With ruptured arteries, a brain never again able to ponder legal arguments, she, too, is no longer the same. Alive only because she is still breathing. The tragedy has brought a measure of certainty to my life. It will never be known why Desiree called for me during her darkest hour. My Desiree, who waited too long, miscalculating the power of her charms.
What will Amazu do? Hope for a miracle? Or will he, with his mathematical mind, give the go-ahead for the machines to be switched off? I picture him, running away from fate; clipping her still-growing toenails, reporting beeping drips, squeezing an increasingly wooden palm, kissing the parched lips never to sing ‘Amazing Grace’ again. Yet how can Amazu ever understand the thrill and angst of peering at Desiree from behind curtains, watching her fix Bra Todd’s shirt buttons – the small, practised movements of her wrist, the slight tilt of her head to the side, the biting off of the sewing thread between her teeth, her frown declaring her thoughts to be on things beyond the attaching of shirt buttons? Or the ecstasy of hearing her sing, watching her on stage with the Fleeting Birds (how charming she looked in floral dresses, ravishing in red, hypnotic in creams). There were many singers in Sophiatown, yet none seemed to hold a melody quite like Desiree, and if they did, it always seemed to me the crude flaunting of talent rather than a God-given grace.
Amazu arrives, obscured by a big bunch of flowers; flowers which, as things stand, Desiree is incapable of acknowledging. It would not make any difference if he placed a donkey jawbone by her bedside instead. Fickle, the meanings humans attach to things. Why should a donkey jawbone, given in smitten admiration, not be equivalent to a bunch of flowers?
Amazu is red-eyed. Hurt; poor mathematician. His pronouncement sounds assured yet crazy: ‘She will pull through.’ The lawyer colleagues know, as I do, that she won’t pull through – but still they say: ‘She will. Dee is a fighter.’ No one, not even Desiree, cheats confirmed brain damage. The reality is clear. Amazu must prepare for a funeral. Maybe in a month, or two, maybe in a year, or ten, depending on his appetite for hospital visits. I shake his hand, say: ‘You wouldn’t have something to eat on you, would you?’
There is disbelief from the lawyers, freshly stuffed from Sandton restaurants and cafeterias.
‘No,’ says Amazu, taken aback.
‘Never mind.’ I shuffle out of ward C3, hungry, drowsy. Not sad or courting rage. I am simply overwhelmed.
At the hospital entrance, I am met by a thunderstorm: hailstones, psychotic wind, flying leaves and other debris, blown too fast to be identified. Rosebank trees are combed by the tyrant wind, shooting dry twigs into the air. The downpour is unexpected and the hailstones turn the route to Verona Estates, two blocks away, into a war zone. I am too hungry to run, so I walk up Tyrwhitt Avenue, past The Grace Hotel, and turn left towards Jellicoe Avenue. The Verona Estates entrance is heaped with hailstones, the impression of an icy grave, piled with ice instead of soil. I am drenched and shivering.
I step over the grave, walk past the courtyard, around the rose garden guarded by falcons carved from stone, onto the cobalt staircase to number 144. A whimpering fox terrier sits on the doormat. There are many things in its eyes: a touch of fear, but also guarded expectation. I notice the limp in its gait, one of its back legs barely touching the floor. I feel exasperated. ‘Out of the more than one hundred units,’ I say to the puppy, ‘you had to choose mine?’ I also feel relief: Renaissance Properties have not locked me out. Yet.
I pick the puppy up, a lovable cream and brown creature. It shivers in my hand, dripping with melting hailstones. I dry my visitor with a towel, for which he licks my hand in gratitude, throw a match under the logs in the fire place, and the room is gradually enveloped by warmth. The reason for the limping is soon found: a thorn is lodged in the small paw. I construct a nest using towels and couch cushions, offer my visitor some bread soaked in sour milk. He cleans up the plate. I offer him red wine on a saucer (local anaesthetic) to blunt the pain from that thorn. Cabernet Sauvignon, left-over from days of better fortune. The puppy rolls onto its back while I tickle its underbelly. I keep refilling the saucer; watch the pink tongue whip it up. My visitor begins to doze, from warmth and unexpected hospitality. One quick pull and a drunken yelp, and the thorn is out. I show it to the puppy: ‘Reason for your suffering,’ and throw the thorn into the fire.
