Broken River Tent Read online

  Thou art Thou.

  The stronghold of Truth.

  Thou art Thou.

  The thicket of Truth.

  Thou art Thou.

  Who dwellest in the highest …

  Who created birds and certain kinds of animals.

  ‘And they would name birds like doves and eagles; land animals like gazelles and lions; sea creatures like fishes and dolphins. Then the song went: You who’s not like Satan, who in trying to create birds came out with bats and owls … And so forth and so forth. It was madness. As people sang they tilted their heads and their eyes rolled back to give an impression of what they called a holy trance. The whole thing spread like fire fanned by a strong wind on dry grass. Conversion was the dernier cri. My concern was that it created a loophole for white preachers to infiltrate our villages, and commoners to disregard their chiefs. I was ready to follow the example of my mentor, Rharhabe, by letting amaNgqika go to the dogs; leave with my own followers, amaJingqi, to start afresh somewhere far away. The only problem was that there was nowhere for me to go. What land other tribes did not occupy was taken by the insatiable demand of white people.’

  Phila’s head was pounding. The din at their table, where everyone seemed to be talking at once and at cross-purposes, made him tired and the place was hot and crowded. He decided to get away from them and attempt a conversation with the entourage of the Xhosa royalty in the far corner. He went across and introduced himself as a journalist who was interested in doing an in-depth interview about the opinions of the chiefs regarding the play. They pointed him to a young man with fair skin and leopardskin band on his head. When the king stood to greet Phila his bodyguard-cum-praise-singer rose first in praise.

  “Ah Nkosiyamntu!”

  The king wore an expensive suit, along Gucci lines. He set Phila at ease, appearing relieved to be rescued from whatever it was his group was discussing. The two of them were of the same age and similar views. They actually hit it off very quickly, mostly talking about the pleasures of travel across the European continent. The king was an economist who had studied in Oxford. He told Phila he was in love with a Scottish girl whom he could not marry because of his royal duties. Phila chose not to probe. He was fascinated by the king’s knowledge of Xhosa history and promised to visit him for a more in-depth conversation.

  Just then the bell, ending the interval, was rung. They exchanged contact details and Phila went to rejoin his own entourage after expressing gratitude to the royal group for allowing him to intrude.

  He was hardly back in his seat in the auditorium when Maqoma, seemingly pressed to end his own narrative, was at it again.

  ‘Meantime Ntsikana founded his own clan, amaCirha, which was growing at an alarming rate. His wife’s people, amaJwarha, were also foremost in the conversion and became the new royals of amaNgqika. Almost all of them belonged to Ntsikana’s new movement. I’ve often thought about what it was that made people so receptive to Ntsikana’s message. In those days people were desperate because it was clear the chiefs had no answer to white people’s encroachment. White people had come with strange diseases we had no cure for. Drought was also prevalent. All these things made people gullible to the supernatural. But more than this, Ntsikana’s strength lay in his flashes of divine milieu, unfurling the immensity of things to come. He had, for instance, foretold the coming of two nations in our midst: one from the west and another from the east. He foretold that the English, “Would be white as the sun, with golden flowing hair like cobwebs from maize ears. And they will bring with them a button with no hole.” The button – which was money, of course – was a conflict bringer, said Ntsikana. “Our nation must be careful not to adopt its habits.” He said the white people would also bring a book “with a red mouth” containing “the word”. By this, as we came to know, he meant the Word of God. “We must listen to the word. Accept the word,” said Ntsikana. “Your land will be filled with wagons, wire-fenced kraals and mimosa-thorn paddocks. The sites of your villages will be grazing sites for flocks of sheep. Don’t fight with the Word. Nxele is a liar. He is misleading people.” So went Ntsikana’s prophecies and all of them came true. “Even when you’ve faltered, Sifuba-Sibanzi will bring you back from the mountains where your skulls shall crush against rocks and be eaten by ants.” We did not have long before that prophecy was to come true – at the Battle of Amalinde, which I already narrated to you.’

  Nandi passed a packet of wine gums to Phila. He took two and returned the packet. Instead of taking it she held onto Phila’s hand. Phila tried to break out of his mind world but Maqoma held just as tightly.

