You Can Take The Girl Out of South Africa…

 

So there I was alone in my apartment with a black man, and I mean black, North
African black.  Broad-shouldered, round-faced, eyes, black marbles in white moons.   I was glad for the photos of my late husband and daughter, which showed that I was not unprotected.  I lived in Israel, but you can’t take South Africa out of the girl.

 My regular cleaner had taken a holiday and sent Lucien to clean for me.  I live in a comfortable but modest apartment in Israel, and on this day, Lucien, a refugee from Bujumbara, who had sought asylum in Israel, came to help me clean the tough spots: the tops of the high kitchen cupboards, light fittings, windows. 

 Refugee from what, I wondered … did I know anything about this man?  Did I want to? In my previous life, men with black faces were a menacing canvas.  Was I crazy to invite him into my flat?  I made a show of glancing at my watch and announced, “We need to be finished by five when my husband comes home from work.” 

 “Bujumbara,” I asked, "Where’s that?”

“Congo,” he told me, arming himself with cleaning fluid, cloths, a broom, and other utensils. 

“And you’re legal?”

“Yes,” he looked around my flat but avoided my eyes.  The blacks I knew back home also avoided eye contact with white people.

 He probably isn’t a refugee at all, I thought.  I should ask to see his papers.  The question evoked unpleasant mental associations with Sannie, my Xhosa maid .  Born in the Transkei, she had been disqualified by the South African ‘Urban Areas Act” from working in the Cape.  She had a sweet, appealing face, and we liked her and felt sorry for her because there was no work to be had in the Transkei, so we took her on.   For fifteen years, we lived with the fear that she might be discovered and carried off by the Black Mariah, only to be dumped somewhere in the middle of nowhere. 

 The “Black Mariah” was what we called the menacing police van that patrolled the suburbs, ferreting out illegals.  They always came in the middle of the night.  They were driven by red-faced, thick-necked men who marched through one’s house barking contempt as they searched under beds and in cupboards for terrified illegal black servants.  How often had we hidden Sannie in our daughter’s bedroom, protesting shamelessly that we had no black ‘girls’ or ‘boys’ on our premises! And how often had I had an accusatory finger thrust in my face, “Hey lady, if we catch her, you gonna get a fine of thousands of Rands. So don’t you come crying to say you didn’t know!”

 The memory made me purse my lips as I skirted around Lucien, warning myself against asking too many questions. What was the point of pushing the man into a corner and making him lie?  He said he had a Visa so let it be.  He was only a temp and it would be better not to make his problem mine.  I hated the migrant worker system and I wanted none of it.   Yet, perhaps Lucien was indeed a refugee and needed the work.  He seemed a decent enough young man.  I pointed to the top of the kitchen cupboards, “I don’t know why they get so sticky,” I said.  “We’ll need hot water and vim.  I’ll tell you what, you climb up there and I’ll stand by with the bucket and soapy water.”

 I tried to read Lucien’ face, but it was a mask and I was drawn to make some kind of contact with him, even as I warned myself to keep my distance.  I was pleased to get away from all this when I left South Africa.  Yet here I was with a black man of dubious status, doubtless the victim of some kind of exploitation, who might have suffered terribly and done who knows what to save his own life, and I could not leave well alone.

 I had seen “The Hotel Rawanda” and been nauseated by the terrifying brutality of Hutu against Tutu, the demented marauding and murdering by young men roiling with testosterone; indiscriminately raping girls and women.   I looked at Lucien and imagined wild mobs, bullying, tearing, ramming their defiant penises into terrified vaginas, or stabbing tender parts with shards of broken glass and harsh instruments that would eradicate them as a nation.  Had Lucien murdered anyone?

 I wiped the countertop, feeling for sticky patches.  Lucien said, “It’s from the cooking and the humidity.”  I nodded, feeling a frisson of fear.

  “Congo – as in Rawanda?”

“Yes, Rawanda,” he said.

“I saw a movie about what happened there.  Terrible.”

“Yes,” he said, “It was like in the movie.”

 “You lost family?”

