Bloodlines (38 page)

I listened to Solomon’s little speech, made for McWilliams’ benefit, and I was mortified, at first for Khabazela, and then for myself. I looked at him, wondering what he was thinking, but his face was a mask, his mouth expressionless. Only in his eyes did I see any evidence of the man I knew was there, and I might have imagined even that—the impression on a stone surface of a sudden, fleeting ripple that quickly disappeared, leaving no trace. I looked at him again, trying to find some indication of how he wanted to handle this moment, but there was still nothing.

How we handled this first interaction in front of the farm overseer was important, and it would set the stage for what followed. Khabazela didn’t want to initiate discussion—it would have been obvious that something was off. So he stood back, allowing me to control the conversation as I would have done in any normal interaction with a farm worker. Like all black people in South Africa, he had learned early to play the game of self-abnegation, to make himself smaller than he was in any conversation with a white person.

But now that I was in the game, too, I had to play the role life had assigned me—and I had to find my own way of playing it. I didn’t know whether Khabazela was stepping back because he thought I would do better without his interference, or because he was testing me—trying to find out whether I would be dismissive and belittling, or whether, playing the white farmer to his black farmhand, I would find a way to be courteous and respectful. Either way, I realized that this was the beginning of what our public life would be, and while I wanted to make it as palatable as I could for him, it also needed to be real to anyone watching. It was a tall order, and I had not anticipated that McWilliams would be our first audience.

“
Sawubona
,” I said.

He nodded, looking at the ground.

“Mandla, you are the son of Solomon’s sister?”

“Yes,
Nkosikazi
.”

“Then you are Mandla Mkhize, of the Mavovo, Gcwabe and Mumbo clans,” I said.

For the first time he dropped the false slouch, raised his head and stood tall.

“It is who I am,” he said, and for a brief second he showed me his warm, humorous mouth. Only I knew that his expression was in acknowledgement of the fact that I had remembered his clan names from a ceremony in Zululand. Solomon smiled widely, but McWilliams looked at me with raised eyebrows. This was the first time I had spoken Zulu in front of him, and he was unable to hide his surprise that I knew Solomon’s clan names. He would never have given a moment’s thought to the family names of his workers. But I was enjoying myself.

“These are ancient and honorable clans,” I said. “This land is honored to have your uncle here as
induna
, caring for the farm. You would honor me if you took his advice and came here to work in my home.”

He removed his cap, twisted it between his hands, managed to squeeze a shy smile from his face. I had never seen him do anything shyly, and I found it charming.

“That would make me very happy,” he said, still smiling, “to come and cook for the
Nkosikazi
.”

For a brief moment he glanced up at me, and I was shaken by the conflict I saw in his eyes. Humor and mockery; humiliation and self-control, and underlying all, a burning fury. And then, in the same smooth, servile voice, “she will be also happy, too, because I am a very good cook.”

McWilliams laughed loudly as he turned to Solomon. “Your nephew thinks a lot of himself,” he said.

“He is young still,” said Solomon softly, “and he will learn.” He smiled. “But he is right about his cooking. He has learned well in Durban.”

Then, before McWilliams could respond, Solomon turned back to me.

“I will take him to my room, and get him some house clothes,” he said, “and then I will have one of the girls show him the kitchen until you come back to the house. Come.”

Khabazela nodded slowly to McWilliams, meeting his eye. Then he nodded in my direction and followed Solomon to the servant’s quarters behind the farmhouse.

“He’s an arrogant one,” said McWilliams. “Shows what happens when these country boys leave Zululand and go off to the city.”

“Thank you for your concern, Mr. McWilliams,” I said, “But I think I can handle it. And if he doesn’t work out in the kitchen, perhaps we’ll find another place for him.”

“Let me know if he gives you any trouble. If Solomon doesn’t keep him in line, I can always find a place for him in the fields.”

My new cook prepared and served me dinner that night, working side by side with Selina, the housemaid, who had been doing the cooking since I arrived, and who was relieved to have someone else in charge of the kitchen.

He picked a red rose from the garden and placed it in a vase on the table, and wearing the white jacket he had found in the pantry, with one eye on the kitchen door, he served me alone in the dining room. As he placed a half grapefruit before me, with a cherry at its center, he lightly brushed my hand with his. And when he returned to replace the grapefruit plate with salad, he paused briefly, his back to the kitchen door.

“I have missed you, my Michaela,” he murmured.

“Nothing like the way I’ve missed you,” I whispered, and then loudly, “thank you, Khabazela.”

When he came in to remove my salad plate and serve me a dish of stewed chicken and vegetables, he touched the back of my neck.

“Each night away from you I have fallen asleep with your face before me,” he murmured, “and with the feel of your skin beneath my fingers.”

“Thank you,” I said again, loudly. “Your uncle was right—they taught you well in the big kitchens in Durban. Where,” I whispered, “did you learn to cook like this? And how can I eat your food alone, while you whisper love in my ear?”

“Very well,
Nkosikazi
,” he said loudly, grinning. “I will leave you to eat in peace. But,” he murmured, “I come to you after midnight, and then we will whisper together, when there is no food standing between us, and when you will find it easier to reply.”

“I won’t need anything else tonight. And please let Selina know that she can go for the evening.” And then, in a whisper, “thank you.”

