Still Life by Zoë Wicomb

Author:Zoë Wicomb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

V

Vytje is back and Nicholas, who has found a new seam to follow, is only too happy to withdraw. The woman insists that she has been cut short, that she has barely begun, and he has no desire to engage with first-hand Africans. Or with women’s stories. Hinza and Mary must hear her out. These days black women’s stories are all the rage; anything they have to say is legitimate, publishable, he complains.

Mary nods sympathetically, says Nick must be right; why else is there a dearth of books by buckras? White writing is being swamped by these female upstarts.

Hinza doubles up with laughter. Yes, Nick’s country has gone to the dogs, so they might as well hear Vytje out, he adds.

Juffrouw Margaret had instructed me not only in fine needlework, but also on fine feeling and good manners. My my, well done Vytje! she exclaimed with pride at my delicate stitching of white daisies on white lawn, her birthday gift for Juffrouw Janet. I had taken a chance, had tested her by insisting that the daisy centres too should be white – why stick to the real world? Surprisingly, she was not angry at my impudence; rather, she tilted her head thoughtfully and nodded, yes, go ahead. A risk it was, but together we admired the finished work, which really was exquisite.

Always remember, Vytje, she said, that you are capable of delicacy also in matters of thought and feeling. Shush! Shush! she had cried, red with distress, when I told her of how Tata had been tied to Baas Cloete’s ox wagon, dragged along, and thereafter flogged to within an inch of his life, of how we had to wrap his flayed flesh in buchu leaves for … Stop right now Vytje, she interrupted, actually raising her voice angrily to drown me out. It is not nice, neither civil nor polite; such … such things must never, under no circumstances, be spoken of. Her palms, poor woman, were pressed against her delicate ears. Her heart was soft as the silk thread between my fingers.

I don’t believe that my earlier account of Hinza will be thought vulgar. I had been taught that nice people do not sympathise with stories of ill-treatment, or even of slights and insults, and I don’t mean to complain, but the question of my name is one that I must return to. Besides, such vulgarity is only a problem for white people, whose ears are not in line with real life. Vytje: it is there in black and white in Baas Pringle’s poem, in print, and that, incidentally, as far as I can see, is all the dealing I need have with the old pale beast Nicholas Greene who shares with us this pondok of fiction. It is pleasing to be mentioned by Mr Pringle – I will remember not to call him Baas, nor the ladies Nooiens – but it is the case that he took licence with the facts. ‘The Emigrant’s Cabin’, they say, is

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