The History of Man. Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
at their government-issued, bungalow-style house with whitewashed walls and no veranda, where they held captive an audience of their son, Emil, and Johan’s deputies, Scott Fitzgerald and Walter Musgrave.
When they had first arrived at the outpost that was but a stone’s throw from the Rhodes Matopos National Park, Gemma had been worried because Johan had honestly told her that they and his two deputies were the only Europeans within a ten-kilometre radius. The only other Europeans they would occasionally see were tourists, the day trippers and sightseers that came to visit the national park. Even if Johan did not say it, they both thought it – Gemma was the only white woman for miles around. It was 1933, so by then they had both, separately, read or heard about the Black Peril, and they had both, separately, been frightened by it. Keeping a brave front, neither of them voiced their fears to the other. They chose, instead, to focus on finally being able to live together and start a life together.
As it turned out, there had been nothing to fear. The natives in the nearby village paid very little attention to Gemma except when she did something that amused them, like hiding from the sun, standing in the rain, having her servants transport water from the river so that they could do the laundry in the yard (when it could far more conveniently be washed in the river), having cold, raw vegetables served to her family as part of supper, painting her face even when there was no special occasion or ceremony and buying feeding bottles as presents for the pregnant women in the village, bottles she was always upset to see put to other, more practical uses.
On second thoughts, maybe the natives did pay Gemma a lot of attention, but that was because she did much to amuse them. She gave the distinct impression of having things upside down and back to front. She was cock-eyed or rather kokayi, as their tongues had transmogrified the word. It was a word that the villagers who worked in the industries of the City of Kings had brought back with them to the village in the same way that they had brought back mirrors, tins of that greatest creation of all, condensed milk, and the knowledge that the Europeans, using a highly esoteric system, had deemed them to be an inferior species of human. ‘Cock-eyed’ had fast become a familiar term as it was used often by their baas to chastise them and make them feel inadequate, small or lacking. Like most of the things that they brought back from the city, the word was part of a shift in the order of things. Perhaps in an effort to make things right again, ‘kokayi’ was used often by the natives whenever Gemma Coetzee did something out of the ordinary. But if any of them intended to make her feel inadequate, small or lacking, they found that they did not have the power to humiliate her.
Since there was genuinely nothing to fear from the natives save the occasional giggle or shake of the head, Gemma relaxed and became happy. She was, after all, the only white woman within a ten-kilometre radius, and therefore something quite exotic, like a rare bird with exquisite plumage that attracted ornithologists from far and wide. During those Friday sundowners she held three European men and one European boy in her sway. They loved her and she loved to be loved by them. Scott Fitzgerald said that she resembled Janet Gaynor; Walter Musgrave swore she resembled Carole Lombard and, for her part, Gemma was happy to be anywhere between these two points – angel or vixen – because it meant that her beauty was of a screen-siren quality. She found it comforting to be considered so beautiful that the entire world would want to gaze upon her.
Scott Fitzgerald, who had absolutely no desire to be a policeman all his life, made no secret of the fact that he was using Gemma as his muse for what was to be his first novel. Gemma happily allowed him to find inspiration in her because she could readily see that there was poetry in his soul and that, because of this, they were kindred. Walter Musgrave, after he had met Gemma, would spend his days off no longer painting watercolour landscapes of the veld around them or the Matopos Hills, but would, instead, have her sit for him so that he could immortalise her on canvas because she was, according to him, the ideal of beauty and femininity. Gemma contentedly basked in the warm glow of both men’s adoration and felt that life on the BSAP outpost would never be anything but good.
Johan did not mind the unguarded attention that his wife received from his two deputies because he loved his wife and knew that she genuinely loved him too. Several years of fevered and fervoured correspondence had made him confident in their love for each other. Besides, Scott Fitzgerald and Walter Musgrave could not have known of the nights when Gemma, while performing a tantalising striptease, would sing with persuasive breathlessness about how much she wanted to be loved by Johan and nobody else but Johan.
Yes, Gemma was happy because she was the jewel in the crown, the apple of every European eye that fell upon her in the outpost. She did not mind that her days were usually taken over by an easy ennui because it happily unshackled itself on Fridays and gave way to a frenzied furore as Gemma reinvented herself as something she had fantasised being, but had, in reality, been too busy to be: a flapper girl.
In their collective imagination, Gemma became the quintessential 1920s carefree, daring and modern woman. And this image that they had of her was true … to an extent. She had danced the Charleston in wild abandon at Durban’s Kenilworth Tea Rooms on more than one occasion, and because one could not dance the Charleston in wild abandon at the Kenilworth Tea Rooms and expect to be taken seriously without the proper attire, Gemma had bought herself, for her twentieth birthday, a bright red cloche hat and, to complete the look, her mother, during a rare act of motherliness, had bought her a black chiffon and lace drop-waist dress that came to her knees. So, despite the fact that she had spent most of the 1920s in a long courtship with Johan and helping Mrs Williams cater to her tenants’ needs, Gemma had felt herself to have been carefree, daring and very modern through it all. She felt in her heart of hearts that she still possessed these qualities at the foot of the Matopos Hills and proved this by donning her red cloche hat and black chiffon and lace drop-waist dress and dancing with abandon at every sundowner on the patch of grass that masqueraded as a lawn and stood where a veranda should have been. The 1930s were not like the 1920S – 1929 had seen to that and sobered the world – but those on the outpost did not have to let go of the heavenly 1920s, not as long as they had Gemma to play the happy, wild and enticing flapper girl.
Gemma’s gesticulations amused the natives to no end because they knew that she considered the enthusiastic flailing of her arms and legs dancing, which it most certainly was not. Nevertheless, as she danced to ‘You’re the Cream in My Coffee’, Gemma’s European audience was enthralled. Sometimes Johan, not much of a dancer himself, became so enraptured by the thrill in Gemma’s movements that he would join her in a foxtrot promenade, a dance that Emil would always remember in beautiful and brilliant Technicolour.
Life on the outpost would have continued uninterrupted on this steady path that showed every sign of leading to only more happiness … if a native girl had not arrived on the patch of grass that masqueraded as a lawn and stood where a veranda should have been. But the native girl had arrived carrying a baby boy with skin the colour of tea with milk in it and a generous spray of curly sand-coloured hair and their arrival changed everything.
The native girl had asked for Walter and this – not the presence of the native girl or the existence of the brown baby in her arms, but the fact that she had simply asked for Walter – was what struck Gemma the most. She had not asked for baas, or Mr Musgrave, or Mr Walter – just Walter. The native girl had not cast her eyes down as she spoke to Gemma, as the short history lived together with the Europeans had taught most natives to do. Uncharacteristically, and rather defiantly, the native girl had looked Gemma in the eye, shifted the baby on her hip and said, ‘I ask to see Walter.’
Instead of responding, Gemma clutched at her throat, which made a gurgling sound as she stifled a primitive and primal scream. The omnipresent heat had, at that moment, become unexpectedly oppressive. Gemma felt the back of her neck grow very hot before she suddenly became light-headed. In the confusion of her light-headedness she became determined. She had been born in Africa; there was no way the unforgiving heat would affect her. She raised her chin rebelliously and tilted it against the heat before falling on her kitchen floor in a fainted heap.
Gemma must have hit her head on the concrete floor because she woke up with a bump on her forehead and a migraine. The now oppressive heat was still there. The native girl and the baby boy were also still there. The only thing new was Walter Musgrave walking towards her carrying a glass of water in one