in the village. Camagu can only catch snippets of the discussion. Apparently a big company that owns hotels throughout southern Africa wants to build a casino on the Gxarha River mouth. They want to introduce water sports in the great lagoon. Tourists will come from all over the world to gamble and to play with their boats and surfboards. At last Qolorha-by-Sea will see progress. But it seems some people in the village are against these developments.

Vathiswa either is out of her depth in this discussion or feels sorry for the stranger who has been left out. She moves closer to him and asks what he studied in America.

“A doctoral degree in communication and economic development,” he says, wondering if that will make any sense to her.

“I wish I were you. Maybe you should put me in your suitcase when you fly to America. I want to see all the wonderful things that Xoliswa Ximiya talks about.”

Camagu whispers in her ear, “Take everything with a pinch of salt. Her adulation of the place must not mislead you. There is nothing wonderful about America. Unless you think racial prejudice and bullyboy tactics towards other countries are wonderful.”

But she is no longer listening. She is giggling. She finds his whispering in her ear rather ticklish. And flirtatious. Perhaps greater things will come out of it.

She tells him about herself. She worked as a nurse in Queenstown. But unfortunately she had a fall.

“A fall?”

“I fell pregnant. At the time they did not allow unmarried nurses to have babies. I then went to model clothes for Mahomedy’s in Durban. I was featured in their catalogues.”

Now she works as a receptionist at the Blue Flamingo Hotel. Camagu remembers seeing her at the hotel and marveling at her outrageous outfit, which was the height of fashion ten years ago. He wonders why Xoliswa Ximiya does not give her a few tips. After all, what are friends for? Or could it be that the erstwhile catalogue model is all right as she is since she makes Xoliswa Ximiya’s flame shine even brighter?

It does not escape Camagu that although Xoliswa Ximiya is ostensibly ignoring him she is furtively listening to his conversation with Vathiswa. When she observes that things may be getting too cozy between them, she makes up her mind that a man who can just fly to America to work there is too important to ignore. He is more of her class than of Vathiswa’s, anyway. He is a kindred spirit, because both of them have lived in the land of the free and the brave.

She draws him into the debate about the developers.

“This is a lifetime opportunity for Qolorha to be like some of the holiday resorts in America. To have big stars like Eddie Murphy and Dolly Parton come here for holiday.”

“That would be nice,” says Camagu without much enthusiasm.

“They go to Cape Town, you know. Cape Town is now becoming a celebrity paradise. Qolorha can be one too if these conservative villagers stop standing in the way of progress. Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know the issues. But I am sure you’re right.”

“Of course I am right. You have seen how backward this place is. We cannot stop civilization just because some sentimental old fools want to preserve birds and trees and an outmoded way of life.”

He learns that the leader of those who oppose progress is one Zim, a Believer to the core of his soul. What is sad is that he has now been joined by John Dalton, the white trader. Are whites not the bearers of civilization and progress? Then why is Dalton standing with the unenlightened villagers to oppose such an important development that will bring jobs, streetlights, and other forms of modernization to this village?

Vathiswa has something to say about that. Dalton is only white outside. Inside he is a raw umXhosa who still lives in darkness.

“That is why,” she adds, “every weekend he takes white tourists in his four-wheel-drive bakkie to show them Nongqawuse’s Pool. Why
would civilized people want to honor a foolish girl who killed the amaXhosa nation?”

Xoliswa Ximiya freezes at the mere mention of Nongqawuse’s name. There is a very strong anti-Nongqawuse sentiment around the table.

“Those people—why can’t they let that part of our shame rest in peace?” she asks pleadingly.

Another teacher has a different view of Dalton’s motives.

“He is just like all the other selfish white people. Especially those who have built sea cottages along our coastline,” he says. “Do you think they care about this community? No. They are here for their own selfish reasons. They have nothing to do with this community. They just come here in summer to have fun in the sea, then leave for East London or other cities where they come from.”

“But that’s unfair,” says another man. “Dalton belongs in this community. He lives here permanently. So have his fathers before him. He was at the same circumcision school as my elder brother. He is the man who has organized the village water-supply project. He has nothing in common with the cottage owners.”

