The Story of the Cannibal Woman (8 page)

“Ever since we arrested her, despite a stream of psychologists, psychiatrists, and communications specialists of all kinds, she hasn't opened her mouth. I don't know what her voice sounds like. They assure me, however, that nobody can resist you. During your sessions people recount everything they have on their conscience.”

Rosélie agreed, murmuring:

“Can you heal those whom you don't understand?”

Don't keep anything from me. You know full well when you say “I” you mean “us.” Let's go back to when you were a girl. Your mother died when you were ten. Have you ever got over it? Do you still dream about her at night?

Can you see yourself playing horsey on her lap?

As they headed toward the door, the Inspector continued:

“Oddly enough, she formed with Adriaan, her husband, a very loving couple. They were married for twenty-five years; they didn't just live together. No, they were married. Legitimately married. Both very religious. They were regulars at the Church of the Resurrection in Guguletu. They didn't miss a service. Then, surprise, surprise, two years after their wedding, Adriaan had a child with a neighbor's daughter. But apparently it didn't affect their relationship. She took the boy in and raised him. The whole business remains a mystery.”

F
iela, you've settled into my thoughts and dreams. No bother at all. As discreet as an alter ego. You hide behind everything I do, invisible, like the silk lining of a doublet. You must have been like me, a solitary child, a taciturn teenager. Your aunt who raised you said how ungrateful you were. You had no friends. You didn't attract attention. The boys walked past without a glance, without a thought as to what you were dying to give them.

Every weekend since she had been on her own, Rosélie had followed Dido to Lievland, where her old mother, Elsie, had stayed on. The open-air life and visiting places had never interested Rosélie. It was Stephen who, at the slightest day off, had dragged her, moodily, through the game parks, onto the beaches, into the mountains and campgrounds where they ate
braais
in the company of strangers—who were disconcerted by the presence of a black woman—and on excursions out to sea to spy for whales they never saw. If she had been left to herself, she would have stayed home on Faure Street, moping with her memories. But Dido insisted she should “enjoy” herself.

Now that gangs ransomed passengers, raped and molested women traveling alone, taking the train was like an adventure into the Wild West. So Rosélie rented Papa Koumbaya's car. Stephen had known Papa Koumbaya's three younger sons at the university where they taught music. During his frequent visits to the jazz clubs, he had become friends with the older sons, who also were musicians. They had all made him laugh when they told him the story of how they had clubbed together and given a Thunderbird as a token of their affection to their old parents, crippled by a life of hard labor under the suns of apartheid. The parents had thanked them warmly, but nevertheless found the car too beautiful, far too beautiful for a couple of old fogies!

They had kept it in a garage, and Papa Koumbaya brought it out in exchange for a fistful of rand for wedding processions. Being driven to the altar in Papa Koumbaya's Thunderbird was one of Cape Town's costlier attractions. Renting his car to Rosélie for mundane excursions showed the full extent of the feelings he had for Stephen.

Rosélie didn't know who she preferred—Papa Koumbaya or the Thunderbird, red the color of desire, hissing like a snake, which, alas, the old man, an extremely careful driver, reined in along the highway like a jockey curbing his thoroughbred. As for Dido, she complained that Papa Koumbaya stank like a billy goat. And then there was nothing original about his stories. They were so basically South African. As a result, she stuck ear plugs in her ears while Rosélie opened wide her own. Shriveled like a gnome behind the wheel, Papa Koumbaya set about telling them a different way each time, spicing them up in new guises, adding moving details or picturesque anecdotes. For forty years he had lived with six others to the room in a men's hostel in Guguletu. When his body cried out too much, he would relieve himself by masturbating in front of a photo of Barta, his wife. Then he would wash away his disgust with gallons of bad beer. In the meantime Barta had been relegated beyond the six-hundred-mile limit to a barren bantustan. They made love during his brief leaves. Year in, year out, however, Barta gave birth to a son. In order to cheer up his miserable life as a pariah, he had learned on his own how to play a number of musical instruments, and communicated his passion for music to his sons. The seven of them had formed an orchestra, which played at services in the churches of the Assembly of God. The Koumbaya Ensemble. Strangely enough, the end of apartheid had sounded its death knell. Too rustic, too folksy when all you had to do was switch on the television to get the handsome Lenny Kravitz or the Spice Girls!

