Praise for Nthikeng Mohlele’s The Scent of Bliss
‘Debut of elusive, skewed beauty.’
– CHRIS DUNTON, SUNDAY INDEPENDENT
‘A poetic, vividly imagined, nuanced text, a rare butterfly in modern African literature.’
– LIZZY ATTREE, WORDSETC
‘An outstanding poetic piece of work … Mohlele’s voice is novel and shows a concern … for beautiful language for its own sake.’
– PERCY ZVOMUYA, MAIL & GUARDIAN
‘An assured debut by a writer who wields his pen with flair and confidence.’
– ARJA SALAFRANCO, THE STAR TONIGHT
Small Things
Nthikeng Mohlele
First published in 2013 by University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
This edition published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2018
10 Orange Street
Sunnyside
Auckland Park 2092
South Africa
+2711 628 3200
www.jacana.co.za
© Nthikeng Mohlele, 2013
Author photograph © Oupa Nkosi
All rights reserved.
d-PDF ISBN 978-1-4314-2760-4
ePUB ISBN 978-1-4314-2761-1
mobi file ISBN 978-1-4314-2762-8
Cover design by publicide
Job no. 003237
For
My teacher, LB Mashiane at
St Bede’s High School – Mpedi!
My son, Lehlogonolo Mohlele
– Moupo Mokganyammele …
My friend, Malose Lekganyane
– Kgomo Mohwaduba.
‘I am the organiser of the universe and very bossy.
From my right hand issue planets.
From my left hand issue stars.
I have to see that everything stays in order and the planets do not collide with the stars.
When something threatens order and peace then I get mad as hell.
But an organiser is not a dictator.
An organiser takes care of everything.’
– BESSIE HEAD, IN THUNDER BEHIND HER EARS,
GILLIAN STEAD EILERSEN
‘For all our conceits about being the centre of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner … on an unexceptional galaxy, which is one of about 100 billion galaxies … That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.’
– CARL SAGAN
Contents
Life
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Nausea
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Echoes
Chapter 15
Life
I, in my own determined and peculiar ways, to certain approximate and exact degrees, don’t think much of life. I am, however, never sure if this conclusion is without some blemish, some residue, however faint, of an ounce of madness. To certain inconclusive degrees, it is clear that some of my disappointments awaited me, gathering rust, years before I was born. I have reason to suspect you will find this tale unusual, but not without beauty. Threads of a spider’s web perhaps, to be unwound, cautiously, a skein at a time.
1
I, to this day, fall hopelessly in love whenever I see postmen carrying mailbags. My heart leaps at bright-red post boxes in pictures. They remind me of Desiree – the postmaster’s daughter. We never exchanged much, Desiree and I. I caught her roving eye on me one morning during Mass. Hearing nothing of the sermon, I saw only this eye, a beaming light bulb that warmed me from the third row, a good twenty metres from where I knelt praying, my knees molten with love.
Seeing her absent-minded, in the company of tedious friends, aroused suspicions that I was in her thoughts. End of term, after the mid-year exams, was marked by forced labour. We cleaned the school grounds and windows in preparation for a new school term. I never joined the gardening or chalkboard-cleaning crews, but always chose to be on the window-cleaning teams, where I could, with good perspective from standing on upside-down dustbins, admire my Desiree shining classroom floors. I got generous compliments from inspecting teachers (windows shone like mirrors against the sun) – who little knew that such workmanship was done in a trance. I was like a spider on a damaged web, doing my utmost to contain my blossoming heart.
