Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

Like the streets, the taxi rank is empty. Usually there are rows and rows of mini-bus taxis, and dirty urchins touting passengers for this or that taxi. And traders selling cheap jewellery and stolen watches. Or fruit and vegetables. This is where he buys his green onions when he comes back from funerals. Or sometimes, when he has had a good payday, a small packet of dried tarragon, which he likes to chew. And then he crosses the street to his favourite bakery to buy Swiss rolls.

An old kombi arrives and drops off a group of domestic workers and people wearing the blue and white uniforms of the Zion Church. That is the taxi to Noria’s squatter camp. He gets into the kombi and takes a back seat. The taxi will not go until it is full. People trickle in, but for some strange reason avoid the back seat. It takes up to thirty minutes to fill all the other seats, and those who come after that have no choice but to take the back seat. They sit facing the other way, trying very hard to give their backs to Toloki, and covering their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs or with their hands.

As the taxi drives out of the city through the winding highway on the hill, his heart pounds even faster with the anticipation of talking with Noria. He wonders what could have killed her son. A bullet from the police maybe? He has been to funerals of children who died from police bullets. Not long ago he mourned at a funeral of a five-year-old girl. The Nurse explained that a police bullet ricocheted off the wall and hit the child who was playing with her mudpies in the yard of her home. We have seen many such cases. Police bullets have a strange way of ricocheting off the walls of township houses, and when they do, there is bound to be a child about whom they never miss.

No, it can’t be police bullets. Remember that the graveyard quarrel started when the Nurse blamed our own people for killing the boy. Perhaps it was a death that was similar to that of a six-year-old boy he mourned last week. The Nurse told a gruesome story of how the mother and father were sitting in their living-room watching the news on television, when a picture of an unknown corpse flashed on the screen. It was their son who had been missing for the past two days. He had gone to school in the morning and never came back. The parents had asked his schoolmates about him, but they did not know where he was. Then they went to the police but were told, ‘Children go missing every day. There is nothing we can do about it.’

‘You mean you won’t even try to look?’

‘Look where? These children run away from their homes to join terrorists.’

‘But he is only six.’

‘It is the six-year-olds who throw stones and petrol bombs at us, woman. All we can say is that you people must learn to have more control over your children.’

The body of the little boy was discovered in the veld. He had been castrated, and the killer had also cut open his stomach, and had mutilated the flesh from his navel right down to his thighs. The police who were called to the scene said it was the work of a crazed muti killer who preyed on defenceless children in the townships. All his victims, whose ages ranged from two to six, were found without sex organs. The police knew exactly who he was, and had been working for three weeks around the clock trying to track him down. He was a thirty-year-old man from the same township, who had a young woman as his accomplice. Her role was to entice the children to lonely spots, where he butchered them and mutilated their bodies for vital parts that he used for making potent muti. The police turned and asked the onlookers if any of them knew who the dead boy was. But no one knew. They took the grisly corpse away, and it became an item on the evening news. The parents were obviously horrified when they saw their son on television. They went to the police to claim the body.

Since the crazed killer has not been arrested yet, the residents of the townships ask themselves who will die next. But if it was the crazed muti killer who murdered Noria’s son, why were people angry with the Nurse when he publicly displayed his anger with the killers? Why did they say that he was giving ammunition to the enemies of the people: the government and its vigilante groups and its police? Why did they not want reporters from the newspapers to get near Noria? No, it was not the muti killer. No one would have had reservations about condemning the muti killer, and about publicizing the fact that he had struck again. Well, perhaps Noria might tell him what really happened. He will not raise the subject, though. If Noria wants to tell him, she will volunteer the information.

He alights from the taxi at the rank in the middle of the squatter camp. He walks among the shacks of cardboard, plastic, pieces of canvas and corrugated iron. He does not know where Noria lives, but he will ask. Squatter people are a close-knit community. They know one another. And by the way, he must remember that they do not like to be called squatters. ‘How can we be squatters on our own land, in our own country?’ they often ask. ‘Squatters are those who came from across the seas and stole our land.’

The fact that he has become some kind of a spectacle does not bother him. It is his venerable costume, he knows, and is rather proud. Dirty children follow him. They dance in their tattered clothes and spontaneously compose a song about him, which they sing with derisive gusto. Mangy mongrels follow him, run alongside, sniff at him, and lead the way, while barking all the time. He ignores them all, and walks through a quagmire of dirty water and human ordure that runs through the streets of this informal settlement, as the place is politely called, looking for Noria.

There she is, Noria, in a rubble of charred household effects next to her burnt down shack. A lonely figure. Tall and graceful. Sharp features. Smooth, pitch-black complexion — what in the village we called poppy-seed beauty. She wears a fading red dress with white polka dots. If it was shorter and brighter Toloki would have sworn that it was the same dress that she used to wear as a little girl back in the village, dishing out pleasures to the community. She is not wearing any shoes, and is standing quite still, as if lost in thought. She hears the noise, and sees Toloki being followed by dancing children and barking dogs. ‘Voetsek! Go away from here!’ she shouts, and the children scamper away laughing. And the dogs flee in shame.

‘They are just children, Noria.’

‘They have no behaviour, those children.’

‘They mean no harm.’

‘They must respect their elders.’

He gives her the flowers. She smiles. He has made Noria smile.

He remembers years ago, when they were children, he was sent to the general dealer’s store to buy yeast. On the way he saw a crowd of people, mostly adults, but a sprinkling of youngsters as well, standing around Noria, feasting on her laughter. Rubber Face Sehole was capering in front of her, making his famous faces, and she was laughing so much that Toloki thought her ribs would be painful. He joined the crowd. But when they saw him they shouted, ‘What does this ugly child of Jwara want here? Go away, Toloki, go away!’ They said that his ugly face would make Noria cry, and that this would spoil their enjoyment. He was furious at this treatment, for Noria had been his playmate when they were younger, and his face had never made her cry. And here, on this Boxing Day, he has painted a smile on Noria’s sad face.

‘You always knew so much about flowers, Toloki. What are these called?’

‘Zinnias.’

‘Thank you very much, Toloki.’

‘I am sorry they don’t smell nicely. . like roses.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Toloki. They remind me so much of the flowers you used to draw with crayons at school.’