Afrika (17 page)

“Back to Cape Town?” asked Kim.

Riana nodded. “Yes. The amnesty hearing involving Themba's father is scheduled for Friday.”

The air was cool as they walked back on the tree-lined road to the hotel. The croaking of crickets filled the night with shrill obsessive sounds like the questions in her head:
Who was her father? Why keep him a secret? Why did he not contact them?
Kim was about to ask but before she could, Riana's cell rang. It was her producer. He wanted a background story on one of the victims. Kim sighed as her mom promised to stay up late and finish off another report. Tonight would not be the time to get the answers Kim needed.

With Riana at work early the next morning, Kim explored Lion's River's main store. She had
never seen a shop like this: it smelled of mothballs and talcum powder, and had everything in it from jawbreakers and half loaves of bread to clothes and household wares. As she stared at the long strips of yellow flypaper spiraling down from the ceiling, she tried to focus on the Afrikaans conversation between the ancient old clerk and a girl about her age in a school uniform. Kim was surprised by how much of the conversation she understood and was relieved to have some place to distract her thoughts. All morning she'd rehearsed various conversations she wanted to have with her mother. But she found her mind jumping to Hendrik. She had a lot to ask him as well. She imagined herself, calm as a detective, peppering him with questions, making him do the talking. In another scenario, her mind filled with accusations.
You must be hiding something! You didn't contact me. Not one lousy time.

By late afternoon Kim had made her way to the hall where the hearings were taking place and waited outside for her mom. It was a warm afternoon and some of the journalists and lawyers were sipping cold drinks on small chairs and tables set out on polished red tiles. Kim sat away from them and dangled her long legs over the stoep wall. Riana had appeared briefly, dressed in hemp pants and a man's wrinkled white shirt.

“Mom,” Kim had pleaded. “At least tuck in your shirt.” Reluctantly Riana did as she was told before she darted inside to say good-bye to colleagues. Now Kim sat with a messy pile of Riana's belongings: her battered leather bag, sweater, tape recorder, glasses, and notes.

Kim enjoyed the sensation of letting her eyelids close and open in the cozy heat of the stoep. The sun was dropping in the sky, tinting everything lime-green and gold. The vegetation had changed, sprung to life, just as Oom Piet had promised.

She could hear distant cheers from a cricket game as it wound down. Occasionally, a car went by on the dusty road in front of the hall. It would soon be evening. Kim remembered the girl in the shop, and wondered how she passed her time in a small town like this. Bored, Kim set her mom's tape recorder on her lap and pushed the PLAY button.

A hoarse female voice with a heavy African accent spoke. “When I went to the police to ask about my parents they said I must go to the mortuary. An uncle took me and we identified the bodies. ‘Are you sure?’ they asked us. ‘Yes,’ we answered. ‘We are sure.’ From that moment my life changed forever. I was fourteen at the time and I had to be mother and father to the younger children. I could not finish school. I could not take a job outside the
house. I could not take opportunities. You see, sir, my parents' death was a murder. But our family unit was murdered too.”

A hawker with bags of tomatoes in his arms strolled past the veranda, chanting: “Five rands a bunch. Five rands a bunch.” Kim turned her attention back to the tape. The next speaker was a man with a deep distinct voice. “I dreamed of studying abroad,” he began. “Ja, I had dreams like that. ‘Solly Bosman, you are a born professor,’ the aunties told me often. But I did not further my education. My problems began when I got a job teaching school, but I did not teach the curriculum that was expected. Instead, I taught the real history using the names of our legitimate heroes and leaders. The principal took me aside and asked: ‘Why, Solly? Why be an agitator? It is dangerous because the white authorities are watching you.’ It was not the end of the story. One day the police came into my classroom and took me away. Not to the station but to a deserted farm. They hung me upside down. They put electric shocks on the bottoms of my feet and later dropped me off the roof of the barn. They wanted me to denounce my students, give up the names of those who had participated in rallies. When I would not, they shocked me again. This time in my intimate parts.” He cleared his throat and added, “Even
today, Mr. Chairman, because of these injuries, my manhood is diminished. And I have no longer use of my legs because of the fall from the barn roof.”

