Rosy-cheeked girls in pink dresses screeched their laughter under the architrave. Then they ran to the lawn to make a nuisance of themselves to the boys who were playing with a rugby ball, practising throws that might see them being picked for Haak Vry-staat, or even the Springboks, in later years. There were no flowers in the garden. Just the lawn. And the small shrubs that would one day grow into a hedge along the short wrought-iron fence. The girls chased one another among the boys. The boys didn’t take kindly to this. They chased the girls away until they disappeared behind the whitewashed house.
The house was an imperfect copy of an English bungalow. But it was more exuberant than an English bungalow. As exuberant as the fruity dancers. Two bay windows with ornate stained glass on each side of the brown double doors, which also had painted glass panels. Purple columns supporting the purple architrave. Pillars whose crude capitals were halfway between Ionic and Corinthian. The roof was green. It was made of corrugated-iron sheets instead of tiles. Purple gutters. Green and white chimneys on opposite ends, one with a cowl and another one with a television aerial attached to it. Television was only a few months old in South Africa. This house, therefore, belonged to a man who not only had the money for such novelties, but was also determined to set the trends.
The boeremusiek of the concertina was relentless. The liedjies, or tunes, were getting louder. The volkspele or dances were getting exaggerated, as the concertina filled the dancers with even higher spirits. It had something to do with the cherry liqueur. The circle of buoyant rounded figures danced in and out of the wide doors. Niki passed the time by trying to identify each of the revellers. Popi couldn’t be bothered. She was busy sketching houses on the sand just outside the gate. She was concentrating very hard, determined that her houses would not be skewed like those she had seen at the trinity’s studio a week before. Her houses would stand straight.
Niki knew almost all the revellers. There was Sergeant Klein-Jan Lombard with his voluminous wife, Liezl, stamping the ground as if they were in a military drill. He of the South African Police, who also acted as a prosecutor at the magistrate’s court. She of the yellow cherry jam that had made her famous throughout the entire district. There was Groot-Jan Lombard, Klein-Jan’s doddering father. There was the Reverend François Bornman, the dominee of the local Dutch Reformed Church, dancing with a woman Niki could not identify as she had her back turned most of the time. The dominee — one marble eye from a gun accident five years ago — was not in his usual black suit and white tie, but in a brown safari suit. There was Johannes Smit, a very prosperous and very hirsute farmer with a beer belly. He didn’t have a partner. And, of course, there was pint-size Adam de Vries, and his strong-boned wife, Lizette. This was their house. This was their garden party.
Adam de Vries ran a small law practice in addition to being the mayor of Excelsior. Like most of the revellers present, he prided himself on the fact that his grandfather had been one of the founders of this town, back in 1911. It had been established on an old farm called Excelsior. People came from surrounding farms to settle here. And since then various members of his family have worn the dynastic mayoral chain. Except on a few occasions when there was no clear candidate from the family. Like when the late and lamented butcher, Stephanus Cronje, became the mayor.
More families of farmers and businessmen were arriving. All pillars of the local Afrikaner community. The very cream of Excelsior society. And of other nearby towns such as Tweespruit, Brandfort and Verkeerdevlei. Niki could see their old bakkies or trucks and veteran Chevrolets approach on the one-kilometre stretch of road that was lined with black iron-bark bluegum trees on both sides. Then the cars would disappear, masked by Reverend Bornman’s church that looked like hands in prayer, only to appear again on Adam de Vries’s street behind the church. They parked in the street and the visitors walked in through the gate without giving Niki and Popi a second glance. They joined the sitees — a much slower dance than both the wals and the vastrap. Even with the fuel of the cherry liqueur, the dances had become languid and the laughter louder.
The rugby-playing children had increased in number and the garden was becoming too small for them. A boy threw the ball too hard. The catcher failed to catch it. It dropped in the street and bounced until it stopped in front of Popi and Niki. The catcher ran out of the gate to get the ball. Niki knew him immediately. Tjaart Cronje. She had not seen him since he was seven. Since the days when he used to insist on being carried on her back, even though he was ridiculously big for that mode of transportation. She would indulge him because he was such a respectful boy. But she stopped when she realised that whenever he was strapped in a shawl on her back, he induced an erection and worked himself up with unseemly rhythmic movements. All that time the boy had been pretending to play horsey-horsey, he had in fact been in venereal heaven at her expense. Now here he was, a gangly lad of twelve.
Tjaart took the ball and threw it to Popi.
“Catch!” he said.
Popi missed it. Tjaart laughed. She ran after the ball and got it. Instead of throwing it, she walked to him and handed it back. He looked at her closely and then at Niki. It was obvious that he no longer remembered who Niki was. Five years can be a lifetime in the memory of a boy. Also, her face had changed. The chocolate-smooth complexion was now marred by black, brown and reddish chubaba patches.
“Why are you sitting here?” Tjaart asked.
“I was hoping to get the bones. or any leftovers. after the party,” she said haltingly. “Something for me and my little girl.”
“Your little girl? This can’t be your child!” said Tjaart. “She looks like a hotnot child. Like a boesman. You must have stolen her.”
Then he ran back to his rugby game.
But soon he came back with a slice of cake, broke it into two, and gave a piece to Niki and another one to Popi. The woman who was dancing with the dominee saw him and hurried to the gate. For the first time, Niki got a good look at her. She was face-to-face with Cornelia Cronje, Tjaart’s mother. Five years had changed her. She looked old and tired. Cornelia recognised Niki too. And glared at her. Niki glared back. Straight into Cornelia’s eyes. Niki did not cringe. She did not cast her eyes down as was expected of her. Cornelia laughed. It sounded hollow and crude. Not rich and full-bodied, like the laughter Niki knew when she worked for Cornelia all those years ago. Then deadly anger flashed in Cornelia’s eyes.
“What the hell do you want here?” she asked.
“I can be here, Madam Cornelia,” said Niki calmly. “It is not your house. I never go to your house.”
“Tjaart!” cried Cornelia. “What are you doing with these people? Come back here at once!”
Tjaart looked at his mother. And at Niki and Popi. He walked back to the rugby game.
3. ALL THESE MADONNAS
MADONNAS ALL AROUND. Exuding tenderness. Burnt umber mother in a blue shirt, squatting in a field of yellow ochre wheat. Burnt sienna baby wrapped in white lace resting between her thighs. Mother with a gaping mouth. Big oval eyes. Naked breast dangling above the baby’s head. Flaky blue suggesting a halo. Unhampered bonding of mother and child and wheat.
Brown madonnas with big breasts. A naked madonna lying on a bed of white flowers. Her eyes are closed and her lips are twisted. Her voluptuous thighs are wide open, ready to receive drops of rain. A black pubic forest hides her nakedness. Her breasts are full and her nipples are hard. Under her arm she carries a baby wrapped in white lace. A naked madonna holds a naked child against a blue moon on a purple sky. The mother is kissing the back of the child’s head. Another madonna kneels, her head resting on the ground near the child in white lace, and her buttocks opening up to the sky. Ready to receive drops of rain. The fattest of the madonnas stands among red flowers, looking at yellow fields that cover large patches of the red and brown and green land, and that stretch for kilometres until they meet a blue and white sky. The madonna of the cosmos and sunflowers and open skies. Like all the others, she is naked. Tightly to her chest, she holds a baby wrapped in white lace.