When I was through I carried my dishes into the empty kitchen, rinsed them, and left them in the sink to be washed the next day. I made myself a cup of tea and sat out on the verandah in the breeze from the river, reading a three-day-old newspaper. I watched the sun fall slowly behind the hills, dragging shadows behind it, until the hilltops were lined in golden slivers of light that gradually dimmed and then went out, leaving me to sit in darkness, listening to the night sounds on my farm. The cicadas droned loud and rhythmic; stream frogs added their intermittent dark hum. There were distant barking dogs and the lowing of cows, mournful bird cries from the hills, and the human sounds—drumming, and the faint sound of Zulu harmonies from the village; laughter and quiet talk from behind the house, where the servants were eating their late supper, Khabazela among them.

I sat quietly that first night, my heart throbbing with anticipation at what the darkness held for me. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and realized how hard I was gripping the arms of my chair only when my wrists became numb. I tried breathing deeply, attempting to take the African night into my body; willing it to absorb me into itself. I loved this place, and I wanted at that moment to be nowhere else—but it refused me, and I sat alone in my separateness until just before midnight. Then I rose and went inside, hoping that, when he came to me, he would be able to take me out of isolation, erase my loneliness, and make me feel as he always did—part of a grand, unknowable design that gave meaning to the little lives that are all we know.

As I write this to you, Steven, I have wondered whether to include the intimate details of my life as a young woman with Khabazela in this narrative; wondered whether you would find it inappropriate, disturbing, or even worthy of mockery or disgust. By now you are aware that young mothers have sexual thoughts and experiences; that they long for their men and for the intimacy of physical congress. I recognize now that because the relationship between us was forbidden, sexual thoughts of each other, making love, and the act of intercourse itself, were imbued with a dark power and with an intensity much greater than any sanctioned love I have ever experienced with another man. And because the hidden relationship we had was conducted in the dark of night, our intimacy was perforce sexual.

The girl I once was is gone; I write this as an old woman to a middle-aged son, and the reality is that neither of us knows the other. At this point, the worst you can do is refuse to read further. If I include intimate details here and perhaps elsewhere, it is in the hope that you will find them not just revealing, but illuminating. I do so knowing that you may find them instead distressing, or worse. They are a part of my own journey; a necessary part of your discovery of who I am, and who I have been.

I left the kitchen door unlocked, undressed in my bedroom and put on my robe. From the laundry closet I took two fresh bath towels and set them on the wooden stool beside the sink, drew myself a bath, and made sure that both the windows and the curtains were closed. When I first moved into the house, there were two shoulder-high wrought-iron stands on the verandah, and I had them carried inside and placed at each end of the bathroom. On each one I mounted three candles in brass holders, intending to use them for just this event. I lit all six candles, removed my robe and hung it on the back of the door, and turned off the tap and the electric light. In the suddenly softened glow and the absence of sound, I stood naked before the bathroom mirror, looking at the shadowed, darkened curves that were my body. I raised the hair off my neck and pinned it around the top of my head, and then examined myself in the flickering light.

At thirty-one I was slender; my belly betrayed no sign that I had ever been pregnant or given birth, and my waist was still narrow above hips that widened just enough to make me attractive in a womanly, rather than a girlish, way. My breasts were small, but full and round, and to me they seemed unchanged from what they had been before being milked by a baby boy who was now nine years old. Having reassured myself as well as possible that I was still as desirable as I had been a year earlier, I turned from the mirror and submerged myself in the warmth of the huge, white, claw-footed bathtub.

Khabazela came silently through the kitchen into the empty house, and he was already naked when he slowly closed the bathroom door behind him and stood shadowed in candlelight. He was all at once dark and brightly gleaming, curved and straight and arched, delicately made and thickly muscled. He was elongated and squat, smooth and yielding, and as firm and shaped as chiseled stone.

I reached for him as he lowered himself into the tub, and he sat facing me in the flickering shadows. Our eyes locked onto each other, he raised his fingers to my earlobe and traced down the side of my neck to my shoulder, across to the V of my collarbone. I knew where his fingers were going, and at the anticipation of his touch I felt a shudder of pleasure run through me. And then his fingers submerged, to trace the shape of my body beneath the surface. The water was warm, but his touch was warmer, and when I soaped my hands and went to wash him, the heat coming off his body made me gasp.

We washed each other gently, in silence; he let me soap his hair, and he leaned back in my arms so that I could rinse the shampoo from his head. When I was done he remained lying back against me and I ran my hands gently down his sides and his belly to where he emerged from the surface hard and thick, and I held him in one dwarfed, transparent hand, while with the other I twined my fingers in his tight curls and felt underneath where the skin of his scrotum loosened in the warm water.

When we were through washing, we rose up out of the heat and into the cool air and stood in the draining bathtub in a wet embrace, his body hard against the entire length of me, and with one arm hard about my waist he raised me just enough to enter me and we made love while I stood with my arms about his neck and one leg curled about his hips, pulling gently at his lips with my teeth, and kissing his full mouth with mine.

We dried each other and he led me to my bed; we pulled down the covers and made love again slowly on the cool, white sheets. The only sounds we allowed ourselves were those we could not prevent, and it was anyone’s guess as to which of us was less disciplined, or more pleasured, than the other.

When we were through we lay in each other’s arms. I lay with my head on his chest, the warmth of his skin on my cheek, the sweet acrid smell of our fresh lovemaking in my nostrils, and it was all bound together by the beating of his heart in my ear, by the echoing vibration that followed each beat, and by my astonishment at the delicacy, and the power, and the resonance of the muscle that pushed life blood through this man’s veins.

“So, Michaela, here you are on your farm. Now that you have it, are you happy?”

“It’s not the farm alone that makes me happy,” I answered, “but having you here with me. Can you tell me where you’ve been? Or how long I have you before you leave again?”