Short Story.
Where The Clouds Gather
What is your name?
It’s as good a place to start as any. A name is just ‘the tip of the iceberg’, as they say – and They say a lot of things; things we simply adopted without thought. Icebergs have no place on the sunny coast of Cape Town, do they? Can you imagine? Although, if you’ve ever been there, you would be forgiven for thinking it a possibility - the strip of coastline cooled by the Atlantic Ocean is notoriously chilly.
If you want to swim, you’re better off doing it on the other side of the coast around False Bay - it’s hugged by the Indian Ocean, which carries warm currents much better suited to beach goers… and a wide variety of sharks. The South African version of the ‘iceberg’ saying should use the sharks instead. Come to think of it, it probably did - in one of the many ancient languages, now steadily fading from collective memory. It would’ve said something like – ‘That’s just the tip of the shark fin’ when a curved triangle shape would slice through the calm waves, signalling danger beneath the surface. At a quick glance that’s probably what the billowing sails of the merchant ships looked like to the locals, that first day they appeared on the horizon centuries ago.
Amsterdam. Present day. I’m standing on the side of the Oosterdok canal when I time travel. I’ve come for a late afternoon walk and the light is subdued.
There are few places in the bursting city centre where you can sit in peace, unless you know where to go. After 17 years here, I have my spots. Along the Ij-tunnel there is a pier overlooking the Oosterdok, which you can reach via a few steps down at the tunnel’s end. On a day like today, when my longing for the water shrinks my chest, I come here, sit myself down between the boats and listen. When I close my eyes, the muffled thuds of underwater activity against the bellies of the boats remind me of childhood trips to the Cape Town docks with my father, who spent many years melding metals as a shipyard welder.
I look across the canal at the Dutch Maritime Museum. Emerging from the water like a ship, the museum boasts a collection of memorabilia celebrating a 500 year sea faring history. I fix my eyes on the building, like it’s called my name. The façade is bone white with neat rows of rounded windows, all lined up like polished teeth in a prized skull. As a crown, it wears the gilded coat of arms of the Netherlands, the only glitz to be seen on the otherwise tidy construction.
“I look across the canal at the Dutch Maritime Museum, emerging from the water like a ship. I fix my eyes on the building like it’s called my name.”
It’s all together striking in its sober charm. In the water before it, the building throws down its rippling reflection. When the wind sweeps over the surface, the ghosted image gets shaky like a memory retrieved from the deep.
Next to the museum is a VOC ship replica, kept in pristine condition, the polished past suspended in the present. Raised Dutch flags wave at passers by. ‘Remember us, remember our bravery, read all about us inside’ - it seems to say. Its reflection in the water says the same, through a veil of gurgling static.
What is your name?
Comes the prompt again from the depths of me. The sky is a textured grey above the museum’s crown. I watch as cauliflower tufts swirl slowly by, pregnant with secrets fresh off the lips of the sea. They diffuse the sun’s rays but the air is still warm. I breathe in the stickiness and hold it in my lungs for a moment. “All this time in the city of my choosing, and I still get homesick”. I breathe out.
A passing boat slices over the museum’s reflection.
“I close my eyes and hear the distant call of seagulls. When I open them, I’m no longer in my body.”
“If I went back, would it still be home?” I close my eyes and hear the distant call of seagulls. A salty breeze brushes my skin, causing little mounds of protest to pimple its surface. I run my fingertips over them, soothing them, into calm. When I open my eyes, I’m no longer in my body.
But where am I? I look down at my feet – except they’re not my feet – they belong to a man and they’re covered in beach sand… apart from gleaming brown toes sticking out where the ends of waves have washed them clean. Around the ankle is a bit of jewellery the colour of milk - ivory? I go to bend my knee and have a closer look but I do not have command over these limbs. I manage only to cause the skin around the anklet to itch. A calloused hand goes down to scratch it and my gaze falls upon a hairy forearm. All that hair - hundreds of wiry round coils resting on the surface of muscular arms and legs like tiny springs. Each hair follicle evenly distributed in a dotted pattern. I’ve seen this kind of hair before, tightly coiled and defiant of water – they’re the concentric tendrils of the indigenous Khoi-San people. Reduced to a minority in present day South Africa, I can trace them in my blood, but am yet to meet a completely Khoi cultured individual. But this, this must be their time…many centuries ago… and I find myself at home.
My host starts to stroll along the beach, I feel the swish of something bristly brush between his hip and arm and realise he is wearing an animal hide of some kind. I’m aware of a number of accessories slung about the torso, each made out of various stretched skins. When he looks down, I focus my gaze on a round shaped satchel. Hung at the hip and made out of snakeskin, it holds a velvety wooden instrument of the same shape with ridges carved along the sides and blowholes at each end. The satchel has a front pouch, the skin of which has been woven to create a new pattern, inside is a smooth, leaf-like pick, which I intuitively know is for strumming along the ridges, while blowing through the flute-like holes. In the quiet I can hear the sound it makes - and I claim the tune as mine. Next time my chest starts to shrink, I will conjure this music.
