Heinrich Troost’s debut novel, Plot Loss, has been shortlisted for the 2008 M-Net prize.
It’s described by its publisher as springing “a big surprise towards the end”, but also being “startling on other counts, especially its cool jazzy engagement with the habitually tedious environment of Pretoria, eventually opening to unsuspected depths.”
In this passage, main character Harry van As leaves the city for a visit to the Tswaing / Salt Pan Crater, only to take an impromptu detour while passing through Pretoria’s outskirts…
* * * * * * * *
‘Vusi?’
‘Harry?
‘Vusi?’
‘Yes, Harry?’
‘Um, um, Vusi?’
‘Ok, Harry, ok, we can go.’ Vusi turns to Cirkene.
‘At the Mabopane turn-off, girlfriend,’ he says, ‘take a left. I am going to introduce you to my mommy.’
‘But?’ she protests. They are interfering with her timetable.
‘Cirkene, you said it was your party …’
‘And only that you could cry if you want to,’ she says.
‘No, I want to go and see Vusi’s mama.’ She looks at him the way his mother looks when he is cutting against the grain. ‘What’s more, I can put it under staff development when I have to motivate Vusi’s next annual increase. And mine.’ He and Vusi can themselves laughing again, shame.
‘But we have to be in the crater before twelve when the sun’s rays …’
‘No sweat, Missy C, this definitely won’t take long. Here, take a sho’t left!’ They turn off to pass some more shacks on the way to the Winterveldt. It is the furthest periphery of the city, deprived of money and deprived of veld.
On its outskirts, built around a dirt rectangle, is Vusi’s village. They enter beneath a big tipuana tree, covered in small leaves and seeds twirling to the ground like tiny helicopters.
It is the village meeting place, a hideout from the sun, which is scorching. He smiles and thinks of his first job, a pretentious firm of attorneys receiving all their work from a big insurance company. A satellite more than a firm.
‘It’s going to be another scorcher today,’ the old secretary with the veins on her cheeks and the big hairdo used to remark first thing in the morning. That, and, ‘I feel like death warmed up.’ He always had to agree.
Vusi’s appearance sends a ripple through the lethargic haze. Children run back and forth and a man approaches the vehicle to welcome them formally. The village is accustomed to European tourists. But it is the soaring beauty of Johnson that fascinates them. He is foreign, a real amakwerekwere.
A wall surrounds the elongated square in bright geometry. It curls up and down to form archways to the separate yards of the rondavels behind it, the patterns startlingly alien in the dusty veld. He is travelling between Africa, the Orient, Meso-America even.
When did the Ndebele start having the urge to paint in this way? he thinks. They had fled in waves from their old tribe, the Zulu, over hundreds of years, but the Zulu did not decorate their homesteads so. The Ndebele, an outsider community, used the traditions and materials of those around them to try to create something new.
Some meaning, he thinks. Through an archway emerges the stately figure of Vusi’s mother, Paulina. She is surrounded by friends, shawls wrapped around their shoulders. There is a clamour of laughter when she greets Vusi, enquiring what he has brought her. She scoffs deprecatingly at the meagre offerings of the Quickshop and they go to sit on the red earth and patches of grass under the tipuana tree. Kwaito music starts playing in the heat, for their benefit, the relentless metronome to which they ask her to tell them her story. The clan was moved here in 1953 from the vicinity of the Wonderboom, a magical acacia north of the Magaliesberg, for a whites-only suburb to be developed on their land. They are the people of Chief Mapoch who have become separated from the main Ndebele settlements to the northeast: a small enclave of colourful symmetry living amongst the Tswana. Vusi’s father gravitated here from Botswana. Contrary to custom, which is patrilocal, he stayed in the village of his wife’s people, but then disappeared into the city.
A man, out on his feet, begins to put together uneven steps to the beat. He is vying for Jeanne’s attention. He pulls back the tails of his jacket and both his hands clasp his lower back, pushing forward his pelvis.
