The Encyclopedia of Exes Page 14

  The man—young, calm—rose from his chair. Hello. Can I help? He wore black pants and a clean white shirt, a knot of copper and rubber bracelets on one wrist. Just looking, Laura mumbled. She noticed a pile of wide wooden bowls, an essential item on Clarissa’s list.

  The bowls must be Zulu or Ndebele, the mats simple, no colors, just tan and brown, maybe a stripe of red, Clarissa had written. And make sure the colors are uneven, which means they were dyed by hand. Don’t buy anything that looks like it might have been made in a factory. Clarissa’s shop was called Madiba, on Golborne Road, just off Portobello. Laura had heard all about it, how Clarissa’s English boyfriend had funded the venture, the recent expansion into art and photography. And bloody Nick had talked her into it, soothed her when they looked at the list of items Clarissa had e-mailed. Laura was to send two big boxes by sea mail, one via airmail, and bring whatever she could fit in two suitcases when she came to visit.

  Take your time. Please. He raised a hand to the shelves and sat down again. The topmost shelf bore unidentifiable things in tall pickling jars—snakeskins maybe. They looked like papyrus, she thought, or withered baby’s limbs—white, desiccated. She’d heard of Zulu Viagra—a tea made of dried animal genitals.

  When she looked down, he was staring at her. The way he stared, like a schoolboy stumped by a tough question, put her at ease. You are looking for something in particular? She said she would like to look at the big bowls. He stood up again. I am Zamakile. He was small with little puffs of cheeks, a tilt to his head, inquisitive eyes that widened before he spoke, mouth perpetually verging on a grin. He collected bowls from around his store. Many bowls, he said and laid one on the counter.

  I’m Laura. He smiled, then produced four pairs of carved salad servers tied with a single string.

  You like these? he asked. She smiled and shook her head. Then bit on her lower lip. Well, maybe. He made a big show of putting them to the side of the counter. She scanned the shelves again; he hung back. She asked if he had any of the other items she required—bowls made of telephone wire, straw mats, pottery. You can wait a minute? Before she could say anything, he was gone.

  Left alone in the little shop she wondered whether he would return, or whether a gang would enter and mug her. Then the fabric swooshed against the doorjamb, and he was back, smiling, pulling out of a Pick ’n Pay shopping bag a small bowl made of threaded colors of telephone wire and another made of dyed straw. He told her that he could get more if she wanted to come back in a few days.

  When she returned, Zamakile had a shelf full of things especially for her. He took each one down and placed it on the glass counter, and they examined the articles together, rubbing cloth between thumb and forefinger, picking up bowls, unrolling mats. They negotiated on prices, discussed items that he would find for her. He taught her some of the Zulu words. The wooden bowls were called umcwembe, and they are made from vangazi, the blood tree. The juice of the tree, he said, looking at her for the word. Sap, she offered.

  The sap, he said. She looks like blood.

  The next time, it was the same. Zamakile had procured more items that were on her list. Big straw baskets, the bigger the better, Clarissa had written. Laura handed him the list, explaining the few words that he didn’t understand, and they came to an agreement: he would get the items on consignment, no obligation, and tell her the price outright. If she liked them, she would buy them. If not, he’d keep them or return them to the store or owner from whence they came. After shaking hands on the deal, she lingered in the shop. He asked why she was buying the items, and she explained about Clarissa and her little shop in London. Haikona, he laughed. Overseas people, they want spoons from South Africa? He suggested that she not buy any pottery. It was poor quality and painted, not glazed, and wouldn’t survive the trip in a suitcase or box. He told her about his father who had a fruit stall in Kwa Mashu township in Durban.

  Another visit, and she crossed mats and telephone wire baskets off the list. They talked more this time, about the items he’d collected for her to inspect. There was, she thought, a sense of shared purpose, a sort of fellowship. They both had the same list, the same job to do. When he made a pot of tea, they stood at the counter together and drank out of small enamel mugs, and when they were finished he shook her hand and held open the fabric in the doorway. Siyabonga mngani. Thank you, my friend.