I change into dry clothes and return to find the puppy fast asleep. Drunk maybe. Bread and sour milk, multiple saucers of wine and a fire – shared with a sudden dog friend. I know I have created expectations, bound myself to be provider and protector. ‘Benito. Yes. That is your name from today.’ The puppy stirs, then sinks into an even deeper sleep. I continue: ‘Welcome, but no barking in the house. Rent, Benito. We have rent problems here, my friend. You are lucky your thorn is out, but nothing can be done about Desiree. Anyway, good night Mussolini. Good Nederburg this, straight from the Cape winelands. I have some left-over cents, something for breakfast. I must warn you, though – ours are small Greek and Chinese shops, or Indian shops, hidden from the glare of mall opulence. We are always short of money, you see, so the smaller shops make the brutal humiliations somewhat more private.
‘The reason we are broke? There are many. You see, I am an astronaut at heart, a poet. That is what I would like to be paid for. Being a poet. Not the kind that simply throws a beret on the head, with an unkempt beard, reading to five people in elite bookshops. Not the kind with predictable metaphors: chains, fire, eternity, time. Phew! We are about existence, Benito, searching for meaning where many claim to have found it – their freedom our pain, their complacency our silent rage. Are you listening, you Italian dictator? I am caught in the tragedies of love – so no barking please. I don’t know how you dogs express subtlety, how you get someone’s attention. Raise a paw, blink. Roll on your back. About tomorrow: you can stay home if you want but my work is at the Mary Fitzgerald Square. We play the trumpet for fools. Plans for the future? We don’t even have a funeral plan, my friend. Other work? What other work? Don’t you see these able-bodied young men on street corners with despair in their eyes – packed by the truckload to fill potholes, dig furrows, carry logs? They also live on bread and milk. They stink? Tell me something new. Their labour is cheap, so what do you expect they should buy? Bread or perfume? How is that paw now? Better? Good. Time for bed, my homeless friend. I miss my Mercedes. You know what she said to me? “You kiss with military precision, my poet. Your embrace is as delicate as the hands of a bomb technician.” She then left me.’
11
I am woken by insistent barking. Benito has woken before me. The rain continues to pour down, in determined torrents rumoured to ignite lust and longing. There is no bread or sour milk left – and, by the look of things, no chance of trumpet donations today. But today is different from other days – there is the dog to worry about. I sleepwalk through the morning rituals. Benito follows me around from room to room, finally settling in front of the television. What do dogs make of CNN? Of world markets and strife in Zimbabwe? There is a knock at the door, decisive, bordering on rude. I open: Ms Tobin, accompanied by a young Indian couple, who push sleeping twins in a pram.
‘Morning,’ says Ms Tobin. ‘Sajiv and Ranjeni Naidoo. New tenants, here to view the apartment.’ No advance warning, no courtesy call, no appointment. In this dreadful weather. I nod, shake hands with the Naidoos. Sajiv is large and imposing, married to a small woman of mouse-like movements. ‘I like it,’ declares Sajiv, even before walking past the open-plan kitchen. ‘Check out the wall art, Ran. I already feel at home.’ I am amused. Irritated. My looming homelessness aside, what kind of man makes such erratic, impulsive decisions? Ranjeni simply nods away. I pray that she hates the place. But she doesn’t. She thinks the wall paintings are exquisite.
‘Madman, this Mugabe,’ says Sajiv as we reach the living room. ‘Check out the bookshelves, Ran. Beautiful. We will take it,’ comes the death knell. Ms Tobin beams. My stomach knots. I, in the absence of coffee or juice, offer the
intruders refrigerated water. Sajiv rambles on. In fifteen minutes, I learn he is the MD of a mining company; has cancelled dentist appointments to be here; lived in Prague for a time; has a twin brother who is a leading mind in microbiology. Not only that: he cannot find a temporary house good enough for the twins (Thiloshnee and Vassie), and plans ultimately to immigrate to Australia. Sajiv has an opinion about everything. Ranjeni is mildly embarrassed; yet her demeanour suggests a repressed cynic not easily impressed. Where Sajiv surges with rushed conclusions, the steely Ranjeni ferments with thoughtful considerations, open-ended commitments. These two: chalk and cheese.
