The Heart of Redness: A Novel Read online

  Acclaim for The Heart of Redness

  “A major step in the new South African novel—now a polyphony of voices, suddenly freed yet still shadowed by deep and immense riddles.”

  —The Village Voice

  “Zakes Mda writes of his troubled homeland with as much affection as outrage, as much love as lamentation . . . . This emotionally rich novel dares to seek redemption amid desolation. In these devastated lives, Mda finds grace, tenderness, even the kind of world-weary humor that is born of hardship.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “A novel of tremendous scope and deep human feeling, of passion and reconciliation. . . A seamless weave of history, myth, and realist fiction. It is, arguably, the first great novel of the new South Africa—a triumph of imaginative and historical writing.”

  —The Seattle Skanner

  “In an unaffected, generous style that blends social and magical realism, oral tradition and written history, Mda spins stories that both read like myth and chronicle ordinary South African life.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Jumping handily between past and present, Mda deftly renders the tensions between maintaining an indigenous culture and altering it in the name of progress.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Mda tells his country’s stories through beautifully realized characters whose search for love and connection take you up close to the black experience, past and present.”

  —Booklist

  “A prolific and prominent new voice of South African literature, Mda transforms historical events and invents new ones that express his continued concern, as in these two novels, that the liberators do not become the oppressors . . . A brilliantly profuse novel. . . provocatively offbeat and tragically weird.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “A nuanced story about belief, memory, and the complex legacies of colonialism and its contemporary heir, global capitalism. [Mda] paints a vivid picture of a new South Africa of uncertain future . . . where the past is deeply contested terrain and social equality remains a faraway dream.”

  —Mother Jones

  “Mda’s fascinating narrative skill reveals the past as a powerful presence in the present: of his characters, and of all of us, as we live.”

  —Nadine Gordimer

  “A work of extraordinary richness, suffused with genuine mythic power: comparable to the recently discovered fiction of Moses Iszegawa and Emmanuel Dongala—and not unworthy of comparison with the masterpieces of Chinua Achebe.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Rich in the sensuality and exoticism of African life.”

  —The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)

  Also by Zakes Mda

  The Madonna of Excelsior

  She Plays with Darkness

  Ways of Dying

  The

  Heart of

  Redness

  Zakes Mda

  THE HEART OF REDNESS. Copyright © 2000 by Zakes Mda. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mda, Zakes.

  The heart of redness / Zakes Mda.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-42174-5 ISBN 978-0-312-42174-8

  1. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction. 2. Xhosa (African people)—Fiction. 3. South Africa—Fiction. 4. Villages—Fiction. 5. Casinos—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9369.3.M4 H43 2002

  823'.914—dc21 2002025008

  First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First published in South Africa by Oxford University Press

  10 9 8 7 6

  DEDICATION

  There is a real-life trader in Qolorha, whose name is Rufus Hulley, who took me to places of miracles and untold beauty. He must not be mistaken for John Dalton, the trader of The Heart of Redness, who is purely a fictional character. I am grateful to Rufus, and to Jeff Peires, whose research—wonderfully recorded in The Dead Will Arise and in a number of academic papers—informed the historical events in my fiction. As for the people of Qolorha, they will forgive me for reinventing their lives.

  I wrote this novel in honor of new lives, among which I count my son Zukile, my daughter Zukiswa Zenzile Moroesi, and my daughter’s son, Wandile.

  The Heart of Redness

  1

  “Tears are very close to my eyes,” says Bhonco, son of Ximiya. “Not for pain . . . no . . . I do not cry because of pain. I cry only because of beautiful things.”

  And he cries often. Sometimes just a sniffle. Or a single tear down his cheek. As a result he carries a white handkerchief all the time, especially these days when peace has returned to the land and there is enough happiness to go around. It is shared like pinches of snuff. Rivers of salt. They furrow the aged face.

  Bhonco is different from the other Unbelievers in his family, for Unbelievers are reputed to be such somber people that they do not believe even in those things that can bring happiness to their lives. They spend most of their time moaning about past injustices and bleeding for the world that would have been had the folly of belief not seized the nation a century and a half ago and spun it around until it was in a woozy stupor that is felt to this day. They also mourn the sufferings of the Middle Generations. That, however, is only whispered.

  Bhonco does not believe in grieving. He has long accepted that what has happened has happened. It is cast in cold iron that does not entertain rust. His forebears bore the pain with stoicism. They lived with it until they passed on to the world of the ancestors.

  Then came the Middle Generations. In between the forebears and this new world. And the Middle Generations fleeted by like a dream. Often like a nightmare. But now even the sufferings of the Middle Generations have passed. This is a new life, and it must be celebrated. Bhonco, son of Ximiya, celebrates it with tears.

