Bloodlines (41 page)

As I walked up the path to the front door, I thought of Khabazela’s reaction when I told him as we lay in bed together that I had been invited to dinner with Jane and Letty, and that Doctor Mac would be there.

“These are good people,” he said, yawning. “Especially Doctor Mac. You know, they call him the White Zulu.”

He stretched, and as he did his belly flattened and the muscles in his torso swelled and tensed. I ran my eyes down his dark body, taking in the contours of his chest, the sparse hairs around each bluish nipple and the narrow line of hair along his breastbone that pointed to his shadowed navel, and further down to the glistening nest at his groin. With my hands I retraced the path my eyes had taken, and I felt the heat emanate from him, through the smoothness of his skin, and the hardness beneath. His mouth opened into a wide smile, and I thought he was responding with pleasure to the touch of my hands. I willed him to reach out and respond in kind, but it was late, and he was weary.

“Tell the White Zulu,” he said as he rolled over, “that Mandla Mkhize sends greetings.”

I curled up behind him, full of forgiveness, and lay my arm across his hip. “How did he come by that name?” I asked. “The White Zulu?”

“Ask,” he replied drowsily, and I could tell that he was still smiling. “He will tell you, and you will find his story very interesting.”

I was still thinking of the smile on his face when Letty opened the door and ushered me inside. I handed her a bottle of red wine.

“I have no idea what it is, or how it tastes,” I said, “but the previous owners left dozens of bottles of wine in the root cellar, and I thought we might try some.”

“I’m sure it will be delicious,” she said, leading the way into the sitting room. “Go on in and meet my brother—Jane’s in there, too. I have to tend to the lamb.”

She hurried off to the kitchen and I went down the hallway until it opened into the sitting room. A fire was blazing in the wide stone hearth, and Doctor Mac was sitting on a well-used leather couch beside Jane. They both rose as I came in.

“Hello, Grace,” he said, stepping toward me. “We meet, finally. I’m Andrew.”

He extended a huge hand, and as I went to shake it he enveloped my hand in both of his. I was surprised by the genuine warmth I felt from him. He was a big man in his mid-forties, solid and energetic; he had unruly dark brown hair, and his face was long and handsome, with a full mouth, cheeks shaved smooth, and eyes so wide that he seemed to wear a constant expression of surprise. But it was camouflage; I never saw him actually surprised by anything. When he looked at me through striking blue eyes, there was nothing ambiguous about his expression. He was intrigued by me, and his eyes revealed that his interest extended beyond mere curiosity. There was a masculine vitality to him, but he had a kind of gentleness that made him entirely unthreatening. Letty and Jane had invited me to dinner for more reasons than one; and I found myself wishing, despite Jane’s instruction not to dress for dinner, that I had worn something more attractive.

“What can I get you to drink, Grace?” he asked. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and he wore a deerskin waistcoat, and as he rubbed his big hands together, I watched the muscles in his forearms bunch beneath graying hair, and was reminded of my father’s thick arms and his big, deft hands. “It’s a little nippy out there. How about a glass of sherry?”

“That would be nice,” I said. “Thank you.”

“The ladies in our community have apparently given you a thunderous welcome,” he said, offering me the glass of sherry and sitting down beside me.

“Thunderous would be an understatement,” said Jane. “And it was hardly a welcome.”

“The good news is that I don’t feel ignored,” I said, “although I would have been happier with a smaller splash.”

He looked at me. “Yes,” he said, “I believe you would.”

“Well, here goes nothing,” said Jane, uncorking the bottle of wine I’d brought. “The previous owners of your place used to have quite a cellar—most of it imported burgundy, although the parents had a stake in some of the Cape wineries, and they used to bring bottles around for us to try. This one is French—let’s see if they left you anything worth drinking.” She poured, swirled, sniffed, and tasted. “Not too bad,” she said. “I’ll take it into the kitchen and decant it—needs to breathe a bit.”

