The Madonna of Excelsior (27 page)

Every day when Viliki returned from the council meetings and wanted to relax, they played music together. And every day they sounded better than the day before. His RDP house was filled with songs, which the Seller of Songs felt were wasted, as he forbade her to go busking ever again.

“Your songs are mine alone,” said Viliki. “I do not want you to share them with other people. The music we create cannot be wasted on people who cannot appreciate its creators . . . who call them such names as boesman.”

“Have they ever called you that?” asked the Seller of Songs.

“Of course not,” said Viliki. “I am not a coloured person. But they have called you that. And they have called my sister that.”

“It doesn't bother me,” said the Seller of Songs. “I can handle it. I don't need you to defend me.”

But he continued to defend her. He defended her against Popi, who had developed a new habit of bursting into his RDP house and sniffing around as if something terrible was stinking. She would sniff close to the Seller of Songs and then, without uttering a word, she would walk out. Back to Niki's shack.

“Why does Popi hate me so?” the Seller of Songs once asked.

“Don't worry, she will get used to the idea that we are together now,” Viliki assured her. “She will accept you just as my mother has finally accepted you.”

“Popi . . . I think she hates me because I remind her of who she really is,” observed the Seller of Songs.

Viliki gave an embarrassed chuckle.

“You should teach her that I didn't make myself to be like this,”
added the Seller of Songs. “In the same way she didn't make herself to be a boesman either.”

Suddenly Viliki saw himself as a little boy. Knocking at Stephanus Cronje's window. He saw Stephanus Cronje reading his mother's note, putting money in an envelope and giving it to him. He saw himself running like the wind to Mahlatswetsa Location and giving the envelope to Niki. He saw himself that evening eating assorted biscuits with Fanta Orange. And then playing with the brand-new top and brand-new marbles that Niki could now afford to buy.

“Popi could never talk about such issues,” observed Viliki. “You are wise. Your songs have made you such a beautiful soul.”

“Enjoy my beautiful soul while it lasts,” said the Seller of Songs with a naughty twinkle in her big round eyes. “Soon Maria will come and fetch me. Or perhaps Uncle Sekatle.”

Viliki laughed. He knew that Sekatle had more important things to worry about than delinquent mixed-breed relatives. One of the issues that occupied his mind was the plight of two schoolboys and one schoolgirl who had each been sentenced to a one-year term of imprisonment for petrol-bombing Viliki's house. Sekatle had managed to keep his hands clean. Nothing could be found to link him to the bombers. He claimed that he had never even set his eyes on them before. But for some strange reason, he was concerned that the bombers should get legal representation, to appeal against their sentences. After all, he argued, they were minors. And they were first offenders. It would have been more just to give them a suspended sentence. Or community service. The poor children were not criminals. Theirs was a political offence. A jail term would turn them into hardened criminals.

The Pule Siblings also occupied Sekatle's mind. Especially Viliki. He wanted to see Viliki expelled or, at the very least, suspended from the Movement for bringing it into disrepute. Firstly by removing the squatters by force. And secondly, and more seriously, by falsely accusing the branch chairperson of the Movement,
a disciplined and loyal member of the Movement in good standing, namely Sekatle himself, of being party to nefarious activities such as throwing petrol bombs into other people's houses.

Sekatle's word carried weight. Viliki was indeed suspended from the Movement while his case was being investigated. Popi decided to suspend herself by no longer playing any active role in the affairs of the Movement. Once more the Pule Siblings spoke with one voice. Same tone. Same timbre. Niki was happy that the wall that had been built between her children seemed to be crumbling.

The Pule Siblings remained on the council. They had been elected by the people and would remain town councillors until the next elections in eighteen months' time. But Viliki had to resign from the mayoral office as he had been elected to that position by the town councillors, the majority of whom were members of the Movement.

There was tension in the chamber when the elections for Viliki's replacement were held. The Movement would have nominated Sekatle as a candidate if he had been a member of the council, as he was now the branch chairperson. But they had to nominate one of their own council members instead. The National Party nominated Lizette de Vries. The three National Party council members voted for her. Tjaart Cronje of the Freedom Front did not abstain this time. He voted for her as well. Viliki and Popi voted for Lizette de Vries. The Movement's candidate got only four votes from its council members. Lizette de Vries, with her six votes, became the new mayor of Excelsior.

The unthinkable had happened. A Movement-run town council had elected a National Party member as mayor. In Excelsior, erstwhile rulers and creators of the apartheid system were back in power, courtesy of the former oppressed who had overthrown them in the first place.

We had thought that the Pule Siblings would not be able to walk the streets of Mahlatswetsa Location without the people spitting at them. Or even throwing stones at them. But we were wrong. No one bothered them. Perhaps the people were tired of the squabbles
of the town council. They were nonchalant about the whole matter. Some of us even commented, privately lest we be called sellouts, that maybe now that the Boers were back in power, we were going to see a better delivery of services in Excelsior. We had, of course, forgotten that when they were in power during the days of apartheid, there was no electricity in our houses. No street lights in Mahlatswetsa Location. No library.

Popi continued to debate vigorously in the council chamber—since Lizette de Vries had helped her regain some of her confidence after the incident of the hairy legs—and to needle and be needled by Tjaart Cronje. But Viliki seemed to have lost all interest in the affairs of the council. He attended its sittings fairly regularly, for he was paid a stipend to do so. He cast his vote without really participating in the debates. It was as though he was in a daze. He just watched how Popi voted and then voted the same. When the new mayor reshuffled her “cabinet”—as the councillors called the management committee that comprised all ten councillors—he was given the least taxing portfolio. He was put in charge of the parks. There was really nothing to do concerning the two parks of Excelsior. They were just there. Big tracts of land with grass and bluegum trees and nothing else. No one bothered to use the parks for anything. So Viliki's work was really cut out for him.