  NoPetticoat, his placable wife, is on the verge of losing patience with his tears. Whenever someone does a beautiful thing in the presence of her husband she screams, “Stop! Please stop! Or you’ll make Bhonco cry!”

  She dotes on him though, poor thing. People say it is nice to see such an aged couple—who would be having grandchildren if their daughter, Xoliswa Ximiya, had not chosen to remain an old maid—so much in love.

  It is a wonderful sight to watch the couple walking side by side from a feast. He, tall and wiry with a deep chocolate face grooved with gullies; and she, a stout matron whose comparatively smooth face makes her look younger than her age. Sometimes they are seen staggering a bit, humming the remnants of a song, their muscles obviously savoring the memory of the final dance of a feast.

  The custom is that men walk in front and women follow. But Bhonco and NoPetticoat walk side by side. Sometimes holding hands! A constant source of embarrassment to Xoliswa Ximiya: old people have no right to love. And if they happen to be foolish enough to harbor the slightest affection for each other, they must not display it in public.

  “Tears are close to my eyes, NoPetticoat,” snivels the man of the house, dabbing his eyes with the handkerchief.

  “A big man like you shouldn’t be bawling like a spoiled baby, Bhonco,�
� says the woman of the house, nevertheless putting her arm around his shoulders.

  A beautiful thing has happened. They have just received the news that Xoliswa Ximiya, their beloved and only child, has been promoted at work. She is now the principal of Qolorha-by-Sea Secondary School.

  Xoliswa Ximiya is not called just Xoliswa. People use both her name and surname when they talk about her, because she is an important person in the community. A celebrity, so to speak. She is highly learned too, with a B.A. in education from the University of Fort Hare, and a certificate in teaching English as a second language from some college in America.

  “They will not accept her,” laments NoPetticoat, as if to herself.

  “But she is a child of this community,” says Bhonco adamantly. “She grew up in front of their eyes. She became educated while others laughed and said I was mad to send a girl to school.”

  “They will say she is a woman. Remember the teacher who left? He was a man, yet they didn’t accept him. They made life very difficult for him. How much more for a woman?”

  “They made life difficult for him because he was uncircumcised. He was not a man. How could he teach our children with a dangling foreskin?”

  “I tell you, Bhonco, they won’t accept her. They will give my baby problems at that school!”

  “She is not a baby. She is thirty-six years old. And if they don’t accept her it will be the work of the Believers. They are jealous because they don’t have a daughter who is as educated,” says Bhonco, making it clear that the discussion is terminated.

  It had to come back to the war between the Believers and Unbelievers. They are in competition in everything.

  The early manifestation of this competition happened a few years ago when the Ximiyas bought a pine dining table with four chairs. The family became the talk of the community, since no one else in the village had a dining table those days. But Zim, of the family of Believers, had to burst the Ximiya bubble by buying exactly the same dining table, but with six chairs. That really irked the son of Ximiya and his supporters.

  Since then the war between the two families has become a public one. Their good neighbors await with bated breath the next skulduggery they will do against each other.

  The Cult of the Unbelievers began with Twin-Twin, Bhonco Ximiya’s ancestor, in the days of Prophetess Nongqawuse almost one hundred and fifty years ago. The revered Twin-Twin had elevated unbelieving to the heights of a religion. The cult died during the Middle Generations, for people then were more concerned with surviving and overcoming their oppression. They did not have the time to fight about the perils of belief and unbelief.

  But even before the sufferings of the Middle Generations had passed—when it was obvious to everyone that the end was near—Bhonco, son of Ximiya, resurrected the cult.

  He does not care that only his close relatives and himself subscribe to it. Nor does it matter to him that people have long forgotten the conflicts of generations ago. He holds to them dearly, for they have shaped his present, and the present of the nation. His role in life is to teach people not to believe. He tells them that even the Middle Generations wouldn’t have suffered if it had not been for the scourge of belief.

  Beautiful things are celebrated not only with tears. So Bhonco tells his wife that he will go to Vulindlela Trading Store to buy a tin of corned beef. NoPetticoat laughs and says he must not use the promotion of her baby as an excuse. He needs something salty because he had a lot to drink at the feast yesterday, and now he is nursing a hangover. Whoever heard of sorghum beer giving one a hangover? Bhonco wonders to himself.

  “While you are away I’ll go to the hotel to see if they have work for me,” says NoPetticoat as she adjusts her qhiya turban and puts a shawl over her shoulders. But her husband cannot hear her, for he has already walked out of their pink rondavel.

  NoPetticoat supplements the income from her old-age pension—or nkamnkam, as the people call it—by working as a babysitter at the Blue Flamingo Hotel. Tourists often come to enjoy the serenity of this place, to admire birds and plants, or to go to the Valley of Nongqawuse to see where the miracles happened. They book in at the Blue Flamingo, and leave their children with part-time nannies while they walk or ride all over the valley, or swim in the rough sea.