It never made sense to me why we had to endure two weeks’ break between school terms – during which I almost turned red with longing. My Desiree would, when my hopes were at their highest, at the fast-advancing first day of the new term, come down with swollen tonsils. This I learnt through considered and disciplined interviews with her friends – slippery and non-committal, like goldfish dodging intruding human hands in ponds. Desiree came back to school (a week of absence!) following the tonsils assault, offered me an orange during lunch. She then woke up brave one morning, handed me a sky-blue homemade card that at first appeared blank. But as I opened it, with the care demanded by heart transplants, I learnt she had drawn a small heart at the centre. Complete with a faint fingerprint and candle wax (a confirmation of feelings known and treasured). Executed in candlelight. This awoke the poet in me. I, the same evening, penned a love note whose fire assailed the heart. I wrote: ‘My love is deeper than one million seas, brighter than a billion suns, bathed in milk, fanned with tulip bunches. Shared in moderation, for fear of total combustion. Desiree. Desiree. Desiree. Come to my heart. A universe of joy. Lit by a trillion moons.’ I never got a response. She would be moody and aloof.
She then promised me eternal love – ‘When the time is right’. There were times when I was angry and rebellious; yet helpless. I wrote, in yet another carefully worded love letter, that it was unjust that I had to endure such blissful suffering. I never got a response. Desiree was again down with tonsils, away from school for two weeks, which seemed like eight millennia. She never encouraged my pursuit of her, nor did she discourage it. She seemed undecided, bordering on confused. Not all was covered in soot, though. There were moments when Desiree ignited hushed conversations, only too brief to allow me a glimpse of her torturous charms. It is peculiar, I know, but even now, I associate tonsils with love. In hindsight, my love for Desiree is as it always was: maddening. I visited Desiree at the post office, licked hundreds of stamps on letters to imaginary people. I mopped supermarket floors on weekends, ran errands, to earn money to give impetus to my suit. I bought small things; with big intentions. Wrist watches. Earrings. Tonsil prescriptions.
She appreciated the efforts, yet dismissed them as heart-warming but unnecessary. It took me time to learn her emotional compass – which often spun out of control. I hung on, learnt and unlearnt bizarre discoveries, reassuring compromises, brutal rebukes. I could recognise Desiree’s singing or laughter in a hall full of people; even if there was a thunderstorm. She knew this, and I suspect it meant a lot to her. That was why I once inquired if she ever thought of me, to which she, with fire in her eyes, countered: ‘What do I have to do for you to leave me alone?’ I was beyond bliss. The rebuke was a step in the right direction. Preferable to her more direct protests, the famous: ‘Stop staring at me!’
I was born in Sophiatown, the Chicago of South Africa. Benevolence Place was, the day Truman bombed Hiroshima, converted into a Catholic sanctuary for abandoned, orphaned souls, of which I was one. A popular rumour says my father, a contract miner in pursuit of gold, died in a blasting accident. No one knows for sure. I never met my mother. I grew and was schooled around monks, who were
quick to say tersely: ‘You do not have parents.’ Benevolence Place was the only world I knew: Crosses. Church bells. Hymns. Orphans. Our heads were shaved, our existence timed, our opinions disregarded.
Father Goebbels assured me there was no greater relief than unburdening, humbling oneself before the Lord. It puzzled me that he always picked on me, kept nudging me to go for confession. To be one with Christ. I was curious, hesitant, non-committal. I thought: why would Father Goebbels think me guilty of such sordid sins at primary school as to warrant emergency confessions? It took Desiree, accusing me of heathen tendencies, to make me finally relent. I untied knot after knot of my secret worlds: the meat and left-over food heists at Benevolence Place kitchens; peeping at urinating monks. A selection of lies told in no particular sequence. To make life easier. My confessions to Father Goebbels were mostly made up. Mild sins. To get him off my back. The confessions never included my nocturnal escapes to Gold Street, to spy and listen to wails of drunken pleasure in the dark. Lord bless that whorehouse, with its varied paying errands: ‘Call Lucy for me, say it is Wilfred.’ Sixpence for errands, four pence for spying. I sinned. For Desiree. For love.
