oudekraal
“Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.”
— Haruki Murakami
27 DEC 2021
Thick, white clouds gather atop Table Mountain until, slowly, they spill down her western face like cream from a tipped glass. The sunset ignites them in fiery reds and oranges, covering the Kloof Nek pass and casting Lion’s Head in a volcanic glow.
On nights like this – speeding in a taxi up Bree Street, studying the mountain through the rear window – all you can do is stare in awe.
And despite the mountain’s rare display, your mind drifts back to Oudekraal.
Days ago, you were browsing one of those trendy shops on Kloof – the kind catering to Afrikaner surfers and tourists. You were not expecting to buy anything. But then you noticed a woman working there, so you picked up a pair of round, crystal sunnies and let her ring you up at the register – just for the chance to see her up close. The next day, walking back along Kloof, in those glasses, you saw her again – as you’d hoped – standing in the doorway.
You waved at her from across the street – instinctually – and to your surprise, she waved back.
You crossed, to say hello.
Sipho, with skin as brown as yours and a mouth full of neat, white teeth, smiles in the mid afternoon sun. Today, her hair is straight and brown with golden highlights that cast rays of sun at you. It’s a slow day in the shop. She’s bored, it seems, and willing to chat, squinting every now and then to make out your face.
Are you ready for Christmas, you ask.
Eish, I’ll be working salad duty all day back home, she laughs, hiding her mouth.
Cooking duty, but no cleaning, ne?
She cuts her eyes at you and raises a hand, fluttering her fingers, knuckles facing you. Long, curved acrylics in alternating pastel pink and white. Gold designs on the index fingers.
With these nails, I could never.
You both laugh at a situation so obvious.
The truth is, you hadn’t even noticed the nails the day before – your attention had been elsewhere.
You first spotted Sipho out of the corner of your eye while thumbing through pastel tees and sun shades – her backside was doing something dizzying – the curve so pronounced it seemed to defy the laws of physics. You blinked, turned back to the glasses display and shook your head thinking maybe you saw it all wrong. A mirage. When you looked again, your eyes met and she was smiling. Like she’d caught the whole thing and didn’t mind. Like it had amused her, the way you fumbled and blinked, suddenly unsure of everything – including gravity.
This time, outside the shop, when your eyes meet – pulling you forward – you don’t freeze. You get her number. You make plans to meet for drinks the day after Christmas.
Sunday, you meet on the rooftop of Cloud 9 Hotel, the sun is high above you. Sipho had never been, but still – insecurely, you wondered if she’d actually show. So you brought a book, Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki just in case – drank a beer at the bar across the street, then ascended to the roof. But, again, to your surprise when you arrive she is already there charging her phone — admiring the mountains.
The wind whips her knee-length blouse, layered over a tank top and cut-off shorts. She’s sporting a dad hat with a small embroidered skull and rose – the words Roses are dead stitched underneath. She seems more at ease than when you saw her on the steps.
I like the top, you comment as you hug her by way of greeting.
She looks up, tilting her head to the side with a wry smile.
Well you all are thirsty, she says pointing a manicured finger at your chest.
I have to hide the cakes, she coyly shrugs back.
You laugh in agreement. You can only imagine what her in daisy dukes walking down the street would do – if not stop time.
She coolly sips a pair of Aperol spritz while you slowly work a bottle of wine. The conversation flows and you two decide to come back to your apartment to finish watching the sun set, eat dinner and to sample a bottle of rosé – one you bought weeks ago from a Stellenbosh wine farm.
Back at your rented flat you sit around the dining table playing Crazy Eights waiting for pasta water to boil. The only stakes on the table are national pride, as you take turns enforcing more and more rules until each card is a battle. She’s born for this, her voice raising with every draw two she lands. Sipho beats you in three of four games.
In the kitchen you struggle to make a dish of spaghetti with a simple tomato, mushroom and basil sauce. You’re anxious that the lack of onion or garlic will ruin the dish, but in the end you pull something together.
Sipho eats across from you at the table, silently smiling.
Is it any good, you venture to ask.
She just nods her head, gives a thumbs up. Her mouth is closed, full of spaghetti, smiling in approval.
After dinner, you two sit on the ninth floor balcony and watch the sun disappear behind Lion’s Head. Sipho snaps pictures of the view. Balancing a sweating glass of the rosé on your knee, you feel at peace as the sun’s final rays slip away.
Cidney calls.
