You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town by Zoë Wicomb

Author:Zoë Wicomb [Wicomb, Zoë; Wright, Marcia; Sicherman Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781558619159
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY

BEHIND THE BOUGAINVILLEA

The papery panicles of bougainvillea rustle in an unexpected play of breeze. From the top of the whitewashed wall it tumbles, armfuls of exuberant purple blossom. And below, the group of people stir, shift from one buttock to another, shake an ankle or ease a shoulder before settling back into a sprawling cluster of bodies. Except for the faces, turned to meet the scrunch of my shoes on the gravel.

I pull an ambiguous face so that it can be seen as either greeting or grimace. This is after all a doctor’s surgery and I could well be in pain. I am abjectly grateful for the response, which I take in with a careless glance. Some purse their lips but nod, others mutter or grunt their greeting and smiling young child pipes a clear, ‘Môre Antie’ at me.

I hesitate. Father’s words repeat in my ears. ‘Oh you’ll find it very different now. It’s not the old business of waiting in the yard; there’s even a waiting room for us now with a nice clean water lavatory. Not that these Hotnos know how to use it, but ja man, I think you’ll find the Boers quite civilised now.’

Why are they sitting outside in the yard? I move past the group to the open door at the end of the wall. With one foot on the raised threshold I crane my neck into the room. The walls are a brooding eggshell. Above a row of empty chairs a Tretchikoff Weeping Rose leans recklessly out of a slender glass to admire her new-born tear, perfect in plastic rotundity. Artfully the blue tint deepens into the parent blue of the plastic frame. My shoe scours the threshold in hesitation and my eyes rest on the smooth primrose crimplene suit of a woman motionless in her chair. Her hair flicks up above her ears in an iron-induced curl that will never bounce in the breeze, and she stares at the framed picture of a woman in yellow on the opposite wall. Her dress is a darker yellow, sunnier, and her hair, the colour of ripe corn, flies away in fear of being eaten by a heifer with amorous eyes. Has she seen me? She reverses the nylon-clad legs crossed at the ankles and her right hand starts to move up and down as she beats off the heat. Below her gaze a man studies the smoke ring he blows into the heat. A large briefcase stands clamped between his shoes. Under his trousers his calves bulge with the effort.

The floor is a highly polished parquet in which blurred reflections shudder portentously and I no longer care. It is in any case absurd to pretend that I have assumed this as my position for waiting. I turn and meet the thousand eyes of those squatting in the yard. They have been watching. They register the tension of the moment by shifting and scratching as people do who ease the discomfort of waiting. I settle on my haunches against the wall and open my bag for a book but cannot bring myself to haul it up.

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