After shaking hands with the Reverend, and with a few friends, Stephanus Cronje and Cornelia went to the gate.
“It was a beautiful service, wasn’t it?” said Stephanus Cronje.
“It was very beautiful,” said Niki.
“We are grateful you agreed to look after Tjaart even though it’s a Sunday,” said Madam Cornelia.
“We’ll make it worth your while,” added Stephanus Cronje.
They walked to their Chevrolet across the street and drove away to a volkskongres — a people’s congress — which was going to be addressed by a cabinet minister in the neighbouring town of Clo-colan.
PULE SAT on the bed motionlessly, staring at the door. Like a wild cat waiting to pounce on its prey. His head almost touched the roof because the bed had been raised with big paint cans filled with soil to make it more imposing than it really was. And to create enough room under it for the two suitcases that were full of clothes and bedlinen. The double bed with a velveteen-covered headboard dominated the room, making a green “kitchen scheme” table with three chairs cower at one corner, and a small pine cupboard with plates, pots and utensils crouch at another.
Even as Niki entered, leaving the boys to play outside, she was apologising for being late. Three o’clock and he had not eaten lunch yet. She had had to go to the church in town because her employers wanted her to look after their son, she explained. She had had to go to Stephanus Cronje’s house first to feed Tjaart and to make him change his church clothes. She was supposed to look after the boy at his home. But she just had to come back because she knew that her husband would be hungry too.
He did not respond. He just sat there and expanded like a bullfrog. Niki imagined him exploding into smithereens. And her picking up the pieces. A different kind of an explosion to the one that happened whenever their bodies were bound together. She was getting used to a sulky Pule. They had been married for over four years now, and he came home from the mines of Welkom every long weekend. He had gradually lost his humour. His face had become harder and colder with every visit. After being drained by gold, he brought back to Excelsior a body that had gone dry of smiles.
“I’ll fry you eggs quickly,” said Niki.
Still he did not speak.
She pumped the Primus stove and fried him two eggs in an old pan that was twisted and wobbly. She served him the eggs with four slices of bread on a china plate. The white Sunday plate with blue pagodas and blue boats and blue pagoda-trees and blue dragons. Weekday plates were enamel plates. With great deliberation and ceremony he stood up from the bed, went to the “kitchen scheme” table, took the plate of food and smashed it on the floor. Eggs and bits of china spattered all over the cow-dung floor.
“It is Sunday today,” he shouted. “Every working man in South Africa is eating meat and rice for lunch. And even beetroot. What happened to the meat I brought from Welkom? You are not even ashamed to serve me this rubbish on a Sunday plate! Why am I not eating meat like all decent human beings?”
“I thought you would be too hungry to wait for meat,” pleaded Niki.
“For whom were you planning to cook that meat when I am gone back to Welkom tomorrow? For your boyfriends?”
She did not answer. Instead she reached for a broom and tried to sweep up the mess on the floor.
“Ja, so it is true! You are hoarding my meat for your boyfriends!”
Niki was getting irritated. She had always been faithful to Pule. Now he was assigning motives again. That was the major problem in their marriage. Whenever she did something he did not like, however innocently, he assigned a motive for her actions. And however much she denied his accusations, the assigned motive would stick. It would be the gospel truth as far as he was concerned. He never tried to find out from her the reasons for her actions. He knew exactly why she did whatever she did. And the motives he concocted were always sinister. She was always plotting some evil. Anthills became mountains when one was always suspicious of the motivations of the other. Shadows of bushes in the moonlight became assassins.
Only six months ago, he had promised that he would never do it again.
Six months ago she had come home late from work. Stephanus Cronje’s unpaid overtime. Pule decided there and then that she was late because she had been sleeping with white men. “Stories are told of black maids who sleep with their white masters,” he said. “You must be one of them.”
She pleaded her innocence. She tried to hold him in her arms to assure him that she would never do such a thing. But he violently pushed her away and slapped her, shouting, “Get away from me! You smell of white men!”
She was Johannes Smit in Pule’s eyes. She saw the uncontrollable yellowness of the sunflower fields. There was the overwhelming smell of Johannes Smit in the shack. Tears swelled in her eyes as she packed her clothes and Viliki’s into a plastic bag. She then left with her son to live with relatives in Thaba Nchu.
Pule remained stewing in misery. He really loved Niki and he missed her. He went back to the mines of Welkom. And then returned to an empty shack. He sent his relatives to Thaba Nchu to plead with Niki to come back. He made endless promises and undertakings that he would never hit her again.
Niki finally decided to go back to her husband. Till death do us part. There was no one at home. She had her own key. Deep in the night he came home singing spiritedly. A drunken female voice accompanied his song. A woman he had picked up at some shebeen as his provision for the night. Take-aways. One-night stress-relief. Balm to a hurting soul. He opened the door without wondering why he had left it unlocked. He struck a match and lit the candle. He uttered one sharp curse. Niki was sitting at the “kitchen scheme” table. Viliki was dozing on the bed. He was up in no time.
“I am leaving you, Pule, and this time it is going to be forever,” cried Niki.
“Please, Niki, don’t go,” Pule pleaded. “There is nothing between this woman and me. I don’t even know her name.”
“But you were going to sleep with her, weren’t you? On my bed too!”
“You scoundrel you!” the other woman shouted at Pule. “You didn’t tell me you had a letekatse — a whore — waiting for you at home!”
Niki grabbed Viliki’s hand and made to go. Pule closed the door with his huge frame and begged her not to go. The other woman, sensing victory, added her own view that she should indeed go.
“I’ll stay only if you hit your girlfriend,” Niki finally said.
Both Pule and the other woman looked at Niki in astonishment.
“Come on, beat her up,” Niki demanded.
“Beat her up? But she has not done anything.”
“I had not done anything either when you slapped me,” said Niki calmly.
“I can’t just beat her up, Niki,” protested Pule.
“You just try to beat me up, you’ll see the eyes of a worm,” threatened the other woman. She was nevertheless reversing towards the door.
Pule slapped her twice. She ran out screaming that people were trying to kill her for nothing. She stood outside, a safe distance from the shack, and hurled insults at the couple, for all the neighbourhood to hear. She was emphatic that it was Pule’s loss, because not even in his dreams would he ever taste what she had been going to give him. When it seemed no one was paying her any attention, she finally walked away, still yelling things about their private parts that would render the innocent deaf.
Pule had on that night promised he would stop blaming her for things she knew nothing about. And so she and Viliki had stayed.
But Pule did not keep his promise. Here he was again assigning motives.