Broken River Tent Read online

  PHILA HAD PLANS TO ATTEND INTLOMBE, the ceremony of amagqirha that morning. The full moon had been sighted the previous night, sparking the start of such ceremonies. Curious to see his cousin start her apprenticeship, he set out at dawn. Rumours had it that the whole thing cost her parents two goats, six bottles of gin, some mysterious accessories and the white cotton dresses of ubugqirha, on top of the hefty sum of two thousand rand. But the parents were not complaining, since bengabantu abamhlophe, thus susceptible to witch-doctoring. Unlike abakhwetha, who daubed white clay only for their initiate period, amagqirha permanently daubed it, wearing white cotton clothes with trinkets to denote that they belonged to the clairvoyant caste. More money would be required when she came out in six months’ time. By then she might even be pregnant, since abantu bomlambo – the River People who have the gift of witch-doctoring – impregnate each other sometimes to transfer their powers. Apparently, sleeping with your principal was common among witch-doctoring initiates, even encouraged, so that one might acquire their aura. Contraception was anathema, as it blocked the natural transference through biological mystique.

  Phila was strangely jealous of his cousin, but he wanted to observe the process. He was even tempted initially to join the apprenticeship too, but the problem was that he was not umtu omhlophe, which was the prerequisite for initiation. The temptation of faking the symptoms, zokuthwasa, crossed his mind: hysteria, nervous paroxysm, dreams, visions and so forth. In the end he decided against it.

  After breakfast at the hotel, he went to his car ready to leave, only to discover the car had been broken into and vandalised on the street he had carelessly parked it on. The driver’s side window was broken, shattered actually, and the door’s keyhole vandalised. They had taken the car’s stereo. As the morning was overcast, threatening rain, Phila thought it was probably not wise to drive the car without a window. He resolved to look for a place that could fit a spare window for him. This was easier said than done on a Sunday morning, as he discovered. King William’s Town was a small village, something he appreciated better when he was not in need of an open spares shop, but eventually he found a place, owned by an Afrikaner in his early forties. When he arrived the guy was sitting on the veranda with someone he called Oom Piet. As luck would have it, they had the right window size for the make of his car. For a bit extra they offered to fit it for him. Phila accepted the offer, after complaining about how difficult it seemed to be to find an open spares shop in town.

  “Eh, boetie,” said the owner, bending over to open the car door from inside, and hitching up his pants to hide the builder’s crack, “People here still go to church. You’re lucky me and Oom Piet have a different arrangement with God.” He gave Phila a smile. “It’s difficult to get parts for these Sentras these days. You’re really lucky. We got this only … when was it, Oom Piet?”

  Phila was a little apprehensive that this performance was designed to con him into paying more.

  “Doensdag,” replied Oom Piet in an indifferent tone, more out of duty than enthusiasm, from the veranda, smoking his pipe, eyes vacant.

  “Bloody skelms. You say they broke into it this morning? I tell you, broer, everyone who has assets in this country must own a gun, not to shoot anyone, but to scare skelms away so they don’t take advantage of you. They’ll probably sell your radio for R50, just to get themselves a bottle of Klippies. Bloody skelms!” He straightened up to light a cigarette – a Royal – before continuing. “I told Oom Piet here …” pointing behind him with a tubby, greasy hand, the only glabrous part of his exposed skin; his upper body was now inside the car. “I said, Oom Piet! Rather than gallivanting and getting our asses in all sorts of gemors, or being lied to by the dominee, why not we open the shop on Sunday? I mean, we stopped going to church a long time ago, what with all the moffie dominees, and besides, my wife prays enough for both of us. And as I said, the big guy and we have a better understanding. So instead of sitting around the yard, fattening our asses and farting from too much boerewors and pap, we could be making some money. I tell you, boetie! Best decision I ever made. Now I make money of three days on Sundays; and it’s usually blokes from the township. That apartheid thing wasted our business. I’d have been a millionaire long ago if okes like Mandela had got out sooner, and everyone would have been better for it. You know mos how there in the township they don’t bother about God. Instead they get their messies in die jalopies and come fix them with me. I give them discounts, and the word spreads like fire, broer. Who can ask for a better church than that?”

