Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

The experience that he gained while working for Nefolovhodwe and looking for corrupt undertakers came in handy. He knew where and when funerals were held. He boldly approached the bereaved and told them that he was Toloki the Professional Mourner. His costume, which in those days was still new, gave him the necessary aura. He suggested that he mourn for their departed relatives for a small fee of their choice. Some people thought he was a madman or a joker. They drove him away. Others gave him some money just to get rid of him, but he mourned at their rituals all the same. He had not yet sharpened his mourning skills at that early stage. He just stood there and looked sad. It was only later that he developed certain sounds that he deemed harrowing enough to enhance the sadness and pain of the occasion.

Soon enough he learnt that it was only at poor people’s funerals that he was welcome. Rich people did not want to see him at all, so he did not bother going to their funerals. When he approached poor folks, they would give him some coins, and tell him to come and mourn with them. Some, especially those who were new arrivals in the city, were puzzled. They thought that perhaps they had missed something that they ought to have been doing. Maybe it was one of the modern practices of the city to have a Professional Mourner. It was the civilised thing to do, they thought. So they engaged his services. Some believed that the presence of a Professional Mourner brought luck to their funerals. Yet there were also those who continued to see him as a nuisance.

At first, Toloki engaged in this unique profession solely for its material rewards, to profit from death like his homeboy Nefolovhodwe. But after two or three funerals, his whole outlook changed. To mourn for the dead became a spiritual vocation. As we have already seen, sometimes he saw himself in the light of monks from the Orient, and aimed to be pure like them. It was this purity that he hoped to bring to the funerals, and to share with his esteemed clients.

Noria returns at midday. She is carrying scraps of pap in a brown paper bag. She shares the food with Toloki, and tells him that this is how she has been surviving for the past few years. She helps people in the settlement with their chores. For instance, she draws water for shebeen queens. They give her food in return. Most times she helps Madimbhaza, because she has so many children, and cannot cope on her own.

‘I have lived like this since I came to the city.’

‘I didn’t know, Noria. I could have helped.’

‘You forget that I do not take things from men.’

‘As a homeboy, Noria. As a brother. Not as a man.’

Noria patiently explains to him that she is not complaining about her life. She has received fulfilment from helping others. And not for one single day has she slept on an empty stomach.

Before she arrived in the city, she thought that she was going to lead a cosy life. People in the village, and in the small town where she lived in a brickmaking yard, had painted a glowing picture of life in the city. She believed that it would be possible to immerse herself in the city’s glamour and allurement, and would therefore be able to forget the pain that was gnawing her as a result of losing her son. She did not want to forget the missing son, only the pain. She believed very strongly that one day Vutha would come back to her. She was going to get a job, maybe cleaning offices, or as a domestic, and build a new life. If things didn’t work out, she could always fall back on her old profession of entertaining men. But on second thoughts, for Vutha’s sake, she would not go back to this profession. In any case, there wouldn’t be any need — the streets of the city were paved with gold and diamonds, after all.

She had a rude awakening when she arrived. There were no diamonds in the streets, nor was there gold. Only mud and open sewers. It was not like anything she had seen in her life, nor anything she had imagined. However, there was no going back. She had nothing to return to in the village.

Homegirls welcomed her. Some were doing well, working as domestics in the suburbs. Others brewed and sold beer — a practice that was illegal. But then their whole lives in the shanty towns were illegal. Word spread around that Noria had arrived in the city. She stayed with an old woman who took her under her wing because That Mountain Woman had cured her of bad spirits that had deprived her of sleep. She was still grateful, and wanted to be of assistance to the daughter of her old doctor. In return she hoped that That Mountain Woman, who was now among the revered ancestors, would look at her kindly and bless her aging life with good fortune.

Homeboys and homegirls came to the old woman’s shebeen to see Noria. They cracked jokes and made funny faces, hoping that Noria would laugh and fill their miserable lives with joy. But Noria could not laugh. She tried very hard to live up to their expectations, and to make her homeboys and homegirls happy, as she had willingly done so many times back in the village, but her laughter would not come. She could only manage a strained grin; which, according to those who saw it, looked like that of someone who was constipated. It was as though the well from which the pleasant laughter flowed had run dry. Soon, everyone decided to give up, and went about with their day-to-day business.

Noria learnt the skills of brewing from the old woman. Even though her mother had been an expert brewer, Noria had never been taught the art at home. Her mother had never made her work. She, according to Xesibe, treated her daughter like an egg that would break. But in the city she worked hard. Some people from the village said that the old woman worked her like a slave. Right up until the time that she set up her own shack after the death of the old lady, she was not paid a penny, but was given food and a place to sleep instead.

Most of the people who came to drink at the old woman’s shebeen were from the village. From them Noria learnt that Napu had come to the city with Vutha. As soon as her hopes were raised that at last she was going to see her son again, they looked at her with eyes that were full of pity. ‘Don’t you know, poor child, of the things that happened? Your son does not live anymore.’ Immediately these fateful words were uttered, Noria wailed in a voice that pierced the hearts of the drinkers. The old woman was angry with them for revealing the sad news in such a tactless manner. ‘Why do you think I kept quiet about it all the time? It was because I wanted to tell her myself when the time was ripe.’ The drinkers apologised, explaining that they were not aware that Noria was in the dark about her son’s death.

Noria learnt that Napu came to the city with Vutha. But they stayed away from everyone from the village. The home-boys and homegirls heard that Vutha was crying for his mother every day. Noria, they gossiped, had deserted her family, leaving the poor man to raise the child alone. Napu had no job, and would spend the whole day begging for money from passers-by in the city. He would sit with Vutha at a street corner, and people would throw coins into a small can that Vutha held. Most people gave money because they pitied the little boy in rags, who was pitch black with the layers and layers of filth that had accumulated on his body. Napu knew that if he went on a begging spree with Vutha, he would get a lot of money.

However, he did not spend any of this money on Vutha. When he got home — he had established a rough cardboard shelter under a lonely bridge on a disused road outside the city — he chained Vutha to a pole, and went off drinking. He went all the way to those shanty towns where he knew people from his village did not live, and crawled from shebeen to shebeen drinking, until the money was finished. Vutha would cry for Noria and for food. But Napu would only go back to unchain him and take him to the city for more begging. The only time they had anything to eat was when some kindly people would give them scraps of food, instead of money.