He sits on the sofa, and looks at a framed picture of a nude African woman carrying a naked baby — a very common poster that he has seen sold by street vendors in every small town through which he has driven.
John Dalton enters the room.
“It is my wife’s idea of art,” he says, making light of his embarrassment. “I can assure you I am a man of discerning taste.”
They both laugh and shake hands.
“What can I do for you?” asks Dalton.
“I am looking for a woman. Her name is NomaRussia. The first person I asked when I entered this village told me that there was someone of that name who used to work at your store.”
“NomaRussia?” says Dalton, trying to think very hard. “I don’t remember her. Of course that is a common name in these parts. It has historical significance. . from the days of Nongqawuse. What has she done? Why are you looking for her?”
Camagu concocts some story that she worked for him in Johannesburg, and she inadvertently left with his passport. He dare not tell this white man that he does not know why he is looking for NomaRussia, that he was driving to the airport to catch a plane to America when all of a sudden he took a different direction. He looked at the map and decided to take the ten-hour drive to Qolorha — NomaRussia’s name buzzing in his head.
“What is her surname?” asks Dalton. “I know all the families in this region.”
Unfortunately Camagu does not know it. Dalton says he is sorry he can’t help him. He exclaims, “City people are amazing. This woman worked for you, but you don’t know her surname!”
But Dalton is curious about the stranger and wants to find out more about him. They talk about Johannesburg and the political situation, and about America. Dalton is fascinated by an umXhosa man who has spent so many years living in America. He himself has never left South Africa and has spent most of his life in the Eastern Cape. Camagu cannot get over the fact that Dalton speaks much better isiXhosa than he’ll ever be able to.
After two hours and many cups of tea, Dalton takes Camagu to his car.
“Is there a place where I can put up for the night?” asks Camagu.
“There is the Blue Flamingo Hotel. It is not a bad place.”
“I think I’ll stay there for a few days. . until I can sort out this NomaRussia problem.”
As he drives away he sees Qukezwa sweeping the stoop of the store, her yellow thighs glistening in the late afternoon sun.
“What a forward girl!” he says to himself. He is renowned as a man of great venereal appetite. But she is still a child. Young enough to be his daughter if he had bothered to marry and procreate.
4
It is a beautifully undisciplined dance that the amagqiyazana—the young girls who have not yet reached puberty — are performing. They shake their little waists and lift their legs in innocent abandon. Their song rises and falls with the wind. It is the same wind that carries the sonorous sounds of the sea and scatters them in the valleys. The audience claps hands, responding to the rhythms. Everyone finds it charming that some of the girls are consistently out of step.
Camagu is filled with a searing longing for an imagined blissfulness of his youth. He has vague memories of his home village, up in the mountains in the distant inland parts of the country. He remembers the fruit trees and the graves of long-departed relatives. He can see dimly through the mist of decades all the lush plants that grew in his grandfather’s garden, including aloes of different types. There are the beautiful houses too: the four-walled tin-roofed ixande, the rondavels, the cattle kraal, the fowl run, the toolshed. Then the government came and moved the people down to the flatlands, giving them only small plots and no compensation.
He was only a toddler when he left with his parents to settle in the township of Orlando East, in the city of Johannesburg. There it was a different life, devoid of the song of the amagqiyazana. And there he grew up until the political upheavals of the 1960s sent him into exile in his late teens. So many things in Qolorha bring back long-forgotten images. He is glad to find himself in the middle of these festivities.
The cacophony of birds, monkeys, and waves had woken him up very early in the morning. To some people this racket from the surrounding woods and from the nearby Indian Ocean may be music, but he would have preferred to enjoy the austere wooden bed of the Blue Flamingo Hotel without further disturbance. His night had not been a restful one because of a recurring dream.
In his dream he was the river, and NomaRussia was its water. Crystal clear. Flowing on him. Sliding smoothly on his body. Until she flowed into the ocean. He ran after her, shouting that she should flow back. Flow back up the river. Upstream. Up his eager body. Climb its lusty mountains, even. When he failed to catch her, he tried to catch the dream itself, to arrest it, so that it could be with him forever. It slipped through his fingers and escaped. He chased it, but it outran him. He woke up, all sweaty and breathless, drifted into slumber, and dreamt the same dream again. Over and over again. For the whole night.
Although he was exhausted from all that running he had to do in the dream, he had jumped out of bed, taken a quick shower, and stepped out of his chalet to face an uncertain day in a strange village.
He had decided to take a walk through the village. Women and children stared at him at every homestead he passed. He was obviously a stranger. All the while he looked very closely at every young woman he met, in case he saw someone who remotely resembled NomaRussia.
He had been called to this gathering by the joyous celebration.
“Are you just going to stand here watching children dance, or are you going to join other men and eat meat and drink beer?”
The furrowed face looks friendly. He cuts a handsome figure in his dark suit and white shirt. His wrinkled necktie has a huge knot. Camagu extends his hand and warmly shakes the old man’s.
“I am a tourist from Johannesburg. My name is Camagu, son of Cesane.”
“A black tourist!” exclaims the aged one. “We only see white tourists here. Mostly stupid ones who come to Qolorha because a foolish girl once lied that she saw miracles here.”
“Ah, Nongqawuse. I learned about her at primary school. We even sang songs about her.”
“It is you learned ones who have turned her into a goddess who must be worshipped. Yet she killed the nation of the amaXhosa. Anyway, why do I bother a stranger with the problems of this community? I am Bhonco, son of Ximiya.”
This is his homestead, he says. He is the owner of this feast. His daughter has been made principal of the secondary school, so he decided to make a feast to thank those who are in the ground, the ancestors. The stranger from Johannesburg is welcome to share with them the little that has been prepared. He calls a prancing boy to lead the esteemed visitor to the place where he will be served.
The boy leads Camagu towards an umsintsi tree under which some village men are eating meat from a big dish and drinking beer in a tin container that is passed from one man to the next.
Bhonco shouts at the boy, “Hey, kwedini! Stupid boy! Why are you taking the visitor to those village bumpkins? Don’t you see he’s a teacher? Take him to the house where the teachers are!”
The “bumpkins” laugh. An elder among them shouts back at Bhonco that he must not be so high and mighty now that his daughter is the principal of Qolorha-by-Sea Secondary School. He must remember that fortune is like mist. It can disappear anytime.
Camagu joins the elite of Qolorha-by-Sea at table. He discovers that “the little that has been prepared” is a mountain of beef, mutton, chicken, samp, rice, potatoes, tomato, and onion gravy, beetroot, and green salads. And bottles of beer, brandy, and wine. Later he learns that the patriarch spared no expense to celebrate his daughter’s elevation. He slaughtered an ox, two sheep, and a number of chickens. Women brewed barrels and barrels of sorghum beer. Xoliswa Ximiya was against the very idea of holding an ostentatious feast in her honor. But the patriarch would not miss the opportunity to show the Believers that it is the Unbelievers who rule the roost in Qolorha-by-Sea.