The Story of the Cannibal Woman

NINETEEN

It was in Papa Koumbaya’s car, shortly before they arrived at Lievland, that they heard the news. Dido was dozing in a corner. Rosélie’s thoughts were roaming sadly around Stephen: Did he love me? During all these years, was he putting on an act? And why? Papa Koumbaya was droning on about life in the men’s hostels. He was just at the point in the story when he would grab his dick and get the sperm frothing when Sun FM suddenly interrupted the jerky rhythm of a rap song to announce the tragedy.

Fiela had cut her wrists with the handle of a spoon she had filed like a dagger. Taken immediately to the prison infirmary, she had never come round. Her body had been returned to Julian.

Rosélie at once was terror-stricken and guilt-ridden.

Fiela, Fiela, in the debacle of my life, forgive me, I forgot about you. I too, I abandoned you. Yet you seemed no longer to need me. In the end, you won. Tell me. Why did you insist on such a punishment when the jury had decided otherwise? Did you think you were guilty? Or did you no longer have the heart to live?

Like me.

Rosélie had kept her word. She hadn’t set foot in Lievland since Jan died.

She was going back this weekend because Dido had insisted. Sofie had suddenly fallen ill. The doctor, far from optimistic, believed she had only a few days left. She was no longer eating. She complained of suffocating. At times her breathing would stop, and she lay inert, her cheeks and lips turned blue.

At Lievland, the tourists kept coming. Coaches lined up in the parking lot and released chattering crowds, prepared to admire everything, to take pictures of everything, the vineyards, the ring of mountains, the homestead and its furnishings. Dido and Rosélie went up to the de Louws’ private apartment. Sofie had been carried from the child’s cot she had slept in for years to the canopied bed in the middle of the room, which faced the coromandel ebony wardrobe from Batavia that Jan had stared at until his final hour. Her body was swallowed up by the bed. The bed itself was swallowed up by the room, whose floor was tiled in black and white and resembled a small craft on the immensity of the ocean.

Rosélie went over to her.

It was as if Sofie were on the other side of our world, going by her gaze, dimmed blue between her wrinkled eyelids. So much like Rose’s in her patience and determination. She was waiting for her son.

That’s how mothers are. They can’t believe in the ingratitude and thoughtlessness of their children.

The morning went by in a strange atmosphere. The sunlight poured into the room, playfully caressing the funereal checkerboard of the tiles. Through the windows could be heard the cries of the tourists, some Swedes this time. They were ambling in the fields, holding one another by the waist and posing for photos. Outside was lively and joyful. Inside, reverence and dread to greet death. Dido and Elsie were reading the Psalms in a low voice. Rosélie relentlessly massaged the white, ice-cold body, so white, whiter than the pillow, the sheets, or the eiderdown. Under the pressure of her hands the blood flowed, but merely produced a glimmer of warmth here and there, like a bonfire that is constantly dying. Although her hands were steady, out of habit, her mind was in a state of confusion. Chaos. Her thoughts were as tangled as a skein of wool: Rose, Sofie, Stephen, Faustin, and Fiela were spinning round and round in her head.

Sometimes, childhood memories surfaced.

Rose’s bedroom in La Pointe. The wide-open window showed a cutout of the sky. In the middle stood the bell tower of the church of Massabielle, as clear as on a photo, crouching on its hill, housing the miraculous Virgin Mary for the adoration of the faithful. The last time the statue had been carried through the island she had made cripples walk again while a deaf-mute from birth had begun to shout “manman” at the very sight of her. Rose, who at the time weighed 250 pounds on her scales and was a tight fit in her rocking chair, was balancing her on her thighs, rolls of fat squeezed between the wooden armrests. Wheezing passionately, she asked:

“Who do you prefer? Your papa or your maman?”

Rosélie didn’t hesitate and docilely gave the hoped-for answer:

“My maman.”

Then Rose showered her with kisses.

