The Stone Virgins Read online

  Thandabantu Store has a large wide veranda where often people meet and sit and talk and wait for the bus to arrive or any other traffic to go by, to stop, to deliver a message, a parcel, a plow, a human presence. They wait for nothing more than the lilt of their own voices.

  A series of three steps, a foot apart and two meters wide, lead to a rectangular cement platform, the main floor of the veranda partly enclosed by a short brick wall. Two front pillars high enough to support the jutting zinc roof, painted red, which extends right across the full length of the store’s front wall. This roof is lower than the primary asbestos roof above it, covering the main building, leaving a gap which carries some lettering. The enclosing walls of the veranda are about a meter from the ground and half as thick. Where they stop they create a comfortable flat surface wide enough to sit on.

  The floor, once painted black, is now cracked, with chunks of cement missing and a rough grout exposed, its crevices slightly putrid with a mixture of spilled drinks and paraffin but the area is still usable, tolerable. There are hand-carved stools and abandoned Coca-Cola crates to sit on, a long metal bench, and the surrounding wall links pillar to pillar, its smooth and flat top a layer of cement. The veranda forms a partial shelter, an enclosure, a resting place.

  Men sit along the wall with their legs hanging high off the ground; only the tips of their shoes touch the floor. They chat endlessly, knowingly, forgetfully. They sit with more confidence on the stools, their backs lowered and near the ground, leaning against the front wall of the store, near the doorway, their feet firm and anchored. Clouds of cattle pass by with bells beating under their necks, pausing to look around, then moving downward through the bridge to cross the Kwakhe River. A few meters away from Thandabantu Store are the hoofprints, the smell of dung, the sun, vermilion.

  The store consists of one large room with high walls. Many shelves are located behind the counter, piled with Gold Star white sugar, tins of red fruit jam, and tins of condensed milk. The dust forms layers over the plastic bottles of Roil and Olivine and sunflower oil; no one bothers to keep them clean, not even the storekeeper, Mahlathini. And bags of sugar beans weigh down the shelves. There are posters everywhere on the walls, about life and Coca-Cola, malaria tablets, and Nespray milk.

  In front of the store, close to the large marula tree, which stands higher than the roof of Thandabantu Store and higher than any other tree near or far, the impatient crowd rushes toward the bus to meet relatives and friends who have returned from the city, from Bulawayo. They find many; they find none. Each moment yields the fervent excitement of discovery. The bus, the bustle, is all under the tree—that is how tall the tree is, full of leaf and height, branches sweeping down over the bus, and enough marula fruit to accompany every leaf. The people push and shove endlessly, raise their voices high, shout through the opaque windows, searching, frantic. The conductor blows his whistle loud and long, and bodies reel and move away. The crowd falls back and lets the conductor swing the door open, outward. They surge forward once the passengers begin to spill out. Some are here to receive parcels that have been sent through the bus conductor, and so the people have to wait till he is ready to convey them or he calls out their names, and if he knows them and their names well, he calls out the names of their children also.

  And letters from husbands, from lovers. And parcels of nylon stockings and skirts made of crushed silk, then red berets, then bangles. Bottles of Shield deodorant and Tomesei shampoo. And Ponds. And lip balm scented with lemon. Bubble gum that has a hint of cinnamon. Cocoa butter and plastic tubes of camphor cream. And a pouch full of divinely shaped buttons, so appealing in their smallness and multitude, the man just has to send them to his waiting woman to be kept somewhere, dusted regularly, kept free of moisture and termites, absolutely never to be used to repair any garment, but kept in Kezi. The woman slides her fingers into the pouch once in a while and feels the attractive polish of the buttons and their touch on her nails, sky blue, deep blue, full blue, and much bluer than anything blue, yet so transparent that she can see forever through them. He definitely will return on that Kezi-Bulawayo-Kezi bus. She will wait till he does or until he sends something else equally magnetic to restrain her impatience, something that he has discovered while rummaging in a corner of some room somewhere, or something he has found discarded on the desk of a white man who has hired him for some labor, some task; a man who, however, has too little time for this sort of misplaceable material treasure. This the black man takes without any fear of being discovered, and none of reprimand.

