Authors: Shamim Sarif
Miriam’s general attitude to Amina that day was one of curiosity, with an underlying sense of disapproval. For Farah’s friends came to the house at least twice a week to gossip. They would bring with them boxes of hard-skinned, green mangoes to cut up for pickles, or a week’s worth of dry garlic bulbs for peeling, and over their work they would talk. Looking down at her own heap of peeled cloves, Miriam had seen only the smart flashing of ten or twelve blades in the still air around her as they chopped and scored, and she had listened as they had made thorough work of blaming Amina’s dead grandmother for the sins of her granddaughter.
“She steered that girl wrong from the start. Taught her to be too proud and above herself. Where does it get you?”
“But Begum had a hard life…
”
“If you mess with the blacks, you can expect a hard life…
”
“She didn’t even feel any shame. Imagine. No shame. And this girl is exactly the same. Her poor mother!”
Miriam finished dressing Jehan and together they waited for Farah to appear. Her
bhabhi
, almost sick with the excitement of eating out, had dressed as though for a wedding, in a fiercely pink
shalwaar kameez
, while Miriam herself wore a simple printed skirt and blouse. At first, Jehan could not be persuaded to come out of her room, and chattered continuously while Farah shouted and cajoled and finally slapped the girl to stop the flow of meaningless talk. At the sting of the hand on her face, Jehan was silent suddenly, and then she laughed, loud and long, as though sharing a private joke with her attacker. This unexpected laughter had long ago ceased to surprise Miriam, but it’s incongruous nature, the way that it spilled out without reason or warning still chilled her. She had heard it first on the night that she and Omar had arrived in South Africa. She had entered her new brotherin-law’s house, nervous and shy, a little way behind her husband, with her head down and her heart pounding, and she had found herself in the middle of a screaming argument.
Two small children sat silent and scared on the floor beneath the table, and watched as their parents, Miriam’s new in-laws, screamed at each other. Or rather, Omar’s brother shouted - Farah attacked pointedly and venomously with a sarcastic comment now and then. Omar had turned and glanced at Miriam briefly, with eyes filled with embarrassment, and then he had shouted to his brother to be quiet, he was here, and what kind of a way was this to behave? The room was silenced, and her new sister-in-law had turned at once to look at Miriam, and at the same time she had smiled, a sly smile of triumph directed at her silenced husband. He was incensed, and had shouted at her again, “So you think this is funny? Now you laugh at me?” Miriam had watched appalled from beneath lowered lids as he continued to shout, with a voice that kept catching, that nobody would ever laugh at him, he wouldn’t allow it, there was nothing funny, nothing to laugh about, did she understand? And it was then Miriam had heard it first, that long, low laughter, maniacal and strange, issuing from a back room somewhere, with impeccable timing, in the middle of Sadru’s warning speech.
It was her first introduction to Omar’s elder sister, Jehan, the one whose inherent mental slowness had been partnered with a kind of madness after a bout of syphilis some years before. The word ‘syphilis’ was whispered with a significant nod by Farah, but the word and all its associations were alien to Miriam; she thought perhaps it was a peculiarly African disease, though she could not grasp how it was contracted, and she prayed privately that she would never catch it.
Holding Jehan between them, Miriam and Farah left the children with a neighbour, and then walked the several blocks to the café, beneath purple-blossomed laburnum trees and past the leaning rows of houses, from whose windows a few people waved at them as they passed. Jehan waved back with much windmilling of her arms, chattering all the while, and Farah walked a few paces ahead of them, itching with irritation.
When they entered the café, they were supremely self-conscious, but few people seemed to show any particular interest in their arrival. Jacob Williams waited behind the counter for a few moments while the three women arranged themselves in one of the booths that ran along the walls. Then he walked slowly over to the table, one leg a little stiff from the arthritis that was slowly invading his body, and nodding politely, he placed down three menus.
“We have mutton stew today, and fresh
keoksisters
,” he said.
Jehan clapped her hands in approval. “
Koeksisters
,
koeksisters
,
koeksisters
,” she said.
“Shhh!” said Farah.
“What are
koeksisters
?” stumbled Miriam, half to Jacob, half to her
bhabhi
.
“Here, try for yourself,” said a voice by her side, and she looked up to see a long fork held before her. A small golden fried doughnut sprinkled with coconut was impaled upon it, and Amina Harjan held the other end.
“See if you like it,” she suggested again, and shyly, Miriam took the
koeksister
from the fork. Breaking it in two, she passed one piece to Jehan and placed the other in her mouth. The warm, sweet doughnut tasted ripely of yeast and melted away in Miriam’s mouth.
“Do you like it?” asked Amina, smiling
“It’s delicious,” said Miriam.