Kim clicked the STOP button. In the field across from her, a school group was packing up a picnic. Straw hats bobbed up and down with laughter. She trembled as she put her mom's tape recorder back in the leather bag.

“Solly, would you like a cool drink?” boomed a voice behind her. Kim turned to see a tall, brown-skinned man enter the stoep beside a man in a wheelchair. They had just come out of the hearings and they were both dressed in suits.

“I'm fine,” said the man in the wheelchair.“But I'm glad that is behind me. Thanks, man, for bringing me up here.”

Kim froze. She recognized the male voice. It was the one on her mom's tape.

The man wheeled himself close to where Kim sat. She couldn't help but stare at him. “Afternoon,” he said to her. He had short gray hair and thick glasses.

“Hello,” said Kim, suddenly shy. A car squealed to a stop in front of them, and Kim was relieved to have this distraction. Everyone on the stoep turned to stare. The driver got out, and squatted down to look underneath the car. A skinny woman with
blonde cascading hair flung open the passenger door. “It was a rock!” she cried in an American accent. “It was a rock the size of a tortoise.”

“Sure enough,” grumbled the driver. “Water is dripping onto the ground.”

The man in the wheelchair turned to Kim. “Look, the foreign journalists are having troubles with their rented car.”

The tall man went forward. “The petrol station is closed for the night. How far must you travel?” he asked the American couple.

The man looked up at him. “Only a few miles. We are staying at Bushbaby Camp.”

The tall man called to a waitress. “Mama, please bring me some Sunlight soap,” he said.

“Come, Hendrik, what are you up to now?” laughed the man in the wheelchair.

In a moment the waitress came back with a bar of soap.

“I will take chips off the soap and massage them between my palms,” he explained. Kim watched as he scraped slivers of soap off with his thumbnail. Then he kneaded them between his hands. “Look what I get – ‘Plasticine.’”

The tall man pushed the putty into the crack in the radiator. “In the morning ask someone at the petrol station to fix the leak,” he said as he straightened up.

“Thanks a million,” said the American journalist. “Can we give you a ride?”

“No, thank you,” he responded. “We are traveling all the way back to Cape Town tonight and we have our own car.”

The Americans drove off. The terrace was growing dark. The waitress brought out candles and set them on the tables. Then the man in the wheelchair spoke to Kim. “Do you know the time?”

Kim looked at her watch. “Six o'clock,” she said.

The tall man stooped forward to look at Kim. “I detect an accent,” he said with a smile.

“I'm Canadian,” said Kim. “My mom's a journalist.”

Kim stared right into his eyes. They were gentle, wrinkled up with his smile. “A Canadian journalist?” he asked.

“My mom's South African. She grew up on a farm near here. But we live in Canada now.”

The handicapped man pivoted his chair around. “I will use the nice toilets here before we go. Just think, Hendrik, the cubicles have been constructed not only for Africans, but for Africans in wheelchairs,” he added with a laugh as he wheeled himself into the building.

Kim and the tall man were alone. Kim wondered why he was staring at her.

“Have you been in South Africa long?” he asked.

“Almost three months.”

“Well, what do you think of our country?”

Kim wasn't sure what she was going to say until she spoke. “I'm glad my mom brought me.”

They both looked past the twisted aloes and thorn trees to the empty Karoo veld beyond the town. The land that spread out in front of them looked raw and prehistoric in the dimness.

At that moment Riana returned. Her white shirt was only half tucked in at the waist and she had a paper cup of coffee. She stopped dead when she saw the face of the man standing beside Kim.

Riana put her coffee down on a table. She was very pale.

“My God,” said the tall man. “Riana. Let me look at you.”

Kim swallowed. Her heart was beating into her ears. Riana stepped back.

