My father rents a room on a plot on the outskirts of Grahamstown. Several pit bull terriers have been chained up on various parts of the property. He tells me about one of the dogs, who has struggled to adjust to being moved from his position close to the house, to a place on the outskirts of the yard.
There are times when the animal seems to be particularly afraid, my father says. When he wakes up, for instance, he becomes very distressed. Then he barks until he loses his voice completely and just produces a hoarse, hysterical cough.
It’s like a big emptiness that the dog feels, my father says. He feels that he no longer belongs anywhere. If someone finally storms out, screaming and furious, he jumps up and down and wags his tail. It gives him a place in the group. And so my father has started to call his name from time to time out of his window. It seems to quieten him down, and afterwards he is happy to go into his kennel and hide there for a bit.
*
A farewell party has been arranged for one of the members of the company that I work with. It is held in the township, in the home of one of the other members.
The house is small. Deep red curtains glow richly against the peeling pink walls. Three couches have been crammed into the living room. Behind these couches there are repetitive marks on the walls, made by hands and feet. Against the fourth wall is an elaborate media stand. It dominates the room, as well as the small black and white television set that it frames. Outside, beyond the open door, the wide sidewalk is covered in kikuyu grass; there are donkeys, goats, children and litter, and further in the distance, brown hills and a clear sky. The smell of wood fires hangs in the air.
Music blares through the two speakers on the media stand. The conversations are loud; the guests have to bellow to be heard above the powerful drumbeat. I try to talk, to engage in conversation, but realise that my voice is not strong enough. Thin, tendril-like muscles strain in my neck. My responses are too considered, my voice too high-pitched. Halfway through a sentence I start coughing, my eyes watering and my face red.
‘Do you have flu?’ Thandeka, the hostess, asks, concerned. She wears a bright yellow, synthetic shirt that screams out against the deep brown of her skin.
‘Yes,’ I lie, embarrassed.
I try to answer her again. I swallow. Three words and I am again coughing uncontrollably.
Thandeka takes over the conversation. She speaks with fearsome intensity. Her eyes lock my gaze. Her gestures are grand and tragic. She stamps the floor, grasps her head in her hands, pulls at the long yellow braids. Shudders pass through her formidable chest. Her face contorts with emotion. I don’t catch everything she says, the music is too loud, but a momentary lull in the music coincides with an uttering of considerable urgency.
‘I was turned against you,’ she says. ‘I lost myself. I lost Thandeka.’ She bangs her chest. ‘But from now on, me, I decide.’ I squint against the yellow of her shirt and the whites of her widened eyes. She is referring to an actor who didn’t trust me, and influenced the rest of the group. I know that she will not mention the name of the person concerned. The Xhosa culture is one of profound discretion, and although words are spoken fast and loudly, they are spoken with extreme circumspection.
‘I was bleddie fucking fucked!’
The words are slightly awkward on her tongue, as if unpractised, and the effect is somewhat child-like. I want to laugh, but I don’t. Her face is full of anger and pain. ‘But it’s over now. No more. I’m back! I’m here!’ Her voice becomes jubilant and she is smiling a giant smile. I see the line where her gum meets the synthetic pink gum of the row of false teeth in the front of her mouth. She stretches her arms over her head – a triumphant gesture. ‘You will see Thandeka now! I am telling you! You will see her! Thandeka will be there!’ And she laughs: an enveloping laugh, the sound cascading.
She pulls me by the arm into the kitchen to dish up food. Some women, members of the company, are fighting around the small kitchen table. One of the men is trying to mediate. He is hardly audible above the shrieks, the indignant clapping of hands, and the disgusted utterances as arms are tossed into the air. The hostess plunges right into the argument, although it is difficult to determine what it is about.
‘I’m still talking,’ a small woman shouts. ‘I have not finished what I am trying to say! I’ll tell you when I have finished what I am trying to say! I’ll tell you!’
Another woman attempts an interjection but the woman roars, ‘I will tell you when I have said what I am trying to say!’ She begins to move like a boxer, dipping and stepping from side to side, her movements punctuating her escalating torrent of words. ‘How can you say that you were not invited? Did I not tell you that there would be a party?! Did I not say that it would be today?! And did I not ask you for the money for the party that is happening today? And did you not give me the money for the party that is happening today yourself, from your own pocket? Did this not happen? Am I lying?’
‘You are lying,’ the addressed woman says, who appears to be fearless.
