You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town by Zoë Wicomb Page A

costumes. Have you ever been in the city for the midnight?’
    Tamieta seals her face and maintains a scornful silence.
    â€˜No,’ he continues, ‘you won’t have seen the lights all down Adderley Street, man, twinkling like home-made stars, man, like all the planets just jiving in the streets. Then all the bells start ringing and that’s when we run out from the shadows with the black polish.’
    His hips grind as he dances towards her, waving his spread palms. She cannot ignore him and when she retreats with her wooden spoon, Charlie grabs his knees with mirth and crows breathlessly, ‘That’s when we get all the whities and rub the black polish all over their faces.’
    â€˜I must be a baboon to listen to all this nonsense. Where will a white person allow a troop of coons to even touch their faces? I may have been born in a pondok but I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.’
    â€˜â€™Strue Tamieta, ‘strue,’ he begs her to believe him. ‘It’s been going on for years now, it’s a tradition you know,’ and taking up his chopping knife he adds soberly, ‘I suppose the whities who come there know it’s going to happen and come specially for the black polish, but perhaps there is, yes there must be, one or two who get the fright of their lives when we jump out from the shadows.’
    Tamieta sets the cups out on the counter. She really can’t be listening to this boy’s nonsense and if he doesn’t know that he’s supposed to spend the afternoon at the ceremony, well then, that’s his problem.
    â€˜Here,’ she calls to the Shenton girl, ‘here, the coffee’s ready.’
    Midst these unlikely sounds of clattering cups and the regular fall of the knife, the bass of the bean soup and the sizzling onion smells, the essay is going tolerably well. There are human voices in the background, the amicable hum ofTamieta and Charlie, harmonising with the kitchen sounds that will materialise into bean soup favoured by the students and bredie for the staff.
    I have followed the opening thrust with two more paragraphs that wantonly move towards exonerating Tess. Retief’s notes are no good to me. He will not be pleased. Things are going well until an ill-timed ten o’clock siren sounds, signalling a visit to the lavatory. Since the collapse of the beehive I have not found a satisfactory way of doing my hair although the curve of my flick-ups is crisp as ever. Fortunately one can always rely on Amami hairspray. I wet my fingers at the tap to tug at the crinkly hairshaft of an otherwise perfectly straight fringe. Cape Town with its damp and misty mornings is no good for the hair. Thank God there is no full-length mirror to taunt me although I have a feeling that the waistband of my skirt has slackened. After a final glance at the now stabilised fringe and a rewarding thumb between my blouse and waistband, I am ready to face coffee-break.
    The boys who play klawerjas at the back of the room are already installed and they let out the customary wolf whistle as I re-enter the cafeteria. Fortunately my table is right at the front so that I do not have to endure the tribute for long. It is of course encouraging to know that a few moments before the mirror does pay dividends, that the absorption with a card game can be pierced by a pleasing female tread. My pulse quickens. Though I sit with my back to them I don’t know what to do. There is no question of carrying on with the essay. These males have a sixth sense. Whilst being held by the game they somehow know when a girl moves and will not fail to pucker the lips and allow the hot draught of air to escape even as you bend to retrieve a sheet of paper from the floor. There must be some girls whonever get whistled at but I don’t think I know of any. We are all familiar with the scale of appreciation, from the festive tantara for the beauties to the single whiplash of a