‘It’s American,’ he says,‘it’s from America.’ He is referring either to his dance or the music, both local as the red soil he is stepping on. ‘C’mon baby,’ he moans,‘take it or leave it.’ He looks at Jeanne, checking if she is ok. Of course she is. He knows that in a shebeen you first have to negotiate the village idiot and the tsotsis before the nice people grace you with their company. It’s a process of natural selection, an obstacle course. The man says he is Vusi’s uncle, but Vusi shows no reaction from where he is sitting next to his ma.
The women are seated on a blanket. Their backs are held straight, legs stretched out and the soles of their feet arched at ninety degrees. No shoes, no diamonds on the soles of them.
‘Until the other day, we Ndebele women wore thick copper rings around our necks, arms and legs,’ they tell the girls. Vusi’s mother rubs her ankles to indicate where extra heavy rings, brightly beaded, used to circle them.
‘I saw you at the corner café, Mama,’ he says, ‘sitting in a row, just like now.We children were fascinated by you.We wanted to touch your rings and ask you how and why. We did not know if it made us laugh or cry, but our mothers always took us away, embarrassed.’
‘So that we could not run away from our men,’ MaVusi says to much laughter. ‘But it was so much hot. And with the thick blanket around
us too.’ A summer’s day reached deep into the thirties here.
A big rooster comes to scrub the dust around Jeanne where the man is still dancing with his fly open. MaVusi scrutinises Sweetness, her hips, then starts to direct questions at Vusi. Sweetness, from the opposite end of the Nguni language spectrum, squints as she tries to follow. MaVusi nods her head slowly to show that something is understood and Vusi starts making moves to leave. There is a feeling of harmony, relief, sitting on the grass and chatting away idly. But Cirkene has done the arithmetic, it is time to go.
‘Ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm,’ Vusi’s mother says and shakes her head. She has heard that they plan on going down into the crater.
‘Is it not good, Mama?’ he asks.
‘No, it is not good to go there,’ she says.‘There is a snake that lives there in the water, a snake with the bright light.’ She touches her forehead above the eyes, her hand staying in line with her elbow. ‘Uh-uh, you must be very clean if you go there.’ She gazes at him for a long time as if it is not for her to make the call.
She suddenly loses herself in a fit of laughter and shakes everybody’s hand, thanking them for being such good friends to her son.
Especially him, Harry. In Africa things are not so much serious, he thinks. She wishes him a very good time wherever he may be going.
He is feeling jovial, still thinking of diamonds, our diamonds making other people rich.
‘I have reason to believe, Mama,’ he cries defiantly, ‘we all will be received in Graceland.’
Vusi’s mother nods in complete approval, but her gaze fixes itself on Johnson. ‘Hey, wena, and you, where do you come from?’
‘Nigeria, Mama,’ he says in a manner that make the others giggle.
‘Nigeria?’ she asks. ‘Ni-ge-ri-a? They give you what, just pap, to make you grow so big?’
‘Ok, let’s waai,’ Vusi says. They say goodbye and are off, waving affectionately as tourists do. A man motions them to stop.
‘What do you think of our village?’ he shouts.
‘It’s so beautiful and so alive, much more than Sinoville,’ Cirkene says, referring to the suburb that takes up their land. They seem satisfied with her answer and she waves to the group of Ndebele men, temperamental, hardworking, men who love buildings, cattle and their wives decorated.
‘How do the people here live, Vusi?’ he asks.
‘Aw, they struggle, Harry, you can see. My mother is involved with the church, the Catholic mission nearby. And she works for people in Hebron too, cleaning. She is lucky,’ Vusi says and gives him a meaningful look.
‘Is that how you got in at cbc, through the church?’ he asks. Vusi nods his head quickly a few times, not saying anything. Fifteen kilometres from where they started, the townships come to a sudden end.
Cattle cross the road and on the left, opposite Mene’s Fun & Games, they see the crater’s old trading store built from corrugated iron. They turn off to Tswaing and sign in at the gate. Just beyond the gate the road crosses a running stream.
‘Can you stop please, Cirkene?’ Vusi asks. ‘I need to do something quickly.’ They watch him walk down and disappear in the reeds next to the water. No one says anything when he climbs back into the kombi.
They are already late for the sky.
* * * * * * * *
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