  ‘On the day of Ntsikana’s death his ox came home early from the grazing fields and bellowed melancholically around the house. People tried to chase it away, saying it was a bad omen, but Ntsikana remonstrated with them. He said if it had vocal cords it would sing a dirge for him. “It is doing all this to pave my departure. You must not eat that bull when it dies.” With that he entered the world of his ancestors after a long sickness.

  ‘Awu! Madoda! The grass rustles when a tall tree falls! The tree falls on it and it rustles!

  ‘Before Ntsikana died he employed people to build him a coffin from uMhlungu wood. He often visited the site of its construction to measure if he fitted in it. People found this behaviour strange but tolerated it because it was Ntsikana. Subsequently, everyone wanted to be buried in coffins. On his deathbed Ntsikana called his bosom friend Soga, the son of Jotela, and admonished him to educate his sons Kobe and Dukwana. He pleaded with him to leave with both their families for the missionary area near UmGwali where uNyengane had been given permission by Ngqika to start a school. The younger boy was called umSimelelo, the one before that Mfundo (educated in knowledge). They all went for white man’s education with the Sogas. I also sent my children to learn the white man’s ways in Cape Town, even as I desperately fought them against taking our land.

  ‘Having looked deep, in an affectionate manner, on both his wives (the white people gave up trying to convince him to give up one of his wives), he said, “When I uprooted these ladies from their father’s kraal I swore an oath that I’d love, protect and nurture them. My blood and theirs now is the same. I do not intend to go back on my word. If this is an error, I’m prepared to answer for it before uQamata.

  ‘Ntsikana closed his eyes. With that umCirha of Qangqolo, uNyembezana, the son of Gaba, kicked the bucket. Awu! The frost lay over the pelt of Gaba’s bull, mfondini! The messenger of the leeward side of truth, whom even the whites could not confuse. He refused to renounce his second wife, Nontsonta, umQocokazi. As a result even today her resting place is on the side of Nyembezana. The greatest prophet the Xhosa nation has ever had.

  ‘I can still see the son of Gaba in one of his mystical dances – singing, rejoicing, leaping into the air, crying out. “Ki-ki! Ki-ki!” Ah! Such times will never come to this land again. Give me a piece from the bark of umthi wamaphupha, the tree of dreams, and let me sleep with my ancestors. I’m tired. Yet I must go on. I see the heavy thunderstorm approach from the land of Kreli. The land will soon resound with thunder. Look at the Quena, doing the dance of thunder, invoking the brave-sounding Nquru on whom he must whisper all his guilt. They confess! They confess according to their culture, each time before a thunderstorm as the clouds darken. Me, I say, to everything a unity of line! The Quena don’t want to carry their guilt to the next world; or be deleted because of it, should thunder extinguish their lives in this one. We come! We come! Mz’ontsundu, we’ve come!

  ‘What rock my youth was shattered against. Lie there, my troubled thoughts, lie there. Gold, you cannot corrupt. On that we are at least all agreed. Let us continue and be ever so vigilant not to disturb Nquru, the son of the thunderbolt. Nde’gram! I disappear!’

  “You seemed preoccupied during the second half of the play. Did you not like it?” asked Nandi on their way back to her flat.

  “T’was all right.”

  They walked in silence with the pale outlin
e of a moon peeking through racing clouds.

  “Do you know anything about the prophet of amaXhosa, uNtsikana?” asked Phila, to break the tension.

  “I read about him once; he sounded like an enigma to me.”

  “I think he was an enigma to his contemporaries too; always telling people about the thing that whispered in his ear, to which he must always be true. At least he didn’t mislead the nation like Nxele did.”

  “But Nxele got the better of him in the end, isn’t that so?”

  “Depends on how you look at it. Strange things were said of Ntsikana after his death, like that he fornicated with his ox,” Phila attempted jest.

  “Surely that can’t be true?”

