Women Are Bloody Marvellous! And Other Stories Read online

  WOMEN ARE

  BLOODY

  MARVELLOUS!

  AND OTHER STORIES

  Betty Burton

  Copyright ©1986, Betty Burton

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without he prior permission of the publisher.

  CONTENTS

  Pulaski Day

  1 The Ice Bear

  2 The Mandela Wall

  3 Kiza

  Women are Bloody Marvellous!

  Found Drunk in Paradise Street

  The Writer

  The Snow Fox

  The Melon-seed Girl

  Commemorative Stones

  The Coffee Baby

  Seeing the Valley

  The Gold-Widow

  The Company Wife

  The Zulu Girl

  The Native Air

  Sisters — under the Skin

  Willow-herb and Speedwell

  PULASKI DAY

  PULASKI DAY

  'If men and women are in chains anywhere in the world, then freedom is endangered.'

  John F. Kennedy,

  Pulaski Day, October 1969

  1 THE ICE BEAR

  South Africa is an unlikely place to see a polar bear for the first time, and that February it was ninety in the shade.

  We had been living in Johannesburg for about a year, had experienced the freeze-drying winds of June and Christmas in mid-summer.

  We were still strangers.

  I had not wanted to go there, not even for three years, but John had a contract with IBCC and I had a contract with John. Nobody lightly broke an IBCC contract and the one between me and John was for better or worse.

  Many people wouldn't have wanted asking twice — three years in a beautiful country, where summers were hot and long and where you could get servants for next to nothing. We were given a company car, and a flat in the airy suburbs paid for by IBCC, the rent of which included burglar-proofing, cooker, fridge and Sara. That's just how IBCC arranged things there — a company man was given a chauffeur and secretary, a company wife was expected to have a maid.

  It was an absurd set-up: the flat was full of labour-saving devices and all the cleaning was done by a gang of African men who spent their days on their knees or up ladders so that Sara and I had only my two small boys to look after between us. So we spent a lot of time doing what Sara loved to do, 'going somewhere out'.

  There was no garden to the flat, but there were 'Residents Only' grounds, the lawned dignity of which made boys aged three and seven with a ball appear as hooligans. So at about mid-day, when school had ended, Sara and I often took them to the zoo.

  We lived about fifteen minutes' walk away so, as soon as we had finished our brief lunch, we would take the lift down from the cool flat and go out into the hard-hitting African sun. We would amble along until Sara gave us our orders.

  'Stop. Here we play five-stones.' And she would make us squat under a jacaranda tree until she considered we had rested. Then a bit further.

  'We shall get Coca-Cola you think, M'em?'

  It didn't really much matter what M'em thought. Sara made up the rules, we played her game.

  Eventually we got to the zoo, and inside, as on the walk, we kept to a daily routine following the same paths, stopping at the same places. I don't know why we did it, it is such a huge park that we could have taken a different direction each time. Perhaps it was because there was something reassuring in knowing that around this bend would be the elephant house, around the next the lake, and over there was the café — all tangible, static, ordered. Perhaps these were the new corner-stones of our lives, replacing the ones we had left in Ascot.

  At some of the enclosures we lingered, visiting an interesting animal; others warranted only a few minutes or a passing glance, but the chipmunks were special — Simon, Brendan and Sara never tired of their greedy antics, and the caged tree was the focal point of the outing. I couldn't stand the creatures, perhaps I saw something in the look-after-number-one type of society that was too near home for comfort, so I went off for walks on my own.

  I really liked that place. I have a passion for gardening which was excited by the exotic trees and flowers, and my anxieties and tangled nerves unwound beside the lake that reflected clear blue. There was a feeling there that I found nowhere else in South Africa. The whole area was surrounded by high fences and walls, and whenever I walked through the gates I felt that I was entering a kind of no-man's-land, buffer-zone, limbo perhaps, at any rate in the zoo park I could foster the illusion that it was just like home, that I was not living in the Republic.

  Of course it was not just like home. 'NIE-BLANKE — NON-WHITES', 'WHITES ONLY', 'NO INSIDE SERVICE FOR NON-WHITES'. But at least in the zoo park the orders and notice-boards were faded, warped and peeling, giving the impression that whoever was in charge saw homo sapiens as merely another species of animal and was not much concerned with classifying it by its hide.

  On that afternoon in February, I went in a direction that I didn't remember ever having taken before, and came to a railed-off area overlooking a concrete pit. In the pit was a small iron cage. I looked down, casually wondering whether there was something that the children had not seen before.

  That was the first time I saw the bear.

  The cage was small, and the bear enormous. There was room for him to take only three steps. I watched him pace back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in quick succession. It was nothing like the usual kind of prowling of large animals kept in cages, he just went on and on — fast — without pause. Not many people were looking at him, just a few zoo cleaners resting with chins on brushes, a middle-aged white couple in shorts and knee-socks, and a grey-haired African with a pattern of tribal scars on his cheeks, carrying a staff carved of wood.