“We’ll have some,” said Farah.
“
KOEKSISTERS
!” screamed Jehan, and Miriam blushed crimson.
Everyone in the cafe, it seemed, had turned to look at their table. In the sudden silence, Jehan shouted out again, an unintelligible word this time, and from the table behind them came a snort of laughter, a derisive, mocking sound. Amina looked around, and stood watching the occupants of the table for a long moment. When she finally asked Miriam and Farah what else they might like to eat, she was still watching, and she turned away only to nod briefly to Jacob. He nodded back, and by the time Amina had walked back to the kitchen with the new lunch order, he had given those customers their bill, taken part of their money, and the people were leaving. That they had not yet finished their lunch seemed to be irrelevant, and Miriam marvelled at the power this young girl, younger even than she, seemed to wield over those around her.
The three women sat, without speaking, and waited for their food. Over the murmurs of the other diners, they could hear from the kitchen the sound of Amina’s voice, and that of the cook, and the sizzle of hot oil, and then the bounce and scratch of a record being placed upon the old gramophone behind the counter. The straining strings started up, wavered and then righted themselves to form the opening bars of “Night and Day”. This was not a song Miriam had ever heard before. She listened to the radio often in the kitchen at home, and she knew many of Cole Porter’s and other American melodies by heart, though she could not really put a name to any of them. Miriam looked over at the record sleeve propped up on the counter. It was hard for her to make out the details from where she sat, but she could see the outline of a man’s face. The cover was lifted away as she peered at it, and she realised that it was being brought towards her, under the arm of Jacob Williams. He stopped at the table and deposited a bowl of steaming mutton stew, a platter of baked pumpkin, and a plate of bread yellow with corn grains. Then he removed the record sleeve from under his arm and offered it to Miriam.
“Amina says you might be interested to see this, ma’am,” he said, and Miriam thanked him and took it. Farah stared and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Why did he bring this?” she asked, putting a piece of bread before Jehan, who ate hungrily.
Miriam shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they saw I was looking at it.”
“Maybe she likes you,” she said, but without any kindness, and with a laugh that Miriam could not read. She ignored Farah and looked down at the record cover. It was, as she had thought, a portrait of Cole Porter. Miriam listened to the record as it skipped along. “In the roaring traffic’s boom, in the silence of my lonely room, I think of you, night and day…
”
Even that name, Cole Porter, seemed to be invested with such glamour, and such a sense of the debonair. The picture was black and white and grainy, but there he sat, hair slicked back with Brylcreem, leaning in towards his piano, eyebrows raised at the camera, a slightly sardonic expression on his face.
When Miriam looked up, Farah was still watching her. But for once, Miriam did not care. Her ten days of counting, of watching for some sign of concern or pleasure or kindness, had finally been ended with the smile Amina Harjan had given her.
T
HE LAST DAY
of each month was pay-day for the scores of Africans who worked on the farms that surrounded the shop, and the day that the overseers, or occasionally the owners themselves, would drive their workers to the shop, clutching their small amounts of tattered cash, so that they could buy whatever dry supplies and clothes they might need for the following month. They started to arrive early, usually just after Sam and Alisha had left on the bus for school in Springs, and it was always the busiest day of the month for the shop. As usual, they had all been preparing since very early that morning. There was plenty of fruit, enough bags of
mealies
, and the dark wooden counters were clear. Omar stood checking his stock and making the occasional scratch with his pencil on the pad of paper that lay next to the till. He looked up for his wife. Squinting through the sun that glanced off the window panes, he could see her outside, hanging washing out to dry.
Everything she was clipping to the line was white. He could see Sam’s tiny vests and his own bright, white shirts, almost blue under the unrelenting light of the sun. He shut his eyes against the glow, and for a moment the shop ceased to exist. He was not here, out in the African wilderness; he was not the father of two small children; he was not a struggling shopkeeper; he was not married to a woman he hardly spoke to. In his mind, he was transported. He was in Bombay for a visit, young, eager, fresh from South Africa, feted by his uncle and aunt. He saw himself, as though he were watching a documentary film, standing out on his uncle’s tiny balcony, smoking a cigarillo, and listening to an unknown girl chatting on the balcony above. His curiosity had risen so high that he had leaned forward and looked up. That had been his first glance of his future wife. Then, as now, she had been hanging out a basket of washing, a waving line of pure white against the whitewashed walls and the sun bleached sky. His eyes had swum with red outlines for a moment, and when he recovered he had to squint to see her. She had also been wearing white, as though she were part of the conspiracy of light that glowed against him. But she was attractive - he had seen more beautiful, more conventionally pretty girls, but this one was tall and lithe and laughing, and he had liked her.
