The Madonna of Excelsior (10 page)

“The bitch!” cried Niki.

T
HESE WERE DAYS
when sunflower fields lost their yellowness and assumed a deep brownness. Days when the trinity's palette became warm and sombre. Dominated by siennas and umbers.

Niki and Popi frolicked in the wide-open spaces that the trinity created for all those who loved wide-open spaces. Those who relished big skies that merged with the earth. Eliminating horizons. Making it impossible to determine at which point the earth ended and the sky began. It was a rapturous sight. Popi, truly coloured in red and blue patches, running among the brown sunflowers. Petals wilted and lost their yellowness. Popi naked and unevenly coloured. Not old enough to crawl. Not old enough to toddle. Yet frolicking and running in the brown field. Niki, naked and free, running after her. Popi and Niki gambolling in the field whose wilting colours formed a fading image. Like one big veronica. Until woman and infant merged with Payne's grey. And became one with it. Disappearing into the trinity's splashes and becoming part of the compassion they evoked.

No one would ever find them.

The clanking noise of the keys, and the grating sound of the
metal bowls of sugarless maize porridge being pushed across the rough concrete floor, did find them. And dragged them protesting out of the splashes. They had not merged strongly enough. Deeply enough. Their guilt-ridden contours had stood out among the innocent strokes. They were found and brought back into the world of fluster and bewilderment. Of catty women and screaming babies.

Niki was living among them in the stuffy cell. Yet she felt isolated and lonely. She faced each one of the seven days in a daze. She saw things happening to her as if she had another life outside of her body. As if they were happening to someone else. As if she was living in someone else's dream. Someone else's nightmare. Daymare. Eveningmare. Morningmare. Every-hour-mare.

Whispers buzzed around her like annoying green flies. Whispers of what Stephanus Cronje had done to himself. The coward. He had taken the easy way out, she mused. Leaving her to face the wrath of the law alone. He had shirked his responsibility right from the beginning. What would happen to Tjaart? She chastised herself for thinking of Tjaart when she and Popi had their own troubles to deal with. When she had been separated from her son, Viliki.

The stench of sour milk from lactating breasts also sought and found her. Milk that had soaked into the babies' unwashed flannel vests. Yellowing garments made of curdled milk. And the vapours that released themselves from the open toilet bucket. And from the bodies of the interned. Lacteal odours took second place to stronger fetidities when the babies decided to release their bowels. Those who had already been potty-trained before their incarceration sat on the bucket, mothers holding them tightly around their little chests so that they would not fall into it. And sink. A baby could drown in the bucket. It got full very quickly, since the women took turns to empty it only once a day—in the morning before breakfast.

Popi was still too small to be toilet-trained. She did everything on the single nappy she had been wearing when she and Niki were
arrested. Niki washed it once, in the morning, with the same water she had used for washing herself in a metal basin. While it dried on the high barred window, she wrapped Popi in her petticoat. And held her close to her bosom. Rubbing her chin gently on Popi's head. Hair was beginning to grow. Not kinky. Not frizzy. Straight hair lying flat on her scalp. Brain throbbing under the skin of the head where the bones of the skull had not yet closed ranks. Bubbling in a slow rhythm like porridge under a low flame.

W
HEN THE MAIN ACTORS
of the unfolding drama began to arrive, we were already crowding outside the Excelsior Magistrate's Court. There were more strangers than us, the people of Excelsior. Strangers from Johannesburg and from as far afield as London and New York. Strangers with cameras and notebooks. Talking to us and asking us questions. Big television cameras that none of us had ever seen before. Taking pictures of Excelsior and sending them directly to the living rooms of England and America. Transmitting our lives through the big masts that had been erected outside our post office. Twenty television masts outside one little post office in a one-street town. Unfortunately, none of these pictures would be seen in South Africa. There was no television service in the country yet.

Busybodies spreading the shame of Excelsior to the world. Even invading decent volk working in their gardens. Bombarding them with inane questions.

“Leave us alone in our trouble,” we heard Oom Gys Uys screaming from his garden at one of these scandalmongers who had asked him what the community thought of its disgraced elite. “Don't interfere with us!” warned Oom Gys as he turned his back and walked away.

We saw Adam de Vries walking from his black Chevrolet sedan towards the courtroom. He was holding a big black briefcase in one hand and a wedge of files in the other. He looked like a member of the Cape Town Parliament in his pinstriped suit and black
Battersby hat. As soon as the vultures with cameras and notebooks saw him, they pounced on him, asking him questions all at once, shoving microphones into his face. Unlike Oom Gys Uys, he didn't seem to be perturbed by all this attention. He seemed to be enjoying it. He could not spend too much time answering their questions, however, for two men from the British Broadcasting Corporation—one with a microphone in his hand and another with a camera on his shoulder—were waiting for him on the steps of the courthouse.

“Excelsior has become the best-known town in the world this week,” said the BBC man talking into the microphone and facing the camera. “The small farming community—population seven hundred—was rocked a few weeks ago when some of its prominent citizens were arrested with their black maids for contravening the Immorality Act. The white accused include the secretary of the local branch of the National Party and some of the wealthiest farmers in the district. Mr Adam de Vries is the lawyer representing the white men.”

By this time, Adam de Vries had reached the steps and was facing the camera with studied graveness.

“Mr de Vries,” said the BBC man, “what are your clients' chances?”

“They are innocent,” said Adam de Vries. “We'll show the court that they have been framed.”

“What about the babies? Surely those babies come from somewhere,” said the BBC man.

“Certainly not from my clients,” said Adam de Vries confidently. “The state has no case against my clients.”