At other times Stephen took the place of Rose. The decor had changed. The sun was shining, remote and cold. They were in New York. The bay windows looked out onto the glistening Hudson and the high-rises of New Jersey. Stephen was sitting cross-legged on the bed in his jogging outfit, his hair in his eyes.

“Out of all your lovers, which one did you prefer?” he asked.

“Out of all my lovers!” she protested. “There were not that many, you know full well.”

The civil servants in N’Dossou didn’t count. Oh no! My private life is hardly material for a pornographic novel. Neither Confessions of O nor Emmanuelle nor The Sexual Life of Catherine M. nor Perverse Tales by Régine Deforges. The voyeurs wouldn’t lose their sight spying on me. I kept my virginity until I was nineteen, a venerable age, even in my time. I’ve never been to an orgy or had multiple partners. I’ve never fornicated in a public place such as a museum, an elevator, or a church. Never been sodomized. For me, sex has never been a feat or a performance. It has always simply rhymed with love. That’s why I wouldn’t know if one black is better than two, three, or four whites. I’ve never compared my men.

“Even so,” Stephen insisted. “Which one did you prefer?”

Here again there was no hesitation.

“You, of course!”

Then he showered her with kisses.

Was he lying then?

Fiela, wherever you are now, you must know. Just one word of consolation. Did he love me? Had he always put on an act? Is it possible to put on an act for twenty years? And why?

Then it was Faustin’s turn. In her life Faustin had symbolized one of those children conceived at the last minute, a latecomer, a krazi a bòyò. They give immense happiness to their forty-year-old mothers.

I can do it! My husband can do it. I took my insides to be a bundle of dry, wiry ligaments and his sex a stick of dead wood. What a mistake! Together we created life.

Toward the end of the morning, the tourist buses moved off to other vineyards. Soon a flow of private cars replaced them. Friends and relatives of the de Louws, attracted by the smell of death, that inimitable smell, sadly nodded their heads and remarked:

“Well, Sofie didn’t survive Jan for very long. A few weeks ago we were gathered in this very same place for a similar painful event. It’s as if the couple is tied to an umbilical cord, stronger than the ties uniting mother and child. As if he couldn’t bear to be separated from her.”

We shouldn’t be duped by the good-natured expression, the self-conscious countenance, and the unassuming dress of these farmers and their wives. They had composed the silent cohorts, the pillars of apartheid, throughout the country. Each in his own manner had paved the way for Afrikanerdom once the ties with England had been severed. They had often occupied regional postings in the Party. Dido, who knew them all by their first names, introduced them to her friend Rosélie, clairvoyant, magician, capable of performing miracles. As a result, they bowed to her out of superstitious respect. As for Rosélie, she was fighting her malaise. She hadn’t forgotten Jan’s last look. Consequently, she braced herself for the insults and contempt that lay behind every eye.

If Stephen had been there, she would have been treated to one of his tirades.

“What are you afraid of? What are you going to invent now? They are preoccupied by the same fears that haunt every human. The same fears as yours. Fear of death, fear of life, fear of the known, and fear of the unknown. Of the foreseeable and the unforeseeable. Must we constantly blame people for what they once were? Must we forever hold it against the English, the Americans, the French, the white Creoles in Guadeloupe, and the békés in Martinique for the crimes of their slaveholding ancestors? We must move forward.”

Stephen was unfair. She didn’t deserve these reproaches. She wouldn’t have asked for anything better than to make peace with everyone, to live free and die. Was it her fault if the other camp wouldn’t lay down their weapons? They could never forget the Good Old Days, and despite the passing of time, their prejudices remained intact.

Whatever we do, the world is like badly ironed laundry, impossible to get the creases out.

