by Ekow Duker
‘Come now,’ Precious said. ‘Not even five hundred rand?’
He laughed, a hiccuping sort of laugh that screwed his eyes into dark pinpoints of merriment.
‘Fifty rand maybe. No more.’
He jabbed the violin in her direction, goading her like he would some obstinate beast. He grew impatient and he looked over her shoulder as if there was a queue of customers behind her instead of an empty shop.
‘No musical instruments.’
He jabbed the violin at Precious again and at one stroke, all the defiance and anger seeped out of her. She took the violin from him and began to sob quietly. She was almost at the door when he called her back.
‘Yes?’ She didn’t turn around because she couldn’t bear for him to see her crying.
‘Try Pawn King in Port Elizabeth,’ the man said. ‘They give you good price.’
CHAPTER 25
When Karabo opened the door to her room a rank smell of rotting vegetation rushed out to greet her. She reached for the light switch. For a brief moment she was afraid to go in. It was the flowers Nigel had sent her. From the doorway, she could see the outline of their stalks flopping tiredly over the edge of the vase. They reminded her of miners, exhausted and broken at the end of a long shift.
She should have left a note for the cleaner before she left but she’d expected sunflowers to be hardier than this. Who gives a girl sunflowers anyway? If Karabo had known the cleaner’s name, she could have started the note with ‘Dear so and so’. But on the few occasions Karabo had seen her, the woman had barely responded to her greetings. She just nodded or shook her head to everything Karabo said, even when a yes or a no response didn’t make any sense. And seeing as Karabo hardly knew the cleaner, ‘Please water flowers’ would have been too peremptory and ‘Water flowers’ even worse. Perhaps she could have left some money with the note, but a pound would have been too much. On the other hand, anything smaller might have caused offence.
Karabo’s room was tiny, as were all the rooms in the hall of residence. The badly scarred furniture looked like it had sprouted in situ after the residence had been built. Her bed was jammed tight beneath the window, now with shrivelled sunflower petals scattered all over it. A wobbly desk, a low bookshelf and a metal folding chair with a cracked leather seat completed the ensemble. There wasn’t even a closet, just a rectangular recess cut into the wall. Karabo had draped a curtain across the entrance to make it look like it held more clothes than it did.
Karabo shut the door behind her and turned the key to lock it. Despite the spartan nature of the room, she found the closeness strangely comforting. She’d hung a picture of Precious and one of Teacher on opposite walls. She’d tried to arrange the pictures so they were actually looking at each other but their gazes refused to meet.
She felt her phone shudder in her pocket. She took it out, thinking it was Nigel.
‘Karabo?’ her mother said. ‘Is that you?’
Precious always began her telephone conversations like this. Even when she called Eskom to report a power outage in their street, she’d start off by saying, ‘Eskom, is that you?’
‘Yes, it’s me, Ma. How are you?’
It was late for Precious, as it was for Karabo, and she wondered if Saddam had got among the goats again. Then she remembered Saddam couldn’t walk anymore and that the goats had taken to mocking him in quivering, nervous bleats.
‘I’m fine, my daughter.’ They hadn’t spoken to each other for several weeks. Something must be wrong. Karabo pressed the phone a little closer to her cheek.
‘What is it, Ma? Is the stove broken again?’
Without the cast iron stove, the house would get as cold as a morgue when winter came to Mthatha. Teacher had installed the stove himself, even climbing up on the roof to make sure the chimney was set straight. Teacher, Precious and Karabo used to sit around the fire every night after dinner. Teacher said they were like three Red Indians, even though the kitchen was too small to dance in.
But recently the stove had become rude and cantankerous. It seemed to know things were not right in the Bentil house. It belched and spluttered and filled the house with smoke at the slightest provocation. Karabo had suggested to her mother that she replace the stove with a gas heater, a modern one with a thin line of flame dancing over smooth white pebbles. But Precious had dismissed the suggestion out of hand, saying that those modern heaters were only for show and not much better than candles. Secretly, Karabo suspected that her mother only kept the old stove because she believed that if she got rid of it, Teacher would never come back.
‘There’s nothing wrong with the stove,’ Precious said.
Karabo could hear Saddam barking faintly from thousands of miles away and she missed home all over again.
‘What’s wrong, Ma?’
‘It’s Inspector Thulisane.’
Something cold and clammy clutched at Karabo’s heart.
‘The usher at the church?’
‘Yes. That one. They found him in his police car.’
Karabo didn’t understand. ‘What do you mean they found him? Was he lost?’
‘Hawu! He shot himself. In his car of all places.’
She sounded as if she’d have preferred Inspector Thulisane to have shot himself somewhere else.
‘He asked after you whenever I saw him. Just last Sunday …’
Karabo interrupted her brusquely but only because the lump in her throat was making it difficult to breathe.
‘I don’t want to know, Ma.’
‘Eh?’
Karabo didn’t know why she was so upset. After all, she and Inspector Thulisane were hardly close. And it wasn’t the first time she’d heard someone she knew had died.
‘I’m sorry, Ma. I’ll call you back, okay?’
Karabo ended the call and sat on the bed. Inspector Thulisane. He had the softest, roundest eyes she’d ever seen. He looked more like a startled lemur than a policeman with a shiny badge and a gun.
