“It is true that when we were fighting for freedom, we encouraged people not to pay for services,” admitted Viliki. “It was part of the war for freedom. But unfortunately the culture of nonpayment set in. People got used to not paying. Now even though we are free, they refuse to pay.”
“As a result, the town council has no money,” said a member of the National Party.
“In the same way that they taught people not to pay, they must now teach them to pay,” said another.
“Are we still talking about the library, Mr Chairperson?” asked Popi.
“Of course we are,” screeched Tjaart Cronje. “People who don’t pay for services do not deserve a library. In any event, black people have other priorities. A library will be a white elephant. It’s like casting pearls before swine.”
“You call my people swine?” said Popi.
“Black people can’t read,” heckled Tjaart. “A library is a waste of resources.”
“If there are no resources it is because you and your people stole them,” said Popi. “So now we are taking them back. If black people don’t read, then we are going to cultivate a new culture of reading.”
“What do you know of culture when you can’t even shave your legs?” asked Tjaart Cronje, looking at Popi’s legs with disgust.
“Tjaart!” admonished Lizette de Vries. “You can’t talk to a lady like that.”
“She is no lady,” insisted Tjaart Cronje. “Ladies shave their legs. She doesn’t. She is therefore no lady.”
There was utter silence. Tears swelled in Popi’s eyes.
For the first time, the honourable members of the council could hear crowds of Baipehi dancing the toyi-toyi dance outside the Stadsaal. Viliki could distinctloudiney hear Sekatle’s voice leading the chants.
The Mayor is a sellout! Hayi! Hayi! Hayi! Down with Viliki! Hayi! Hayi! Hayi!
26. THE SELLER OF SONGS
THE PENNY-WHISTLE. We still call it a flute. But the coloured girl has graduated from birdlike twitters to the gurgling sounds of river spirits. And her face has been tanned brown by the busker’s sun. Patchy brown. Her true yellow-coloured complexion peeps through in places. A tattered brown felt hat sits on her head, covering her forehead to the eyebrows. Hiding her golden-red locks. Her round eyes are wide and her brown pupils threaten to pop out and start bouncing on the brown ground to the rhythm of her melody. Her body is covered in a brown blanket. She kneels on the ground as the deep mellow notes and the shrill piccolo-like notes send shivers of prayer to those who are sleeping under it. Her fingers have learnt to close and open the six holes of the rusty metal instrument in the most dextrous manner, producing sounds that wriggle like water snakes in a warm current.
Brownness envelops her. Thin-nibbed outlines of Indian ink give an ephemeral presence to the ghost that watches over her shoulder.
We noticed that the Seller of Songs no longer spent her days busking outside the bank in town. She had decided that if customers did not come to her, she would take her music to their houses. She went from door to door playing her penny-whistle. Rich white people gave her a few coins, if only to get rid of her. When they got tired of her repeated visits, they shooed her away. Then she came to our houses in Mahlatswetsa Location. When she played outside your door, you opened and gave her some coins. She played a song or two, depending on how much you had paid her, and then moved on to the next house. Those of us who did not have money to waste on songs just clapped our hands and bade her goodbye. As she turned away from us, we would comment on how she was the spitting image of the Reverend François Bornman. And on how her eyes and ears looked exactly like those of Jacomina, the dominee’s daughter and wife of Tjaart Cronje. We were able to see these resemblances quite expertly because we knew that the Seller of Songs was Maria’s daughter. The Maria of the Excelsior 19. But of course the Seller of Songs was much younger. She was born several years post-Excelsior 19. Obviously Maria had continued with her escapades with white men. Could she — the temptress that she was — have continued spreading her body parts before the path of the dominee?
SUNDAY MORNING. Viliki stayed in bed and enjoyed his fingers. He loved his fingers more than he could any woman. They took him to heaven, without his first having to die. And most importandy, without his sweat mingling with anyone else’s. His fingers could become any full-bodied figure he had fancied in the street during the day. Or in the gallery of the council chamber. In an instant they could turn into one of those half-naked sirens who graced the pages of Drum magazine.
He heard the penny-whistle. He ignored it. He had not yet reached his heavenly destination. The melody persisted. He cursed. He put on his pants and quickly went to open the door. The Seller of Songs was standing on the red polished stoop, displaying a smile that would not be out of place in a toothpaste advertisement. She could pass for a waif in her brown felt hat, whose brim almost covered her eyes, and a brown threadbare blanket hanging from her shoulders and covering her whole body down to the ankles. He smiled back.
He had seen her busking in town. On the pavement in front of the bank. But he had never really paid her any particular attention. She was just one of the light-skinned girls walking the streets of Excelsior, as the former Minister of Justice, P.C. Pelser, once so apdy put it. Later Viliki had heard from Popi that she was the daughter of Maria, Niki’s erstwhile friend. Still he did not take any notice of her.
But here she was, at the door of his RDP house, smiling his knees into jelly and his palms into a sweat.
“Are you just going to stand there or are you going to play?” he asked.
“I have already played,” she said impishly. “Three songs while you refused to open the door. You owe me.”
“Come in,” he found himself saying.
She went in. And never walked out again. At least not that day. Not that week.
In the chamber of the council, it was announced that His Worship the Mayor of Excelsior was indisposed. But in the chamber of his RDP house, he was bathing in the sweat of the Seller of Songs. And in her blood. He had gently reprimanded her when she had said she would not let him swim in her filth, as it was her bad time of the month.
“God cannot create filth,” he had said. “Babies come from this blood. Babies cannot come from filth.”
And to prove that he meant what he said, he had touched it and let it slide between his fingers, even though she herself was disgusted by it.
As SOON AS Popi entered the shack, Niki let her feel the chill of her wrath.
“How can you not tell me when my child is sick?” Niki asked.
“I didn’t know it was serious,” Popi defended herself.
“He has been ill for one whole week and you didn’t know it was serious? I had to hear it from people in the street.”
“I am sorry, Niki. My mind is full of too many things lately.”
Niki mumbled that not only had they succeeded in taking her children away, they had built an uncaring wall between them, despite the fact that the children had come from the same womb.
Once more Popi apologised. It was her war with Tjaart Cronje that was destabilising her life, she confessed to Niki. She should have remembered to tell her mother about Viliki the very day it was announced that he was indisposed. But she had been angry and flustered by Tjaart Cronje’s taunts about her hairy legs.
This was not just an excuse on her part. Indeed, since Tjaart Cronje had mentioned her hairy legs for the first time during the library debate, she had become even more conscious of her hairiness. And this had made her less vocal in the chamber lest Tjaart Cronje refer to her legs again. Tjaart Cronje, on the other hand, had every intention of exploiting this newly discovered weak spot.