The Curse of the Ripe Tomato. John Eppel

      “Be serious, Patience.”

      “I am serious. Blake says hell is Energy.” In her mind’s eye she saw the word with a capital letter.

      “Blake? We did him at school: Tiger, Tiger, burning bright...”

      “Spelt with a `y’.”

      “In the forests of the night...”

      “The tiger is pure energy.”

      “So, if hell is energy, energy is evil?”

      “Yes, but evil and good are the same thing, Duiker. Heaven and hell, God and Satan; Blake says Without contraries is no progression. Christians like you, not Blake who was also a Christian, prefer to separate good and evil and then to simplify them, to reify them. Thus your image of good is an old but powerfully built white man, dressed like an Arab, bareheaded with a full beard and long silver-grey hair which was once blond. What colour are his eyes, Duiker?”

      “Well, blue, I suppose.”

      “Precisely. And your image of evil is this red, goat-like creature with a huge dick and a tail that ends in an arrowhead.”

      “You know, you remind me of a... er... friend I had once, a girl called Honey... er... Swanepoel - ”

      “Honey! I remember her. From Umdidi?”

      “Yes. She also used to use fancy words like `reify’. I still don’t know what it means.”

      Nothando began to gather the plates and the utensils and the left over pieces of pudding. She looked tired. “I use it to mean `materialize’. You know, when you convert an abstract idea like `good’ into a thing like `God’. Have you finished with your dessert?”

      “Yes, thanks. Ngi suthili (I’m full). She was a Godless person, Honey. She became an out and out communist.” Duiker didn’t protest when Nothando began to wash the supper things in the grimy sink which was situated, with the stove, in an alcove of the room.

      “Well, I’m also a Godless person,” Nothando replied. “I worship a Goddess. Her name is Eartha.”

      “Eartha Kitt?”

      “No, not Eartha Kitt. Mother Earth. Black too, though. We create God in our own image. Your god is a white male, my goddess is a black female.”

      "But the Bible says -”

      “The Bible says what you want it to say. Come and dry the dishes; and let’s postpone this conversation until we get on the road.”

      Duiker dragged himself off the floor and looked around for a drying cloth. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t thought of gherkins the whole day. He could not locate a cloth so he used one of his shirts instead. He took a plate from the rack and swaddled it in his garment. He stood close to Nothando and watched her bending over the sink. He noticed that the exposed hair on the back of her head was more grey than black, and that her neck was deeply wrinkled. Her skin had grown darker with age. She had the beginnings of a dowager’s hump, this woman of no property, no title - unless "Grommet" could be construed as such. He had an urge to touch her; instead he spoke. “You said you left school after Standard 5, but you know a lot more than I do, and I even went to university for a while. How come?”

      “I read, Duiker.”

      “You must have got a good grounding at the mission school.”

      “I did. I also attended extension classes while I was in Zambia.”

      “On communism?”

      “Not just communism. A wide variety of subjects. I had a lot of sympathy for the Marxists. I still do. But it was their certainty that I couldn’t handle.”

      “Is that what you don’t like about Christians?”

      “Not all Christians. Not the sceptics.”

      “Isn’t that a contradiction?”

      “For you it would be, I suppose. You seem to see things as either black or white - I don’t mean racially,” Nothando hastened to add.