  The bus also brings the disintegration of relationships, empty parcels with no letter enclosed, or a letter with a message of which the heart cannot partake, but always there are goods to be removed from the roof of the bus—mattresses, tables, chairs, blankets, pots, and sacks of maize seed to prepare for planting. To have brought a bed from the city, this is among the highest achievements. The goods are carefully lowered as arms reach, then carry the items down. Window frames for those who have started to build their houses with bricks. Metal door frames. A door with a metal handle, just like they have at Kunene Mission School. And even though water is still being carried all the way from the river or borehole by each and every household, a man not only brings a metal door frame; he also carries silver taps. Just in case.

  The people disembark from the bus and go first into Thandabantu Store and buy whatever else it is they have forgotten to bring from Bulawayo, or whatever they identify, like, and can carry, or can fit into their many parcels. It is only after being at Thandabantu that they disperse into the village, feeling fortified and ready to deal with whatever uncertainty they left behind—an unresolved matter, an anxiety of their own—no matter how long or brief the time away. Even before the last dust from the bus wheels settles, they enter the store like fugitives. They enter into Thandabantu’s welcoming veranda, chatting endlessly with the storekeeper, Mahlathini, greedily gathering details on who has died, who has married, whose cow has calved, who has moved from Gulati to settle in Kezi. They desire to know much more than this, much more than could ever be shaped into words. Truth is elusive; they settle for the evident; their own hearts, beating.

  They are starving for the security of something they have left behind. Being absent witnesses, they seek knowledge about whatever it is that has happened in Kezi without their assistance. Thirsty, they plead deliverance from the rows of warm and dusty Fanta bottles that have sat on the shelves for weeks, untouched. They do not accept any change from the money they render, but sneer, proudly, tipping their hats at Mahlathini, composing some thought with which to linger purposefully at the counter, sliding one furtive hand into one neatly ironed trouser pocket as though to warm it, kneading a chin with an open palm, leaning both elbows on the greasy counter, asking and pondering the worth of each response. The year is just beginning, with its mixture of strong winds, full sun, and war.

  They already miss and favor the city lights, whose brilliance outshines the moon; they miss the city’s curse and caress, its movements, which are like an entire constellation, man-made. You can measure time in the city by its own particular scents and sounds—in the early morning, the smell of baking bread in the ovens at Lobels Bakery, spilled liquor fermenting in alleys, the dozens of wiry cats turning over the garbage bins and rummaging for food, the tumult of flower sellers outside the city hall at midday. Then, fuel and burning tar rise pungent from the fleet of cars, and penetrate every conversation, and late, late in the night, when the black people have vacated the city center except for the necessary few, the sight of white men at the Selborne Hotel as they gulp the clearest liquor from thumb-sized glasses, their faces a masquerade, their shoulders sunken with a baffling and private delight.

  With boxes of Lobels choice assorted biscuits under their armpits, or lemon creams, or Mitchell’s ginger biscuits, the disembarked squeeze into Thandabantu and buy bottles of Mazoe concentrated orange. They buy bread that has come from Bulawayo the same day, on the same Kezi-Bu
lawayo bus they have just vacated. There is always business for Thandabantu Store, and more than just money is passed around. As shelves empty, items are brought in from the back rooms in large cardboard boxes, and again various items are replaced in rows—baked beans, jam, soap. Coins clatter, voices thicken, and, through the window, the light outside begins to fade.

  A man and a woman in matching sunglasses sit quietly under the marula tree and catch their breath. He wears a red shirt; she wears a red skirt. They have returned to the village, having gathered what they can about the city, about themselves. Ready, now, to wake to the smell of fires, to the cricket sounds and the white chorus of doves. They watch the bus, which has their hopes condensed all over its windows. Their clothes mingle in the same suitcase that is pinned down with black rubber bands onto the roof of the bus, dust filled, termite-free, ice cream stained. Folded neatly inside the suitcase, the embroidered white pillow covers they have shared in their city love and which they bought at Vidaya’s that same day when they could not afford the twelve-by-twelve-inch plastic tray they had so wanted. It had one yellow rose on it, and no thorns.

