Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

‘Toloki, I am sorry about the way they treated you back in the village. . about the way we treated you.’

‘It happened a long time ago, Noria. I never think about it at all.’

‘You are a beautiful person, Toloki. That is why I want you to teach me how to live. And how to forgive.’

‘You are the one who will teach me, Noria.’

He says this with utmost humility and modesty. His thoughts are caught by the label that Noria has given him. He has been called ugly and foolish all his life, to the extent that he has become used to these labels. But he has never been called beautiful before. It will take him time to get used to this new label. Maybe all the catastrophes that have happened in her life have affected her eyes, so that she is able to see beauty where there is none.

‘Perhaps we should prepare to sleep now. If you want to pee at night, use the basin.’

‘I’ll go outside, Noria.’

‘It can be dangerous outside. It is not like the docklands here.’

She says things so innocently, this Noria, as if it is the natural thing for a man to pee in a basin. Anyway, he knows how to hold his bladder until the next day. In the morning he will go to a public pit latrine that the residents have constructed a few hundred yards from Noria’s shack.

Noria spreads her donkey blankets on the floor. Toloki spreads his on the other end of the small shack. Only a small strip of mud floor divides their separate kingdoms. She takes off her polka dot dress, and retains only her petticoat. Toloki is afraid to look at her, but a glimpse in her direction tells him that the petticoat has seen better days, and like his venerable costume, it is held together by pieces of wire and safety pins. She gets between her two donkey blankets.

‘You can undress too, Toloki, and sleep. We have a very busy day tomorrow. After the funeral, I want to take you to a few places in the settlement where we do some work.’

‘I always sleep with my clothes on.’

Noria laughs. It is the innocent laughter of a child. It sounds like a distant reverberation of the laughter we used to feast on when she was a little girl. Toloki cannot explain the ecstasy that suddenly overwhelms him.

‘You remind me of my father. He used to sleep with his gum-boots on.’

‘I do take my shoes off, though, when I sleep.’

Soon Noria’s breathing becomes steady and slow. Toloki shyly steals a glance at her. She sleeps in a foetal position, like all the true sons and daughters of her village. In spite of the fact that she has been in the city for so many years, she has not taken to the grotesque sleeping positions of city people. This discovery fills Toloki with admiration. And with pride. There is nothing that he wants more in the world than to wake her up, and hold her in his arms, and tell her how much he admires her, and assure her that everything will be alright. But of course he cannot do such a thing. He can’t look at her sleeping posture for too long either. That would be tantamount to raping her. It would be like doing dirty things to a goddess.

The Nurse is a toothless old man who has seen many winters. He holds a fly-whisk made of the tail of a horse, and as he talks he uses it to whisk invisible flies from one side to another. He sways to the rhythm of his speech, working himself into an almost dance-like frenzy that leaves us panting with excitement.

‘He was my age-mate, this our brother who will not see the new year,’ he laments in a pained voice. ‘We grew up together in a faraway village in the inland provinces. When we were little boys we looked after calves together, and when they escaped to suckle from their mothers, our buttocks received the biting pain of the whip together. When we were older we graduated together from calves to cattle, and we spent months in cattle posts in the snowy mountains. We went to the mountain school together, where we were circumcised into manhood. We went to the mines together, and dug the white man’s gold that has made this land rich. Then we came to this city to work in its harbours. When we were too old to make them rich any more, we were thrown out of employment together. I tell you, my brothers and sisters, we travelled a long road with this our brother. Ours was the closeness of saliva to the tongue. And now here he lies, waiting to be laid to rest under the soil. And it is the hands of his own children that have put him in this irreversible state.’

Toloki sits on the mound. Today he floors us with a modern mourning sound that he has recently developed. He sounds like a goat that is being slaughtered.

Noria is somewhere in the crowd. She insisted on coming. They had woken up quite late, and were almost tardy for the funeral. Toloki is usually a very early riser. This morning, his eyes had opened at dawn. But he gave his back to Noria and pretended to be fast asleep. He did not know what to do once he woke up. He couldn’t just sit there and ogle at Noria in her sleep. But most of all, he was ashamed of a dirty dream that had visited him in the night, leaving his perforated green underpants all wet. It was a dream about Noria. The Noria of the aloes.

After Noria had woken up, and put on her polka-dot dress, he was able to wake up too. She poured some water into a basin, took a blanket with which to cover her nakedness, and went behind the shack to wash herself. After she had finished, she came back and poured some water for him. She told him to wash himself outside. ‘Wash yourself thoroughly. And don’t forget to wash behind your ears,’ she added. He covered himself with his blanket, pulled his pants down to his ankles, and washed his shame away. He thought of the seedy tramp who had mocked him about wet dreams in the waiting room the night before.

As he washed himself, people were passing on all sides of the shack: domestic workers rushing to catch taxis that would take them to the kitchens of their madams in the suburbs, factory workers going to the industrial areas, and pickpockets and muggers going to ply their trade in the central business district. Some of those passing by commented that it was nice that Noria had at last found herself a man. The cynics responded that for sure she had always been hiding men in her shack; no woman could survive like a nun as she pretended to do. A fat washerwoman shouted to Noria, and she responded from within the shack.

‘Hey wena Noria, don’t forget that this afternoon we have a meeting.’

‘What would make me forget, ’Malehlohonolo?’

‘Who knows? Now that you have a visitor. .’

‘You are a madwoman, ‘Malehlohonolo. Of course I’ll attend the meeting. But you make sure that you come back from your washing early, because you must also be at the meeting.’

The fat washerwoman gave a naughty giggle, as if to say, ‘Yes, Noria, I know what you were up to last night.’

Toloki was not at all bothered by the passing crowds. He is used to public ablutions. And the passers-by were not gawking at him. They were going about their business. In any case, in the settlement people generally wash themselves outside their shacks. There isn’t enough room inside for ablutions.

The dream haunts Toloki as he sits on the mound, listening to the Nurse, and seasoning his oration with goatly laments. It makes something rise in the region of his groin. It is violently kicking inside his pants. Toloki bends forward as if responding to the rhythms of oration and mourning. But what he is really doing is hiding his shame. People must not see that he has disgraced his asceticism by having dirty thoughts running through his mind, and playing havoc with his venerable body.

The Nurse is now talking of how this our brother saw his death. He was a graceful patriarch who loved his family, and was a custodian of his people’s customs. He was blessed with three sons. As an afterthought the Nurse adds, ‘Or let me rather say, we thought it was a blessing.’ And he waves in a dramatic gesture: ‘But does any one of you see his sons here? No, you cannot see his sons here, my brothers and sisters, and my children. You cannot see his sons here, because none of them are here.’