‘Are you saying that I am lying?’
‘I am saying that you are lying.’
‘And I am saying: how – can – you – say – that I am lying?’ It is like a battle cry, and is repeated at increasing intensity: ‘How can you say that I am lying?!’
I smile politely, hoping to look both sympathetic and neutral.
Thandeka hands me a massive plate of food: three chops (mostly fat), a mound of pasta salad, a bread bun and a bright red piece of boerewors.
I begin to object, tentatively. ‘Oh, I’m actually not – ’
All five of the woman turn on me. ‘Eat!’ they shout.
‘Yes, but – ’
‘This is not the suburb!’ shouts the small one. ‘You do not do this here! You do not do this!’
I am ushered through a piece of cloth hanging from the door frame into the adjacent bedroom, painted a pure blue. It is cool and dark. The only other white guest is already sitting on the bed, eating. Outside the door, the argument continues.
‘Are you saying that I am a liar?! Is that what you are saying?’
Suddenly Thandeka’s voice is audible above the rest. ‘Who switched the music off?’ I hear her thundering through to the living room, where there is utter silence.
‘It was Lenny,’ shouts one of the men, thinking quickly.
Another moment of silence, the tension palpable even through the wall, and then she replies: ‘Lenny can do whatever he wants tonight because it is his farewell.’ And she heads back into the kitchen.
Gales of relieved laughter follow, new music is put on, and the argument in the kitchen is resumed. A softer voice is heard as the man again tries to mediate. ‘Hayi man, Thabo, we are not fighting!’ one of the women silences him. His response is inaudible; stifled by the unanimous command that he should leave. A momentary lull, as the man presumably exits, and then the women, satisfied, continue.
*
Another dog is tied up outside my father’s door. Her eyes are small and set wide apart. My father remarks on her beauty. She jumps straight up into the air, twice her own height. Her chain lands with a thud. ‘She’s very elegant,’ he says.
In the evenings my father has a meal of white bread and meat. He eats what the family eat, but he prefers to have this meal in his own room. He eats only a bit of the sausage. When it is dark he takes the rest of the meal out to the dog. Sometimes her breath smells of garlic the next morning
He is saving up to buy her a harness, he says, so that her skin can heal. He shows me where it has been rubbed raw against the chain. Her eyes close slightly as he runs his hand down her head and down her back. His arms are long and his hands fine: the nails like small shells. She lies down in the dust, offering him her belly.
*
On the weekends that I spent as a child with my father we would often visit the township – Guguletu, on the outskirts of Cape Town. I remember the smell of meat, and of the smoke that lay thick in the blue dusk. I remember being in a moving crowd, and asking my father to take me home, back to my mother’s quiet house.
On Monday mornings we would sit in the school hall, listening as the headmaster spoke about die swart gevaar. Later in the day we practiced bomb drills, crouching underneath our desks.
My father loved the township. He found it a much more vibrant social environment than white, suburban life. I sometimes felt that he would have preferred a black daughter.
*
In the first half of the year we rehearse in the drama department of the university. A woman named Gladys cleans the building.
She admonishes me on several occasions. Once I try to enter the bathroom just before a performance, and she chases me out.
‘The show is about to start,’ I beg.
‘The floor is wet,’ she says, standing guard like a sentinel in front of the doorway.
‘I’ll walk carefully. Please, I’m desperate.’
She doesn’t respond, but stares into the distance, hand resting on the top of her mop. Her cheeks are large and smooth, her gaze expressionless.
On another occasion she tells me that I spilt some tea on the floor of the rehearsal venue, and that I need to clean it up. On yet another, she complains that I left crumbs on the counter in the green room. I explain that I am always careful about cleaning up, because I know how particular she is. ‘There was a crumb here,’ she says, indicating the exact spot. I apologize, and assure her that it will not happen again.
One day our work is particularly demanding: we are filming a production in the theatre. I hear Gladys talking to the caretaker in the passage outside. Her voice is full and ebullient. I slip out of the theatre, stand outside the doors holding my finger to my lips, hissing ‘shhh,’ and looking straight into her eyes.
She pulls herself up to her full length. ‘Don’t speak to me like a chicken,’ she says.
‘We are filming in the theatre. People work here,’ I say. Holding her gaze.
‘I am not a chicken,’ she says. Stepping towards me. Although we are the same height, she is much larger than I am.
‘We work here, Gladys. This place does not belong to you.’