  NoPetticoat is occasionally called by the hotel management when there are babies to look after. However, when many days have passed without anyone calling her, she walks to the hotel to find out if there is any work. She has had to do that since she discovered that the managers call her only as a last resort. Their first choices are the young women whose bodies are still supple enough to make red-blooded male tourists salivate. Almost always when she goes without being called, she finds that indeed there are babies to look after, but a message has been sent to some shameless filly to come for the job. Invariably she fights her way and takes over.

  Bhonco drags his gumboots up the hillock to the trading store. His brown overalls are almost threadbare at the elbows and at the knees. He wears a green woolen hat that the people call a skullcap. He does not carry a stick as men normally do.

  Under his breath he curses the trader for building his store on the hill. But the breathtaking view from the top compensates for the arduous climb. Down below, on his right, he can see the wild sea smashing gigantic waves against the rocks, creating mountains of snow-white surf. On his left his eyes feast on the green valleys and the patches of villages with beautiful houses painted pink, powder blue, yellow, and white.

  Most of the houses are rondavels. But over the years a new architectural style, the hexagon, has developed. On the roofs of these voguish hexagons, corrugated iron appears under the thatch, like a petticoat that is longer than the dress. This is both for aesthetic reasons and to stop the termites. But Bhonco does not believe in this newfangled fashion of building hexagons instead of the tried and tested rondavel.

  From where he stands he can see the Gxarha River and the Intlambo-ka-Nongqawuse—Nongqawuse’s Valley. He can also see Nongqawuse’s Pool and the great lagoon that is often covered by a thick blanket of mist.

  Indeed, Qolorha-by-Sea is a place rich in wonders. The rivers do not cease flowing, even when the rest of the country knells a drought. The cattle are round and fat.

  Bhonco was born in this village. He grew up in this village. Except for the time he worked in the cities, he has lived in this village all his life. Yet he is always moved to tears by its wistful beauty.

  A gale of heat grazes his face. The wind always brings heat from the sea.

  Vulindlela Trading Store is a big stone building with a red corrugated-iron roof crowned by an array of television and radio aerials and a satellite dish. In front of the store is a long concrete stoop with a number of wooden yokes and green plows and planters chained together.

  Behind the store is the trader’s family home, an off-white rough-cast modern house with big windows. Between the house and the store, a car and a four-wheel-drive bakkie—both of them Mercedes-Benz recent models—are parked.

  Bhonco glances at the television that the trader, John Dalton, has put on a shelf against the wall of the store’s verandah. It plays videos of old movies, and children are always crowding here, watching “bioscope,” as they call it. Some of these children are herdboys who should be looking after cattle in the veld. No wonder there are so many cases these days of parents being sued because their cattle have grazed in other people’s fields.

  Bhonco slowly walks into the store, casting a disinterested look at a big blackboard that announces the latest prices for those who want to sell their wool, maize, skins, and hides to the trader, or those who want to grind their corn at his mill. He demands to see his friend the trader. When Missis Dalton says he is away on business, Bhonco insists that he wants to see him all the same. He knows that he is hiding in his office. Dalton has no choice but to skulk out of his tiny office to face the stubborn man.

  “What is it now, old man?” he demands.

  Dalton is stocky a
nd balding, with hard features and a long rich beard of black and silver-gray streaks. He always wears a khaki safari suit. He looks like a parody of an Afrikaner farmer. But he is neither an Afrikaner nor a farmer. Always been a trader. So was his father before him. And his grandfather was a trader of a different kind. As a missionary he was a merchant of salvation.

  Dalton is a white man of English stock. Well, let’s put it this way: his skin is white like the skins of those who caused the sufferings of the Middle Generations. But his heart is an umXhosa heart. He speaks better isiXhosa than most of the amaXhosa people in the village. In his youth, against his father’s wishes, he went to the initiation school and was circumcised in accordance with the customs of the amaXhosa people. He therefore knows the secret of the mountain. He is a man.

  Often he laughs at the sneering snobbishness of his fellow English-speaking South Africans. He says they have a deep-seated fear and resentment of everything African, and are apt to glorify their blood-soaked colonial history. And he should know. His own family history is as blood-soaked as any . . . right from the days of one John Dalton, his great-great-grandfather, who was a soldier and then a magistrate in the days of Prophetess Nongqawuse.

  “Don’t call me old man. I have a name,” Bhonco protests. Although he is old, and to be old is an honor among his people, he has always hated to be called old man since his hair started graying in his late twenties and people mockingly called him Xhego—old man. Now at sixty-plus—or perhaps seventy, he does not know his real age—his hair is snow white.

  “It is well, Bhonco son of Ximiya. We are not at war, are we?” Dalton tries to placate the elder.

  “I do not fight wars with children. It was your father who was my age-mate. And, ah, the old Dalton looked after me. He was a kind man, your father.”