  People move close to the counter and fill the entire space and, as usual, refuse to budge. Their keen voices perforate every reality but their own. They whisper about the hills of Gulati, taking good care not to be heard, not to be identified with their own voices, leaving hardly a trace of their concealed agonies, except for the anger rising under their arms. They laugh. Close to their bodies is the city jive lingering along the ankle, where the turned-up hem of a trouser has now gathered a flour-fine layer of dust. Nothing betrays them as much as that unswinging arm with the choice assorted biscuits held tightly beneath, the clumsy handshake, and that single lonely hand sliding gently into the trouser pocket, seeking consolation, not warmth. To be in Kezi, to be in the bush, is to be at the mercy of misfortune: Fear makes their hearts pound like drums. The war so near, so close to the skin that you can smell it.

  3

  Thenjiwe walks across the road, joins the crowd, the goods, the searching voices. She holds the money for her purchases in a tight fist, a few coins in her right hand. She intends to buy a bottle of cooking oil, some flour, a packet of salt, a packet of tea, some matches. None of the faces or voices is familiar to her, so she moves on, raises one foot onto the first step, another, and suddenly her whole body is mingling with the excited voices spilling onto the floor beneath her feet. She must wait for an opportunity to enter the packed doorway filling with men’s hats, and arms raised into triangles over their heads, while strong and protective palms slide over the grooved top of each hat, pressing the supple felt peak, holding down. Black, gray, and brown brims. The place is full. Thenjiwe is not in a hurry at all and can stand aside and absorb the melody, if not the dance.

  A man sits alone at the edge of the stoop at Thandabantu Store; the shadow of the roof cuts his face into two halves, one dark, one light. Thenjiwe passes by. She notices him, then his silence. Thenjiwe pardons this man who drops his lashes when she approaches and lifts them as soon as he feels her shadow graze his knees. He moves his knees this way, that way. He rests his palms over his knees, spreading his fingers, swinging his knees till she turns her head and looks back, at his eyes and not his knees. At him. He feigns surprise and raises his eyebrows, asking a question, discovering if she needs some kind of help, offering abundant appeal.

  She walks by and takes over the corner in his mind where some thought is trapped, some useless remembrance about fences with NO TRESPASS signs and NO WORK signs. A remembrance, of persecutions and possible agonies, of bold urgen-cies. Some hopeless memory hangs on a lone nail somewhere in his mind and disturbs him a little, makes him slightly frantic when he sits down, walks, or lifts an arm to complete one of three tasks, whichever task comes to mind, one at a time, and disturbs him slightly, like a wind fluttering, like that paper he once saw as a child as it floated on water in the Nyanyani River, the ink spilling off the words, the paper thinning, transparent, tearing, the words vanishing.

  He leans his head toward her to catch whatever she might say in his regard, noting well the amusement breaking in her eyes. His knees no longer rocking, held down by her searching eyes. She stills his knees. He smiles a broad, even smile that has everything to do with her but nothing to do with his own past, his cautious memory, calm and hidden. Now something else in him is swinging, swinging, as she walks on by.

  He is remembering. His eyes trace the motion of this memory. The whip raised high up, knotting the sky. The whip strikes ribbons of air behind her. He looks past her shoulders, way beyond. The cart is in the way, suspended between her and eternity. A horizon might save him; only the sky and earth could challenge her presence. The burnt evening sky coveting morning. The horizon sky. The cart tilting. Stopped. Where the bus has been. The dust rises into small clouds. He remembers this woman as though he has met her before, in some distance. It could only be her. But where? His voice opens beside her, breaking her stride, offering something that belongs to her. Something from himself. He has brought her a nameless gift. He is whistling amusement. He is amusement.

