Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

He wanders aimlessly, until he finds himself at the waterfront among the tourists. Since he is not wearing his professional costume, they don’t pay any particular attention to him, except of course to make sure that their wallets and handbags are safe. But then that is what they do every time they see someone who does not look quite like them.

At his quayside haunts, he sees some familiar faces. They do not seem to recognise him. He is piqued to discover that although he has been away for only two days, they have already forgotten him. But then a watchman recognises him, and slyly smiles.

‘Hey, Toloki, you are back! What happened to you, maan?’

‘I live in the settlements now.’

‘Ja maan, some vagrant told us that one night you dreamt of a woman, and took your trolley and left. Is she one of the women you met at your funerals?’

‘It is a woman from my village. And it is a lie that I dreamt of her and left. I left because I needed a change from the pollution that your vagrant friend was causing — breaking wind and filling the whole place with the smell of rotten cabbage.’

‘I agree with you, maan. Me too, I would rather inhale rotten cabbage from a woman’s bowels anytime, than from a drunken hobo’s.’

Toloki walks away in disgust. He was only trying to be friendly in responding to the watchman’s conversation. But that does not give him licence to make crude remarks about Noria, whom he does not even know. He drifts towards the waiting room, and sits on his bench. He fondly watches his ships sail away. He has sat there for many a day, and sailed in those ships. They took him to faraway lands, where he communed with holy men from strange orders that he had never heard of, and took part in their strange rituals, and partook of their strange fare. When he got tired of sailing away in the ships that left the harbour, he came back in those that sailed into the harbour, and was welcomed by throngs of votaries. He sailed mostly during those senseless holidays when people did not bury their dead. When he got tired of sailing, he would just sit and while away time by using his thumbnails to kill the lice that played hide-and-seek in the hems and seams of his costume or home clothes, depending on what he was wearing at the time.

He contemplates his life. Now, his is a world that is far removed from those lonely voyages, and from the merciless slaughter of nits.

Toloki finds himself back in the central business district. He is passing by a stationer’s shop when he notices that some art materials are on sale. He enters, and whimsically buys a box of wax crayons and some drawing paper. He has no idea what he wants to do with them. He buys them only because they are there.

He goes to his pastry shop and buys pies and his famous Swiss roll. Outside the store, he buys green onions and dried tarragon leaves. He is going to celebrate New Year’s Eve with a royal banquet. Noria can eat the pies and pastries if she does not like his special austere combination. Or she can eat the Swiss roll plain, without relishing them with green onions. After this shopping spree, he thinks of getting some flowers for Noria. He walks towards the part of the city which has roses growing in well-tended sidewalk gardens. But there are too many people walking about. He will not have the opportunity to pick any flowers today. Not even zinnias. All the streets are crowded with New Year’s Eve revellers, and the police are on the alert all the time.

He dallies for a while, just watching people. Then in the afternoon, he decides to go back home. He smiles as he realises that he actually thinks of Noria’s place as home. It is as though he has lived there all his life.

Back at the settlement, he finds all the children from Madimbhaza’s dumping ground playing outside Noria’s shack. They have been joined by other settlement children, and there is a lot of screaming, and shouting, and running around the shack, and throwing mud at one another. He greets the children, and Noria walks out of the shack when she hears his voice.

‘Oh, Toloki, where did you go?’

‘I went to the city, Noria.’

‘You should have said so, Toloki, before you left. I was so worried about you. Times are dangerous out there. You never know what might happen to you.’

‘I didn’t want to wake you up, Noria. You do sleep like a log, you know that.’

The children, Noria tells Toloki, have come to play at her house to give Madimbhaza a break. Children get excited on New Year’s Eve, and do not want to sleep until they have seen in the new year at midnight. This means that they will be bothering the old lady until the early hours of the morning. Normally Noria would have gone to look after them at the dumping ground. But as she was worried about the whereabouts of Toloki, she preferred to be at her own shack so that she could wait for him or for news of him.

Toloki laughs.

‘What did you think had happened to me?’

‘At first I thought you had left me. But when I saw that your trolley with all your property was still here, I had hope that you would come back.’

‘I will never leave you, Noria. I am even more convinced of that now that I have been to the city and have visited the places of my old life.’

They sit outside and watch children play. Noria points to a skinny little girl and says that that is Danisa. When she saw all the other children playing at Noria’s, she came to play as well. At first, Noria was reminded painfully of her son, for the two children had played together most of the time. But she has forced herself to accept that Danisa will be there, and will be everywhere she wants to be, without her son.

Toloki remembers the crayons and paper that he brought from the city. He takes them out and starts drawing pictures. He draws flowers, and is surprised to see that his hand has not lost its touch. He draws roses that look like those he brought Noria, the roses that are still very much alive in the bottle that is filled with water inside the shack. He also draws the zinnias that he brought her the other day.

‘I was not able to bring you any flowers today, Noria. But you can have these that I have drawn with crayons.’

‘I love these even better, Toloki, for they are your own creation.’

As the afternoon progresses, Toloki draws pictures of horses, as he used to do back in the village. Noria says that they are the best pictures that she has seen in all her life. She asks him to draw pictures of children as well. Toloki tries, but he is unable to.

‘You remember, Noria, even back in the village I could never draw pictures of human figures.’

Noria jokingly says that maybe she should sing for him, as she used to do for Jwara. After all, Jwara was only able to create through Noria’s song. Noria sings her meaningless song of old. All of a sudden, Toloki finds himself drawing pictures of the children playing. Children stop their games and gather around him. They watch him draw colourful pictures of children’s faces, and of children playing merry go-round in the clouds. The children from the dumping ground and from the settlement are able to identify some of the faces. These are faces they know, faces of their friends, their own faces. They laugh and make fun of the strange expressions that Toloki has sketched on their purple and yellow and red and blue faces.

The drawing becomes frenzied, as Noria’s voice rises. Passers-by stop to watch, and are overcome by warm feelings. It is as though Toloki is possessed by this new ability to create human figures. He breathes heavily with excitement, and his palms are clammy. His whole body tingles, as he furiously gives shape to the lines on the paper. His breathing reaches a crescendo that is broken by an orgasmic scream. This leaves him utterly exhausted. At the same moment, Noria’s song stops. The spell breaks, and the passers-by go on their way. Others come and look at Toloki’s work, and say it is the work of a genius. In the same way that they read meaning in the shack he and Noria built, they say that the work has profound meaning. As usual, they cannot say what the meaning is. It is not even necessary to say, or even to know, what the meaning is. It is enough only to know that there is a meaning, and it is a profound one.