Hey, I’m headed to a bonfire at a beach past Camp’s, do you want to ride, she asks over the phone.
You have the phone on speaker, you look at Sipho on the couch.
Are you down for a bonfire?
She nods, her eyes saying yes, knees tucked to the side.
Assuming a plus one is fine, you ask Cidney.
Of course, we’ll be over in ten minutes.
Minutes later, as-if on cue, your phone buzzes. It’s Cidney texting, Hey, we’re here.
You pick up your bottle of Laphroaig 10. Sipho trades her blouse for your black and tie dyed Pleasures hoodie, pulling the bottom down over her shorts.
You step out into the night. The temperature has dropped as cool, Atlantic air breezes through the city with the passing of the sun. The ocean is letting her presence be known.
A black sedan, windows tinted, idles at the curb, Cidney in the passenger seat. You open the rear door. Experimental pop melodies over low 808s, spilling from the speakers. Inside, the leather is cool, the dash backlit in soft neon, spaceship-like. You and Sipho climb in.
Ohh, she’s cute, Cidney grins as she sticks out her tongue at you. You make a face back.
Cidney, Aisha – meet Sipho.
We ready, you ask.
Let’s go.
South of Camp’s Bay, Victoria Road is deserted and unlit. There is just the headlights of the car, the gleam of the moon and the silhouette of Table Mountain as you wind along the coast. The car pulls into a car park that’s nearly invisible in the deep blackness of land that borders the ocean. You all pile out of the car and there are no signs of a beach.
There can’t be anything here, you think.
You walk off the asphalt, past brown-painted park barriers, scale the largest boulder you see, and peer down into the black abyss whose only sound is the crashing of waves. You know the void below must be the ocean, but it’s so dark you can’t even make out the contours of waves -— you can only hear them. It feels like you’re standing on the edge of the earth, like the darkness itself could pull you in, like you might fall into the crashing nothingness at the slightest breeze.
Slowly, your eyes adjust and you sense the glow of a fire.
There – people below, you shout, grinning.
Dots of light – phones – dancing like fireflies in the dark around a flame. You climb down from the rock, trying not to tumble off into space.
We’re actually here, you say.
There should be stairs to the left, Cidney replies.
Walking to the far edge of the car park, you find a rickety set of wooden stairs that vanish into darkness, and a small sign that reads: Welcome to Oudekraal Beach.
You take the lead, cautiously touching the first step. Sipho is behind you, and you take her hand as you descend. Cidney, Aisha, and the driver Pierre bring up the rear. At the beach, you’re impressed by the size of the fire roaring in the sand —- it’s surrounded by a handful of people you’ve never met. You skirt the crowd, grab a rock with Sipho, and sit shoulder to shoulder as you pour Laphroaig into a plastic champagne flute.
Wind whips at the edges of the group and you each take turns tossing in slips of paper, burning what you choose not to carry in the coming year. Between the heat of the fire and the scotch you are starting to sweat so you stand and stroll toward the shoreline. Sipho silently joins you, barefoot in the sand, at the water’s edge.
Water laps calmly against your ankles, piercing your bodies with sensation. The icy water sobers you slightly, awakening you with pins and needles.
Further out, in the crashing surf, there are boulders ten and twenty feet high. Massive, looming sentinels with a gravitational pull that beckons you closer.
Staring out to the freezing, black waters you say to Sipho, I should swim.
No, Sipho says, eyes fixed on the distance.
You really don’t want to do that, she adds, turning to you with a compassionate look.
A look that reminds you of the danger of such an idea.
Instead you turn back toward the bonfire, drawing her by the hand to stand in front of you. You lean against a smaller rock near shore and watch people gyrate by the fire to Amapiano (soul piano). Sipho starts to slowly wind her hips while your hands deftly hold her waist. Her body pressing against yours for the first time feels poetic, soft and gentle. Her movements cause the synapses in your brain to splash colors across your field of view as the flickering flames leap towards the spinning stars above. Pushing aside the hair spilling from underneath her cap you kiss her neck. She turns her face, smirking at you then runs off — toward the fire.
The wood is burned and people start to disband. When you’re the last one on the beach kicking sand on the embers, Sipho is there too, holding the Laphroaig, kicking sand. In the car ride home you sit in the middle seat. Sipho squeezes in beside you and you willingly pull her closer with a hand placed on her thigh, just below the jagged frills of her cutoff shorts.