  The Afrikaner seemed to have lost his initial inhibitions. Bits of shattered glass came flying out of the window onto the road.

  “I tried introducing some of my okes into coming in shifts on Sundays, thinking they’re probably in need of the extra cash, but it was no use. Those who came were drunk most of the time; the others couldn’t be bothered even to pitch up. You know mos how it is there. They just go to their shebeens, play loud music and run after skirts. Then on Monday they all want to go to the clinic or something. Only this year two of my guys died on me. What else? It’s the thing that’s out there. Now I have to give them short lessons before handing them their envelopes on Friday. I say: ‘Boetie, gaan lekker maak met jou geld. I’ve no problem with you testing the oil gauge of other cars with your dipstick, if you know what I mean.’” He halted to wink at Phila. “’But there’s this thing out there, so moenie gaan opening your zip with strange ladies.’ I say, ‘Chaps, last month it was Sipho; that other month it was Zakes. Who’s next? If you don’t stop fucking around mos, or gaan met a damn condom, jy sal be dood, almal van julle. Faster than any apartheid ever killed you. A person will have to gird with his own booty if he must, until this AIDS thing blows over at least.’ Wat? None of that helped. Three of my guys are sick again. I had to let one go because he was too sick to be of any use to me. Ja-nee, die kak is in the fan.”

  He was silent, but not for long. “Well, boetie, you’ve got a mess here. They broke some frame pieces too when they broke the window. I’ll have to take the frame out. That’ll cost you extra, boetie. Askies tog. Maar a Boer maak a plan vir jou.”

  As the man strolled off to go and get some tools from his workshop to strip the window frame, Phila started panicking about time. When he came back, having stripped a frame from another Sentra, a newly lit cigarette between his lips, he said, “Relax, boetie. If you want something done well you must be prepared to invest some time on it. Oom Piet!”

  Oom Piet had disappeared from the veranda into the shop.

  “Give the gentleman some keiner-kleiner to relax him!” the Afrikaner shouted.

  The drink came in a jiffy. Phila swigged it back, prompting the Afrikaner to thunder into a boisterous chesty laugh. “Ag man, jy es a skelm wena, suka!” When he stopped laughing, he said, “There’s a lot more where that came from, boet! As I told you, me and God have different arrangements. Just now I was having difficulties untying this screw. I put it to Him that it’s rather rude to delay this nice chappy who obviously has somewhere else to be, so I’ll appreciate any help He can give. And there, immediately the thing came out. God and I understand each other. The dominees and their arse-fucking tendencies just get in the way.”

  By the time Phila left the yard it was already ten to twelve and his head was hot from more than a few tots of brandy. There was no chance he was going to make the ceremony now. Amagqirha would have long left with their crew. Phila drove back to the hotel with his tail between his legs.

  “Did you have a good sleep?”

  “Ja.” Phila, sitting at the bar, where Matswane joined him, was noncommittal.

  “I thought you’d left without saying goodbye.”

  “How could I?” Phila said. “You’re not working today?”

  “I do most of it from the room, I don’t really have an office here.”

  They were both quiet for a few minutes.

  Then Matswane said, “I thought to myself, even if I was drunk, surely I couldn’t
have been that bad?”

  “You were terrific actually.”

  ‘Thanks for saying, even if it’s not necessarily true. I needed to get all that energy out of me.”

  “Glad I could be of some help.”

  “So what are you doing tonight? You’re welcome to my room, if you wish; perhaps this time I might even recall what we did.”

  “Be kind.”

  “You’ll join me again, won’t you? Surely one bêtise doesn’t make a complete fool?”

  “What about your fiancé?”

  “Let’s go to lunch.”

  Matswane swung her behind under her tailored, hip-hugging, salt-of-the-earth jeans, showing confidence in her personality. Her boobs jutted under the loose shirt she wore, or almost wore. Phila followed her into the dining room. Mat opted for a canapé lunch, boosted by cheese morsels, and a salad with Norwegian salmon, which she made a big fuss about. A little irritated by her upper-middle-class poise, mannerisms and attributes, Phila ordered ribs and chicken and grilled vegetables. After lunch they went and sat at the pool again, where light shimmered over the water with protesting intensity.