  Now he pulls his knees back, his thumbs tucked under his armpits. He holds still and beats the ground with his foot, his foot raised and waiting, tapping away. He taps steadily on the cement floor. His own heart beating, he draws his foot closer to the metal can on which he sits, round its edge, and hooks the circle of its base with the back of his shoe, hugging her memory as she moves right past, and again his left foot draws forward, unable to be still, and he can hear the scratch of the tin, the hollow rhythm of sound from his foot beating his sole against hot metal. He holds still. The sun is setting.

  She holds on, too cautious to turn her head, not this moment, but soon, past her own desire to look over the shoulder, to stop in front of him and say something, anything, to offer a single wholesome laugh, perhaps to raise him from his sitting position and bring him to her swaying height. Almost. Just to see who would touch the other first, who would extend a hand in greeting in the presence of so much uncertainty, so much harmony among strangers. His whistle is more than a confession—it is about himself, a whistle that, on the surface, has nothing to do with her, so self-involved, the sound of labor, of a man passing the time while he makes something useful, while he carves on wood, carves or just takes a turn round a wide street. Nothing musical or agonized, but not disinterested, either. She pulls in her own breath quietly while he continues to be preoccupied with the labor of his empty hands.

  She forgives that and steps aside. Not disturbed, but disturbing. No longer wishing to escape. She is without shelter till he stops whistling amusement and leans on her, leans the full burden of his body on her, or so it seems.

  She laughs to herself and kicks her precious heels. Her feet draw closer, the sandal with the yellow base and the red band hooking her toe, the sandal now sliding off and flicking sand from the ground to the back of her precious legs.

  She really does not care for much but her own motion, her own breath, her weightless courage to be loved. Thenjiwe forgives the desire sparkling in her own fine limbs as she hears each whistle penetrate the air and move in her direction. She catches and holds it. She sees a single spotted plume dive down from the marula tree and land in her path. She feels naked and wonders if he, too, has noticed that glittering plume. She wants to pick it up but does not. That would be a risk. She has no confidence that she could bend her knees that far down, stretch her arm, and still be able to come up for air. She would perish, for sure, with him watching, with him able to blow her ashes off the ground with a single breath.

  He is totally new to her thoughts, this man; he makes her dizzy. He makes her reconsider each action as though he has a power to form an opinion of her. And why does it matter? She has always just lived her life, with a bit of set pattern. He is different.

  Winter, June and July, is her own abode, her own accolade, a pristine time guarded jealously. October. Then rain time, from November to January. The rain
y season of mud and insects caught in melting anthills, numerous and silver-winged, transparent-feathered, sliding boulders and crumbling clouds, burrowing earthworms and black beetles with gray-streaked coats, red-eyed, raised antennae, seeming dead. Each drop of rain a rendezvous.

  That drizzling time of melting anthills; the rain beats the soil till it slides off its mound. Thenjiwe, more beautiful than rain, watches the rain slow the hills, flatten them, leave gaping holes where an anthill, higher than her shoulders and higher than high, used to be; the rain cleaves the air. Ancient mounds, perforated humps of hardened soil that water cannot melt, cling to the side of the sheltering trees, remain imprisoned, the trees high, the bark cracking, the water swelling harmlessly around the firm and fine soil, which clings, dark, to the roof of the mouth, a syrup when you suck on it. Amavimbandlebe—a multitude of tiny insects, winged, blind, dashing themselves against each drop of rain, splattering into a white paste on the ground, dizzy and without wings, a multitude of insects rising like glory, ready to die in order to lose their wings, to be buried in rain. The greatest freedom—to shed the possibility of flight. They descend, brown, scattering to the ground. The birds swoop and fall on them; they emerge within each tip of a wing, each arched dive restless, without wings. Amavimbandlebe—the multitude that brings a silence to the ears—their journey is silence, their numbers, their sudden release so surprising, so much that they bring blindness not to the eyes but to the ears. They banish hearing, not sight, for sight is a trance. They are unable to resist the journey of flotation and suicide, the descent into darkness. So one sense aids another, suffers for another, deafness for sight. She is thinking rain time, thinking November, as the man follows her, from Thandabantu Store way past the marula tree, so suddenly.