Then he hurried into the courtroom, his face hardly betraying his inner joy at the prospect of being seen on the screens of faraway London.

These were days of glory for Adam de Vries.

They were days of shame and humiliation for Cornelia Cronje. We saw her walk unsteadily into the courtroom. A sad figure in the comforting company of Lizette, Adam de Vries's wife. We had not
expected to see her here so soon after the calamity that had befallen her family. Stephanus Cronje had shot himself dead only a few days ago. He had been released on bail of two hundred rands. The following morning, after leaving his wife at work, he had locked himself in the guest bedroom, to which Cornelia Cronje had exiled him while she slept alone in the master bedroom they used to share in happier times. They no longer shared a conjugal life since the exposure of his activities with Niki. When she returned from work that day, something made her suspect that all was not well with her husband. She had asked the gardener to break down the bedroom door. And there he was. Stephanus Cronje. Bloody-faced. A rivulet of blood tracing its way from his temple to the foot of the bed. The shotgun with which he used to threaten us lying between his legs.

If Cornelia Cronje had been one of our people, she would be sitting on a mattress in an unfurnished bedroom, weeping softly, and being comforted by female relatives. Even if betrayal had killed all her feelings for the deceased, she would still have been required to go through the regulatory mourning rituals. But the customs of her people did not include brooding in ceremony over death. Here she was, attending a court case, eyes full of undisguised anger. And loneliness. Scurrying away from photographers into the courtroom.

We saw the white men arriving. Dodging photographers. Five white men charged with indulging in stolen pleasures. They were all out on bail of two hundred rands each, while their partners in crime remained incarcerated in the fester that was Winburg police cells. Adam de Vries had had to battle to get the magistrate to grant one of the accused, Groot-Jan Lombard, bail. The prosecutor—imported all the way from Ladybrand—had opposed the bail application. He had submitted that Groot-Jan Lombard had been involved in a case of violence in which an African woman had been killed.

“He used violence on a previous occasion,” Christiaan Calitz,
the prosecutor, had said, “and as a result he was convicted and given a suspended sentence.”

Adam de Vries had stood up in defence of his client.

“Mr Lombard has undergone a total personality change,” he had said. “Previously he had a violent temper. But now he is a different man. He suffers from heart trouble and cannot survive in a prison cell. Also, his farm cannot do without him.”

These had indeed been compelling reasons. The magistrate had released him on bail of one hundred and fifty rands.

“You cannot take photographs of these men,” said an exhausted policeman. “The law does not allow you to publish photographs of accused persons.”

“We aren't publishing them in South Africa,” responded a Cockney accent.

First to arrive was Johannes Smit, punishing his grey suit by stretching it almost to bursting point. We really were not surprised that he was one of the accused. Among all the Afrikaners of Excelsior, we knew him as an openly lecherous man. Why, he even drove to Mahlatswetsa Location on occasion to hunt for his quarry. He was known to bribe little boys with bottles of milk from his Jersey cows to “organise” him their sisters. He was the only white man we had seen actually doing this.

Then followed Groot-Jan Lombard. Tottering with a walking stick. Supported by Liezl, Klein Jan Lombard's sizeable wife. Groot-Jan Lombard did not hesitate to use his cantankerous stick to clear his way through the vermin that were pointing cameras at him.

“Sies!” exclaimed a white female spectator, attired in a Voortrekker costume with kappie and all. “This man was revered by all of us because he took part in the Great Trek commemoration of 1938. His name is there for all to see on the plaque at the church. But here he is, involved in this evil! The world is coming to an end!”

“How dare you judge?” responded a white male spectator.
“These men are innocent. They have been framed by the blacks. Oom Groot-Jan Lombard occupies a place of honour in this community. He will continue to occupy it after this trial because he is innocent.”

While the spectators were debating the black conspiracy, two other accused arrived. We did not know them. They must have come from outlying farms. Later we heard that one of them was a policeman.

The Reverend François Bornman was the last to arrive, accompanied by his sickly wife. They were both in funereal black. If ever there was a person who had been framed, then it had to be the dominee, we all agreed. We knew of him as a man of God who preached obedience to His laws. Laws against adultery and miscegenation. Why, he had even been responsible for running Konstantin Dukakis and his sinful family out of town.

Dukakis was a silver-haired Greek who had come to Excelsior ten years earlier to establish a corner café. We remembered him very well because he had punched a few of us when we had complained that the fish he had sold us was stale. Or that the chips were charred. He would hurl our change at us. We would chase the coins as they rolled on the concrete floor. He and his son, Ari, found this most entertaining. Their guffaws would follow us as we fled the café, only to come again the next day for more doses of rudeness. What could we do? His was the only café that sold fish and chips, which we ate when we were giving ourselves a treat.

We also remember him for the glossy magazines that he sold at his café. He introduced to our town
Kyk
, a picture-story magazine whose pages took the citizens of Excelsior to great flights of fanciful romance. And
See
, which was the English version of
Kyk
. He also introduced
Mark Condor
, a picture-story magazine of adventure, spies and crime-busters. Issues of this used to circulate among our boys, who would hide them in their exercise books and read them in class. Then there was
Scope
, a magazine whose pages were full of white women with stars on their tits. If the Afrikaner men of Excelsior caught a black man reading
Scope
, they would
beat him to pieces. Black men had no business ogling topless white women. But the brave men of Mahlatswetsa Location had no qualms about risking broken limbs by smuggling the magazine under their shirts. To this day, many of us believe that white women have black stars on their breasts instead of nipples.