Zakes Mda - Cion

“It’s the fuckin’ mark of the fuckin’ Irishman and I’ve got to live with it,” she says vehemently. It’s beautiful, I assure her. It is not, she retorts. Her hair is black. Her armpits are black. Why should it be “fuckin’ blonde”?

She will never know that I have never looked at a pussy before. Never seen it and its intricacies. Never explored its various corridors. Years back, when I broke my vows of celibacy and gave up my life as a monk of my own order of professional mourners for Noria, I plunged into her without ever looking at it. She used to tease me about that: “What if there’s nothing there…that I have tricked you with an artificial one made of plastic?” And I would respond: “Guess I will never know. It’s fine that way.”

But Orpah is now withdrawn. She rolls herself in a fetal position. I hold her in my arms. We cuddle on her pink duvet. Nothing happens beyond that. I just rest my member on her thighs until the fury is over. And we both drift into a deep sleep.

Dawn is a whisper away and soon the birds will chirp. The medium man treads lightly in the forest looking for ghost orchids. Broken limbs of trees are scattered on the ground. His socks in his shoes are soggy and the lower legs of his pants are wet with dew. Before entering the forest he walked on the grass dotted with yellow dandelions waiting to unfold their petals with the rise of the sun.

The medium man has spent many days and many nights looking very closely at the trunks of trees. He hopes nighttime will bear fruit in the form of a gleaming ghost orchid. Perhaps they come out in the night and sleep during daytime. They are, after all, ghosts. That may be the reason he has failed to find them in the day. He imagines they transform from the shape of a frog that has been flattened by a car to a tiny ball particularly to hide themselves from him. And when they think he is fast asleep or he is performing his memories for the spirit child they unfold themselves and spread out and become the ghost orchids they were meant to be.

The spirit child instructed him to pay particular attention to ghost trees, for they are the likeliest hosts of ghost orchids. The medium man therefore looks into the hollow hearts of those ghost trees that have hollow hearts. It is in the hearts that secrets are hidden.

The moon is full; the ghost trees are ghost trees.

The medium man is not in the forest today as a medium man. He is looking for ghost orchids to make the spirit child happy, and is beginning to be despondent that he has not found any. The ghost trees do not care that his mission is different today. To them a medium man is always a medium man. Therefore they whisper stories to him. As they are wont to do when he walks in the forest. Be it day or be it night. From the branches that touch the sky the leaves breathe out stories of another time and gently blow them down to him. Memories of how an Abyssinian Queen flapped her wings and swooped to the ground and of how the sun was once lonely because it had no one to play with. His body soaks in these memories, so that his mouth may retell them later.

Yet he does not forget his quest. And his persistence later pays. At sunrise when he is walking home he discovers his first ghost orchid. At the edge of the forest. On the first tree he would have encountered when he got there. And yet he had missed it. There it is in all its glorious whiteness. Stuck on the mottled part of the trunk so as to stand out, waiting to be discovered by him. He is jumping with joy as he plucks it. His smile is not only on his lips, but in his eyes as well.

He knows what he’ll do that night. He will dress up like…he will decide later what character he will assume. But he will be in full costume when he presents it to the spirit child.

These things had not been revealed to me yet, for the sciolist kept them close to his chest. I did not know about the medium man and the spirit child. That is why I am wondering where Mahlon Quigley comes from so early in the morning and why there is a bounce in his gait. I am standing at the front door when I see him approach. I give way and he enters without giving me a glance. I think he has made up his mind that I don’t exist. He goes to his room, perhaps to sleep.

Ruth stands up from her workstation and walks to the kitchen. I follow her. She starts fussing around preparing breakfast of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and coffee for her Mr. Quigley.

“Where does Mr. Quigley go at night?” I ask.

“Mr. Quigley has his ways,” says Ruth.

She sets the food on the table.

“What are his ways?” I persist.

“The question is: what’s your ways, mister? You think we don’t know you slept in Orpah’s room the other night? And Mr. Quigley don’t like it one bit. I don’t like it neither.”

“Who told you that?” I demand, ready to deny the incident if only to protect Orpah’s reputation. After our moment of weakness Orpah and I have avoided each other. Our eyes don’t meet when I chance upon her. We behave like two guilt-ridden teenagers.

“Mr. Quigley knows everything,” says Ruth, glaring at me. “And he’s gonna protect his own.”

As I make a shamefaced exit I brush against Mr. Quigley, who is coming for his breakfast. He ignores me as before.

It is too early to go to the Center so I loiter in Mahlon’s garden, wondering how I’ll continue to live under his roof after my scandalous behavior. If only Obed were here he would advise me exactly how to handle this…how to control the damage. But he has been scarce lately, thanks to Beth Eddy.

I need to talk to somebody, but there’s no one here but the gnomes. And there’s one of mine standing on a pedestal squinting at me. The Bush gnome, I mean, which really belongs to Mahlon. It holds a machine gun, which tells me that Obed was here not so long ago. Maybe last night. That’s what he does when he is here: places a machine gun in Mr. Bush’s hand. After some time Ruth will notice what Obed has done and will yank the weapon out of the President’s hand and replace it with an American flag. This has happened many times over — a battle of wills fought over Mahlon’s gnome. I don’t know why Ruth hasn’t thought of breaking the plastic machine gun to pieces and throwing it away where Obed will not find it. Maybe she is just respectful of it because it is Mr. Quigley’s property.

Mahlon witnesses this battle without comment, and never interferes with either the machine gun or the American flag.

Orpah walks out of her room toward the swing. She is in a pink robe and her hair is in curlers. She makes for the living room door when she sees me. I call her name and she stops, but does not look at me. I walk toward her.

“Ruth knows,” I blurt out. “How the heck did she know?”

“About what?” she asks, looking at me innocently.

“What we did.”

“We didn’t do nothing,” she says, averting her eyes.

“I know. But they don’t know that,” I say, not looking away this time but staring into her eyes.

“They know we didn’t do nothing. I told my daddy.”

“You told him I spent the night?”

“Yeah. I tell my daddy everything. He wanna kill you.”

She walks away.

“Oh, that’s just great,” I call after her. “Your father wants to kill me and you just walk away like that?”

She stops and smiles. She can afford to smile at a time like this. She looks cherubic without her garish jewelery and makeup.

“I got new pictures,” she says. “Wanna save them from the tsunami?”

Without waiting for my response she rushes to her room and in no time is back with a stack of drawings. She dumps them in my hand and runs back to her room.