‘Ask for God’s forgiveness then, my son,’ said Father Ben. I was, all along, convinced I was talking to God Himself. But the voice, of a sombre yet amused Father Ben, hiding behind the confession box, caused me untold embarrassment every time our paths crossed. Each time Father Goebbels said: ‘God loves all his children,’ I asked, irritated: ‘Doesn’t God ever tire of hearing the same prayers over and over again?’ Father Goebbels warned me against such erratic thinking and, visibly annoyed, said everything has its place in the universe. ‘Don’t be like your people, bowing to dead things in search of salvation. Don’t engage in satanic rituals, drumming to evil spirits. Refrain from lust, voodoo and greed, and from polygamy. Why does a man need three wives, if not to satisfy base, wild instincts? Jesus – only He is the way, the truth and the life.’ John 14:6. If everything indeed belonged somewhere, I pondered, why was Desiree blind to my adoration of her? Why did Jesus allow such persecution?
Father Goebbels expected us to do odd jobs in return for sanctuary: remove weeds from flower beds, collect and distribute mail, ring the church bell on general and specific occasions. I was a captive of that bell, in all kinds of weather. I imagine the bell grew tired of me, as I did of it. All Father Goebbels needed to do was frown, and I knew. I would run to the tower, yank that rope to the deafening din announcing Mass or afternoon prayers. I ran in for Mass, rang the bell again to mark the end of prayers. It was only then that I was free – yet under Father Goebbels’s eagle eye, his sour smiles.
For reasons known only to him, Father Goebbels concluded I was never to be trusted with anything. Not even removing weeds from the vegetable gardens, or remembering to ring that wretched bell. There was always his hostile eye, his lemon smiles, following me around. He was creepy: like an uninvited, cynical mortician at a wedding reception. The Dutch, said Father Goebbels, came to the Cape in 1652, to establish a refreshment station. To save sailors bound for the East from scurvy. Such simple-minded fools. Why endure the wrath of the sea, risk losing your teeth and drowning, for a few bags of spice? Father Goebbels refused to answer why most black people I knew shone floors, dug furrows … a life of servitude. He exploded, catching the class unawares: ‘Why don’t you stand the hell up and come teach this class then?’ I sat still, petrified.
Sophiatown was myriad heartaches: souls stabbed in dark alleys, covered with newspapers and flies come morning. Police lining loitering people up against police vans, frisking them, demanding answers to petty things. Pass books. Places of employment. Lodgings. Intended destinations. The Americans and the Spoilers, mob figures, cruised the streets with their maroon and cream Oldsmobiles and picked unwilling beauties up off dance floors. Like one picks cherries off a birthday cake.
Yet you heard staccato and other breeds of laughter. Midnight wails, too. How was it that amid open sewage, such laughter was possible? That self-taught pianists, painters, writers and unassuming philosophers saw and expressed life with such devastating clarity? It was as if skulls were not being cracked with batons, torches not shone on naked lovers during planned and impromptu raids. Happiness, I found, was a strange creature. While the gramophones wailed, while wedding songs filled romantic summer nights, rumours abounded that Sophiatown would be demolished.
Drunks in the streets sang and stumbled down Gold Street (shebeens, brothels, dagga dens), their jollity interspersed by moments of clouded introspection. I endured Father Goebbels’s lemon smiles; until I grew pubic hairs, expressed the most ungodly sentiments I could dream of. I was kicked out of the orphanage, accused of being a demon. My youth was, upon leaving Benevolence Place, consumed by a single urge: to charm Desiree. My night prowlings were never about blowing air onto feminine navels, but lonely hours spent in the Odin Cinema or Back of the Moon. Like a stray dog. In search of not food, but meaning. I hung out with Bra Todd, a respected newsman, with a taste for American swing. ‘Everyone is a politician,’ he growled, with his infectious laughter. We listened to records, while I polished his shoes, helped with the dishes, and learnt sophisticated ways to woo a lady. I was terrified to let my feelings be known, so although Bra Todd looked out for me, I refrained from burdening him with my Desiree misfortunes. He was her uncle and, as such, had full command of her attention. How I envied him! I, at fifteen, between bouts of pleading with Desiree (silent, helpless despair), spent many late nights with Bra Todd in newsrooms, as a willing apprentice.