“Yes… many people.”

I sighed.  “People do such despicable things to one another.”

He wiped the cupboard doors. 

 “Is it clean?  I don’t think so.  Here,” I passed him a piece of Scotch-Brite.  Maybe this will do it.”  His cleaning was unimpressive.  I know the difference between wiping and cleaning.

 “You want something to drink?  To eat?”

“No”, he said, “first I work, then I eat.”

I opened a window, wondering where I’d put my purse. When I found it on my desk, I picked it up and put it in my bedroom cupboard.  Drawing near to him, I said, “

“Maybe you were sort of lucky … at least you got refugee status in Israel. I know many people who would like to live here but can’t get permits.”

He looked at me as if puzzled as he filled the bucket with clean water.   I felt crass; there was nothing lucky about Lucien’s situation. 

 I said, “Let’s move the table together; it’s heavy and the floor needs cleaning.”  He clutched one side and I the other, and pushed.  The table scraped the floor, making a black streak.  “Oops,” I said, “I hope we didn’t scratch it.  I fetched the scourer and he rubbed the mark away.  “You have many jobs?” I asked.

 “Not so many, I need more work.”

“Where do you live?” I asked, moving chairs out of his way.  He threw soapy water on the floor and sponged it.

“Tel Aviv – South Tel Aviv.”

 I nodded, cautious.  I was aware of how poorly the migrant community lived. Many were packed like sardines into dilapidated rooms, while some found shelter in the old bus terminus. If Lucien told me how bad things were, what would I do?  Invite him to stay with me?  Give him extra money?  Give him a meal?  Feel guilty for having a roof over my head, enough food, secure citizenship, and rights simply because I was Jewish?  But this was nonsense; we Jews had been driven out of so many countries, including northern Africa.   These refugees pitched up on our borders, starving, exhausted, often close to death, with desperate pleas and terrifying nightmares, and expected us to save them?  But how? What were we to do with them?   We had so many of our own problems in Israel.  Were they Christians … Muslims?  Would they have offered us the hand of friendship if the shoe was on the other foot? What did we have to do with these Hutus and Tutsis and their inter-tribal wars?

 “Do you live alone?” 

He smiled shyly and said no, he shared his flat with a couple of others.  We exchanged smiles

“You are married?  You have a woman?”

He covered his face with his hand, embarrassed.  “No, I don’t have a woman.”

“But you have family with you?  Parents?”

He shook his head.  “My father was murdered in Bujumbara .”

“Murdered!” I stopped moving around.

“When I was a boy,” he said.  “Many in my family were killed!”

I shook my head.  “I am sorry, Lucien.  Is it okay… do you mind my asking …?”

 He shrugged and wiped his forehead.  “I can take water, please?”

“Of course,” I told him.  “Tea?  Coffee?”  I wondered whether to give him a paper cup or a regular mug.  “Maybe now you will eat something?  Here,” I said, fetching a sandwich from my fridge. I was irritated by my absurd constraints: “Sit down and have a sandwich.  It is already made.”

  Lucien hovered, uncertain.

“Sit” I said, putting down a straw place-mat and a plate of food.  I sat across the way.

“You have a nice place,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You have children here?”

I lied, “Yes”.  My children had left Israel, but Lucien didn’t need to know this.

“Where you from?”

I said, “South Africa.  “You been there?”

He shook his head.

 He ate the sandwich hungrily, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.  “I was at school in France,” he said.  “On a scholarship.  Then the war broke out, and my scholarship was not renewed, so I had to return to Congo.”

“You never completed your schooling?”

“No –university.  When I came home, things were very bad.” 

“University?” I exclaimed.  What was this young man doing cleaning floors?

“So your father was murdered … and your mother?”

 “My mother is alive.  She is still in Bujumbara with my brothers.”

“And how do they live?  You help them?”

He nodded.  “I send money.” 

I shook my head empathetically.  “And you earn enough to make it worthwhile?”

He said, “Sometimes,” and laughed.  “When I get work!”  He had a pleasant, open smile with dimpled cheeks. I warmed to him.