  “Do you want to go somewhere with me?” asked Phila, standing up suddenly.

  “Where?” Matswane asked, raising her head and looking at him from beneath her straw hat.

  “You’ll see. It’s not far, but we’ll need to drive.”

  “Okay.”

  The past is a constant responsibility, an operation of conscience for dealing with the present, thought Phila as he drove. We colonise our experiences and give them back as myths.

  The wind blew strongly. “Le vent se lève. Il faut tenter de vivre.”

  “What did you say?” asked Mat.

  “I was just thinking about a line I like in Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon: ‘The wind is rising. We must attempt the task of living.’”

  “You’re strange.”

  “Is that why you are here?”

  Scavenging dogs transported degrees of gloom and seediness to the back streets as they drove out of town. On the outskirts almost immediately the road reached into a rural atmosphere. The houses became frugal and the landscape green and lush.

  Matswane sat up. “So, I never really asked your story?”

  “Like what?”

  “We’re all hustlers mos. What’s your hustle?”

  “To be honest? To find a good way to live, without too many internal contradictions. Perhaps afford to pay for my own keep, if I’m lucky.”

  “What contradictions?” Mat asked.

  They were passing through citrus farms that were in harvest. All along the road there were people, coloured teens mostly, selling bags of oranges with R5 prices written on brown boards. The selling price at the supermarkets for the same bags started at R15.

  “Never mind,” said Phila.

  “You haven’t told me where we’re going. What are we looking for?”

  “We are looking for … no, let me not spoil the surprise.”

  Seemingly in the middle of nowhere Phila took a gravel exit. Was isolation the sum of the rural life, he wondered, and the reason most people fled to urban areas? After a bumpy drive, which involved almost getting stuck in the small brown river they crossed, he stopped the car.

  Matswane looked surprised. “I do not see anything to see here except a few old ruins,” she said as she got out of the car. “Or are we here to admire the view?” She pointed down to the valley below, from where they had come, and looked at Phila enquiringly.

  Phila followed her to the ruins she had indicated, some crumbling walls overgrown with moss. “Well, we’re here to see the ruins mostly.”

  “Great! And I thought you were interesting. Now I am sure you’re a lunatic about to murder and bury me on a deserted hill.”

  “The only way you can see anything interesting in places like these is by bringing something of yourself along. Provided –”

  “– provided you’re a lunatic?”

  “Provided you have a little spark of their history. You can wait for me in the car, if you like.”

  “Actually, I think I’ll do just that, mister flak catcher.

  “This scene is shuck.”

  Phila gave her a grin of clemency as he strode off. There was an air of quiet dereliction over what remained of Fort Willshire. It was hard to believe that this had been the scene of one of the fiercest battles between the Xhosas and British forces. Now the ambience was quiet, somehow fey. Phila sat down on one of the stones with his ear on the ground.

  After half an hour Matswane came looking for him.

  “I almost didn’t want to disturb you. Where do you go when you visit these places?” she asked as she sat next to him.

  “I’m trying to … I want to … I don’t know. I’m looking for something … I don’t know, something intimate, when I’m in these places.”

  “What do you mean, intimate?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe it does not want to be found, or understood.”

  “I think the contrary is true.

  “It only wants to be understood on its own terms, so we have to eliminate the noise and the possibilities of misunderstanding.”

  “Is it love you’re looking for?”

  “Why is it, when there’s something missing, women always assume it’s love? I’m looking for everything that makes sense, a way to live. I suppose love is the ultimate sense.”

  “I want to look with you, but I want to know what I am looking for.”

  Phila frowned. “It’s a hard, boring life, as I indicated earlier, and one I wouldn’t wish on a dog. But something inside me compels me, deeply compels me.”

  The irony of him sounding like Maqoma was not lost on Phila.

  He was also wary of making himself falsely sound like an enigma to Matswane’s ears.

  Together they walked around the area.

