MUTHAL NAIDOO

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The Bridge-Playing Rain Queens

Four refugees from the ARP&P (Association of Retired Persons and Pensioners) – they couldn’t play bridge you see – put their grey heads together and decided to form their own bridge club. They would teach themselves the game. Etta, short for Martinetta, a former teacher, set up the course and was very strict. She made learning aids, gave homework and administered tests. Prudence, widow of a former diplomat, devoted herself to protocol and made sure that they all followed proper bridge etiquette – everything clockwise and to the right. Hilary, member of a mountaineering club, challenged the group to go higher and higher and while they struggled to master bidding, finessing and ruffing, Felicity kept their spirits up with amusing tales about Whiskey, her seventeen-year-old cat.

The first time the group met to play bridge the heavens opened up and flooded the whole city. A clever motor engineer, stalled by the deluge and watching the rising tide outside his window, had a brainwave – a car with oars or an outboard motor – and was destined to spend the rest of his life trying to design such a machine.

Felicity and Whiskey, looking out at the torrent, were glad that they had brought in the washing before the downpour. On the following Friday morning, when the group sat down to play, it came down in buckets again and every Friday after that. Umbrellas and raincoats became essential requirements for a bridge game. When Hilary went off on a hike and Felicity out of town to a grandchild’s twenty-first birthday party, they stopped playing for a couple of weeks and the weather was fine.

On the Friday morning that they resumed their sessions, it began to pour again and they were caught without raincoats and umbrellas. Etta, an avid reader of science fiction, saw in it a paranormal phenomenon. The following Friday, after the women had trooped through Whiskey’s garden carrying raincoats and umbrellas as had been their wont before the break, and had settled around the card table, Etta made a dramatic announcement, ‘I have been contacted by aliens.’ Whiskey jumped off the sofa, ran into the bedroom and disappeared under the bed.

‘You can’t be serious.’ Prudence was sceptical.

But Felicity was quite amazed. ‘Did you see Whiskey’s reaction? I’ve never seen him scurry off like that before. He thinks he’s only twelve.’

A mystical glow filled cat-lover Hilary’s eyes. ‘The only other time I have seen such a reaction was when our mountaineering club visited Kathmandu. The Dalai Lama’s cat, which he had left behind, streaks through the streets at odd times. Tibetans see him as a symbol of their ultimate liberation.’

Not being fond of cats, Etta interrupted with a portentous announcement, ‘I was given a message.’ Her solemn look silenced the others. ‘My phone rang!’ This was extraordinary indeed. ‘When I answered, a weird voice said, This is Vodac. He gabbled on in a pseudo-American accent and I couldn’t make out what he was saying ...’.

‘Were you wearing your hearing aids?’ Prudence was finding this conversation quite ludicrous.

‘I don’t need them when I’m on the phone. In any event, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t make out the words, I understood instinctively.’

‘Oh really? What did you understand?’ Prudence would have guffawed but crude noises were foreign to her.

‘Just look out of the window. Do you see?’ They didn’t. ‘It’s clear. Not a cloud in the sky, not a drop of rain. It is a beautiful sunshine and braaivleis day. That’s how it always is before we begin to play.’ Etta paused significantly. ‘The minute we start, it comes pouring down.’

‘You don’t really believe that!’ Prudence couldn’t hide the smile.

Felicity was nodding thoughtfully. ‘It does rain every time we play, doesn’t it?’

‘The Aztecs had ways of communing with the gods.’ Hilary turned to Etta, ‘Are you sure you were contacted by aliens? Not Aztec spirit guides?’

Prudence was losing patience. ‘Oh please. This is nonsense and you know it.’

Etta smiled back knowingly. ‘Let’s play and you’ll see.’

Felicity picked up the cards and shuffled. As she dealt, the light began to change. As soon as she called one club, day disappeared under an overcast sky. When the bidding was over and Pru had contracted for game, thunder and lightning broke free and the clatter of raindrops on the roof drowned out all attempts at conversation except, of course, for Etta’s guffawed, ‘What did I tell you?’

Pru reluctantly raised her voice: ‘But what have aliens to do with the rain?’