  A Tuesday. I have a present for you, he said. It is a kanga. The best dress. It will make you look like a real Zulu woman. Before she could say anything he directed her to the back of the store and turned away while she changed in the narrow space between the back wall and a battered old filing cabinet. She could see him lingering, looking out of the corner of his eye, as she stood there in her bra and panties before pulling on the stiff fabric and trying to knot it as she had seen Zulu women wear them. Of course she couldn’t get it right, and Zamakile had to help her, and his hands ran across her ribs and glanced off her breasts. He took his time adjusting the fabric with his small, strong hands, standing close, pressing up against her, until he stood back and admired her. Yes, beautiful, he said.

  He stood in front of her. Close. She could see tiny freckles and delicate crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. He smelled musky and slightly oily. She said Thank you, it’s beautiful, whispering because he was so close, then touched him. The stiff cotton fabric rustled as she wrapped her arms around him. Their eyes lingered on each other’s faces; he cupped his hand on her arm, just above the elbow. And then their mouths moved closer together, and they kissed. He stopped to close the door, then took her hand and led her into the back of the shop. They were about the same height and stood chest to chest, kissing. After a while their hands began exploring each other’s bodies. And then he untied the knot and unrolled the fabric around her and bent down and kissed her stomach. He took a pile of Basuto blankets and laid them on the cement floor, and they lay down and she unbuttoned his shirt and ran her hands across his chest, and they kissed again, groping, fondling. He cradled her cheek with his hand, stroked her hair. Then he took off the rest of his clothes, removed her bra and panties, his underpants. He fished a condom out of a box under the counter. When he entered her, he looked intently into her eyes, his head slightly tilted. Okay? he asked. Yes, mmnh, good. It was the first time since the last time with Nick, she thought, and then let herself go.

  She bought a ticket on British Airways, shopped for a black raincoat, leather gloves, a travel umbrella. And met Zamakile at his little shop every Tuesday afternoon. He would lock the door and pull the fabric curtain across the single window while she waited in the back where he had laid Basuto blankets on the floor. And he would undress her slowly, his dark hands delving pale skin. She would keep her eyes open and watch the focused look in his eyes, then the dreamy gaze as he came, sighing and kissing her neck. Afterward he would make sweet, milky tea and they would drink it standing at the counter, before he opened up the shop again.

  There were five Tuesdays before her flight, easily enough time to buy all the items Clarissa had requested, especially with Zamakile’s help. Laura shopped more carefully now, as she came to know the things she was buying. If she rejected something, he didn’t mind. As she began looking for the more expensive items on the list, her eye became trained, her knowledge deepened. She appreciated the shape of a good basket and came to know whether a fabric was made on a traditional single-heddle loom or a factory loom. She inspected the delicate patterns on the ebony and wood spoons, the designs carved into wooden bowls. Circles for life, lions for strength. Mbubi. Zamakile taught her the song his mother used to sing. Yaletha amathamsanqua, mbube. How blessed he is, lion.

  When she had filled three boxes, she took them to the post office. Now it was just a matter of filling her two suitcases. She saved the best items for hand delivery. And as the pile in front of her bookshelf at home grew, she began to take liberties. She bought a few items that Clarissa had not requested. Muthi gourds decorated with beads, mirrors set in hammered tin. They
were real, not imitations made for the tourist trade. And as she imagined Clarissa’s reaction upon taking inventory of her two suitcases, Laura’s thoughts turned to London. It would be nice to visit again, to go to the theater, maybe a fancy West End restaurant or two. She had other friends there, from high school and university. Maybe now was the time to move there; she’d thought about it for years. Maybe she would meet a man this time. It happened to Clarissa. There was, after all, nothing much holding her in South Africa anymore. Not her parents. Not her job at the magazine. Certainly not Nick.

  One Tuesday, they had finished their tea and Laura was just about to leave when an old man wandered into the store. He was thin and tall, his face intricately wrinkled, his mud-brown scalp scattered with hair white as snowflakes. His voice was raspy. Zamakile listened, then led him gently out of the store. They stood outside for a while, the younger man speaking close to the older man’s ear and pointing from time to time. What was that all about? Laura asked when Zamakile came back inside. Just an old man, Zamakile said. Lahlekelwe. Lost.

