This City

The taxi is quicker but I prefer the train. Instead of squeezing into a cramped Mitsubishi tin-can, with its glib woman harassing conductor and audacious traffic (in)sensibility, I prefer the train and its train station. Setting out from the air-conditioned bank to make a rare cash deposit, I walked through the leafy narrow streets to the Rondebosch train station.

The stationed is two huge slabs of concrete, isolated in a sea of maple and oak trees, hemmed in by suburban bungalows, cul-de-sacs and apartment buildings and linked to other islands by a single pair of rail-tracks. These tracks, connecting the hinterland behind the mountain to the inner city of cape town, transformed the string of old Dutch farms into demarcated plots for Victorian design housing for urban white workers. Now the rail tracks are dominated, a century later, above and below with bridges and subways, by cars and trucks with their asphalt roads. The trains now, for the most part, only bring in and take out the domestic workers, the security guards, the artisans, street hawkers and the petty thieves, from the distant squalor and crime reserves of the flats yonder, well away from the mountain.

My ticket is for third class, that class that is not first class. That class that does not sit pensive individuals, struggling to avoid each others attention. Instead it is the class that holds the wide double doors open when the train is in motion. That class where limbs dangle from overcrowding. A collection of carriages abound with preachers, confectioners, singers and petty thieves. Sometimes the carriages sing and dance, when they are full with large women in song and banging on the walls. The bouncing rail car, when in such a full throttle choir mode will hold the same gospel tune from one to terminal to the other, while replacing its singers many times over.

For me, these colorful surrounds with the slight perception of insecurity are a light thrill that I wear with feigned ambivalence while reading a book, as if unconcerned with the surrounds I have deliberately courted. Esoteric as I appear, the subalterns that ride with me return my signals with equal and deliberate nonchalance. Either that or they genuinely don’t see me. In among this throng of performances a dirge is sung to the tune of a guitar that ripples throughout the carriage, coating me with goose bumps with each wave. I can’t make out, beyond the dusty sweaty bodies, from whom the song originates but it is a man’s voice and his wail is guttural and plaintive. At the final destination in the city bowl, the carriage quickly empties, leaving behind a blind man sat with a guitar and black sunglasses clutching a small aluminium case for donations.

I stormed out the train, as I always do to speed past the boogie men and petty theives, through the connecting shopping centre of greasy foods and hair products to cross a sun soaked busy street of cars and street hawkers. I walked up a paved pedestrian street past cafes and curios in the shade of trees and colonial era city buildings that are clad with wood window shutters and gargoyles. I walked past the cobbled tourist market square, up the street towards the mountain, walking past car guards, design houses, dormant night clubs and expensive inner city apartments. Up the incline, until the ocean and the harbour was in view behind me. Up further still, past the restaurants and hotels, until I met Nadja, as scheduled for a breakfast of fresh juice and omelet with a view of the city bowl and all its transport terminals.

Nadja, my attractive Germain hero of Switzerland, who took me in when I was stranded with no place to stay, is now the stranger. It is she who is venturing into a country with potentially limited prospects to escape a life that has all the hallmarks of being successful and dull. I found it strange to speak to her on equal terms, where, for the first time, we were in a country that spoke my language (among others) where I knew the geography and I could pronounce on the history and the politics. But she has her reservations about the crime and her new boyfriends white masculine attributes of drink and braai(barbecue). I tried to tell her that her acute perception of crime, came from quarters least qualified to comment and most sheltered on/from crime. I failed to tell her that her insecurity came more from her new lover and his history than from anything else. That crime in this country is horrendous is a stumbling block for such an explanation. I had been beaten to it, ideologically speaking. Furthermore, my narrative is far too convoluted and nuanced in apportioning blame and placing accountability to counter what many see as just plain obvious.