“Shall I make some tea?” Miriam asked, her voice small in the large, quiet space of the shop. He looked up and nodded, and she went into the kitchen. At the range, she stopped abruptly and gripped the cold edge of the stove, and waited while a surge of dizziness passed over her. She closed her eyes for a few moments, and then looked out through the window for the first trucks. There was no sign of them yet, but she could see Robert walking slowly towards the shop from the store room, carrying a huge squash in each arm. At the back door he bent very slowly at the knees, so that his bony legs almost buckled, and lowered the vegetables gently onto the ground. He had dropped one earlier, and Omar had shouted at him not to be so clumsy - who did he think would buy a bruised squash? Robert had not been able to think of anyone who would, and had therefore accepted his admonishment with good grace, and now he carried the squashes with utmost care, cradling them in each of his thin sinewy arms as delicately as if they were chubby children. His boss shouted at him frequently, and although there were often times when he was sure he had not done the thing he had been accused of, he bore all the shouting in silence and apologised where necessary. It had never occurred to him that he might defend himself - it was not his place.
Anyway, no amount of shouting could make him unhappy to be working for these people. Although his wage was small, his mistress would often send him home with leftover food, or bits of material for his mother to use in sewing clothes, and she treated him well. She trusted him with the children. He knew about children - he himself was the second of seven surviving brothers and sisters. Robert’s eldest brother was in Johannesburg, working in the mines. His family had celebrated when his brother had left for the city, for they were hungry for income, and Johannesburg was were the jobs were. But his brother lived in rough conditions, and worked in even worse ones. Robert had been there once to visit him, and had had to share with his brother a tiny bed in a concrete building that housed more than one hundred men. The beds were so crammed together that Robert felt the raw breath of the man in the next bunk upon his face for most of the night. His brother was thinner than he had been at home, and his face was worn and creased with dust. He coughed almost all the time that he was awake. The mines were dark and cramped and the air was bad, his brother said, and the hours so very long. Robert had left after three days, sorrowful at having to leave his brother there, but unable to contain his own relief at the realisation that if that was how life was in the city, he would be happy to remain in the countryside.
The kettle began its high-pitched whine, and Miriam spooned two heaps of the crushed dried tea leaves into the pot, then carried a cup in to her husband.
“Thank you,” he said, but he did not look up.
For a short while they went about their little tasks, and though neither one spoke, Miriam sang softly to herself, a tune that had begun as an old standard but which was being improvised into something longer and sweeter. Omar glanced narrowly at her, being careful not to move his head, or she would see him and stop singing, assuming that she was irritating him. This singing of hers was another thing that he remembered from that balcony in Bombay. He frowned at himself. He was not a man given to sentimentality or nostalgia, but today these memories kept pushing back into his mind. He had gone out on the balcony on the second day to smoke and she had been above him again, singing quietly, unaware that below her someone was listening intently. With a sudden burst of decision, and with the soft tones of her voice still lingering in his head, he had gone back into the apartment and had demanded to know who that girl was.
His aunt had raised her eyes from her sewing. “What girl?”
“The one that lives above us,” he had said. “The one that sings and hangs the washing.”
His aunt had shaken her head. “She is a very pretty girl. But she is not for you.”
He had waited, with impatience, for her to explain herself.
“Her family is very humble,” she had added at last.
“Humility is a good thing.”
“Very poor,” she had emphasised.
And Omar had waved his cigarillo dismissively. “Are they our people?”
“Yes.”
“Then I want her.”
When eventually they heard the approaching rumble of the first truck, they looked up at each other and Miriam moved with the practice of routine out across the shop floor to prop open the door with a small bag of flour.
The truck was driven by Mr Wessels, the foreman of the Van Wingen farm, and he ground the pick-up slowly up the track to the shop. The back of the truck was fully weighed down by his worker. There were perhaps twenty or thirty men crowded onto the back-sitting piled high and hanging over each of the sides, draped over the back like banners, their bodies moving like fluid with the rough movements of the truck. They jumped off lightly when it stopped, a slow overflowing of bodies, mostly clad in worn trousers and shirts. Mr Wessels was already in the shop, shaking hands with Omar, tipping his hat to “the missus”, and telling them it was “hot as the breath of hell out there,” before handing over his own list of groceries to be boxed up. Miriam set to work on these, while the foreman bounded out to the porch and beckoned his men inside.
In they poured, moving slowly, filling every corner, while Robert watched them, a mixture of welcome and warning on his face. He had been told by Omar to watch carefully for anyone who might shoplift, and he took his duty seriously. The men milled about the shop, selecting their purchases and then stepping up to the counter to have them rung up on the huge metal cash register. A few bought only cold drinks and sat outside on the steps, talking and watching the dust from the truck settle around them.