“Wonderful,” said Andrew. “We can drink it with dinner.” We were sitting together on the couch, and he turned to face me. “I’ve always lived here, Grace, and our family’s been on this farm for generations. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for a single woman to find her way into this community. So, educate me. How’ve your first few month been? It can’t all have been as nasty as it was last week at the ladies club.”

“Not at all,” I said. “I’ve had a lot to learn, and it’s been busy. But it has been a bit lonely at times, and I’m glad to have met Letty and Jane.”

“Very different from each other, my sister and Jane,” he said, “but they make a great team.” He paused, looked down and retied the laces on his worn, soft leather walking shoes. “They’re lucky to have found each other. Letty wouldn’t have kept the farm going on her own, and I couldn’t run it and a medical practice at the same time. We would have been forced to sell, and that would have been difficult—we’ve eight generations buried in this turf. Jane’s made it possible for us to keep the farm, and I’m very grateful for that.” He looked at me again. “Tell me, Grace,” he said quietly, “how are you managing?”

I thought I heard condescension in his voice, and an assumption of familiarity that I was not prepared for. “I’ve done this before, you know,” I said stiffly. “I have a competent foreman and a wonderful
induna
. We’re doing well, thank you.”

“Yes,” he said, still speaking softly, but insistently. “I know Brian McWilliams; I’ve treated his family. And hard though it may be for you to believe, your
induna
, Solomon Mavovo and I grew up together.”

“So that’s how you know my cook. When I told him I’d be here for dinner tonight, he asked me to give you his greetings.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Your cook. Mandla Mkhize. Please give him my best. Khabazela,” he said pointedly, “is a fine, fine man.”

I’d never heard a white man refer to a Zulu with such respect, and I was puzzled.

“I understand that they call you the White Zulu,” I said.

“So, Khabazela has been talking,” he said with a smile. “Yes, they do. And I’d be happy to share my story with you, perhaps after dinner. It’s a longish tale.”

He took a final sip of sherry and placed his empty glass carefully on the coffee table. I was leaning back, and he placed a hand on the backrest and turned to me. I had the sense that he was looming over me, much closer than he had been before.

“Tell me about your farm up north,” he said in a low voice. “I understand from Phyllis McGowan that it was up close to the Rhodesian border. Your husband tried his hand at growing grapes there?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. I was angry that she had asked me so many questions, and that I had felt obliged to answer them. “I’m so glad she reported to you correctly. What else did she tell you?”

He looked straight at me and spoke softly, close enough so that I felt the vibrations of his voice. “She told me that you were charming and beautiful. But she also said that there was something about your story she didn’t believe, and she asked me what I thought.”

“And what do you think?” I asked, raising my chin, “about me and my story?”

“She was right on all counts. She also said, by the way, that she thought you were too good to be true.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yes.” He waited, smiling thoughtfully. “She was right about that, too. You’re way, way too good to be true.”

I hated the fact that he was able to make me flush to the roots of my hair.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” I said.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I told Phyllis that I thought your story held together perfectly, and that I found nothing unbelievable about it.”

“How nice of you,” I said. “I suppose I should be grateful.”

He shrugged. “That’s up to you,” he said, and leaned in even closer to me. I instinctively backed away. He grinned. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you two things. First, drop the grapes from your story—they don’t grow that close to the border. The fact that you might have tried to grow grapes only raises unnecessary questions about your competence as a farmer.”

I was about to object angrily that I didn’t have a ‘story’, and that he had no business questioning my competence or telling me what to do, but I simply couldn’t fake it convincingly in front of him.

“Second,” he said, “you should know that neither you nor Khabazela are the only ones who’re other than what they seem.” He held up a hand to silence me. “Don’t waste your indignation. You don’t have to defend yourself, or him, against me. When you get home, just ask him about our work together.”

“Your work?” I asked in a whisper. “What work could you possibly have together?”

“Ask Khabazela,” he said, rising and turning his face to the kitchen. “From the smell of it, the lamb is ready. Let’s go in, and I’ll tell you my story. I promise not to bore you.”

