Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

‘I did, Noria. I did.’

‘Only three times in two years! Don’t deny it, you are glad she is dead.’

‘I loved your mother, Noria.’

When she returned to her shack, however, she was dumbfounded to find it empty. Not even her own clothes were left. Noria knew immediately that Napu had finally carried out a threat he had sometimes made in his drunken moments: that one day he was going to kidnap Vutha and run away with him to a place where Noria would never find them. At the time, Noria had thought this was just an idle threat.

Noria spent days on end looking for Vutha. The police did not even try to help. They said it was a family matter. Finally, after months of searching, she gave up. By now she was a broken woman who had lost everything that meant something in her life. Still, she was absolutely convinced that one day Vutha would return to her. She decided to go to the city, to start a new life.

The stories of the past are painful. But when Toloki and Noria talk about them, they laugh. Laughter is known to heal even the deepest of wounds. Noria’s laughter has the power to heal troubled souls. This afternoon, as the two of them sit in front of the shanty, exhausted from building last night’s creation, and refreshing themselves with stories of the past and soured porridge, Toloki lavishly bathes his soul in her laughter.

‘Well, Noria, I think I must go back to my headquarters now. My clients must be looking for me.’

‘How do they usually find you, Toloki?’

‘Oh, at other funerals. Those who know where I live usually leave a message in my trolley.’

‘Toloki, you have helped me so much. I really don’t know how to thank you enough.’

‘Your laughter is enough thanks for me, Noria.’

‘No, Toloki, it is not thanks enough. It would mean that we have not grown from the days when I gave pleasure, and was paid with favours. Remember, I am going to pay you back.’

‘I understand why it is important for you to pay me back, Noria. I do not object.’

‘Am I going to see you again, Toloki?’

‘For surely you will, Noria. I’ll visit you now and then, if you don’t mind, that is.’

‘Of course not, I would like to see you again, silly.’

They walk together to the taxi rank in the middle of the settlement. As usual, Toloki is the centre of attraction. Heads peer inquisitively from the small doors of shanties. Passers-by gawk at them.

‘Why do you prefer to use taxis? Trains are cheaper.’

‘Indeed they are cheaper. But these days there is a lot of death in the trains.’

Noria laughs. She agrees that people die everyday in the trains, but jokingly asks if Toloki is afraid to die, even though his daily work involves death. Toloki returns the laughter, and says that it is true that death is his constant companion, but where one can avoid one’s own death, one must do so. He has a mission in the world, that of mourning for the dead. It is imperative that he does his utmost to stay alive, so that he can fulfil his sacred trust, and mourn for the dead.

‘Fortunately my mourning for the dead makes it possible for me to avoid death by using alternative transport.’

‘It is a pity that the people who die every day in the trains die because they want to earn a living for their children. They have no means of using alternative transport. Thank God some have survived, and live to tell the story.’

She tells him the story of one of the residents of the settlement who escaped death by a hair’s breadth only last week. He was waiting at the station when a group of men believed to be migrants from the hostels got off the train. As usual they were armed with sticks, and spears, and battleaxes, and homemade guns. He tried to board the train, but some of the men pulled him down on to the platform by his jacket. They demanded to know what ethnic group he belonged to. He told them, and it happened to be the same clan the men belonged to. They said that if he was a member of their ethnic group, then why was he not with them? Another one shouted, ‘This dog is lying! He does not belong to our people. He is of the southern people who are our enemies!’

A man wielding a knife rushed towards this resident of the settlement, and was about to stab him. But the resident escaped and ran along the platform shouting for help. He ran towards a group of security guards, whom he thought would come to his rescue. To his amazement, the security guards turned on their heels and fled. The resident jumped onto the railway line and hid under a train. He clung for dear life to the axles with both hands and feet, suspending his body between the railway sleepers and the bottom of the train floor.

The migrants jumped onto the railway line to look for him. They started shoving spears and pangas underneath the train. Fortunately he was protected by the train wheels, and the weapons could not reach him.

After a while the migrants left, and the train driver came to his rescue. He told the terrified man to get into the driver’s cabin, as some of the migrants were still milling about on the platform. The driver then drove the train to another station, where the resident realised for the first time that he had been stabbed in the eye.

‘He is one-eyed now, but at least he is still alive.’

‘He was fortunate that the white man who drove the train saved him. Other people are not that fortunate.’

Toloki tells her of another train incident, which also happened last week, where the victim was not as fortunate as this resident. A young man and his wife were in the train. She was holding their one-day-old baby. They had come from the hospital where the wife had just given birth the previous night. Three gangsters walked into the carriage and demanded that the woman give her baby to her husband and follow them. These were not migrants from hostels this time, but the very youths who live with us in the townships and in the settlements. The children we gave birth to, who have now turned against the community, and have established careers of rape and robbery.

The couple begged and pleaded. They explained that the woman had just given birth, and the baby was only a few hours old. But the gangsters showed no mercy. They insisted that the woman come with them. And she did. Not a single one of the other passengers lifted a finger to help. The next day, she was found dead in the veld. The gangsters had taken turns raping her, and had then slit her throat. Toloki knew her story because he had mourned at her funeral.

Toloki and Noria walk quietly until they reach the taxi rank. Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears.

‘Mothers lose their babies, Toloki, and babies lose their mothers.’

‘Death lives with us everyday. Indeed our ways of dying are our ways of living. Or should I say our ways of living are our ways of dying?’

‘It works both ways. Good-bye, Toloki.’

‘Good-bye, Noria.’

‘Just one more thing: please take a bath. Just because your profession involves death, it doesn’t mean that you need to smell like a dead rat.’

Toloki laughs good-naturedly, and promises that before he visits her again, he will take a shower at the beach. He boards the taxi with happy thoughts, and waves to Noria as it drives away.

Toloki wakes up early in the morning, and goes to the beach. He hopes that the gawpers will not have arrived yet, since beaches normally get crowded in the afternoons on Saturdays. He is whistling to himself, and from time to time he breaks into a jig of exhilaration. A gust of wind blows his topper away. He runs after it, performing a nifty cart-wheel that is actualised only in his imagination. He laughs aloud, until tears stream down his cheeks.