Around noon, the prayers stopped. The room of the dying woman emptied, with everyone’s thoughts on getting something to eat. In the courtyard the women lit stoves and began preparing braais. The men opened cans of beer, and despite the nearness of death, the homestead’s courtyard was as festive as a fairground. While devouring their lamb chops, friends and relatives were making dire predictions. How frail Sofie seemed! Three times in a few hours her breathing had stopped, then started up again in fits and starts with a persistent death rattle. Would she survive until Willem arrived? In other words, until the following afternoon? Rosélie gained everyone’s esteem by asserting that Sofie would live as long as was necessary. Her gift at clairvoyance, however, surprised nobody. The Kaffirs, everyone knows, make excellent sorcerers.

Halfway through lunch the new parish priest, Father Roehmer, a small, sickly man, climbed out of his four-wheel drive. He was giving Sofie Holy Communion, as he did every day. Despite his fragile appearance, Father Roehmer had survived nine years in a high-security prison, accused of being a Communist in a cassock, a KGB agent, and a supporter of the ANC. He appeared not to harbor any bitterness over his past suffering and humiliation. He smiled, shook hands, and patted his former enemies on the back. An old friend of Dido’s, he went up to Rosélie as if she were a longtime acquaintance and said in a familiar tone of voice:

“Dido tells me you’re leaving us. When are you going?”

She had no idea. In fact, she had vaguely noted the address of a few estate agencies and even more vaguely sorted through her personal belongings and made an inventory of the furniture she hoped to sell. Suddenly the thought of saying farewell to Cape Town was heartrending. She realized that, unbeknownst to her, ties were binding her to this city, ties she had never formed with any other place. Even that of her birthplace. Liberated as if by magic from her fears, she would walk through the streets drinking in the arrogant, enigmatic beauty that was so special.

In the morning, she would walk as far as the wharf for Robben Island when the sea opened its bleary eyes, muffled in gray like the sky. The sun hesitated on its path: was it expected to climb up there once again with the little strength it had left? She had no inclination to mix with the crowd of tourists already lining up for the ferries, shivering in their anoraks. She waited for the light to slowly dawn and the day to change as she strolled through the harbor. She never tired of this sight. The whole world was here. Japanese, Brazilians, and Liberians, as black as Niggers of the Narcissus, were washing down the decks of their rust buckets. Americans, Australians, and Scandinavians with mops of flax-colored hair were preparing to sail out to sea. Next to the catamarans, birds eager to take flight, balancing on the crest of the waves, idle passersby were admiring a fore-and-aft rigged schooner from the pioneering age of navigation.

Silently, dusk fell.

The mountains glowed red before turning blue and melted into the surrounding darkness. Without warning the penumbra became umbra. One by one the visitors withdrew, leaving only Father Roehmer and the cronies of death, never tired of trotting out psalms and litanies. Dido handed round cups of very strong coffee flavored with cardamom, which revived people’s spirits. Prayers were replaced by talk. The subject turned to Fiela. Some thought that the priests of her parish should refuse to give her remains a religious burial. Others, including Father Roehmer, objected. In this country where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had pardoned unimaginable torture and heinous crimes, why should Fiela not be forgiven? This caused a heated debate. One can only compare what is comparable. Can one compare the guilt of an individual with the collective guilt of the supporters of a political regime?

Incapable of expressing an opinion, Rosélie slipped outside.

The courtyard of the homestead was bathed in darkness. The trees, bushes, and even the flower beds had taken on disturbing shapes. The old superstitions of her childhood resurfaced and she began to run clip-clopping over the flagstones, arousing echoes of the three-legged horse of the Bèt à Man Hibè.

Standing rigid in the dark, Stephen, Faustin, and Fiela were waiting for her beside her bed.

The night was long.

Willem’s taxi arrived earlier than expected. At noon, whereas they were expecting him in the early afternoon. When he entered the room, blond and weather-beaten by the sun, the smell of wide-open spaces in the folds of his clothes, Sofie uttered a sigh as if something had come undone inside her. Staring wide-eyed, she examined him from head to foot so as to engrave his image for eternity. Then she closed her eyelids while a mask of peace settled over her face.

Eternal peace.