David's Story by Zoë Wicomb

Author:Zoë Wicomb [Wicomb, Zoë; Driver, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781558619135
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY

KOKSTAD 1991

Kokstad carries no traces of Andrew Abraham Stockenstrom le Fleur. There are no street names, no monuments, and it would seem no memories. In the houses to which the Bezuidenhout woman takes David, he learns nothing. That poor woman has sadly, predictably, let herself down by treating David as her guest, helping him with his enquiries, and now must brave the skinderbekke, gossips young and old, who are already talking about the new suitor. And a married man, too, her mother says bitterly.

This evening they are nevertheless hosting a little get-together for his benefit. People drift in as if for a formal meeting that they have decided beforehand to hijack; they are only too happy to speak about the old days, about what they have heard, but seem unwilling to talk about Le Fleur, and all David’s efforts to steer the conversation in that direction are thwarted. There are, after all, not many real Griquas left, says the Bezuidenhout mother, having decided to come to his rescue. Those people of the past have disappeared, passed on, she supposed, with Le Fleur’s many treks. That Le Fleur guy certainly messed things up, squandered people’s money, puts in a neighbour. But no, seriously, says another, he did what he could, a clever ou; he was like a kind of lawyer, trying to get back the stolen land from those rogues, but there was of course no beating those white skelms. And so on to real politics and the New South Africa, David taking his practised position of saying little while encouraging them to speak.

That they ate dainty meat pies that had fluted edges and were garnished with sprigs of parsley, followed by delicious granadilla cake that must have taken hours to make, is a detail that he does not remember. But Ms. Bezuidenhout surely looks on silently and thinks of the waste as the men speak through mouthfuls of food that might as well be shovels of mealie pap. What, she wonders, is the point of copying in one’s best hand recipes from Cosmopolitan or Tribute into a book with hard marbled covers? She might just as well cut them out and paste them any-old-how into an old ledger, but, she supposes, smoothing a crocheted doily through all that talk, a woman has her pride, has to keep up standards.

Heitse! croaks an ancient toothless woman, a silent, crooked shape who has been sitting all evening in a big chair with a tea towel tied around her neck and a rug around her knees. David, after the many handshakes, has forgotten about her, but now, just as the gathering breaks up, she cries out triumphantly, East Griqualand for the Griquas and the Natives! That’s it, she says. That’s what’s been hiding from me all night. I knew there was a mouthful after the Griquas, and that’s just it, For the Griquas and the Natives, that’s the slogan the Chief taught us. We would come singing out of the church and form a

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