I spent most Sundays at the Odin Cinema, enthralled by competing ensembles: dancers, jazz bands and choral music. Desiree sang for the Fleeting Birds, a group that specialised in church tunes. I, like a man possessed, shuffled between bodies in the overcrowded performance hall, for a view of her. Desiree was always the last to walk on stage, and my sanity momentarily escaped me every time she sang the lead in ‘Amazing Grace’. Everyone agreed that the grace was truly amazing – and so was the line of suitors. I made sure I pleased Bra Todd; knew that none of those rascals with pulsating hearts would dare to touch my Desiree. Desiree and I had an understanding, fraught though it was; raging love torrents received with lukewarm courtesy.
Her voice, rising through the performance hall, assured all that God would one day take a stroll through Sophiatown and, as Father Goebbels was fond of saying, ‘set the crooked paths straight’. Bra Todd loved Desiree who, in his estimation, had the subtle charms of a fleeting breeze. He would play Louis Armstrong records, his favourite being ‘Kiss to Build a Dream On’. I embraced my role of accidental houseboy – for its proximity to Desiree. It never mattered what was thrown my way: cleaning muddy boots, scraping burnt casserole dishes, or the occasional debt-collection voyages – complete with Bra Todd’s warnings: ‘Tell Joel I have only anger to express.’ I loved seeing grown men shiver, mumble incoherent explanations. I collected debts as old as three years – where some debtors suffered bloody noses even after paying in full. I was, by comparison, the safest citizen in Sophiatown. Those in the know would simply say: ‘That is Todd’s boy, stay clear of him.’
2
The demolition rumour proved to be true. I watched as government lorries moved human cargo; observed Meadowlands, Soweto, sprawl into a majestic, flamboyant eyesore. A place of explosive cocktails of despair, possibilities, limitations. For me, there was something more devastating in the move to Meadowlands: Desiree went to live with her uncle in Alexandra Township; sparking in me sporadic fits of rage that left me drained and ill tempered.
From an Indian shop in Mayfair I bought a second-hand Remington with a faulty ink ribbon that I had to nudge into position every three sentences. My ponderings became letters to the editor, evolved into seething opinion pieces, ending in an offer for a column a few years later. Bra Todd’s cautions were clear: ‘We love the venom, but tone it down. Or you are as good as a corpse.’ It was impossible, having venom I couldn’t use, of which I was permitted to
emit only small doses. The Venom Debates became explosive newsroom outbursts, ending with surly resignations like: ‘Suit yourself; it’s your life.’ The worst was when Bra Todd simply ignored me. I knew: tone it down.
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you, says Pericles. 495–429 BC or thereabouts. I remember the piece vividly, copied out with a blunt pencil from a maroon leather-bound book, overdue by several days, making the librarians furious. I well recall that book: its coffee stains, the faded gold lettering proclaiming Greek Philosophers, the dead cockroach with its abandoned wing on page 322 and the rest of its corpse and crushed antennae preserved on page 548.
I took a walk to the Daily Argus entrance below, shared the contents of my lunchbox with eager pigeons, jostling for the best position next to my charitable hand. The sun cast gold light spells on the newsroom windows. An assortment of cars was dotted around the parking lot under the yellow afternoon light: Cadillacs. Valiants. Oldsmobiles. Constancias.
The weather changed without warning. A gloomy, tempestuous storm stalked the cityscape. It hit Johannesburg sooner than anticipated, dropping nipple-sized hailstones. Palm trees in city parks bowed obediently to God’s invisible hand. Wind blew water against window panes, causing blurry vision. Bad-tempered lightning and sudden thunder bullied the senses.
I rushed back into the newsroom, just in time to catch a phone call. ‘Bastards!’ said Bra Todd. ‘You are on the list.’ I was not surprised. A yellow Ford Cortina had tailed me for some weeks. The vehicle occupants, weird-looking men with sweaty armpits, following me around, tapping my phone, making me nervous. My indifference to my pending arrest intrigued them. How was it that I continued with my blighted routines, as if there were no noose dangling over my head? I risked working late. The 10:00 pm curfew was simple: no African permitted on the streets – your desires and tragedies notwithstanding. I spent my thirty-third birthday transfixed behind my desk. Thinking.
Small Things Page 1