Episode 29: The Red and the Black: 2
My Life as an African: A BiograFictional Memoir
A link to the previous episode: Episode 28: The Red and the Black: 1
… Continued from Episode 28: The Red and the Black: 1
Over time Mrs Gold tells me about herself. She grew up in a small dorp north of Cape Town. Her husband was an immigrant from Lithuania who’d come to South Africa as a 14-year old long before World War II and been brought to her town by his relatives who’d immigrated earlier. She was eighteen, fourteen years younger than him and just out of school when they married at the end of the war. They moved to a farm he bought in South-West Africa. A few years after that, when her first child was born, she moved to Cape Town. Her husband kept running the farm.
She seems to spend her time looking after children, seeing relatives, involved in charity events, raffles, and used-clothing drives.
“I married early, you know,” Mrs Gold says to me one day between cigarettes. “Straight out of school. In the bundu you married and became a housewife. Now girls need time to find themselves — I think they shouldn’t compete to find a husband so soon.”
“According to Schopenhauer,” I reply stupidly, “All women are natural competitors. They’re like plumbers or shoemakers, all in the same trade.” I explain about Schopenhauer.
She nods seriously and frowns a little, takes another drag at her cigarette.
“Maybe,” she says slowly, “ ... that could be. At least when they’re young. I wonder if I was like that. It’s a little sad, you know, how we set out in life with no idea of what will happen. Or the wrong idea. That hasn’t happened to you yet, you’re lucky … I live differently now from what I expected.”.
I like her and I can see she likes me. I take what I can: the flattery of being taken seriously, the surreptitious glances at her incipiently vulnerable body, the beginning-to-get-heavy contours of her face, the full figure and legs, the slow curvaceous walk when she’s relaxed, the index finger impatiently tapping on the cigarette to knock off ash, the sticky red imprint of her lips on the end of the cork filter, a glimpse of a slip between two buttons of the pink housecoat, the way she leans over to touch my arm, intimate and casual, when she wants me to refocus my attention on some new question.
Her whole life seems bare of men, and yet ... she dresses and paints herself to look attractive. Why would anyone do that if they weren’t thinking about men, I wonder.
Once I go driving on a country road near the local quarry and see Mrs Gold and Daniel walking together on the sidewalk, accompanied by another mother and son. I slow down and wave to them as I drive by, but keep going. When I turn my head left and back to look at them and wave the steering wheel turns left with me. My car’s two wheels ride up briefly on the empty country sidewalk and then come down again. I hope that they don’t notice.
One rainy weekday afternoon during university winter holidays I take a solitary walk through suburban streets to pass her house. The windows upstairs and down are all dark except for the kitchen. I open the gate and walk down to the front door and ring the bell.
She opens the door dressed in her housecoat. “Oh, no one’s here, Daniel and Sandra have gone out of town to the farm for the week, and I gave the maid off for the afternoon.” She looks a bit pale, not quite right. “Do you want to come in for a while?”
Tea and cigarettes. She looks distracted, uninterested as we talk about politics, South Africa, Israel. Suddenly, between puffs, she covers her face and sobs for a moment. I am about to ask what is wrong when she waves her hand up and down in a negative ignore-it sign.
“Don’t ask me anything, please,” she says. She takes a tissue from the table and wipes her eyes.
I feel sad for her, paternal, and filial too. I have been wanting to touch her for weeks. I walk over to her armchair and stand over her, lean down and stroke her black hair, kiss her forehead. She looks up confusedly.
“What are you doing?” she says sharply, and stands up quickly.
“It came over me,” I say, and back off. “What could I do? I’m sorry you’re sad.”
A softer kinder look comes over her.
“My dear! It’s alright! Don’t be upset! I didn’t expect that.” she says.
She has cheered up and half chuckles. “Oh, so romantic,” she says, with a touch of mockery. “You’re from a different generation, I never really had those feelings. I didn’t have time for relationships,” she says in a continuing stream of statements. “I went straight from parents to husband to children.”
She sits down again and smiles and says, “Sit, let’s have some more tea and a cigarette.”
She changes the subject. Later, when I feel I should leave, she walks me to the door.
“Please please don’t be insulted,” she says looking straight at me. “It’s alright. You can still visit here. I like talking to you. I’m sorry I’m upset today, I reacted.”
She leans forward and kisses me lightly, right on the lips.
I go back the next day in the late afternoon, by car. She looks a bit agitated when she opens the door.
“Is everything OK?” I ask.
“Thank you for being with me yesterday,” she says. “I have troubles. I cannot talk about them … I read my horoscope today and it said everything will be ok!”
“I’m sure they will,” I say. “Things will work out.”
“Do you really think so?” she asks me, leaning back, entwining her solid legs about each other shyly as though she were a child, looking up at me almost coquettishly,
“Yes I do.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
She makes tea.
“I've been having such a difficult time for months,” she says quietly while we drink. “Thank you for helping me.”
“I can keep you company for a while if you want, is that OK?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, solemnly, nodding her head up and down.
We talk.
When the time comes I prepare to go to my car. It’s not light any more. She accompanies me outside, which she’s never done before, and waits while I open the car door.
I decide to tell the truth. I turn towards her.
“I don’t feel like leaving,” I say.
She moves forward in the dusk, tilts her head up, and puts her lips against mine. I’m much taller than her.
“Then don’t,” she says, and kisses my mouth and then my cheek.
My heart fills with all the kinds of love I know about. I see her yearning for something I cannot properly understand and I see that she sees my yearning. I kiss her cheek. and she kisses me back.
“Come,” she says with a sigh.
She takes me to the spare room off the landing, not all the way upstairs, pulls back the covers. She looks at me and puts a vertical index finger on her lips and sighs again.
“The maid will be back soon,” she says.
“Come visit again, I’m glad for your company,” she says. “This is just between us, not even we remember it.”