  “Of course it wasn’t true! Just jealous people who wanted to tarnish his image. I mean, he was extremely fond of the bull. It also behaved intelligently – it was like a pet – as animals that are exceedingly loved tend to do. His sin was taking white men’s religion seriously without necessarily adopting white habits and culture. It made him distrusted by both the black natives and white settlers. Ntsikana was conservative but progressive, where Nxele, aka Makhanda, was opportunistic and regressive. Nxele usurped the notion of Pan Africanism when it suited his purpose. The Xhosa progressives, led by the likes of Soga, took to ploughing and hoeing gardens, which in their culture then was the women’s job. So they were seen as effeminate. Of course white people took advantage of this. The white missionaries were forever flocking in Tyumi, around Soga, trying to convince him of this and that, and helping him in his fields. They wanted to prove that Western ways were far superior to our ways so that he might be the example for others who wanted to follow him. They eventually established a mission there. Things were still friendly between them, hence Chalmer, who manned the mission station, then sent his son with Soga’s to Scotland for education.”

  “The fact is that Xhosa communal ethos was hostile to innovation,” Nandi said, looking Phila in the eye.

  “Xhosa chiefs didn’t see things quite that way. They were irked at people like Soga. All that selling of produce was too much for them. Ntsikana preached against our nation adopting the practice of monetary exchange, but it didn’t even take a decade after he was dead before his protégés adopted the practice, selling things with money at the market and all.”

  As Phila and Nandi entered the flat, evening was falling like a shroud. They went and sat on the balcony.

  “Dawn and dusk remind me of my father,” said Nandi. “I used to wake each time he went to work at about six in the morning.” She rested her head on Phila’s stomach, making it impossible for him to talk back except with an occasional grunt. “My father would ruffle my hair as he walked out, saying, ‘Be kind, princess.’ I’d watch him climb on his bicycle with the right side of his trouser leg tucked into his sock. I liked to watch him ride the bike against the mist until he was swallowed by the streets. It felt as though he was going to slay some dragon each morning.”

  “Hmm. He worked at a dairy?”

  “Ja – you remember?” Nandi twisted her head and looked up at him.

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Yes,” she said, settling back down. “He would come back late in the evening with buttermilk. I hated it. It smelled like fart, but it was our staple diet. My mother would cook umphokoqo to mix it with. It got to a stage when I couldn’t stand anything associated with dairy. I didn’t even like ice-cream, which he bought us every Saturday when we met him at his work place.”

  “That must have been hard, especially as he must have thought he was giving you a treat.”

  “It was a little. But I liked the fish and chips he bought for us to eat on the bus back. I didn’t want vinegar on mine, the smell reminded me of buttermilk. To this day I can’t stand vinegar.” Nandi wrinkled her nose at the memory, then went on: “As you know, my mother was not that educated; worse still, she was a miser. Whatever money I gave her she saved, afraid bad days would catch her unprepared. I mean, we were indigent, but she made things worse by always worrying about tomorrow. She was plug-and-play, though, when it came to taking care of the house, although I suppose there wasn’t much to take care of. Old rusted metal kitchen unit, a crumbling wooden table, a kist on its third generation in the bedroom, and a chipped fake imbuia wardrobe; sagging flea-ridden sofas, a pinewood wall unit with a display of three generations’ photos.”

  “I remember there was a framed photograph of your grandma in your dining area,” said Phila. “I always thought she looked so regal in her red Methodist Women’s Guild uniform.”

  “It was rumoured once that a mine in Carletonville, where her husband worked, was collapsing and she prayed so hard it stopped.”

  “Whhomm!”

  “There wasn’t always enough food to go around in our house of three children. Sometimes my father didn’t go to work for weeks. But thanks to my generous neighbour I at least always had something to eat.” Nandi twisted her head again to look up at him. “How did you know I needed that food?”

  “I didn’t. I was just happy you relieved me of what I didn’t want when I offered you. I was not fond of food then, and my mother force-fed me.”

  “I admired your mother. She always looked so clean and smelled very nice. To this day I remember the perfume she used because it was on the dressing table the day you popped my cherry.” They both laughed. “It was called Opium. I tried it on my wrist and was never able to forget that smell. She was the only black professional woman I knew, your mom. Because of her I wanted to be a nurse. And of course I was in love with you.”

  “It wasn’t just a crush?”

  “It was more than that, and I have your bloody sheets to prove it. How did you wash them? I often wondered.”

