The Madonna of Excelsior by Zakes Mda Read Free Book Online

armpits.
    â€œTake them off, Niki,” insisted Madam Cornelia. “Everything! You must be hiding it in your knickers.”
    No meat hiding in her bra. Only stained cotton-wool hiding in her knickers.
    She stood there like the day she was born. Except that when she was born, there was no shame in her. No hurt. No embarrassment. She raised her eyes and saw among the oglers Stephanus Cronje in his khaki safari suit and brown sandals. And little Tjaart. Little Tjaart in his neat school uniform of grey shorts, white shirt, green tie and a grey blazer with green stripes. Grey knee-length socks and black shoes. Little Tjaart of the horsey-horsey game. His father had just fetched him from school. And here he was. Here they were. Raping her with their eyes.
    â€œMagtig Niki,” said Madam Cornelia, “where did the kilo come from?”
    And she burst out laughing as if it was a big joke. Everyone giggled. Including Niki. But there was no laughter in her eyes.
    She put on her clothes and went tamely home.
    Niki’s triangular pubes loomed large in Tjaart Cronje’s imagination. Threatening pleasures of the future. A sapling looking to the starless sky for a promise of rain. He knew already that it was the tradition of Afrikaner boys of the Free State platteland to go through devirgination rites by capturing and consuming the forbidden quarry that lurked beneath their nannies’ pink overalls.
    For Stephanus Cronje, Niki’s pubes, with their short entangled hair, became the stuff of fantasies. From that day he saw Niki only as body parts rather than as one whole person. He saw her as breasts, pubes, lips and buttocks.
    While the Cronje men were seized by the fiends of lust, anger was slowly simmering in Niki. A storm was brewing. Quietly. Calmly. Behind her serene demeanour she hid dark motives of vengeance. Woman to woman. We wondered why she did not resign from Excelsior Slaghuis after being humiliated like that. But she knew something we did not know. She was biding her time. She had no idea what she would do. Or when. In the starless nights of Mahlatswetsa Location, she was nursing an ungodly grudge.

THE CHERRY FESTIVAL
    W E HAVE SEEN how the trinity loves donkeys. That is why this long-eared creature foolishly fills the whole space. It wears blinkers and its long tail touches the green grass on which the ass poses like the monarch of the canvas. The fields are uncultivated. They are brown with patches of green. They stretch for miles, until they reach the small brown hill that peeps over the white horizon. There is no room for anything else, except the red cock that the ass carries in a transparent bag strapped on its back and hanging from its side. The donkey and the cock own the world.
    A blinkered donkey led the floats on a Saturday morning. It was the king of the world for that day. It wore a crown of flowers and ribbons. Red, yellow and blue ribbons. Pink and purple carnations. It was not burdened with a red cock. Instead, a black boy in a colourful Basotho blanket perched on its back. And absorbed in his little body the summer heat of the eastern Free State town of Ficksburg, near the Lesotho border. Eighty-nine kilometres from Excelsior.
    The donkey nonchalantiy led the procession from the Henniede Wet Park down McCabe Street, into Voortrekker Street, and up Fontein Street.
    All the luminaries of Excelsior were there. They would not miss the cherry festival for anything. There was the diminutive Adam de Vries attired in a grey wash ‘n’ wear suit and grey moccasins. He was the only one of the Excelsior group who was dressed formally. He was also the only one who came with his wife. Lizette was dressed formally as well: a big straw hat shaped like a fruit bowl with plastic bananas, grapes and apples gracing it. A blue short-sleeved polyester dress with yellow flowers. White seamless nylon stockings and blue pencil-heel shoes.
    The couple had to be formal because Adam de Vries was a