  “I think I want to try,” said Matswane in an uncharacteristically deflated voice. Usually she sounded forceful, her tone bristling.

  Phila looked at her. “A firebrand longing for adventure, or domesticity?”

  Matswane shrugged. “Either way, I can no longer go back to my life as if nothing happened.”

  Phila wanted to advise her against his foolish life but he felt impotent. “You have a comfortable life, Mat,” he said. “What do you wanna spoil that for? Go back to your fiancé. In a few weeks you will have forgotten all about this, and everything will be fine. You don’t really want to come with me. You just want to conquer what you see as a wild spirit. It’s a woman’s instinct to want to tame.”

  “Thank you, Mr Freud.”

  “This is not a life of trendy cafés and cocktails; or fancy boutiques, malls, and emporiums hawking cosmetics, handbags, shoes and all that.”

  “Tell me what happened here.”

  Phila became pensive and then generous.

  “These crumbling walls are the remains of a fort. Fort Willshire. It was one of the first forts the colonial government built in the area. When they became fed up with colonial encroachment on their land, the Xhosas attacked it in 1850. They used to call it ‘the seat of the devil’ because it was where white people led black people for trade, exchange, with prices that satisfied white people only – things like stripped and dappled hides, tanned sheepskins, ivory, gum, knives, beads, cooking pots, fronded ostrich feathers, tallow, Dutch soap, timber ploughs – things like that. Beads and buttons served as currency; they were exchanged for live beasts and hides inland from the Pondo and Thembu people. Ngqika, the chief of amaXhosa in the region, was decadent by then. He frequented the fairs here because of his alcoholic degeneration. It was where he got most of his monetary income, by demanding tribute from those of his people who made exchanges with white people. He also got his brandy that way. To Xhosa aristocrats this place was loathsome, a symbol of how white people were cheating in exchanging crooked prices for commodities, and turning their people into a nation of drunkards that could be easily taken adva
ntage of. They resented the fact that they were allowed to cross the river borders only when white people wanted to exploit them, as was the case during the fairs.”

  “Is that why you wanted to check out the agricultural show? You thought it’d be more than the fairs of before?”

  “Not really. They were only allowed to cross the river from 10am, during the days of the fairs, and could only stay until 4pm. By the time most of them got here the agreed going prices for the day had been made without their contribution. As such there were ‘morning prices’ for white folks, and midday prices for kaffirs, and then evening prices for general farmers of the area. Mornings and evenings kaffirs were not allowed to be here – as such, those prices were not inflated. If you think about it, the whole thing is similar to the legacy of apartheid: the kaffirs must come to town during the day, work and spend their income, then return to the peripheries or urban and rural poverty.

  “Impetuous dealers got a raw hand, while if you delayed too much you found yourself in the position of having to go back with your stock, or sell it at way lower than its real value. White preachers used the opportunity to convert ‘black heathens’ and the whole thing generally had an effect of anglicising Xhosa people, which was why these fairs were loathsome to chiefs. It was not a rare thing in these fairs to meet Xhosas wearing wool blankets, soldiers’ coats, knee-breeches, silk stockings, hats, and carrying things like parasols and handkerchiefs. Some even had cotton rugs in their huts. Xhosas here acquired addictive tastes for sugar and brandy. From there they became dependent on white people, treating them like their baas. It was these fairs, together with the missionary activity, that were the main destruction of Xhosa social structure and the transformation of what had been their national torpor to the religious and market principle. Things like these undermined the authority of the chiefs – ‘making men effeminate by compelling them to do women’s jobs like planting gardens and hoeing’, according to Maqoma, son of Ngqika.”

  “You sure have researched these things.”

  “During the 1851 war, when the Xhosas were joined by some of the rebel Kat River valley Khoi, and a few amaMfengu, the sky over white people’s settlements became bright with wreaths of flames from burning farms and mission stations. Gunshots echoed occasionally along the kloofs whose skies were lit from the devastated homesteads of settlers. Sometimes I mistake certain sounds for the echoes of those days, because I can feel … I mean, Maqoma tells … I mean, I’m reading about things that happened in these places.”