‘I am not a chicken,’ she says. ‘I am not a chicken.’
I don’t reply.
‘I’m going to take this further. You don’t know me,’ she says, turning away.
And I think that she does not know me either.
*
I write a letter of complaint about Gladys. I phrase it carefully so that I will appear reasonable and yet respectful. However tactfully I formulate the letter, I know that Gladys will appear foolish. And I know that while she will not be dismissed or even reprimanded, at some level she will have no defense against my words.
*
I remember once when Gladys went on strike. One of the basins in the bathroom was filled with vomit.
*
The difficult thing is the transitions, my father says. When he is with poor people, it is not a problem to be poor. It would be no problem for him to have only one set of clothes. But it’s when he’s around people that have money that he may start to feel bad.
*
In his mid-thirties my father had a promising career ahead of him. He had already done pioneering research. Then, six months after entering a debilitating depression, he resigned from the one job in the country that was perfectly suited to his skills. Afterwards he realised that he probably would never have been fired, but at the time he was afraid of being found out. In the years that followed he suffered one major depressive episode after the next, preventing him from resuming his career.
We seldom speak about these events. Only on one occasion – I remember that we were outside his room and the hills were blue in the dusk – he told me that he felt that there was something real about his life at present. As though it was closer to an animal life, or something like that. As though this is what life really was, or what it should be.
*
When my father wakes up, he goes out to feed the chickens. He watches as they snatch a piece of bread and run off with it, thin legs flying. He enjoys the quiet contented sing-song accompaniment with sudden interspersed comical squawks of alarm. It is a good way to wake up, he says.
*
I take the company to the plot where my father lives to do research for the theatre piece about dogs we are doing. We stand outside the cage of one of the largest dogs, who used to take part in fighting. His ears are shredded, his face scarred, and one side of his mouth is limp from where it was torn. The corrugated iron base of the cage thunders against the chicken wire frame as he lunges against it, wagging his tail.
I am not making headway with this piece. For weeks it’s been evading me. As soon as I come up with a new idea, it becomes clear that it also won’t work. I sometimes have a feeling that I am cursed.
Apart from the dogs there are chickens, a goat and a sheep on the plot. The yard is scattered with building equipment, old scaffolding and wheelbarrows, piles of old bricks and cement building blocks, dominated by a large palm tree and a water tank on a tall iron tower. The goat has stripped the honey suckle hedge up to head height. Apart from the washing on the line, small items of washing dry in the sun over scattered bushes. Some eagles nest in a cluster of dead pines near the house. In the distance there are thorn trees and aloes, the first hills looking out over the undulating coastal plains, all the way towards the hills around Port Elizabeth.
The goat stands next to my father. When he touches its horns, the animal drops its chin and leans into my father’s leg with the top of his head, head-butting him gently. He scratches its back.
Afterwards my father takes us to his room, and brings us tea. He can’t offer us any biscuits, he apologises. He puts pillows from the bed on the floor so there are enough places to sit. The actors are silent, and their eyes are large. They expect the homes of white people to be different – houses with swimming pools, well-kept gardens and domestic workers.
*
Some weeks into the year we shift our rehearsals to a church hall. A large woman cleans the venue while we work. She and I never speak to one another.
She walks from one end of the hall to the other, through the area in which the actors rehearse. Through irreverent dialogue, slapstick comedy, dramatic incantation and guttural screams, her weight shifts from one dragging foot to the other, constant. She never stops. I only ever see her in the corner of my vision.
One day I am in the kitchen warming my lunch in the microwave. I am preoccupied, thinking about the unfolding dramatic action. The woman is also there. Suddenly it is as if my eyes are drawn to the side of her head. I realise that the shape of her profile has changed. There is a swelling around one half of the face that changes her features completely. The cover-up that she has applied is several shades too light and it seems to draw attention to the swelling rather than disguising it. Her eyes are downcast. Perhaps sensing my gaze on her, she turns her head away.
The next morning I greet her.
A week later, when the swelling has gone down, we are both in the kitchen again over lunch. I am heating leftovers from the previous night. I remove the lid of the container, turn the dial to a minute and a half, and stand and wait. I am conscious of her presence, scrubbing a part of the counter that is already clean, as though caught in a reverie.
Still looking at the counter, she suddenly asks: ‘Did you put curry in the vegetables?’