Rosélie would have driven through Stellenbosch and its whitewashed houses, full of memories of apartheid, without stopping. But Dido always woke up on entering the town and demanded they have a coffee in the rose-covered patio of D'ouwe Werf.

“I can't believe I'm actually sitting here,” she would say. “When I was small, we were barred from this place, like so many others. And I used to dream about it. So you can understand how I feel sitting here today!”

Although the waitresses in their ample aprons were polite, the tourists had no scruples, staring in hilarity at this unusual trio. Were they a father and his two daughters? A husband and his two wives? They had no idea they were a sight themselves. Tourists had always fascinated Rosélie. In Guadeloupe, most of the visitors were extremely average French families, both in bank account and physique, seeking cheap exoticism.

Canadian women have long gone. They now prefer the males in Saint Martin.

Whereas the whole world was streaming into Cape Town. But why do you see only the garish, the brash, the loud, the fat, the potbellied, and the big-bottomed? Where were the handsome, the slim, the polite and discreet? Don't they travel anymore?

Despite the slow pace of Papa Koumbaya's driving, they soon reached Lievland from Stellenbosch. Lievland boiled down to its homestead. Nestled in the foothills, amid a setting of oaks, it was a magnificent example of eighteenth century Cape Dutch architecture. Throughout the years, every owner had added his mark. One a stable, another a gable, and yet another a granary covered in fire-retardant material where they stored coffins and provisions side by side. The tourists, raising their heads to the gabled facade before dragging their sneakers through the series of rooms, had no idea of the drama being played out upstairs. In 1994, swearing he would never see his beloved country in the hands of a Kaffir, Jan de Louw had turned his back on his vineyards and locked himself in his bedroom, his eyes stubbornly fixed on his wardrobe from Batavia made from coromandel ebony. His wife, Sofie, had first tried to get him to go downstairs. Unable to do so, she had written to Willem, their only son, who, long ago, had taken refuge in Australia. There, at least, the aborigines stayed in their place. At the most, they won medals at the Olympic Games! Willem had refused to set foot in South Africa. So Sofie had tried to look after the vineyards herself. But that's a man's job! With an aching heart she had had to sell her land and put the estate house on the well-known tourist circuit of AfriCultural Tours. It had become a major point of interest, attracting busloads of admiring tourists. A Dutch photographer fell in love with the place and asked for permission to include it in a series of postcards entitled “Marvels of the World.” A Norwegian had flown from Hammerfest to have his picture taken alongside his bride. There was a time when Dido had proposed opening a restaurant in the former slave quarters, beside the stables, opposite the animal park. But Sofie had firmly opposed it. She suffered enough seeing hordes of strangers stream over the de Louws' floor and considered it a comedown. She didn't want to see them. She didn't want to hear their stupid comments.

“Did you see that barometer? How old is it? How does it work?”

“And that wonderful clock! Look, it not only shows the days but also the phases of the moon.”

“How extraordinary!”

Every day from nine-thirty to five o'clock she would hole herself up in the kitchen behind the door marked
PRIVATE
. By craning her neck, the curious visitor could see the stone hearth that stretched the whole width of the kitchen, and salivate at the thought of the meat that was once smoked there.

Dido and her mother lived in the former slave quarters, a long, low building to the side of the homestead under a heavy roof that would have delighted an amateur of local color. No heating. No hot water. A rudimentary shower. A makeshift WC. In order to counterbalance the lack of comfort, Dido had scattered colored rugs over the floor of beaten earth, laid lace crochet work on the back of shapeless pieces of furniture, and, above all, hung one of Rosélie's paintings, oil on wood, in the center room. With no title, of course. Despite her allegations, the weekends at Lievland were anything but “enjoyable.” They would walk around the vineyards. They would eat a
bobotie
cooked by Dido's mother. They would take a siesta. They would take another walk, this time on the road, and pick wildflowers. They would dine on the rest of the
bobotie
. With Dido's mother rambling on in the background about the time she visited Maputo, describing the city like a Muslim the Garden of Allah. They would then watch films on the VCR; always the same ones, featuring Keanu Reeves from every possible angle. They would go to bed. They wouldn't sleep. Yet they always got up at the crack of dawn and started all over again, except the
bobotie
would be replaced by a lamb curry. At 6:00 p.m. on the dot, Papa Koumbaya's car would be waiting. They would drive back to Cape Town. They would go to bed. They wouldn't sleep.