  The cleaners and the couple soon moved on, leaving me and the old man. He stood with his feet planted slightly apart, the carved staff in his right hand, back erect in the stance of a guardsman on duty outside Buckingham Palace, and for an instant I saw a glimpse of his ancestors, plumed and confident — before the white man came.

  Watching animals in captivity is not something I like to do. When I took the kids to the zoo park I had a feeling that we weren't really living here at all. Yet I stood watching for a long time.

  I had never seen a polar bear and I wanted to look closely. His massive volume was impressive, yet how light his steps were. I wished that he would be still, and stop the fast-moving blur as he paced and re-paced the cage. I wanted him to lie down and stretch out like a leopard so that I could really look at his form, could see why his fur appeared to be yellow instead of the expected white, look at the eyes and ears. But he moved and moved, fluffing the long hair of his coat.

  'M'em?'

  I was brought back from my absorbing attention to the bear. It was the African, standing at a respectful distance, who had spoken. His voice was rich and deep, and he inclined his head to one side as I noticed many older servants do when they ask a question of a 'Madam' or 'Baas'. I had seen plenty of such servants who had been with one family for a lifetime, taught early in life to know their place yet who, in spite of handed-down clothes, retained impressive dignity.

  'Excuse me, M'em. Those zoo boys — they say this is the Ice Bear?'

  'Yes, that's right. It's called a polar bear.'

  'Is it true also that it lives at a place of only ice?'

  'Yes, the land's covered most of the time.' I wondered if he could imagine such a place. It was likely that his only experi
ence of ice was that which tinkled in the glasses he served.

  He shook his head. 'That must be very strange to see. And cold.'

  'Colder even than Jeppe Street when the wind blows.' It was a joke and he smiled. Soon I was again lost in watching the bear. There was something wrong. Suddenly I saw what it was. Its eyes were unseeing — not blind, but blank. A deranged bear. The perpetually moving body housed a dead mind.

  I didn't tell the children about the bear. We continued our walk, they chattered and I answered, and laughed or showed interest, but all the while the bear in a cage at the back of my mind moved constantly.

  We went to the zoo as usual the next day and, as we approached the gates, I felt apprehensive, torn between wanting the animal to be there, yet hoping that he was not, in case I should find him still moving, moving, moving, as I had been seeing him since yesterday.

  He was still there, and still pacing back and forth.

  As I watched I became tense and anxious, more than ever wanting him to stop, just so that I knew he could, yet, for all the fifteen or twenty minutes I stood there, he never hesitated in his one flowing figure-of-eight movement.

  As I turned to leave, I saw the old African coming to the pit area. His brows were drawn together, his shoulders a bit bowed — nothing of the old warrior, just an aged servant with something on his mind. I felt I ought to speak.

  'You've come again too.'

  'Yes, M'em.'

  We were both silent, watching the bear.

  'It knows nothing of out here.' Indicating anywhere outside the pit. 'This animal is too long in this cell. It wish to go to the ice country and is keep in this city. It is sick in the heart.'

  Yes, truly, the bear was sick, heart and head.

  On weekends Sara went to stay in Soweto and John and I took the children picnicking along with other company contract families, so I didn't see the Ice Bear again until Monday.

  The old man was already there, standing just as I had last seen him, preoccupied, staring blankly down into the pit. I said 'hello' but he didn't look up and soon I too stood silently, willing the bear to drop down, slow down, at least change the rhythm of its three steps and turn, three steps and turn.

  I told John about the bear, but when I put it into words it sounded like any story about animals in zoos and circuses. I wanted to explain about the sickness in the heart, and talk about the old man. Later that evening, John was reading the newspaper. 'Listen,' he said, 'your bear's in the paper.' He read out a letter asking why the zoo authorities were keeping the animal in such appalling conditions.

  I never understand why people who are quite indifferent to human suffering respond so fiercely to press reports about animals, but they always do. Overnight the Ice Bear became the cause célèbre of the moment, so that on Wednesday when I went to the pit there were about thirty people squeezed in front of the cage. The old man and I hadn't a chance, and I felt annoyed, it was our bear. All that I could see was a glimpse of bouncing yellowish fur that puffed up and down as his muscles worked in perpetual motion. The old man was at the far side of the clearing. I couldn't get to him. I thought that he looked once in my direction and I raised my hand, but he looked through me.

  In the days that followed, the indignant rumpus in the press grew louder. Reporters and photographers descended upon the zoo demanding that the authorities account for themselves. Which they did. They told how the bear had been rescued from a travelling show which had trundled the creature about Africa in the small cage. Veterinary surgeons and animal psychologists had tried every kind of treatment and given it all sorts of environments, but had found that the least stressful place for the bear was in the pit in the cage in which it had spent most of its life.

  But that was not enough. Animal Lovers Protest! Anger at Bear Pit! Zoo Must Act!

  And act it did. They shot the bear.

  While all this was going on, we still went to the zoo each afternoon, but I kept away from the pit and the sightseers. But as soon as the bear was dead so was the sensation. I knew the cage would be empty yet I had a compulsion to go there.