  The following week, she stopped by Zamakile’s store on Monday. She was on her way to run an errand in town and wanted a few more medicine gourds, having decided that Londoners would like them as paperweights. She was surprised to see a young woman behind the counter. Laura greeted her with an over-zealous politeness that made her feel like a suburban housewife. The woman smiled and offered a timid hello.

  There was a rustling in the back of the store and after a minute Zamakile appeared. “My wife,” he said. In Zulu, he whispered to his wife, who smiled again and nodded politely. Laura looked around, addressed both proprietors to say she was just looking today, and hurried out of the store. When she got to her car, she sat there for a while, her hands on the steering wheel. It hadn’t occurred to her that Zamakile might have a wife, and it was as if she had seen a ghost. Her hands were trembling as she put the key in the ignition and started home.

  Clarissa and James’s flat off Grosvenor Road was smaller than Laura had imagined. The guest bed, actually a kind of futon chair, was lumpy and hard, the pillows and blankets inadequate, and her first night in London Laura slept in leggings and socks.

  The next morning she had tea and a scone with Clarissa after James had gone off to work, and the two of them talked, catching up on forgotten friends, asking and answering where so and so was, what she did, where he had moved.

  They talked briefly about Nick, about why it had ended, and then went together into the study-cum-bedroom where Laura carefully unpacked the items she had brought. Clarissa took out a spiral notebook and began ticking off items as Laura unpacked them, arranging them carefully on the bed. I really enjoyed it, Laura told her friend, smiling. Shopping for everything. I learned a lot. And she was about to tell her about the Zulu she has learned, the newfound appreciation she had for weaving and pottery, maybe even broach the salacious topic of her brief affair with the handsome shopkeeper, when she noticed that Clarissa wasn’t very interested, neither in what she was saying, nor in the items laid out before her. She was giving each item only a cursory glance before finding the place in her ledger and ticking off the new inventory. She didn’t even touch most of the things, just pointed with her Biro while she paged through the little notebook.

  When Laura unpacked the final items, and Clarissa, somewhat reluctantly Laura thought, agreed to take the medicine gourds and mirrors, she closed her notebook and thanked Laura, rather formally. Then she wrote a check made out to cash. You’re a lifesaver, she said. You won’t believe how low our supplies are. You must come to the store and see for yourself. Laura picked up a small yellow and red basket made of telephone wire and woven in such a way that the circles of color on the sides flattened out like raindrops. Some of the work is just so beautiful, she said, rotating the little basket in the palm of her hand.

  Yes, it is, Clarissa agreed, dropping the basket into a cardboard box. Doing our bit to help the South African economy, aren’t we?

  Laura stood in the corner of the room, near the door, and watched Clarissa pack the items away. It was clear to her that Clarissa didn’t know the difference between a complex weave and a novice attempt, didn’t appreciate the shape of a good bowl, or the meanings of the figures carved or embroidered. So she stood there, saying nothing, watching as Clarissa taped up the boxes in which she’d put the items and headed off to work.

  Clarissa admitted as much that night at supper. More of an entrepreneur than a craftsperson, was how she put it. They ate, not at a fancy restaurant, but in the cramped kitchen, a bowl of pasta with store-bought sauce and two bottles of Chianti. James drank nearly a whole bottle himself. Clarissa and Laura spoke about their school days: Mrs. Barlow the headmistress, boys, dances. Laura noticed that James laughed a lot, but when he was not laughing his face took on a sour expression.

  Sitting in the little guest room that night, Laura felt lost without the carefully wrapped packages of mats and fabrics she had picked so lovingly and lived with for nearly two months—the baskets and bowls Zamakile had held in his delicate hands, the woods and cottons and ebonies they had rubbed and touched and examined together. It was as if the things had been her clothing, and now she was naked.

  The next night Clarissa and James had plans. They hadn’t made clear to Laura when she would go to the shop on Golborne Street, or when they would see her next, and it dawned on her slowly that they were not expecting her to stay long and, moreover, that they would not go out of their way to entertain her. So, there she was, alone in the flat with nothing to do. She made a couple of calls to old friends. She asked one what she was doing that night, but it was too late for her to get a babysitter, and she didn’t reach the other, just left a message with a cleaning lady who spoke very little English and disconcertingly referred to Laura’s unmarried friend as Mrs. Kate. So she was on her own tonight, Laura thought. Nothing wrong with that, of course. She would go out alone. She could go to a play or a movie. And that is what she did.