His daze disappeared as soon as he got to his RDP house, where he made love and music with the Seller of Songs.

Popi, on the other hand, attacked the duties of her new portfolio with great enthusiasm. They included the new library of Mahlatswetsa Location. It had finally been built, furnished and equipped. It was an imposing brick structure with a green corrugated-iron roof. Its neat grounds were paved with bricks and concrete. Inside, the floors were of shining tiles, made slippery by the polish that the cleaner applied every morning. There were many shelves lined with books bought with council funds and donated by the provincial government and by overseas countries. Popi took her work as the town councillor in charge of the library
very seriously. She spent all her days paging through the books, smelling them and just fondling them. We even thought she was the librarian, for sometimes she stood behind the counter and assisted students who were looking for books. The real librarian took advantage of her enthusiasm, and often sneaked out to do her washing at home. Or to go shopping for groceries. She knew that Popi would take care of the patrons. And they were many, these patrons. Mostly students from the various primary and high schools in Mahlatswetsa Location. Some adults had library cards as well. Others used the library for reading newspapers and magazines.

Popi's favourite corner was the one that had oversized glossy books on art. She paged through the colourful paintings, and read more about the European artists called Flemish expressionists who had influenced the trinity's early work. She gained a clearer understanding of what the trinity was trying to do with his distorted figures, and was no longer bothered by the fact that they were distorted. In fact, when she came across books with figures that were not distorted, that captured life as people saw it with their eyes, she was not moved. Such works, she felt, were lacking in emotion.

The library became the new thief that stole Popi from cow-dung collecting expeditions. Niki missed her. She saw her only in the evenings when she came home to sleep. Sometimes she returned only after Niki was already asleep and left early before Niki woke up. They saw very little of each other. Yet Niki continued to loom large in Popi's life. She felt Niki's presence all the time. Whether she was debating in the council chamber, fondling books in the library, or singing for the dead at funerals, Niki's aura was always with her. She could smell it. Sometimes she even felt that she was seeing everything through Niki's eyes.

Serenity had now descended upon Niki. She spent her mornings collecting cow-dung. And her afternoons sitting on a grass mat, watching worker bees fly in and out of the two hives that she had constructed in her backyard. Her face was scarred and cracked like a dried-up swamp experiencing a prolonged drought.
Her cheeks had become very hard and discoloured even as serenity set upon her. Black and blue chubaba patches blotched the rough terrain. The hair that peeked from under her doek was grey and spiky. The whites of her eyes had lost their whiteness and turned yellowish-brown.

Serenity rested on her shoulders like a heavy log.

T
HESE BROWN PEOPLE ARE
less distorted than the trinity's usual people. Perhaps it is because they carry a load of sorrow contained in a blue coffin. A small coffin that two brown men hold in their arms close to their chests. Dark brown jackets. Light brown pants. Their eyes are closed and their brown-haired heads touch as they bow above the coffin. They have to walk sideways stepping carefully on the brown ground with their bare feet. A small crowd of brown women and children follow them. Eyes closed. A barefoot girl in a brown blanket. An older girl in a blue dress. A young woman in a white dress. Two women in brown blankets. One wearing a blue doek. A grandmother in a brown blanket and blue dress. Age has cut her height to that of the barefoot girl. The brown and blue roofs of township houses stretch to the light brown sky behind the funeral crowd.

Popi's voice rose above all voices. Its undulations carried from the cemetery to the houses of Mahlatswetsa Location a kilometre away, sending tremors of comfort even to those who had not bothered to attend the funeral. Those who had become nonchalant about funerals. They needed to be comforted, too. It was their death as much as it was that of the little boy who lay in the coffin,
and of the bereaved mother who sat on a mat next to the mound that would cover her son, listening to the pastor of the Methodist Church reading the last rites.

Death lived among the people of Mahlatswetsa every day. In days gone by, a funeral was a rare occasion that everyone talked about. That everyone attended. Death was something that happened to the men who worked in the mines of Welkom, who were brought home in pine coffins after their lungs had been eaten by phthisis. Or after “the table” had collapsed on them in the dark holes where they ferreted for the gold that made white women beautiful and glittery. Death was something that happened to the aged who had lived their time on earth.

But these days death was, as the Basotho people put it in their adage, the daughter-in-law of all homesteads. Young men came home to die after being eaten by AIDS. Young women infected their unborn babies, who died soon after reaching toddlerhood. The little boy for whom Popi was singing had been more fortunate. He had reached the age of six before the disease had reduced him to a living skeleton that could not move from the bed. It was a relief for his mother when he finally gave up and breathed his last. She knew too that soon it would be her turn. Like him, she would be reduced to bones. She would be laid to rest in this very cemetery. And hopefully Popi would sing for her as well.

Popi was indeed kept busy singing at funerals. Sometimes in a single Saturday there would be three funerals, one after another. And she would sing at them all. She did not sing only at the funerals of the Methodists. She sang at Roman Catholic funerals. And mastered their hymns, which she thought lacked the liveliness and the danciness of Methodist hymns. She sang at Dutch Reformed Church funerals. And at the funerals of the Zionist Independent Christian Churches. Once she even sang at a funeral for white people. A whole family had been wiped out. Father, mother, a son and two daughters. It was one of the tragedies that had become part of the Afrikaner tradition, in which the father—faced with financial ruin and unpaid Land Bank loans—killed his whole family
and then himself. Lizette de Vries, who since becoming mayor had been working closely with Popi, took her to this funeral. All eyes were on the coloured “girl” who sang Afrikaans hymns with such a heavenly voice. The Reverend François Bornman, who conducted the funeral service, stared at her and remembered Stephanus Cronje. What would he have made of this sweet-voiced creature?