Back in the flat, Sipho passes out in your lap while the two of you rest on the sofa. You let her sleep some before waking her.
What do you want to do, stay or go?
She has work in the morning and despite the way she nestles her body into yours, you know she’s not here to sleep with you. But you wish she would stay – and let the intimacy of the embrace hang a bit longer.
Before long you’re standing with her in the lift, her face resting against your stomach, just above the navel making you feel like a giant. You see her off to the taxi and wait up to hear that she’s made it home.
Kissing face and sad doe eye emojis from her as she texts, Thank you for the night.
You pass out cradling your phone, its screen bathing you in a dim blue light.
29 DEC 2021
You’re in an economy seat on Ethiopian Airlines headed to Addis – the monotonous hum of a jet engine reminding you that South Africa is now physically behind you. But just before you boarded, Sipho showed you something – without a word. And now, you sense that distance can’t undo a feeling.
You woke up earlier than usual today, sunlight filtering through the open blinds. You’re not alone – Sipho lies face down beside you, wearing one of your t-shirts, arms folded under the pillow. Her hair, now curly and black, hides her face as she breathes softly.
You reach with your right hand for Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki on the nightstand, trying not to wake her. You’re nearly finished, despite finding it just last week on a bookshelf in the apartment – the name Murakami catching your attention. Something about Tsukuru’s journey is uncomfortably close. The way the world can turn upside down on you – leave you clinging to numbness until you decide to seek the truth, at least for Tsukuru, there is something to find.
Tracing Tsukuru’s past and present as you read, your left hand slides instinctively to rest in the valley of Sipho’s lower back where her shirt ends and the curve of her legs rise up from the bed.
The day has to start and eventually, you slip into shorts and step out onto the balcony. The morning air bites your skin and dries your sweat as you move methodically through sets of pushups. The sun climbs, slicing off clouds and keeps you warm despite the breeze. Looking west up Wale Street, you see and hear Cape Town waking below you.
Just before you finish your last reps you wake Sipho so she can order herself breakfast from your phone. When she steps out of the shower, glowing in the morning sun, she smiles at the smell of her food.
Sitting to drink an Americano as she eats, you ask her if she’s ever read Murakami.
No, she says between small, joyful bites.
Who’s that?
You try to explain, lightly, Tsukuru’s journey to discover and confront the source of his pain so he can truly love.
She nods politely but her eyes glaze. You laugh, mostly at yourself —- it’s too early for a deep dive on a fictional Japanese salaryman. Despite the intersections, a quiet distance remains between you. You know you’re from different worlds. And yet, the silences don’t demand to be filled, even when they once gave you anxiety.
After breakfast, you pull on your shoes to walk her to work through the Company’s Gardens. Your last act in Cape Town before you pack to leave. Outside, at the Adderley Street gate, a man in worn clothes, with eyes so tired they suggest his yesterday hasn’t yet ended, is begging for change. Seeing him, Sipho simply hands him the rest of her unfinished breakfast, oil from warm hashbrowns staining the paper bag.
The sun is high now, casting everything in an amber-gold warmth.
You walk carrying her lavender gym bag slung over your shoulder, your free hand grazing hers until naturally – it finds her far hip. Suddenly, past the statue of Rhodes, Table Mountain comes into view – a mass of granite, blue-grey and stoic splitting the horizon in two – there is only mountain and the sky above.
You stop.
Let’s take a photo, you say.
Sipho shakes here head – no. Instead, she positions you alone.
You need the light behind you, you say, motioning with your hand how she should turn.
She waves you off, circling you like a statue in the garden. You move awkwardly, unsure what to do as Sipho hypes you.
Haibo, she grins and snaps.
As you turn to leave, she takes one selfie – you in the background, smiling at the lens.
You two cross Oranje Street and she airdrops you the photos. Then she unlocks the gates to her shop. You hug, exchange blown kisses and another wave before she disappears behind the security gate.
On the walk back to your flat, you scroll through the photos. You see all the pictures of you – but not the one of you both.
At the airport you sit with Dewun, reminiscing about the last two months. In a lull, you check Sipho’s WhatsApp story — a mix of nostalgia and longing tugging at you. There are ads for flat tummy teas, a few selfies.
And then – you.
Alone. Arms crossed. Standing in front of a crystal-clear blue sky and a cloudless Table Mountain.
You practically shimmer in the sun. And you notice – nothing else in the frame matters.