But that weekend, the thirteenth since Stephen had died, was destined to be different.

When they arrived, Rosélie and Dido found Sofie deep in conversation with Elsie.

Sofie was a frail little woman. Wearing a white headscarf tied into a bonnet and a black dress, she looked like someone out of a painting by Vermeer. Despite the extraordinary difference in size—Sofie, a featherweight, weighed under sixty pounds—Sofie reminded Rosélie of Rose. Rose had finished her days the same way: alone in a house that was too big, neglected by her husband and deserted by her only child. At the back of their eyes you could read an identical tale of solitude and desertion, as if this were the lot of mothers and wives.

Sofie looked up as they came in and croaked:

“It's Jan. He's thrown himself out of bed and fractured his skull. The doctor says he hasn't got long to live.”

As if to ward off ill fortune, Elsie made the sign of the cross.

Dido and Sofie hurried over to the estate house. Seeing Rosélie hesitate, Dido shouted to her:

“Come on! You could help him. You know you're worth more than all the doctors on earth.”

Faith is the only saving factor!

The tour buses were now jostling into the parking lot, and some Germans were getting out. Sofie explained she hadn't been surprised by her husband's act. Recently, Jan had changed a lot. He who devoured the newspapers, rejoicing at the upward curve of AIDS and the increase in the number of child rapes and robberies, was no longer interested in anything. He dozed all day long. He would ask for his mother and brother, who had been laid to rest years ago. Rosélie was ashamed of her curiosity. It was as if the ogre's padlocked door were finally creaking open on its hinges. She had never been near Jan, around whom Dido had woven a thick mythology of tales and legends in which he had become a hairy, longhaired, one-eyed beast, evil personified, his personal stench lingering around the homestead like a decaying carcass. At last she was going to see him with her own two eyes. A troubled feeling of triumph mingled with her curiosity. She was going to see for herself his downfall. For this voluntary end to his life was a point of no return. At last he had admitted that this country, where he and his kin believed they could lay down their law, had escaped them for good. The Kaffirs in power were here to stay.

Sofie entered first, then Dido. Gripped by a kind of fear, Rosélie was the last to cross the threshold.

What was she expecting?

A hulking, menacing man with an arrogant, slightly protruding jaw. Instead, deep in the four-poster bed lay Jan, as frail as his wife, dressed in a nightshirt with a pleated yoke, with chalky-white skin and his forehead wrapped in an enormous, soiled bandage that made him look like a sick fakir. The room was painted dark brown and made even darker by the closed shutters, which let in a thin shaft of light. You would never have dreamed that outside it was broad daylight. Besides the wardrobe from Batavia, the room was furnished pell-mell with a marquetry chest of drawers, a rosewood table, and a camphor wood trunk. In a corner stood the child's cot on which Sofie had slept for years. Seeing this, Rosélie's forebodings were swept away in a wind of compassion that brought her to the verge of forgiveness. The final moment the old man was going to confront, Stephen had confronted alone. Alone like Rose a few years earlier. How could she soften the blow? Could her meager talents be of any use?

It was then that Jan opened his eyes and she received his gaze full in the face. A bluish green gaze, stained in places by fibrils of blood, floating on the white of his cornea like clumps of seaweed. Bluish green like the ocean at the farthest end of the earth, at the extreme tip of this cape they call Good Hope. Wrongly. For the dismal cargo from the East Indies, Madagascar, and Mozambique, the sight of these jagged, rugged cliffs signified in fact the end of all hope.

His gaze pinned her rigid against the wall. It seemed he was sending her back to former places, to a previous role. Standing behind the master's chair, waving peacock-feather fans to drive away flies and cool the sweat on his shoulders. Lying, legs spread open, fodder for the master. Back bent, lacerated by the overseer's whiplashes. For Jan, time had stopped still. Today meant yesterday. There was no tomorrow.

Sofie and Dido vainly tried to get her to come closer, but the pitiless beam from Jan's eyes paralyzed Rosélie while a host of feelings welled up inside her. The rage to hurt him, even kill him; in any case to make him lower his eyes. Part of her was ashamed, another part terrified by such violence. As a result, she could no more move than if she had been changed into a rock. After a while she got control of herself and, regaining a semblance of calm, turned the door handle and slipped into the corridor.