Ms Tobin promises to prepare the lease for collection by close of business. She intends to have everything wound up with me by then. ‘Use the banking details in the email,’ she tells the Naidoos. ‘Keys and gate remote will be handed over once the contract is signed.’ She walks them out. Their goodbyes are drowned by an amusing tragedy: I am a homeless soul with a bookcase full of books, owner of a trumpet and a stray dog. Ms Tobin returns shortly. She tries hard to come across as remorseful, but her eyes betray her. ‘I truly sympathise with your predicament. But we have limited options here,’ she says. I nod. ‘You can move your belongings to our storeroom in the meantime. For a fee.’
‘Predicament’ does not begin to describe my circumstances. There is nothing more unforgiving than Johannesburg winters. I dread the frost, the fevers, the prospect of aching bones. There is an even more sinister reality: I cannot expect Johannesburgers to stand around the city precincts in freezing weather, listening to tempestuous trumpet notes.
12
The soul is a temperamental thing. Once tainted, there is little to be done to restore its tranquillity. Like window glass smudged by oily hands, leaving erratic dirty handprints that obscure views of a complete universe. But there is an uncomfortable truth: souls are not designed to be tranquil – and if there are any such, they are so few as to render their existence meaningless. That is what I learnt in prison – a conclusion reached after many years of reflection. Yet meaning still eludes me; for the world is full of flammable opinions.
It will never make sense to me why the eighteen-year punishment. I admit: I am not a Desmond Tutu. Or a Nelson. I have come to realise that underlying my apparent indifference is irresolvable anger; anger in search of meaning. There is a risk that I will die without completely ridding myself of this terrible predicament, aging with smouldering resentment, a sense of brewing rage. But the injustice that I feel is nothing new. Che Guevara commanded guerrilla warfare while wrestling with bouts of asthma, yet he died with little reward. All those months in the woods, attacking and escaping from Batista’s men, and on the grand march to Bolivia. And the reward? An execution.
Major Joubert was right in warning me that I should not be a martyr. But he was also wrong. Martyrdom is not only when you are dead and buried; there are many walking dead, bruised by the revolution. A revolution which, by the look of things, has lost its way – in the Animal Farm and Kafkaesque sense. How is one expected to plead justifications for one’s continued existence to gun-wielding thugs – thugs that emerge out of nowhere, demanding things?
I return to sleeping on park benches. There are times when it feels like the winter will never end, when the cold nights seem to be doubling into endless spikes determined on drawing blood. There is Benito to worry about; so I wrap him in plastics, in discarded garments, anything resembling warmth. Johannesburg is one grey mortuary, cold and lonely. Frost descends on Benito and I with relish, leaving park benches and grass a silver-fish white. Other beggars? Of course there are. But they are too involved in their unknown thoughts to sustain any proper conversation. So I talk to the dog instead. What about? Well, we talk about the revolution. All I need do, I tell the dog, is speak to the comrades I know. Not many words. There is a particular language, a language of immediate responses. Comrade A speaks to Comrade G who presses Comrade Q for an answer. Who is he? Comrade Q will ask. One of us, the others will say. Not exactly in the trenches, but he risked death supporting our cause. A long imprisonment, and not one comrade betrayed.
But I cannot bring myself to say the words needed to escape the biting winters and vagabond life; this life of torrential humiliations. I have my reasons. I have never believed in easy, predictable things. I have, in my mind, not worked out what may happen if Comrade Q indeed offers that cushy job to me. Will I be expected to owe him favours? Of what kind? Even more absurd: how many souls owe how many Comrade Qs favours?
There is yet another problem: being an accidental politician (a newspaper columnist, really) has its burdens. It is a revolution for sissies, typing rhetorical observations from the safety of a newsroom. I crossed no borders, hid in no trees or muddy swamps. Comrade Q has every right to disdain my requests, award the perks to more deserving revolutionaries. It is this uncertainty that I cannot bear, this endless weighing and counter-weighing of options, the scrutiny demanded by prospects without guarantees. Everyone serves at the pleasure of Comrade Q. And, worse, everyone wants to be Comrade Q. That is why I choose instead the certainty of Johannesburg winters, the solace of the trumpet. There is a certain freedom, a peculiar reckless abandon, that comes with not being important. Humiliations hide a secret power, of pin-point observation, of righteous anger. In other words, I am always free to tell Comrade Q, whoever he is, to fuck off. What is existence without the divine principle of free will?