‘They have given us the power to end the drought.’

Prudence couldn’t believe her ears. ‘With bridge!’

But Etta, inspired, jumped up with evangelistic fervour. ‘We will drive down to Bloemfontein and help the mielie boers whose crops are failing.’

Hilary, who loved challenges, cheered while Pru, who was finding it difficult to control her disdain, inquired in mocking tones, ‘What do you propose? That we set up a card table in the middle of a maize field?’

‘Exactly!’

Hilary nodded. ‘What have we got to lose?’

‘What will I do with Whiskey?’

‘Put him in cat care.’

Despite Pru’s protests, the next thing she knew they were in the middle of the mielielands sweltering in a tent under a clear blue sky. Etta had insisted on the tent to protect them from the rain. Within minutes of setting up their table, a few clouds sailed in over the horizon. As soon as Pru started to deal, the sky became overcast. As she opened the bidding, she heard the first big drops splattering among the dry cobs. When she made the game call of 3 No Trumps, the heavens opened up.

Pru was forced to concede.

And the four women understood and accepted! They had been called to serve their country, to avert a national crisis.

Once the nation understood, their lives changed altogether and they were flying from province to province bringing succour to farmers everywhere.

People hailed them as saviours.

Except, of course, at Cycadia. Pulamvula, the Official Rain Queen (ORQ), was in a state of despair. It had not rained since the old queen had died, since she had become ORQ. People looked at her askance. They were beginning to doubt her powers and were losing faith in the age-old tradition. To make matters worse, these bridge players had come out of nowhere and broken the drought. Every time she switched on the TV in her hut and saw the weatherman showing where the bridge players would be, she turned into a raging fury, dancing, stamping and ululating, bringing down the most violent electric storms but not a drop of rain. Nevertheless, She was the Queen, anointed by God! Not the surrogate of alien creatures from another planet! She would not allow the pretenders to usurp her throne! She consulted the inkosi, threw the bones and saw that she had to depose the upstarts if she was ever to get her powers back. So she went on TV news and during the weather forecasts challenged the bridge group to a rainmaking contest at Cycadia.

They were stunned, but felt obliged to accept.

On the appointed day, the cycad-enclosed arena was crowded with spectators and crews from TV networks sent to broadcast the event live across the country. After establishing the setting, cameras focused on the Sangoma flanked by her drummers, then panned to the opposite side where the bridge players, in their tent, sat upright at their card table, their packs shuffled and ready. Each side had one hour to bring down the rain. When the signal was given, Queen Pulamvula, who had won the toss, threw a contemptuous look at the bridge group and began to dance. Her drummers struggled to keep up with her pace and vigour as she blew her whistle, flailed her chobo, leaped, shouted and ululated. Lightning streaked the sky, struck an empty hut nearby and set it alight. Thunder crashed like an invading army. But no rain. Not one drop. At the end of her hour, Pulamvula sank to the ground with a terrible groan.

The cameras then zoomed in on the bridge players. Hilary dealt and they took up their cards. They were very nervous and the bidding began tentatively. But they soon got into their stride and when Pru called a small slam, nimbus clouds threw a pall over the sky. As Hilary led the first card and Felicity put her dummy hand on the table, large drops began a loud tattoo on the ground. Then sheets of rain slanted over the earth. People raced off in all directions and TV crews disappeared into vans. Only Queen Pulamvula, collapsed in despair at the centre of the arena, lay there calling on the lightning to strike her dead. A drenched, writhing bundle, she did not see the umbrella and raincoat brigade moving towards her. It was only when she felt Felicity’s hand on her shoulder that she saw the bridge players kneeling beside her. Felicity spoke quietly to her and after some minutes, the queen stood up slowly in all her dignity, and returned to her hut.

The next year when it was time for the rainy season, Queen Pulamvula danced and it rained and rained and rained. She broke the drought and was restored to her rightful place as the country’s ORQ.

Now people come from all over the world to see her perform her miracle.

If you ever go to Cycadia to catch a glimpse of the queen during the rainy season, leave the beaten track and you will find, hidden among the cycads, a little tent in which four women contentedly play bridge while Pulamvula dances.