Niki shook her head pityingly.
“I need something more substantial than a man to fill the gaping hole in my heart,” added Popi.
“Sometimes I think you miss being a town councillor,” said Niki.
“I do not miss being a town councillor. The only thing I am sorry about is that I left the council before we could have a festival of our own in Excelsior. And I miss running the library. Of course I can still go there to borrow books like any other patron.”
“Anyway, it is a useless council. All they know is how to eat our money.”
Popi laughed and asked how her mother knew anything about that.
“People talk,” said Niki. “Maria and Mmampe always come with strange stories of how they eat. They say now the spout of the kettle is facing their direction. It is their turn to eat. They say my children were foolish not to eat when the spout of the kettle was facing in their direction.”
“At least as a coloured person I can complain that in the old apartheid days I was not white enough, and now in the new dispensation I am not black enough,” said Popi jokingly. “What about you, Niki? You are black enough, but you are not one of those who eat. What is your excuse?”
Niki laughed. For the first time in many years. She laughed for a very long time. Popi just stood there in amazement. She had not thought her joke was all that funny. Niki laughed until tears ran from her eyes and disappeared into the cracks of her face. Popi was getting worried.
“Are you all right, Niki?” she asked.
“Oh, Popi!” cried Niki. “I am so happy that at last you are so free of shame about being coloured that you can even make a joke about it.”
“My shame went away with my anger, Niki,” said Popi quietly.
“You are free, Popi, and you have made me free too. For a long time, I felt guilty that I had failed you. that I had made you coloured! Every time they mocked and insulted you, it ate my heart and increased my guilt.”
“God made me coloured, Niki, not you. You have no business to be guilty about anything.”
Popi and Niki embraced and laughed and cried at the same time. They were not aware of the bakkie that had stopped outside their gate. The roly-poly frame of Johannes Smit rolled out of the bakkie and up to the gate.
“I am sorry to break up this Kodak moment, ladies, but I have an urgent message for Popi,” said Johannes Smit, flashing a broad smile.
The message was that Tjaart Cronje wanted to see Popi. She was taken aback. She couldn’t imagine why her mortal enemy would want to see her. The temerity of it all was that he expected her to go to his house.
“He wants to see me, so he must come here,” said Popi. “He cannot just summon me as if he is the baas.”
“He is sick, Popi,” explained Johannes Smit. “Very sick. He wants to talk to you.”
“He wants to make peace with you, Popi,” said Niki. “I think you must go.”
“How do you know he wants to make peace with me?” asked Popi.
“His ancestors are telling him to make peace with you, Popi. You can’t go against the wishes of the ancestors.”
Popi laughed and said, “White people don’t have ancestors, Niki.”
Niki offered to go with her. But Johannes Smit said Cornelia Cronje would not be pleased to see Niki in her house. Popi said that if her mother was not welcome, then she would not go either. Johannes Smit relented and allowed Niki to accompany her daughter.
Niki sat in the front of the bakkie with Johannes Smit while Popi sat in the back.
“This is a good opportunity to speak with you, Niki,” said Johannes Smit as he drove out of Mahlatswetsa Location. “Why don’t you join our mentoring scheme with your bee-keeping project? It could benefit you a lot.”
Niki did not answer.
“I think we must declare a truce,” pleaded Johannes Smit. “We can’t live in the past forever. Bygones should be allowed to be bygones, Niki.”
“This is a strange way of asking for forgiveness,” said Niki. “I do not understand all this nonsense about a truce. I don’t remember any war between us. You, Johannes Smit, wronged me. You stole my girlhood. And now you talk of a truce?”
It was Johannes Smit’s turn to be silent. He held his peace until they reached the Cronje homestead.
He led the two women through the kitchen door, as was the custom. He asked them to wait on a bench while he went to look for Jacomina. Niki’s eyes ran around the room. It had not changed. The varnished oak cupboards and the cast-iron pots and pans that hung on the wall were as she remembered them. So were the wooden table and the six heavy wooden chairs in the centre of the room. The antique coal stove was still there. But it was no longer in use. There was a cream-white electric stove and a matching fridge. These were the only new additions.
Jacomina came and led the women to the bedroom, without greeting them. Tjaart Cronje was lying in the antique metal bed. Niki recognised the bed at once. She shivered slightly as she remembered lying on it. It was possible that Popi had been conceived on that bed. If not in the sunflower fields. Or in the barn. The white bed still looked like a hospital bed to her. And the fact that a gaunt Tjaart was lying in it, covered with a white sheet, enhanced its hospitalness. The atmosphere in the room reeked of a hospital.
“Niki, you came too?” said Tjaart Cronje, his eyes brightening. “You are lucky my mother is at the butchery. Otherwise you would not leave this house alive.”
Then he laughed weakly at his own joke. No one else laughed. Jacomina left the room. Johannes Smit gestured to Niki that they too should leave. But she did not move. Her eyes were fixed on the framed portrait on the wall. A dashing Stephanus Cronje, frozen in a perpetual state of youthfulness. Johannes Smit gently took Niki’s arm and led her out. Popi’s eyes remained fixed on the portrait.
“I wish you had known him, Popi,” said Tjaart Cronje in a quivering voice.
“Known him?” asked Popi.
“Our father,” responded Tjaart Cronje. “He was not a bad man.”
“Your father.”
“Our father. Surely you know that by now.”
“I have heard whispers.”
There was an uneasy silence for a while. Then Tjaart Cronje made some small talk about their days on the council. He did not talk about their fights. He recalled only some of the funny moments when the joke had been on him. Self-deprecating moments. Soon Popi was laughing. An uneasy kind of laughter. After a while, Tjaart Cronje said he was tired and wanted to sleep. He thanked her for coming. But as she was about to walk out of the door, he called her back.
“I have a little present for you,” he said, giving her a container of Immac hair remover. “It is a cream that will make your legs smooth.”
For a moment, anger flashed across Popi’s face. Her hand did not move to take the insensitive gift from his shaking hand. But when she saw the earnestness of his face, she took it and said, “I don’t shave my legs, Tjaart.”
“You are a beautiful woman, Popi. Very beautiful. That cream is going to enhance the beauty of your long legs,” he said.
Popi smiled and whispered, “I do not shave my legs, Tjaart.”
“But you must,” cried Tjaart Cronje. “You are a lady. A beautiful lady.”
Popi was blushing all over. No one outside Niki and Viliki had ever called her beautiful before. At least, not to her face. Apparently she never knew how we used to gossip about her beauty, grudgingly praising it despite our public denunciations of her being a boesman.
“Lizette de Vries told me that progressive women don’t shave their legs,” she said. “Not even their armpits.”
“Lizette de Vries is an old-fashioned old fart,” he responded, chuckling at his own joke again.
“I’ll take the cream, Tjaart, because in my culture they say it is rude to refuse a present. But I will never use it. I love my body the way it is.”