Camagu is curious about the cottage owners. The land in the rural villages is not for sale. It is given to the residents by the chief and his land-allocation committees. How do the cottage owners get the land to build here?

This is a sore point with some villagers, he is told. The white people—and some well-to-do blacks from the old Transkei bantustan—bribe Chief Xikixa with a bottle of brandy, and he gives them the land.

“At first it was a bottle of brandy,” the history teacher corrects his colleague. “But now the stakes have gone up. Competition for prime land by the sea has intensified. The white folks now bribe the chief with cellphones and satellite dishes. Haven’t you heard? The chief has even named one of his daughters NoCellphone. His wife is pregnant. If the baby is a boy he will be named Satellite. A girl will obviously be NoSatellite.”

It is illegal to build within a kilometer of the coast. But the cottage owners don’t observe that. Most cottages are right on the seashore.

The landscape has changed already. The Unbelievers say it is a good
thing, though, because the cottage owners give employment to the local men who wash their cars and to local women who work as maids. None of the men get jobs as gardeners, though, since most cottage owners keep wild gardens planned by landscape artists from East London, and these need no maintenance.

The history teacher says that progress is in the eye of the beholder. He remembers one day when the Minister of Health came to the village to address an imbhizo—a public meeting—about family planning. The minister’s emphasis was on the necessity to limit the number of children to three.

An old man asked the minister, “Now, you tell me, my child, how many are you in your family?”

“Eight,” said the minister. “But those were the olden days. Things were different then.”

“That’s not what I am talking about. You say you are eight. What number are you among these eight children?”

“I am the seventh.”

“Now tell me, where would you be if your parents had taken the advice you are giving us today?”

The imbhizo never forgot how the old man put the minister in his place.

The table laughs, except for Xoliswa Ximiya, who snarls, “The minister was foolish. Today we don’t talk of limiting the number of children. We talk of spacing them properly.”

“In any case,” says a puny man who has been quiet all along, “that story of the Minister of Health—it did not happen in this village. It’s an old joke. I read it somewhere.”

The history teacher is offended.

“Cooks read too, do they?” he asks.

“I am not a cook.”

“Since when? As far as we all know you cook for white people at the Blue Flamingo Hotel.”

“I am a chef, not a cook.”

“What’s the difference? You cook, so you’re a cook.”

“You call me a cook again and I’ll show you your mother!”

The history teacher is jumping up and down, dancing around the table, shouting, “Cook! Cook! Cook!”

No one knows when the chef got the stick. Like lightning he hits the history teacher on the head. Blood springs out like water from a burst pipe. He falls down. Soon there is a long red stream on the floor. There is commotion. People hold the chef and try to stop him from inflicting further damage on the unconscious history teacher. Xoliswa Ximiya is more concerned with what the visitor from Johannesburg will think of them, behaving like savages in her father’s house. She takes Camagu by the hand and leads him outside.

“I am sorry you had to see our worst side,” she says.

“It is all right,” replies Camagu, trying to make light of the matter. “I have learned a good lesson: never call a chef a cook.”

He laughs. She maintains her stern expression.

“Anyway, I must be on my way. But please, can I see you again?”

“Of course.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I am free in the afternoon.”

In a clearing in front of the pink rondavel, women’s upper bodies are vibrating in the
umngqungqo
dance. Bhonco is joking with the men under the umsintsi tree. He sees Camagu walking away and calls him back.

“Hey, teacher, are you just going to disappear like a fart in the wind, without even saying good-bye?” shouts Bhonco.

“Oh, Tat’uBhonco, I am sorry. I did not see you,” says Camagu.

“Did those children expel you so early? The feast is still young.”

“I have enjoyed myself, thank you. They entertained me enough.”

“With fights? A woman came wailing that the teachers were fighting. I told her to leave us alone to enjoy our beer in peace. The learned ones always fight when they are drunk. What was it all about?”

“I do not know. It started with the discussion about the developers.”