Zakes Mda: Ways of Dying

That was yesterday. Today he was treated with the utmost disrespect, and now he is annoyed. He sleeps, and in his dreams he sees the sad eyes of Noria, looking appealingly at the bickering crowd.

Toloki opens his eyes. Boxing Day. One of those senseless holidays when we do not bury our dead. Like Christmas Day. Instead we go for what we call a joll. All it means is that we engage in an orgy of drinking, raping, and stabbing one another with knives and shooting one another with guns. And we call it a joll. We walk around the streets, pissing in our pants, and shouting, ‘Happee-ee-e!’ That’s what Christmas is all about. And Boxing Day is the day we go out to bars and she-beens to take off the hangover of yesterday. But by midday, the whole orgy has started all over again. Some of us, the better-off ones, go out to the beach to play volleyball and frisbees, and to piss and vomit on the golden sands as the day gets older. It was just sheer luck that there was a funeral yesterday: only because that stuck-up bitch Noria was sensible enough to insist that her son be buried on Christmas Day, and not on any other day. The street committee, or whoever is in charge of the lives of the squatter-camp dwellers, could have refused, but they acceded to her wish. It just shows how much power Noria still has — especially over men.

Today he must go and see her. Fortunately he is still wearing his professional costume, since he was too lazy to change into his home clothes when he came back from the funeral yesterday. He really must discipline himself to change, and not to sleep in his costume. Otherwise it will get finished, and God knows where he will get another one like it. It was not easy getting this one. One day, years ago, he was passing by one of the city shopping malls. At the paved square where there were flowers and small trimmed trees growing in giant concrete pots, and genteel people sitting at the small round tables eating all sorts of food, he saw a small shop that he had not noticed before. It was between the two restaurants where the pavement diners had ordered their food. Different types of costumes were displayed at the window, and he was struck by a particularly beautiful outfit all in black comprising a tall shiny top hat, lustrous tight-fitting pants, almost like the tights that the young women wear today, and a knee-length velvety black cape buckled with a hand-sized gold-coloured brooch with tassels of yellow, red and green. He fell in love with it. He knew immediately that it would be most suitable for his new vocation which he had decided on only the previous day after his disagreement with Nefolovhodwe.

Toloki walked inside the shop, and was welcomed with a firm handshake by the old man who owned the shop, and his son, who was being trained in the trade. The old man explained to him that his shop served the theatre world. Most of his outfits were period costumes that actors and producers came to rent for plays that were about worlds that did not exist anymore. But other costumes did not belong to any world that ever existed. These were strange and fantastic costumes that people rented for fancy dress balls, or for New Year carnivals, or to make people laugh. Toloki asked him about his favourite outfit in the window. ‘Oh, that one,’ said the old man. ‘I have only rented it out once before, to some Americans who wanted it for a Halloween party.’

‘Can I buy it?’

‘Buy it? Of course. Although God knows what you’ll be buying it for. People don’t normally buy these costumes. They rent them because they are things you use only once, and never again.’

‘I want to own it.’

But when he heard what the price was, he knew he could not afford it in a hundred years. It was expensive, he was told, because it was made of very expensive material: silk and velvet. He left with a very painful heart, for he really wanted that costume. He could see himself in it, an imposing (albeit stocky) figure in some of the greatest cemeteries of the world, practising his vocation which was slowly taking shape in his mind.

He went back to the shop every day, and sat outside that window looking longingly at the costume. Leaking from his open mouth were izincwe, the gob of desire. The owners of the two restaurants began to complain. ‘He is frightening our customers away,’ they said. ‘Who would want to eat our food while looking at the slimy saliva hanging out of his mouth?’ But Toloki refused to move away. It was a public place, wasn’t it? Didn’t he have a right to be where he wanted to be? At least if he couldn’t afford to buy the costume, he had all the right in the world to sit there for the rest of his life and admire it. ‘What can we do?’ the restaurant owners said resignedly. ‘Ever since these people began to know something about rights they have got out of hand. I tell you, politics has destroyed this country.’ So, day after day Toloki came to admire his costume, until one day the restaurant owners decided to buy it for him. ‘Promise us that if we buy you this costume you will never come back here again,’ they begged. He promised, and left happily with the nicely wrapped costume under his arm. He was never seen there again.

That was several years ago. Now the costume has seen better days. The colourful tassels are gone. The topper is crooked and crumpled. The velvet of the cape has developed a thick sheen of dirt, and the tights are held together by wires and safety pins. The black beauty has become almost grey. His pride in this venerable costume increases with age, though, like advocates of law who wear their old and tattered gowns with pride as symbols of their seniority in the bar. He will wear it, certainly, when he goes to see Noria, even though he is not on duty. It is a pity that Noria has never seen him in action. One day he would like to impress her with a flourishing display of his mournful expertise.

Maybe he should first go to the beach and take a shower. He has not washed himself for at least one week. Then he will go to Noria’s in the afternoon, when people are done with their household chores and are prepared to welcome visitors. On second thoughts, he will not go to the beach. It is Boxing Day and all the beaches are crowded with holidaymakers from the inland provinces who come especially to litter the lovely coastal city at this time of the year. People like to gawk when he showers. The smaller the crowd the better. Perhaps he will take a walk to the waterfront and entertain himself by watching the antics of the buskers and the ridiculous excitement of the tourists who visit the pubs, stores and theatres there. Or he might just as well sit here, watch ships come and go, and think of Noria.

Noria. The village. His memories have faded from the deep yellow-ochre of the landscape, with black beetles rolling black dung down the slopes, and colourful birds swooping down to feed on the hapless insects, to a dull canvas of distant and misty grey. Now, however, it is all coming back. Pale herdboys, with mucus hanging from the nostrils, looking after cattle whose ribs you could count, on barren hills with patches of sparse grass and shrubs. Streams that flowed reluctantly in summer and happily died in winter. Homesteads of three or four huts each, decorated outside with geometric patterns of red, yellow, blue and white. Or just white-washed all around. One hovel each for the poorest families. In addition to three huts, his homestead had a four-walled tin-roofed stone building with a big door that never closed properly. This was his father’s workshop.

His father, a towering handsome giant in gumboots and aging blue overalls, was a blacksmith, and his bellows and the sounds of beating iron filled the air with monotonous rhythms through the day. Jwara, for that was his father’s name, earned his bread by shoeing horses. But on some days — Toloki could not remember whether these were specially appointed days, or whether they were days when business was slack — he created figurines of iron and brass. On those days he got that stuck-up bitch, Noria, to sing while he shaped the red-hot iron and brass into images of strange people and animals that he had seen in his dreams. Noria was ten years old, but considered herself very special, for she sang for the spirits that gave Jwara the power to create the figurines. She had been doing it for quite a few years. Although her voice added to the monotony of the bellows and beating metal, we thought it was quite mellifluous. We came and gathered around the workshop, and solemnly listened to her never-changing song. Even the birds forgot about the beetles, and joined the bees hovering over the workshop, making buzzing and chirping sounds in harmony with Noria’s song.