Zakes Mda: Ways of Dying

The earliest reference to Noria as a stuck-up bitch was first heard some years back when Toloki’s mother was shouting at Jwara, her angry eyes green with jealousy, ‘You spend all your time with that stuck-up bitch, Noria, and you do not care for your family!’

Noria was seven at the time, and she and Jwara had spent a whole week in the workshop, without eating any food or drinking any water, while he shaped his figurines and she sang. We came and listened, and went back to our houses to eat and to sleep, and came back again to the workshop, and found them singing and shaping figurines. Even the birds and the bees got tired and went to sleep. When they came back the next day, Noria and Jwara were still at it.

Xesibe, Noria’s father, came to the workshop, stood pitifully at the door, and pleaded with Jwara, ‘Please, Jwara, release our child. She has to eat and sleep.’ But Jwara did not respond. Nor did Noria. It was as though they were possessed by the powerful spirits that made them create the figurines. Noria’s mother, the willowy dark beauty known to us only as That Mountain Woman, was very angry with Xesibe: ‘How dare you, Father of Noria, interfere with the process of creation! Who are you, Father of Noria, to think that a piece of rag like you can have the right to stop my child from doing what she was born to do?’ That Mountain Woman had razor blades in her tongue.

Toloki’s mother, on the other hand, was furious. There was no more food in the house, and no one could get Jwara to respond to their pleas that he should give them money to buy maize-meal at the general dealer’s store. He just went on hammering and hammering to the rhythm of Noria’s monotonous song. It was in these circumstances that Toloki’s mother, her stout matronly body shaking with anger, uttered the immortal words that gave Noria her stuck-up bitch title, which lived with her from that day onwards.

We know all these things, but Toloki does not remember them. He only knows that as far as his memory can take him, Noria was always referred to as a stuck-up bitch, and was proud of the title. How this came about, he does not know. Nor can he remember how Noria began to sing for his father. This is how it happened: he was eight and she five. They were playing the silly games that children play outside the workshop. Jwara had just finished shoeing the policemen’s horses, and was about to put off the fires, and to close the shop. He was looking forward to taking an early break, and joining his old friends, Xesibe and Nefolovhodwe, for a gourd of sorghum beer. Then Noria sang. Jwara found himself overwhelmed by a great creative urge. He took an idle piece of iron, and put it in the fire. When it was red hot, he began to shape it into a strange figure. He amazed himself, because in all his life he had never known that he had such great talent. But before he could finish the figurine, Noria stopped singing, and all of a sudden he could not continue to shape the figure. The great talent, and the urge to create, had left his body. He could not even remember what he was trying to do with that piece of iron. Then in the course of her game with Toloki, Noria sang her childish song again. The song had no meaning at all. But it had such great power in Jwara that he found himself creating the figurine again. From that day, whenever Jwara wanted to create his figurines, he would invite Noria over to the workshop, she would sing her meaningless song, and he would work for hours on end at the figurines. Sometimes new shapes would visit him in his dreams, and he would want to create them the next day. Jwara and Noria did not usually work every day though, and the time that they worked for the whole week was an exception and a record. It was because Jwara’s dreams had been particularly crowded the previous night, and he was unable to stop until he had reproduced all the strange creatures with which he had interacted in his sleep.

We were not surprised, really, that Noria had all this power to change mediocre artisans into artists of genius, and to make the birds and the bees pause in their business of living and pay audience to her. In fact, one thing that Toloki used to be jealous about even as a small boy, was that we all loved the stuck-up bitch, for she had such beautiful laughter. We would crowd around her and listen to her laughter. We would make up all sorts of funny things in order to make her laugh. She loved to laugh at funny faces, and some villagers gained great expertise in making them. A particular young man called Rubber Face Sehole knew how to pull all sorts of funny faces, and whenever he was around we knew that we would all be happily feasting on Noria’s laughter. So Noria received all the attention, and Toloki none.

It is rumoured that when Noria was a baby, she already had beautiful laughter. We say it is rumoured because it is one of the few things that we do not know for sure. When That Mountain Woman was pregnant she went to give birth in her village in the mountains, as was the custom with a first child. Since we never had anything to do with the mountain people, we only know about the events there from the stories that people told. They said that nursemaids and babysitters used to tickle Noria for the pleasure of hearing her laughter. This went on until her mother had to stop the whole practice after baby Noria developed sores under her armpits. After that, when she was tickled she did not laugh but cried instead, which seemed to spread a cloud of sadness, not only among those who heard her cry, but throughout the whole mountain village.

We felt that Toloki should not have been overly jealous of Noria. Although we always remarked, sometimes in his presence, that he was an ugly child, he was not completely without talent. He was good with crayons, and could draw such lovely pictures of flowers, mountains and huts. Sometimes he drew horses. But he never drew people. Once he was asked to draw a picture of a person, but his hand refused to move. When he went to school, he would just sit there and draw pictures while the teacher was teaching. Come to think of it, neither Toloki nor Noria paid much attention to school work from the very first day they were registered at the village primary school. But then they were not the only children who did not pay much attention to school work. Toloki drew his pictures not only in class during lessons, but also during break when other children were playing football with a tennis ball on the road near the school.

There was the time when a milling company sponsored a national art competition for primary school pupils. Those pictures that conquered the eyes of the judges won prizes of books. One of Toloki’s pictures, the only entry from the village, won a prize. The big man from the milling company drove all the way from town to the village primary school to award the prize of books to Toloki. The principal asked all the pupils to assemble in the big stone building that served as a classroom for Standards Three, Four and Five, and also as a church on Sundays, just as they did for the morning prayers, and the prize was awarded in front of everybody. Words were spoken that day that filled Toloki’s heart with pride, and for the first time in his life he felt more important than everyone else, including Noria. After school, filled with excitement, he ran home with his new books, and went straight to his father’s workshop.

‘Father, I have won a national art competition. I got all these books.’

‘Good.’ Jwara did not look at Toloki, nor at the books. There were no horses to shoe, no figurines to shape. He was just sitting there, staring at hundreds of figurines lined up on the shelves where they were fated to remain for the rest of everybody’s lives. And he did not even look at his son.

‘Father, I have a picture of a beautiful horse here. It is a dream horse, not like the horses you shoe. Why don’t you shape it into a figurine too?’