For a moment I am at a loss for words. Then I start talking, not stopping to breathe, describing the recipe, listing the ingredients, explaining all the steps. Only then do I add: I didn’t put in any curry.
She is quiet for a moment, and then she says: ‘I like vegetables so much.’
‘Me too,’ I reply. Then I turn to open the microwave, which has long since beeped. The woman takes up the broom and starts to sweep the floor. It suddenly occurs to me that I believed that she could not speak.
*
The company performs at a venue in the township. After the performance I walk out with the audience. In front of me is a child walking on all fours, sliding both feet towards his hands.
*
If he was in a position of power, my father says, he would ban anything with celebrities in it. ‘It is such a vast perversion,’ he says. ‘It makes it seem as if Nicole Kidman getting married and having a baby is more important than someone in the township getting married and having a baby.’ He had been standing in the library, agonizing over whether to buy glossy magazines for twenty cents each. The woman that he lodges with loves them, and they are nice because they have all these nice pictures and beautiful people and people are naturally interested in other people. But then he was thinking that they would be lying about the house and the children would pick them up and read them. And he would feel bad, because the children would be exposed to a whole set of values that are completely skewed.
*
We work with some children from the township in one of our productions. A tall boy with knobbly knees plays the part of a springbuck. His timing is out during every dance. I am about to ask him not to participate in the dances anymore, when I reconsider.
I have an image of my father as a child. I remember him telling me that he would watch his father pat down the fire to prepare the coals for a braai. Once, when his father was making a fire, he had gone inside to fetch something. Thinking he was being helpful, my father had patted down the flames and mistakenly put the fire out. His father had been furious and punished him with ten lashings of the belt.
Later I see the knobbly-kneed child practising one of the dances on his own, concentrating hard.
*
Thandeka, the woman who hosted the party, often stumbles over the English text of our scripts. ‘Take your time,’ I tell her. At times I mean it. There is a shift in her attitude, as she told me there would be. She is more patient with my constant correction. I am not sure how much of my irritation is evident to her. I take care to keep it hidden. When I ask her to repeat a sentence, I do so in a calm tone of voice.
Several weeks after the party she arrives late for work. I warn her that it is happening too often. She looks down at the floor. She is sorry, she says. It is happening too much, I reply. She turns and walks away.
The next day I send a message to the cast, asking them to come in later for a rehearsal, as I have been delayed. I receive a reply from the woman. It reads: ‘I will do whatever you want my master. I am only a location animal.’*
Shocked, I ask to speak with her at lunch. While we work, we avoid eye contact. I see that she is tearful. At the end of the rehearsal, we walk in silence to a venue where we can talk privately. We sit on either side of the table
‘Why did you send that message?’ I ask.
‘I was angry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t think. I just wrote it. I am sorry. Sometimes I just say things when I am angry.’
I want to believe her. I can see that she wants to believe herself.
She has been having a difficult time, she says. She overreacted.
‘But is that really how you think I see you?’ I ask, knowing what she will say.
‘That is not how I think you see me,’ she says.
‘Because I don’t see you like that,’ I say.
‘I know you don’t.’
We sit quietly. A tear rolls down her cheek.
‘That was a terrible thing to say,’ I say.
‘I’m sorry,’ she responds.
Afterwards, when we are standing in the passage outside the door, I tell her that I am sorry too, for being impatient the day before. She gives me a hug.
‘You are important to me,’ I say, and it is true.
‘You are very important to me too,’ she replies.
I feel like I should say something else, but I don’t know what it is. It is as though we are both suddenly shy.
Over the next weeks, when our eyes meet, we smile nervously.
*
When my father visits me, he takes out the rubbish. He scrubs the sticky residue behind the stove, scrapes the grime between the tiles out with a knife; scrubs the mould off the shower curtain. The mould forms in the places where the curtain folds, he says. It is satisfying to see the dirty water run off it, when he rinses it. Later, when he has taken a lift back to the plot, I receive an sms:
SO BEAUTIFUL HERE EARLY WINTER EVENING. A FEW CRICKET SOUNDS THROUGH THE COLD AIR AND SOFT CACKLES AS THE LAST CHICKENS FIND THEIR ROOST. DOGS ARE QUIET, RETREATED INTO KENNELS WITH NOSES UP TO TAILS. FEELING THE COLD. HOPE YOU KEEPING WARM. LOVE YOU, DAD.
* ‘Location’ was the term used for townships during the apartheid era.
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