He stood aside for me as I rose and, feeling dazed, preceded him into the dining room. “Don’t worry, Grace,” he said in a low voice, patting my shoulder. “You’re among friends.”

Andrew and Letty grew up on the farm, their father being the only son of Scottish immigrants who settled the land in the 1860s. When Letty was born, their mother fell ill. Her illness was never given a name, but when Andrew was born five years later, she was unable to breast-feed him. In a local village his father found a young Zulu woman who had just given birth, and they hired her, bringing her into the house with her baby. She became Andrew’s wet nurse and doubled as his nursemaid; in time, Andrew began to call her
mama.
His birth mother turned out to be depressed and anemic, he said, and showed little interest in him, even after he was weaned.

“I was suckled by a Zulu mother,” he said, “nourished by Zulu milk. While I was at one breast, my Zulu brother Sbusiso was at the other, and we were breast-fed, as was the custom, for almost four years. We slept together in the same cradle, and when we started to investigate the world, the first thing we laid eyes on was each other. My first words were Zulu words, and I spoke Zulu fluently before I spoke English. At the age of seven I was sent to school, and when I was told that I had to go without Sbusiso, I wept with grief. I remember the sense of loss, and the frustration at not being able to fathom why he couldn’t come with me.

“But I went, barefoot, refusing to wear the shoes my father had bought for the occasion. We’d never worn shoes before, Sbusiso and I, and they were uncomfortable on our calloused feet. I left them under a bush outside the schoolhouse. Inside, I stood respectfully to greet my teacher the way I had learned was courteous and polite. At the end of the first day I went home, and that night my father asked me how it had been. I gave him a noncommittal response—something short that wouldn’t bring me to tears in front of him. He patted me on the head. He said, ‘It’s difficult, my son, but you’ll get used to it in a few weeks. We all do.’

“Later that night, as our mother was giving the two of us our bath, she couldn’t help but notice the welts on my back. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Did the big boys fight you?’ I think she had expected me to be teased—the other boys knew that Sbusiso was my closest friend. I told her that the teacher put the marks on my back. She thought I must have done something terrible, although she couldn’t imagine what it was, and she was furious, in her quiet way—in her culture, children were never beaten. She asked me, again and again, ‘What did you do, Andrew, for her to do such a thing to you?’

“Sitting in the bathtub and looking up at her, I raised my arm solemnly and said, ‘
Sawubona
.’

“‘Why do you say
Sawubona
to me?’ she asked, frowning. ‘This is not a game, Andrew. Tell me what terrible thing you did to make your teacher beat you so.’

“I said that I was just showing her what I had done at school—I had greeted my teacher politely, raising my arm in the Zulu way, as I had been taught, and I had said, ‘
Sawubona
,’ I see you.

“She lifted me out of the bathtub. ‘What was the woman thinking,’ she muttered as she spread a salve on my back, ‘to beat a child so?’

“‘She said she was teaching me,
mama
.’

“‘Teaching?’ she asked with quiet smile. ‘We do not raise a child by raising welts on his skin. What was she teaching you?’

“‘She said that I was a white boy, not a Zulu—and she was going to teach me never to use that language in her classroom. But it does not hurt me,
mama
,’ I told her, trying to comfort her, ‘and it will be better tomorrow.’

“‘It will be better tomorrow, yes,’ she said. ‘But we will see about her.’

“‘What do you mean,
mama
?’ asked Sbusiso. He stood behind me, gently tracing the welts on my back. She said nothing.

“My teacher was a hard, obese woman with a sour disposition, powerful from carrying around her huge weight. She used her strength in the service of her frequent irritation with the children in her classroom, and as a result we cowered before her. She had given me my first lesson in Afrikaans cultural tolerance, her only teaching tool a bamboo cane, and I quickly found ways to avoid her anger. After a few weeks, Sbusiso and I forgot about the incident, I learned to wear shoes, and as my father had predicted, I became used to going to school. But all was not right with my teacher, who began to behave strangely.