After twenty-five years, these naked madonnas still live. Popi tells us that they will live forever because such things never die. So will her memory of the excited trinity surrounded by canvases of naked madonnas on easels, with a naked Niki sitting on a stool holding a naked Popi. Popi thought these madonnas looked nothing like Popi-and-Niki of the flesh, even though Popi-and-Niki of the flesh had modelled for them. They were distortions of Popi-and-Niki of the flesh.
It did not matter to Niki that the trinity failed to capture their real images. It was boom time for madonnas. Mother and child had been modelling every day for a month. Mother and child would not need to sit outside another garden party for a long time.
Initially, Niki had been embarrassed to be seen naked by this old white man. But the trinity was gentle. At first he allowed her to pose fully clothed as he painted the madonna in a blue shirt. And the blue mother. The one with an angelic face and flowing locks like Popi’s, holding a baby who wore nothing but white socks. Then the trinity eased Niki into taking her clothes off. She cringed in shame. But when she remembered the mortifying garden party, her garments fell on the floor, one by one, until her smooth body glowed before him in all its glorious blackness.
It was not the first time a white man had seen her naked. But this one was different. He did not seem to see her nakedness, even though he painted it.
4. IN THE VERY BEGINNING, THERE WERE THREE NAÏVE GIRLS
HERE IN THE Free State the sky is big. A red sun oozes out of the sky. It drips down on the yellow fields. It melts everything it touches, eliciting a feast of colour.
Thirty-five years ago, the sky was just as big. The sun dripped on the yellow fields. Colour ran amok. But the trinity’s world was of dark and sombre tonal values. Charcoal on white. Figures in tight embraces. Naked women being observed by floating heads. Flowing figures in squiggles that become lace. Three birds of prey perched on the naked buttocks of a woman. Naïve women and children in a naïve black and white world. A world of sinless doodles.
Even then the trinity’s was clearly a male gaze. We do not forget that one of his threeness is a man.
Three naïve girls walked out of the trinity’s naïve world. Each carried an empty sisal sack. They walked among the cosmos flowers that grew between the fields and on the edge of the road. They had no cares in the world and were singing and humming joyously. They sang about the red railway bus that took fathers, brothers and lovers to the gold mines of Welkom, leaving only the dust in Excelsior. Every time the girls came across dry cow-dung, they picked it up and put it in their sacks. And moved on in a rhythmic step in time to their song.
One of the girls was Niki. She was eighteen years old and looked pretty as a doll in her brown pleated Terylene skirt and white frilly blouse. The only outfit she owned both for happy and sad days. She wore blue rubber sandals that we called “flops” because of the noise they made, especially when one was walking fast. Her body had the fullness of the moon. We thought she was blooming into such a unique flower, and we exclaimed so whenever we saw her. A rare flower in the middle of the desert that was Mahlatswetsa Location. Her skin was chocolate brown and smooth. It was not glossy, for she applied Pandora matt cream generously, which gave her face a ghostly finish. Her hair was rich and sheeny. Only the previous night she had used a red-hot stone to straighten it.
Niki was the only one dressed in her Sunday best. She had just returned from church when her two friends, Mmampe and Maria, came to ask her to join them in a cow-dung collection expedition. She didn’t hesitate because she was running out of the essential dung that was used as fuel to cook food and warm the single-room corrugated-iron shack she shared with her father. Also, such expeditions were great fun. Girls got to enjoy the freedom of the big sky and to share the latest titbits on the ups and downs of boy-girl relationships.
Bees were swarming on a bush, and the naïve girls kept their distance, even though next to the bush was a pile of dry dung. Swarming bees could be dangerous if they were disturbed. These were contemplating creating new brood chambers under the rocks next to the bush, so as to be near the nectar and the pollen of the sunflowers and cosmos.
“Eeii!” screeched Mmampe.
“What is it?” asked Niki.
“You want to provoke the bees!” cried Maria at the same time.
“Hairy Buttocks,” said Mmampe softly.
It was Johannes Smit. He had materialised before them with a whip in his hand. He cracked it and laughed. Niki was scared. She wanted to run away, but the squat hairy gorilla blocked her way. Mmampe and Maria giggled. They had played this game with Johannes Smit before. Niki only knew of the game from fireside stories. She was not looking forward to it. She had heard of white farmers whose great sport was to waylay black girls in the fields. They chased them around and played harrowing games with them. She had never experienced these games herself. And now it seemed it was her turn. Hairy Buttocks was standing in front of her brandishing a whip.
She knew Johannes Smit vaguely as the farmer her father sometimes worked for. Her father was a handyman who did “piece-jobs” for the farmers and traders in the district.
The hirsute man with a beer belly smiled benevolently, searched the pockets of his khaki shirt, then of his khaki shorts, fished out some bank notes and gave the girls one rand each. Niki hesitated. But when she saw her friends gleefully grabbing the money, she took it too.
Johannes Smit gave Niki another one rand note.
“This is for your mother,” he said in Sesotho.
Niki took it, even though she expected Johannes Smit to know that her mother had died many years ago. Surely her father must have told him when working for him.
He gave her yet another one rand note.
“This is for your father.”
The two naïve girls gave Niki knowing winks.
“He wants you,” whispered Mmampe.
Johannes Smit cracked the whip in Niki’s direction.
“Follow me,” he commanded.
Niki just froze.
“Don’t be foolish, Niki,” said Maria. “He will give you more money.”
“Then why don’t you go with him yourself?” asked Niki.
“He wants you, not me,” said Maria.
“He chose you,” added Mmampe.
Johannes Smit grabbed Niki by the arm and dragged her into the sunflower field.
“You wait there and whistle if you see people approaching,” he barked to the two girls.
Deep in the sunflower field, Johannes Smit pulled off Niki’s Terylene skirt. She tried to hold on to it, but he had the strength of ten demons. He threw her on the damp ground. Then he pulled down her panties and took them off. He sniffed them, which seemed to raise more demons in his quivering body. He stuffed the panties into his pocket.