The man cleared his throat and turned to Kim: “My name is Hendrik Fortune. I'm your father.”

T
he next morning Riana got up early to pack for the long ride to Cape Town. While her mother was in the bathroom, Kim lay fully dressed on her hotel bed listening to bird noises and reliving the unexpected meeting with her father. Today she could hardly remember what he looked like. He was tall with brown skin – more than a tan, she thought – and gentle eyes. He had laughed when Kim told Riana how he'd put soap putty on the radiator of the Americans' car. Hendrik and Riana hardly spoke. They kept looking at each other like they were seeing ghosts. But before Hendrik left, he had asked if they could meet in Cape Town. He gave them his card. Soon after, he wished them a safe journey and left with his friend.

Riana interrupted Kim's thoughts by plopping a container and plastic spoon into her hands.

“What's this?” Kim asked.

“Pot-pudding,” Riana said. “One of the translators gave it to me.” Kim tasted it and declared it
delicious. “We'll take the rest with us,” said her mother. “We need to get on the road. Come on. It's going to rain.”

Blue-black clouds were forming when they climbed into the rental car. Riana sipped a coffee and stared at the road ahead of them. Kim was concerned about her. Since they had seen Hendrik, Riana had withdrawn into her own world.

“Are you upset about yesterday?”

Riana shifted gears. The bottom of the rental car scraped the dirt road. “No, I'm fine.”

Kim settled into her seat and watched the bush spread for miles in front of the low hills beyond.

“What should I call him?” Kim asked after some time had passed. They were still on a dirt road, had to go slow, and then finally stop altogether to allow a few cows to cross the road. “Hendrik? Mr. Fortune? Dad?”

Riana drummed her hand on the steering wheel. The cattle passed and the rental car rattled and gained speed. Rain in the night had made the land less thirsty and given life to the bush. Still, the dust was everywhere, and they had to shut the windows tight to keep it out of the car.

Kim opened the container of pot-pudding and shared with Riana. Riana wiped some off the corner of her mouth. “Themba's grandmother, Elsie, used to make this on the farm,” she said. “Elsie was
like a mother to me. When I was little she put me on her back in a sling and carried me all over the farm. When I was older she washed my grazed knees and rocked me when I was sick. Then, one day, I realized that she had her own children.” Riana paused. Her mouth stiffened. “It was quite a shock. It had never occurred to me until she showed me the photos of Lettie and Rosie. They were with relatives in the Transkei. By law they were not allowed to live with her. I never realized that by raising me, providing me with all the comfort and beauty that she did, she was missing her own children.”

Kim stared at her mom. It was as if the pudding had loosened a rush of memories.

Riana swirled her plastic spoon through the thick pudding and continued.“When I was your age, I went to school, sitting on the leather seats of my parent's car, my ankles crossed neatly in little white socks. I was happy with my life. I trusted it. I didn't ask questions. I didn't think to ask why it was that only Blacks formed lines in the sun at bus stops. My mind was always on some bit of homework, pleasing a teacher, getting a good grade.”

The pot-pudding was finished. Kim took a gulp of water from her bottle. A car passed them and streaked off down the road, a brown cloud rising behind it. The sky had grown dark. Large, noisy raindrops spattered down.

Riana continued, “I was a naive farm girl. But by the time I enrolled at university, I was beginning to wake up, albeit slowly. I was nineteen and this part has to do with your father. We were both at the University of Cape Town, a multiracial institution. It had been a huge fight for me to attend. Oupa and Ouma were dead set against it, but in the end I won – only because I told them I wouldn't go at all if I couldn't go there. It was the first time I met people of different backgrounds as equals, as friends. For almost fifty years apartheid forced the people of South Africa to live apart as Blacks, Whites, Indians, and Coloreds. I never really knew until then what the laws meant. How everything my life was based on – all the beauty and safety – was a lie! And it was Hendrik who showed me the lies.”