  The pit was empty. There was no reason why he should come, but I had assumed that I would see the old African, and soon I heard the dot of his wooden staff and the shuffle of his ill-fitting shoes. Grey-skinned, droop-shouldered, he stood leaning heavily on his staff. An old man sick at heart.

  Ever since that hot February, I have kept locked in my mind the double image of the Ice Bear and the old African. When I am asleep the bear paces obsessively and the old African stares with blank eyes. I used to think that if I wrote about them, brought their images to life, I might finish with them, and I think that I now see the bear only as the great, beautiful tragic animal that it was.

  But what about the old African? I had wanted to ask him about himself, about the sickness in his heart, but I never did. He was a boy, a Bantu, a native person, and I was a Baas's lady, IBCC executive wife on contract. I had promised that I would never get ... involved.

  What I might have asked him, and what he might have told me I don't know, for I didn't get involved. I had stood beside him but had said nothing. We both stood there, each inside the cage of our separate skins.

  2 THE MANDELA WALL

  New York subway graffiti are astounding in their volume, but nowhere is there anything approaching the wall messages of Johannesburg for size and impact. Often a single word: 'Soweto' perhaps, or 'ANC', done with a wide brush in black paint. 'Sharpeville' painted along the entire length of a factory wall; 'Freedom' on a long stretch of suburban pavement.

  When I first stepped out on to the balcony of my new flat, I saw on a thirty-yard stretch of white stucco wall surrounding an old block of flats opposite, 'Nelson Mandela'.

  That first summer, I spent a lot of time on the balcony, breaking myself in to the altitude and heat. Below was a garden, landscaped with Jacarandas, bougainvillaea and scaled-down kopies and vivid green lawns, entirely dominated by the Mandela Wall across the road. Once, half a dozen men with cans of whitewash came and obliterated the name, and for a few days the wall showed only ninety square yards of brilliant white. Within a week the wall was as readable as ever. Then somebody added a clenched-fist symbol.

  During the day, apart from a few aged memsahibs who never ventured out, I was the only white resident. African cleaners padded about all day, quite willing to stop for a mug of tea. I got to know all the gossip, particularly from David, a hump-backed Zulu cleaner, fount of knowledge and carrier of gossip; willing to talk all day if he could get away from the eye of the concierge. But I could not get anything much out of him about the wall.

  'When was it done?'

  'Some long time now.'

  'Who do you think did it?'

  A grin. 'Who knows, M'em?'

  Indeed, who would know? And if anybody did know they were unlikely to let on to a M'em. But it didn't stop me speculating, wondering about those brave ones who painted the message. Not only was it a subversive act, it must have been difficult to accomplish because the wall ran along the main road from Johannesburg to Pretoria, which was well-lit and overlooked by two blocks of flats.

  One day David exchanged a mug of tea and piece of Dundee cake for the rumour that a new block of flats was going to be built opposite and, as usual, David's rumour became fact. Before long all the tenants of the old block had moved out and a demolition crew moved in and, within a few weeks, all that remained standing was the wall. I watched the new building rise with the speed that can be achieved in a wealthy city with a large pool of cheap labour. Within months there stood opposite a twin to the block in which we lived, enclosed by the Mandela Wall.

  One January morning, before John or the children were awake, I was watering plants on the balcony. It was not long after dawn and already the air was beginning to feel used and I guessed that by ten o'clock the temperature would be in the high nineties again. Opposite, the daily routine on the building site was starting. The crumpled African night-watchman left his packin
g-case hut and unchained the corrugated-iron gate which bucked and jerked as it crashed open.

  The tinny bell of a wooden chapel was bonging the hour when a lorry came speeding on to the site and braked to a gravel-spraying halt. In the back were some Africans and two black guards, such a gang as one often saw about the city under escort, hard-labouring.

  Two uniformed black guards, carrying rhino-tail sjamboks, jumped from the lorry and assembled the prisoners; then, with pushes and shoves, ordered them across the site. They came stumbling, tethered to each other and in single file. A white guard off-loaded some shovels and tools then went to where the tea-boy was brewing up. The prisoners began the demolition of the Mandela Wall.

  As usual when something is happening, people stopped to have a look, usually a group of three or four — mostly domestic servants with shopping bags — at any one time. At about eight thirty I noticed an old man. He first caught my attention because he had knotted round him a highly coloured blanket such as many Africans new to the city wear, and carried a knotted bundle. It was obvious, though, that he was quite at home amid skyscrapers, thronging people, traffic, noise and fumes, for newcomers gaze up and all around — as I had done myself not so long ago.

  I recognized him from somewhere but could not make the association. I called David to look.

  'He's just anybody. Just some old man.'

  The old man placed his bundle on the strip of grass between the pavement and the wall and sat beside it. The demolition gang had been working for several hours but the brickwork was so strong and solid that they had not demolished a single letter.

  By eleven o'clock the temperature in the shade of my balcony was in the eighties and the air was still. Even the jacaranda tree, which usually responds to every slight movement, was still and quiet, and the air was like thick felt. Roses and cannas looked dark and exhausted, and when the lawn sprinkler was turned on, one could imagine the red earth hissing and crackling. Only proteas and new immigrants in bikinis turned towards the sun.