Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

In the late afternoon Jwara was storming around the house, kicking everything in front of him. He was seething with rage. Toloki knew immediately that he had had an appointment with Noria, and that she had stood him up.

‘What is this that I hear about you and the church?’

Toloki stutteringly tried to explain that he had merely testified as others were doing. But even before he completed a sentence, Jwara kicked him in the stomach. He fell down, vomiting blood. Jwara kicked him again and again. Toloki’s mother came running, and threw herself between the two men in her life.

‘What are you doing, Father of Toloki, trying to kill my child?’

‘Did you not hear, Mother of Toloki? This ugly boy preached in church.’

‘What if he did? What is wrong with that?’

‘I don’t know. People say it was a disgrace.’

‘It’s that stuck-up bitch Noria again, is it not? She didn’t come, and you want to take it out on my child.’

That night Toloki made up his mind that he was leaving home for good. He would go to the city and find work. He told his mother, who gave him the little money that she had. In the morning, without even saying good-bye to Jwara, Toloki left his home, and his village, in search of what he later expressed to those he met on the road as love and fortune.

Throughout his long journey of many months he harboured a deep bitterness against his father. And a hatred for Noria. It was all her fault. The quarrel was not because he had disgraced his family. Jwara didn’t even know what it was exactly that his son had done in church. He couldn’t care less for the church. The source of all the trouble was Noria.

After all, this was not the first time that Toloki had had an altercation with the church. His first skirmish was with the Archbishop of the Apostolic Blessed Church of Holly Zion on the Mountain Top. Toloki was actually cursed by this holy prophet.

The Archbishop earned his living during the week by selling tripe and other innards of animals in a trunk fastened to the carrier of his bicycle. He rode from one homestead to another through the village, shouting, ‘Mala mogodu! Amathumbo!’ in his godly baritone. This simply meant that he was touting his offal, encouraging the people to buy. Some children, whose mothers had not taught them any manners, sometimes shouted at the holy man, ‘Thutha mabhakethe! Tshotsha mapakethe!’ What they were saying was that the Archbishop was a carrier of buckets. This emanated from the days when the holy man used to work as a nightsoil remover in town, before the Holy Spirit caught up with him, and called him to serve the Lord as the Archbishop of the Apostolic Blessed Church of Holly Zion on the Mountain Top, which he subsequently founded. The Holy Spirit had great timing, for the Archbishop was about to lose his job in any case, since the town was phasing out the bucket system. The municipality was going to introduce the water cistern for the well-to-do families, and pit-latrines for the poorer ones.

On Sundays, the Archbishop conducted services in his church, which was built of old corrugated iron sheets. Outside there was a lopsided sign which shouted in roughly daubed letters: ‘Oh come all ye faithfull to The Apostolic Blessed Church of Holly Zion on the Mountain Top and heal yourself and your soul and get blessed water cheap’, and then the name of the Archbishop. Toloki always wondered whenever he passed by why ‘holly’ was spelt with two l’s. And what the letters ‘B.A., M.Div., D.Theol. (U.S.A.), Prophet Extraordinaire’ after the holy man’s name meant.

In his church the Archbishop prayed for the sick, and dispensed bottles of holy water that he himself had blessed. Since he claimed that he could cure all sorts of illnesses, he was in direct competition with That Mountain Woman. But there was enough sickness to go around, and neither rival complained. However, the Archbishop acquired the reputation of having greater expertise in extracting demons than That Mountain Woman.

Even Noria herself, when things were not going well in her marriage to Napu, had secretly gone to the Archbishop for his prayers. The Archbishop asked her to confess her sins in public, and testify to the Lord. She spoke, but did not reveal everything about her life. The Archbishop said she was marked by the devil. That Mountain Woman heard that Noria had gone to consult her rival, and she called her daughter a traitor. But she forgave Noria when she promised that she would never go back again. When That Mountain Woman died, we couldn’t help noticing that there was a glint of satisfaction in the holy man’s eyes, in spite of his professed sorrow at the death of such an important member of the community.

On special days such as Easter, the Archbishop and his flock went down to the stream where he baptised new converts through immersion. The worshippers, all wearing green and white or blue and white dresses and caftans, sang to the rhythm of the drums, and danced around in circles.

On such occasions, Toloki would often be spotted on top of the hillock facing down towards the stream, mischievously throwing rocks and clods of mud at the worshippers. He would pelt them, and then hide himself. But the Archbishop would usually catch sight of him, and would curse him with everlasting misfortune in life, and everlasting fire after death.

The war between the Archbishop and Toloki was one of long standing. It had started when Toloki laughed at the holy man’s flock as they were vomiting. It was part of the Easter ritual of the church to give the members of the congregation quantities of water mixed with holy herbs to induce vomiting. After the water and an enema, the worshippers would dot the hillside in a colourful display of blue, green and white, as they squatted there and threw up and emptied their bowels. This was the sacred cleansing of body and soul. Toloki and his friends enjoyed the bright spectacle, and it was the highlight of their Easter to laugh at row after row of fat buttocks decorating the hillside.

The Archbishop reported Toloki to his father, who in the presence of the holy man, talked with him strongly. The holy man himself added his heavy words, and said that it was indeed unfortunate that Toloki was fulfilling an adage that our forebears created: that glowing embers give birth to ashes. His father was an important man in the village, yet his son was as useless as cold ash. As his father spoke in serious tones, Toloki vowed in his heart that he was going to make life even more uncomfortable for the Archbishop and his flock in the village. Hence the stone-throwing incidents.

After the Archbishop had left, Toloki overheard his father telling Xesibe and a few other customers about the feud between Toloki and the church. They were all laughing and joking about it. ‘They deserve what they get from these youngsters! Can you imagine grown people displaying their buttocks and doing all these strange things in front of children!’ So, his father had only been pretending to be angry with him in the presence of the Archbishop! The whole fuss was just a big joke to him. This was precisely why Toloki was taken aback by Jwara’s violent reaction to his Methodist Church adventure. It really had nothing to do with the church at all, and everything to do with Noria.

Toloki arrives at the settlement, carrying his bulky load of presents. He walks to the shack. This time, he is not followed by dogs and children. Perhaps they are getting used to his presence. He arrives at the shack, but Noria is not there. He sits outside and waits for her. After some time she arrives, and says that she had been at Madimbhaza’s place when a child came to inform her that there was a visitor waiting for her outside her shack.