Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

Toloki is impressed by the care taken with the food. The meat is so soft that even old grandmothers and grandfathers can chew it with their gums. It is well salted, but it is not spiced. Funeral meat is never spiced. It is just boiled in water and seasoned with salt. The samp also is soft and tender. Often the samp at funerals is hard and undercooked.

He looks around, and sees Noria enjoying her food at the basin that is reserved for women. Poor Noria, she only gets to eat meat when there is a funeral. Toloki, on the other hand, does not usually eat at funerals. At first, it was not his choice not to eat. However, when he used to join the men’s basin they would make snide remarks about him, and about his odour. Blunt ones would even tell him rudely that he was not welcome at their dish. He could have refused to move, and continued to eat. After all, the food was meant for everyone who was at the funeral, and the louts did not have any special rights over it. But he decided not to lower the dignity of his profession by engaging in quarrels about food. People have been known to fight and injure one another over food at funerals.

At some funerals, especially in the townships where there are better-off people, the system of dispensing food is different. The most important people — usually the relatives and close friends of the family, and those who are pillars of the community — are served food inside the house at the table. The food that is served there will include not only the usual funeral fare of samp and beef, but rice, and some salads, and jelly and custard. The second stratum is made up of those people who are fairly important, but not well-known enough to sit inside at the table. They form a line outside, and women at a table dish samp, beef, and sometimes cabbage onto their individual paper or plastic plates. They eat standing and gossiping about how great and impressive the funeral was, and what inspiring speeches were made, and who has been secretly sleeping with whose wife. The final stratum is that of the rabble. They are fed samp and beef in communal basins, as is done at this funeral in the settlement. The difference in the settlement is that everyone eats like this. The ranked strata do not exist.

At township funerals, Toloki belongs to the second stratum. He usually collects his food, and drifts to some spot where there are no people, and quietly eats from his plate.

No one ever has to stand there and separate people according to their strata. People know who they are and where they belong. These things always work themselves out.

Toloki dips his hand into the samp over and over again. No one complains about him, since the only odour emanating from him is that of perfume. He needs to eat and fill his stomach, especially since he does not know where his next meal will come from. He has some money, but he is far away from the places where he used to buy his luxury food of cakes and green onions. Of course he can buy the normal food of mealie-meal and some relish from a spaza shop, and they can cook it together on the primus stove in the shack. But will Noria agree to that? Won’t she say that she doesn’t take things from men? He needs to tread lightly, until he has a better understanding of this woman. Or at least until he knows exactly which are the right things to do, and which are the wrong ones.

After the meal, Toloki and Noria go back to their shack. They have some time to kill before she goes to help Madimbhaza, and then to attend her meeting. Toloki has promised to go with her, so as to see what kind of work she does. But first he must change into his civilian clothes. Noria has suggested that he wear his mourning clothes only when he goes to funerals. At home, he must look like other men. It is not a bad idea, really, since it will help to preserve his costume for further years of mourning.

They sit outside the shack and talk about the world, and about death. Noria says she is beginning to get the hang of this mourning business. And she believes that she is able to read meaning into the sounds that he produces. But she needs to attend more funerals with Toloki in order to thoroughly grasp the profound meaning that he draws from the depth of his soul. They try a few sounds together, especially the new goatly sounds. Noria’s first attempts are quite amateurish, and they both burst out laughing.

‘I am sorry, Toloki, to laugh about such serious matters.’

‘Don’t be sorry, Noria. In death we laugh as well. Don’t you remember that when you were a little girl, your own friend died laughing?’

‘You are such a wise man, Toloki.’

Toloki tells her of an occasion, not long ago, when the whole graveyard broke into laughter. There were four funerals taking place at the same time. One of them was a Zionist funeral, and was particularly noisy, since Zionists beat drums and dance around when they pray. At the funeral where he was mourning, things were very solemn, as the family belonged to a denomination that believed in burying their dead with quiet dignity. At the various funerals, preachers were preaching, orators were making their speeches, and people were singing various hymns. Each person was supposed to concentrate on the activities of the funeral she or he was attending, and ignore the noise from other funerals.

The Nurse at the Zionist funeral had a booming voice. Soon, all ears at all four funerals were directed towards him, and people were no longer paying attention to their own funerals. He made a naughty joke about the deceased, and everyone at the various funerals in the cemetery burst out laughing. This happened at the same moment that the priest at the funeral where Toloki was mourning was engaged in the most serious part of the ritual, that of praying for the soul of the deceased so that it should be happily received into the portals of heaven by none other than St Peter himself. Even the priest couldn’t help laughing. Everybody laughed for a long time, for it was the kind of joke that seemed to grow on you. You would laugh and eventually stop. But after a few minutes you would think of the joke again, and you would burst out laughing all over again. Laughter kept coming in spurts, with some people even rolling on the ground. When the four processions finally marched off in various directions, some people were still laughing. Others had stomach cramps from laughing too much.

‘In our language there is a proverb which says the greatest death is laughter.’

‘You see! I was right, Toloki, when I said that you knew how to live.’

Church ministers have spoken at length about heaven, and the infinite joy experienced by those who are lucky enough to go there. Toloki wonders if their joy is as great as the joy he is feeling now, sitting in front of their shack with Noria. The pleasant smell of cheap perfume envelopes them both. It is Toloki’s perfume, which he shared with her this morning.

Their conversation drifts to the village. They remember their childhood and their youth. Some memories are happy. Others are sad. But there is no bitterness in either of them. Sometimes they do not see things in the same way. For instance, at one stage. Noria says that Jwara was a great man, a great creator who was misunderstood. Toloki chooses not to comment on this. His views on the matter are very different, but why spoil the moment by bringing up contrary opinions about a past that is dead and buried forever?

‘I am sorry that I did not go to his funeral, at least to sing for him for the last time. Even now I feel that I still owe him one last song. Things will never be right for me until I have sung that song. One day, when I go back home I will visit his grave, and sing him his last song. Did you mourn at his funeral?’

‘No. I learnt of his death long after he had finished dying.’

‘I hear his dying was a long process.’