He stops strolling. Weight shifted evenly onto both feet, facing the ocean. There’s been a change in the water. It’s gone from rhythmically rolling blue, to pale, frothy unrest. Within minutes the tide swells, waves rearing on their hind legs like wild horses, higher each time they roll in. My host doesn’t move from the ocean’s reach and I suddenly feel trapped. What kind of experience am I here to witness? I begin to panic. I feel hot. I flutter into flight, batting against my host’s chest, quickening his heartbeat. I become liquid, spurting through veins, spilling out of pores, speaking in sweat. Exposed to the scorching sun I have become slick, I am oily, I am oozy, I become fear.
“Oh? Fear. Is that your name? You, shapeshifter - transforming at will. Hm. Keep your gaze on the waves.”
Oh? Fear. Is that your name? You, shape shifter - transforming at will. Hm. Keep your gaze on the waves.
Clear instructions. I decide to go with it and focus on the galloping waves. The moment I do, my host stops shaking. The waves rush towards us, cresting far above our head. At the very top, for a fraction of a moment, it looks at us - snarling.
This time, I don’t flinch - I become light, dispersing into particles, making space inside the lungs. I am floaty. I am everywhere. I have become air. Obedient nostrils flare – breathing in salt and water. Before it swirls forward, as always waves must, we bow to each other.
A distant triangle shape appears on the horizon. I recognise it immediately and I know what brought me here. Billowing sails bluster through the swelling sea. Red, white and blue streaks swish under strong winds.
The time must be 1652, April – the month the Dutch VOC ship sails into a natural bay on the
Atlantic seaboard of what’s now known as Cape Town. With warm and cold currents conceiving clouds from their meeting in the deep, I wonder what name the Khoi-San used to describe this place where the clouds gather.
There is more than one ship in the water. Two come first with a third one lagging behind. Aboard ‘De Goede Hoop’ a young colonial officer, Johan Anthoniszoon van Riebeeck cuts a lonely figure on deck – having lost a few men on the journey, his tired spirit holds his youth hostage. Having held many jobs under the VOC umbrella, among them - assistant surgeon, administrator and not to mention newly wed husband, he got so bold as to think he could line his own pockets while on assignment in Batavia. Duly dismissed he was reassigned to one of the less desired jobs. Acquisitions.
Given the daunting task of making a long trip from Holland to India shorter - by setting up a refreshment station halfway - he arrived on African shores hot, bothered and ready to cut corners.
“An invaded shell goes into self defence, building layers of opal over the intruder.
The eventual pearl knows nothing of this.
It is simply born as beauty.”
My host and I are not the only ones to see the approaching vessels. A woman is making her way toward us. Let me take a moment to say, the illustrations of indigenous women of the time do not do them justice. Long before she reaches us I have the impression of magnetism – stirring up the particles in the air between us, her energy precedes her. In no time at all, she’s standing beside us, winged nostrils flared.“Autshumato, just say the word and I’ll send them back on the East wind”
“No, Rokgoloqo, keep the seas calm and let them come. It’s time.”
They are speaking in a click-tongued dialect of old, which I find I can understand.
Rokgoloqo focuses her gaze on the ship for a while. We stand in silence as the waves seethe and spit.
Turning to us she says, “The vessels carry long fire sticks, the likes of which our bows are no match for. We cannot win and we will become a fable, Autshumato, are you sure about this?”
“Daughter, the ships will keep coming. And no one will win or lose. Do not fear. They come bearing gifts”
Autshumato bends down, searching the sand, ignoring all the shiny shells, he picks up what looks like an oblong bit of driftwood, and taps it with his finger, listening. Long discarded by the sea, it has a mossy brown surface and parched hair-like tufts looking like an unkempt beard. Using a flat, sharpened stone he slits into the side of the driftwood, there’s a cracking sound, something squirms; little bubbles forming at the cut as its juices run down his arm. Turns out it’s not driftwood at all. Splayed open, it seems to be a mollusc of some kind, like a muscle or a clam; it’s hardened mantle shielding a glistening world of pinky flesh. Resting in the centre is a milky white round, clear as truth and gleaming with the sudden flood of light.
“Do you think the pearl knows it is the daughter of a turbulent union?”
Rokgoloqo raises an eyebrow, prompting Autshumato to say more.
“When the shell is invaded by microscopic ocean debris, the mollusc goes into self defence, building layers upon layers of hardened opal over the intruder. The eventual pearl knows nothing of this. It is simply born as beauty.When I get back to my body the light has changed. Early evening has drawn a hush over a slowing Amsterdam. I am still me. The Maritime museum and its ship are still there, but the water, its different - still - unterrorised by winds or passing boats. For a moment the reflection is crisp, the spitting image of its tangible twin.
With new eyes, I see them as one. They are the same, with different powers.
I feel a calmness descend on me; I am aware of it’s swirling in my lungs, it’s sweeping through my veins, it’s glowing around my heart space and I understand that I am not alone. I am hundreds, thousands and before I set off, their energy precedes me.
So, what is your name?
- Me?
I am the daughter of sea and sky
I change, but I cannot die
you, with your fire
can take me in your claws,
but my name is Peace
and when the light floods in
so is yours.
Xx