Omar spoke to Mr Wessels occasionally throughout, but rarely to any of the Africans, except to give a price or clarify a request, although few of the workers asked him anything – often they looked more easily to Miriam to help them. One asked the price of some cloth for a dress for his daughter. When she told him, he shook his head and said it was too much, and could she bring the price down? She lowered it by two pennies as she knew she could, but he held out his poor salary in one roughened hand, and asked her how could he pay so much? She looked at the money in his palm and could not answer him. Miriam glanced at Omar to ask if she might take the price lower, but he looked across at her as he rang up the till and shook his head. She looked helplessly to the man, but he too had seen her husband’s response and was already gone.
Robert also helped serve behind the counter, and he chatted now and then with the workers, greeting one or two, and laughing. As she watched him, Miriam felt the prickle of a gaze upon her, and her eyes went to the front of the shop where one of the workers stood apart, drinking from a bottle of Coke, and watching her. He looked her up and down, slowly, and she felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise.
“Don’t trust the
kaffirs
,” her
bhabhi
had once told her. “They want only one thing - from their own women, and from white women and Indian women too. They do. And they are strong,” she had added. “If they attack you, there is nothing you can do. And then there is the syphilis. And God knows what else.” It was only then that Miriam had her first inkling of what had caused her sister-in-law’s illness. But when she had asked about Jehan, Farah just laughed and said that Omar and Sadru only preferred to think that Jehan had been raped.
“Your sister-in-law had a
boyfriend
,” Farah had laughed. “Almost as retarded as she is, for god’s sake, but he loved her.”
“Why didn’t they get married?” Miriam had wanted to know.
“Because he was a
kaffir
,” Farah told her impatiently. “He hung around for weeks, until the men in the family caught him and almost beat the life out of him. He had to stay away in the end.”
When she looked up again, the African worker was gone, replaced in her mind by a brutal vision of kicking and beating, the cold imaginings which had come to her so often after hearing Farah’s flippant story. Outside, Mr Wessels was shouting for everyone to get back on the truck. He spoke in English, for Afrikaans was the White language. Omar spoke it – he had learnt it at school here, but the Africans usually only knew enough to comprehend their masters and, if they worked domestically, their white mistresses. Mr Wessels moved among the men, grasping a stick in his hand which he never used, only leaned on, or twirled about, using it as a prop, rather as other men might keep their hands busy with a cigarette. He shooed the workers back onto the truck as though they were so many huge birds, and one by one, they arranged themselves into the back, the last few perched on the sharp edges, keeping alight with a practiced sense of balance.
They were relieved when the last truckload had left, and it was still only one o’clock. This pay-day had fallen on a Wednesday, and that meant that they would receive a visit from the sons of their landlord. George and David Kaplan often stopped by the shop “on their way through” to somewhere, for a pack of cigarettes, or some small item. But in addition they always came by on the last Wednesday afternoon of each month for a social visit that softened the collection of the rent money with talk of politics and weather, and often they brought their wives.
The two Mrs Kaplans held a fascination for Miriam that she could not explain. It seemed to her that they always floated into the shop, bringing with them the slow whisper of a chiffon dress, the soft pastel of their low-heeled pumps, a shimmer of blonde hair and the lingering scent of expensive French perfume. Their voices were high and laughing, filled with delight at greeting Miriam, as though she were the one and only thing they could have wished to see upon entering the shop. While their husbands talked business with Omar around the table in the back room, the wives stayed in the shop with Miriam, sipping tea and chatting.
They arrived today at two o’clock, the usual hour, by which time Robert had helped Miriam to set the tea-tray with a fresh cloth, embroidered by her own hand, and three cups and saucers from their best set of dishes. The milk was poured into a china jug that had once belonged to Omar’s mother, the white sugar was brought out to replace the everyday brown, and then a replica of the whole tea-tray was set upon a white cloth on the back room table for the men, to whom Robert would serve tea, while Miriam took care of the wives herself. In the kitchen, Robert kept a careful eye on the sponge cakes that were rising gently in the great range oven.
The car pulled up smoothly, and all they had heard of its approach was the slow crunch of the dust and stones beneath the solid tyres – a delicate advance, far removed from the rumble and grind of the farmers’ trucks. Miriam sipped from a glass of soda water, trying quickly to overcome the light-headedness and nausea that she had felt in passing waves throughout the day. She looked out at the car, long and black and gleaming. She had no idea what make of car it was - Omar had told her once, as they watched it pull away, but she had forgotten. It was beautiful, though, redolent of a world which Miriam could hardly fathom, and she could only imagine what it must be like to sit ensconced in that shiny casing, sinking into the leather seats, and listening to dance music on the little radio that was fitted into the wooden dashboard.