  But she couldn’t concentrate on the film. The weight of the trip, or the weightlessness that she felt after she’d shed herself of the carefully acquired objects and found her friend and hostess to be something of a stranger, played on her mind. She kept thinking of the beautiful bowls, mats, and spoons that would pass from one hand to the next, lost and unappreciated in London. As for the film, it confused and irritated her, with its numerous car chases and mountainside shootouts, loud soundtrack, and childish women characters who lost all bravura when the leading man approached.

  It was raining when she walked out of the cinema onto crowded Shaftsbury Avenue, wearing her new raincoat and gloves but without the new umbrella. Looking up, she took in the slate-gray sky, the flittering drizzle illuminated by the streetlights, the bright, buzzing theater signs. She started off walking at a brisk pace, thinking she was headed back to the Piccadilly Circus tube station, but after a while realized that she had in fact been walking in the opposite direction and was now in labyrinthine Soho. Not only had she not brought her travel umbrella, but she had forgotten the fold-up Harrods map that Clarissa had given her.

  The rain fell harder now, wet feathers on her face and fingers. As she strained to read a street sign up ahead, her mind jumped around, seeing scenes from the movie interspersed with images of Nick, Zamakile, Clarissa, all of them as indecipherable and fleeting as the film. Bloody hell, she cursed aloud when she discovered she had made yet another wrong turn. She found herself angry at the film; it seemed meaningless, sexist, and unnecessarily violent. She looked up hopefully when a taxi appeared, but it was taken.

  One minute she was sure that she was nearing Oxford Street, the next she found herself in an alley of sex shops, each one small, below street level, hung with bright signs advertising sex films, adult kinky, fetish video, she-men on DVD. The rain hadn’t abated, and by now her feet and hair were wet. She searched the streets for the warm orange glow of a taxi sign above the occasional mollusk-like black cabs that slithered through the dark, wet
night, diesel engines grunting. But the only taxis that passed were full, so she kept walking. She would come to a bus stop, she thought, or a tube station, or the next taxi would be free, and then she could shake off the rain and warm up.

  She turned around seeking out a taxi, then resumed walking toward the better-lit street up ahead. A boy, maybe sixteen, all hips and denim, blocked her path. Not walking, just standing in the dim street, under an awning. When he spoke, the voice surprised her. Too rough with cigarettes and booze for the sweet hollow face from whence it emanated. Hello, miss. Want some company? Shaking her head, she turned her collar against the rain and walked, looking back and forth for a taxi, trying not to cry, and wishing that the rain would stop.

  She stayed away from Mai Mai. At the end of summer she went to visit her parents in Cape Town. One night they threw a party. Deviled eggs and salmon mousse, mountains of food on silver trays and doilies. She carried a platter of prawns impaled with toothpicks and thought of a multicolored porcupine. The house was soon crowded, and people spilled into the little courtyard garden, smoking under the oak tree. There were few people her age, and the guests barely seemed to notice her. Except for one: Joe Saunders, a businessman who had lived in Lagos and Toronto, bald with a groomed gray beard and wire-rimmed glasses, who sought her out. He was tanned, with a pampered self-congratulatory look. He wore expensive loafers and an elaborately embroidered silk vest, silver and blue. He made conversation, asked about her work, what magazines she read, her thoughts about the South African economy, film noir, TV, surfing. He was an inept flirt, she thought, but cute and guileless, and paying her attention, lots of attention.

  When her mother brought out coffee and cake, he leaned close and asked if he could drive her home afterward. No thank you, she said. I’m staying here. Are you? Yes, I’m the daughter. Aha, he whispered, his forehead rising, making little waves of wrinkles around his eyes. In that case we’d better go for a walk. She giggled, thinking, silly man, no one goes for a walk anymore. Then she put down her cup and followed him through the house and onto the street.