  “You left me with a serious problem. I put Jik, Handy Andy, Omo, nothing worked. The bloodstain refused to come out. I think my mother just assumed I had been hurt.” Another mutual laugh.

  “I liked that you let us play with your toys, stuff, records and all. It was at your house I first watched TV, which you surprised me by not caring to watch yourself. I had never met a person who was that fond of reading before, to the extent of disregarding TV.”

  “I still don’t watch.”

  “It felt unfair that you had a TV when you didn’t care about it, while we who wanted one didn’t. I liked the silence that fell on your room when you lay in bed reading. The smell of fabric softener in your bed. You smelling of Blue Stratos. I don’t think I could have coped without you when my father died. You became my refuge. Of course, you probably just wanted a shag.”

  “That I did.”

  “There’s a lot you did. I remember how devastated I felt when you left for Europe. I even read racial connotations into it, as if they were always robbing us of things we love.”

  There was silence for some time before Phila continued. “I do not know how to mourn. I just get angry about everything.”

  “There’s no formula. You just need to stay true to your feelings.”

  “Often I have difficulty identifying my feelings.”

  “You don’t need to identify them, just live them.”

  “Live is a loaded word. Most of the time I feel nothing where I am supposed to feel something, and everything where I’m supposed to feel nothing, and it all confuses me.”

  “Take the advice of the philosopher who responded prophylactically to Heidegger’s vision of man as living ‘towards death’ by advising against thinking too much about it. That is where your first problem lies. Carpe diem is best honoured by caressing the quotidian details and appreciating the ordinary. Feeling nothing is also something. I think you were thrown in alienating situations too soon, too young. It made you rely only on yourself. And now you don’t know how to create space for others in your your life.”

  “Something compares to nothing to me.”

  “Feel that and let me know.”

  “I’ll write you from there, when I’m ready to share with you the gift of my nothingness.” />
  Whichever Way the Wind Blows

  PHILA LEFT GRAHAMSTOWN EARLY THE following morning, driving into the blinding sun. Somewhere between Ngqushwa and Qonce the mountains slipped into grand focus, making things grow nearer to his telaesthetic sight. The genius of his nation fell heavily, bending him like the Nilotic reed. The unclaimed burnt marshlands of history lay before the eye of his mind. He pulled over and stopped the car. Ubuthongo bentlombe kaNtsikana took over. The sedimentary smell of life lulled him. The last sounds he heard were the pit-pattering of birds.

  The voice was insistent. ‘You must speak! You must speak!’ The thing that entered him told him: ‘You must speak before darkness overtakes your mind.’

  Phila felt his body go taut as a rope, then begin twitching in uncontrollable spasms. He felt himself having a fit, his head hitting repeatedly against the headrest. ‘The gadfly! The gadfly!’ something said in the depths of the boiling tumult of his mind. ‘Ola hu! Ola hu! Oh!’ the thing screamed. Then a deep peace descended over him, tranquillity such as he had never felt before. Across the fence a tractor tilled the soil, leaving ochre scars where its blades cut.

  ‘Now that we are about to enter the seasons of my life I think it proper I give a formal introduction of my life,’ Maqoma said solemnly. ‘I was born a twin to a girl who could not fail filling our father’s kraal with her lobola. Her name was Nongwane. Our umbilical cord is buried at Egxukwane, near what in white man’s language is called Middledrift, just beyond this mountain. Our lambskin swaddle clothes were skinned from the kraal whose sheep drank the waters of the Qoboqobo River – we’ll pass the river soon. In our era those waters made an oxbow before entering Debe Nek. They passed through a succession of valleys before joining Tyumi River. In those cool valleys Nongwane and I were born of Nothonto’s pangs, the daughter of Nxiya, a maiden of the Ngqosini clan, of Sotho and Khoi ancestry. The banks of the Tyumi River, where if you’re sick they give you a concoction of aloe’s honeydew and burn umhlonyane in your nostrils – an unsavoury thing of tremendous medicinal value – were our playing ground. I learnt to carve oxen using clay dug in those banks.’ Maqoma pointed in front of them, wavering to indicate further down.