Morning comes. It is with these thoughts that I see dawn sweep in over grey and lifeless skyscrapers, the first rays of the sun, summoning park birds to a melodious concert. We worship the sun, Benito and I. How else are we expected to thaw? Benito stirs, his belly pink and empty. I will have to make a plan, pawn some Wordsworth or Aristotle for bread and sour milk. Prized poets and philosophers, bought for a pittance, resold for a fortune. Second-hand bookstore keepers; fucking vampires.
Johannesburgers. In all directions they walk, speaking into cellphones, arranging their lives. From the Bree Street taxi rank music blares, to raucous laughter from taxi drivers around a fire. There is a name for this music. It’s called kwasa-kwasa. Congolese. Erotic dancing. It is as if the taxi drivers have no bones, the way their waists gyrate to the spellbinding guitar arrangements, the way they touch themselves in feather-light mime. I approach, Benito following close behind, whimpering from the cold. I have only one thing in mind: the fire. Taxi drivers are known to be rough, to hold flammable opinions. The dancing stops, the laughter subsides. The fire is tempting, inviting. The ash that surrounds the steel bucket confirms this as a morning ritual; lonely taxi drivers ferrying all manner of souls to Johannesburg’s cardinal points.
‘Man and dog,’ says a bearded one, smiling broadly. Laughter. Benito whimpers close to me, settles down next to my torn boots.
I greet.
‘Yebo,’ comes the chorused response.
‘May I share your fire please, gentlemen?’ I ask, my teeth clattering.
They look at me suspiciously, with repressed laughter.
‘But you are already warming yourself, without the permission you seek. You and your dog,’ says an irritable queue marshall. They are full of questions, judgements. I half warm myself next to their fire, field a barrage of questions. Where am I from, with a dog, so early in the morning, why do I look like I ate eleven months ago, what is in the case that hangs over my shoulder?
‘A trumpet,’ I answer.
‘A boy scout?’ comes a question from a shadow masked by wood smoke.
‘A trumpeter.’ They laugh. One walks to his taxi, returns with bread and avocados. ‘Have something to eat,’ he says. ‘You will have to see about your dog.’
Benito looks at me, expecting his share of the bread. I ignore him, and his whimpering. My bones begin to ache as the warmth thaws the winter cold. I choke on bread and emotions, a deep sense of gratitude so profound that I hold the bread to my bosom, shaking. Benito continues to whimper, his eyes on the bread. ‘Johannesburg dogs,’ quips the bearded one. ‘Si
nce when do dogs desire bread?’ There is raucous, indulgent laughter. The passenger queues grow.
‘Rosebank, Sandton, Alex, Eastgate,’ says the queue marshall, his mouth full of bread. ‘Randfontein, Soweto, Melrose, Tembisa,’ he adds, between whistles. Like roaches the taxis leave the rank, one by one, packed with pondering clientele. The fire dies down, taking with it the comfort of temporary warmth. Benito looks at me, reproachful, a touch of distrust in his eyes. I offer him bread. He sniffs. Looks the other way. Why do I have to put up with this temperamental dog? I snap my fingers at him. He ignores me. I walk towards Mary Fitzgerald Square, see Benito battle quick decisions, then reluctantly follow my heels in motion. A hungry, agitated, mistrustful dog on my tail. I feel sick.
Along Bree Street there is an impromptu roadblock; body searches, scrutiny of suspicious characters. Three youths lie belly down on the concrete, police dogs sniffing and growling. I am lined up with others against the wall, almost searched. Visible policing, they call it. I offer my name and my trade (trumpeter) and am allowed to pass without being frisked. It must be that I look harmless – an unfortunate trait to have in the unpredictable streets of Johannesburg.
Mary Fitzgerald Square is unusually deserted, except for the pigeons fluttering overhead. I adjust the trumpet case on my shoulder, continue thawing in the mid-morning sun. Someone has lost a twenty-rand note; fortuitous taxi fare, to visit Desiree. I walk back to the Bree Street taxis, stand in the Rosebank queue, the visibly hungry dog at my feet. The ride is smooth. Benito lies at my feet, unobtrusive. I suspect he will not last a week on Johannesburg streets, so there is a profound commitment in hoping I can delay his death. One never knows when life will decide to cease. The rest of the trip is eventless; along Jan Smuts Avenue, through leafy suburbs hidden behind high walls and trees. At Twelfth Avenue my trip ends, followed by a ten-minute walk to the Rosebank Medical and Dental Centre. A sign at the hospital reception warns:
Small Things Page 7