“Have you had enough to eat?” I asked, wrapping up an apple and an orange.  “This is for you to take home, later.”

 We moved to my office, where I have my desk, my books and my piano.  Wide-eyed, Lucien asked, “Do you play?”  He raised the lid.

Laughing a little, I said, “Mmm, sort of.  I used to play when I was a child but I’ve forgotten most of what I learned.  I‘m having lessons, but it is slow going.”

 He strummed his broad black hand over the ivory keys, “I can play.  But I can’t read music; I never learned.”

I was skeptical.  “So how do you play?”

He sat down on the piano stool and began to form chords.  “I play for you?” his face was an earnest plea.

“Sure,” I said, positioning myself on my desk stool and wheeling it closer.

 He ran his fingers up and down the keyboard, creating harmonic, jazzy sounds with repetitive African rhythms that made my body want to move.  I was incredulous. 

“This is a song I am thinking about while I am cleaning.”

“You mean – now?”

“Yes, right now.”

“You just made it up?  How did you do that?”

“I just do it,” Lucien said. “I play the guitar and I sing too.”

“Really?” I exclaimed.  It is difficult for me to play a single piece, even after hours of practice.  How could Lucien  do all these things by instinct? 

 He crooned to his own accompaniment, his voice a mellow, sweet tenor, his face shining.

“You make up your own songs?”

“Yes,” he said.

“But if you can’t write them down, how do you remember them?”

He laughed, “Sometimes I forget.”  His white teeth were framed by soft full lips.  “And sometimes I remember.”

 “Oh, no.  I’d die if I wrote a song and then forgot it!  You have to record your song.  You need an MP3,” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” he shrugged, “One day I will have one.”

No, no, that didn’t feel good.  Lucien had talent and I had three MP3’s – I was ashamed of my excess while he had so little. I rummaged on my bookshelf.  “Okay,” I said, “I have an MP3 for you.  It’s a little old-fashioned, but it works.  And you don’t have to use batteries; you just charge it.  You want it?”

 “Really?  I can have it?”

Smiles all round.  “Of course,” I said, showing him how it worked. “You will need earphones.”  He showed me that he had a pair for his cellphone. I gave him a basic music theory book.  “This is a great little manual; it teaches you about notes and how to understand the way Western music is constructed.  I learned with it; it has some beginner songs that you can practice.”

 Delighted, Lucien leafed through it. 

He picked up the sheet music for Autumn Leaves, lying on my desk. “You can play this?”

“Nah”, I just play the melody so that I can learn to sing the song.”

“Oh, you sing?” he asked, his eyes wide.

Shyly, I said yes.  Well, yes, a bit.  Nothing very wonderful.

 “Sing for me.”

Sing for this strange, black young man?  I couldn’t!  I felt a little crazy, but before I could think of all the reasons not to, I opened my mouth and sang, “The autumn leaves, drift by my window… the autumn leaves, of red and gold…”  Lucien listened intently, then carefully picked up the melody and played it.  I shivered.

“You have a nice voice,” he said. “Sing some more!”

“Nah, rubbish – YOU have a wonderful voice,” I said.  “I’ll sing if you sing with me…”

 Sometimes one has a sense of being both in a scene and outside of it, participating while watching it from afar.  I had this sense of watching Lucien and myself from a distance: this squat, pleasant-faced black man, a young man in jeans and a checked shirt, a refugee from Bujumbura, and me, an elderly, middle-class woman, enjoying an afternoon making music and singing. 

 Not for the first time, I heard the voice of my late husband admonishing me, “What are you doing?  You aren’t thinking straight … you can’t get involved with total strangers. Your cleaner, for goodness' sake! What’s the point?”  My husband would have known that I have a penchant for getting into situations and that become complicated and embarrassing. But for now, I harmonized with Lucien; he playing the piano and me, tapping out the rhythm on my wooden desktop.  Just for a moment, this black man from the Congo and I thumbed our noses at caution, deliriously enjoying our daring and allowing ourselves to believe that something strangely liberating was happening.