Inspector Thulisane wasn’t like the other policemen in Mthatha. He never cruised behind girls at walking pace or leaned out of his patrol car window and called out all sorts of unwanted compliments. Not even the seemingly innocuous ‘You were on my mind when I woke up this morning,’ to the vaguely threatening ‘Sisi, that ass of yours is begging to be arrested.’ No, Inspector Thulisane never said anything like that. He’d simply hand Karabo the collection pouch in church and his jacket would fall open by accident so she couldn’t help seeing his gun. Then he’d go all shy and his lemur eyes would grow wide with apology. Once she’d had to wrench the collection pouch out of Inspector Thulisane’s hands because he was so transfixed by her breasts. She could still remember how much softer his hands were than hers.
Karabo got up from the bed and looked out the window towards the rooms on the other wing of the residence where the graduate students lived. The drawn curtains made a pattern of coloured rectangles against the grey concrete façade. She’d passed through there a couple of times and found herself whispering as if she were in a library. They were all so studious on that side. Teacher would have been in his element.
She took up her phone and called her father. He answered on the second ring.
‘Karabo,’ he said with a chuckle.
There is something gorgeous about the way a father answers the phone when his daughter calls. With one mention of her name, Karabo felt strangely at peace. If ever she had a daughter of her own and she called home, she’d pass the phone to her father just so the child could hear him say her name.
‘Teacher.’
‘This is a singular pleasure,’ he declared. ‘One deserving of a mention in the Daily Graphic.’
He was teasing, of course. His elaborate, pompous phrasing was the equivalent of Karabo lying on her back and he tickling her tummy. She thought he’d stopped doing that much too soon but that was Teacher. Always careful to avoid the slightest hint of impropriety.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t called in such a long time
.’
‘That’s all right, Karabo. I know you are busy.’
His voice was deep and gravelly and reminded her of the sound of his car crunching up their driveway. In all the time he’d been in South Africa, Teacher had never picked up a South African accent. She liked that about her father. He wasn’t one to change.
She thought she heard a tinge of sadness in his voice but with Teacher, it was hard to tell. Teacher often buried his speech under so many layers of correctness, it was impossible at times to know what he really felt.
‘I’m never too busy,’ Karabo said, taking the line from an old R&B hit by Kenny Lattimore. Growing up, she’d listened to so many of Teacher’s old-school CDs that she was always out of step with her friends and their taste in contemporary music.
‘You’ve got things on your mind?’ Teacher asked, continuing the same riff.
Both Teacher and Karabo were very good at the old-school game. They could carry on for at least an hour, exchanging lines from R&B hits until one of them stumbled. Precious scolded them and said they were being frivolous when there was still a struggle going on.
‘What struggle?’ Teacher asked in a mild voice.
Precious looked at him as if he were out of his mind. ‘Hawu, Teacher! You think because we voted in 1994 that the struggle is over?’
The unspoken agreement Karabo had with Teacher was that they stuck strictly to R&B, and the older the tracks, the better. There was one time when Karabo forgot herself and in her excitement, strayed into the baggy-jeaned posturing of gangsta rap. She blurted out a line about licking a lollipop and Teacher went quiet all of a sudden. He looked at her oddly and mumbled that he had to prepare for class, then went abruptly to his room. She was so embarrassed, she could have died of shame.
‘Things have been a little overwhelming recently,’ Karabo replied, putting their game to one side for a moment.
‘Have you made friends over there? Who was that English boy you met again?’
Teacher never forgot a name, no matter how fleetingly it had been mentioned. He’d probably googled Nigel already and knew as much about him as was possible to learn online. But he wasn’t going to say Nigel’s name out loud. That would be tantamount to condoning their relationship. It would kill him to think his daughter did anything more than hold hands.
‘Nigel. He’s fine. He sends his regards.’
Karabo knew Teacher would like that, even if it wasn’t true. She’d come to learn that Ghanaians were forever passing greetings backwards and forwards to each other, in a perpetual exchange of formalised pleasantries. It embellished their reputation for being so peaceful and welcoming. A Ghanaian couldn’t very well club his neighbour to death when they’d spent half the morning saying hello to each other.
‘Ah. That is good. Please send him my regards as well. And to his parents.’
‘I will. And how are Paa Kofi and Ma’ama?’
‘They are fine, Karabo. Ma’ama has a little trouble with her back but she is much better now. We found a good chiropractor in Accra and she sees her every week.’
Karabo couldn’t say she was displeased to hear Ma’ama had hurt her back. Her grandmother must have bought a bigger broom and fallen off it. A turbo-powered broom so she could whizz around, wreaking mischief. But she was being churlish. Ma’ama was her grandmother. She didn’t deserve to have a bad back.
‘Is she with you?’ Karabo asked. She knew Ma’ama and Paa Kofi lived some distance away from Accra in Cape Coast where the old castle was. She’d seen it on the map.
‘Until she is better. Paa Kofi comes often so we have a full house.’
Karabo was glad to hear Teacher say that, not because of Ma’ama, but because it meant he hadn’t found another woman to take her mother’s place. It was odd how she clutched at words, then twisted them into the meanings she wanted. Just as Teacher didn’t dare imagine her doing anything more indecent than holding hands with Nigel, Karabo couldn’t entertain the possibility that Teacher didn’t sleep alone at night.
‘What is it that has been overwhelming you?’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Are you pregnant?’
Now it was Karabo’s turn to go quiet. He wasn’t supposed to ask her that. Not Teacher. She felt soiled all of a sudden.
‘Karabo, are you there?’
‘No, I’m not. Pregnant, I mean.’
‘Are you in trouble?’
‘No!’
It sounded like he wanted her to be in some difficulty so he could ride to the rescue like fathers were supposed to do.
‘It’s just that time of the month,’ Karabo said. If he could ask her if she were pregnant, then he could deal with her periods too.
‘Ah,’ Teacher said and Karabo imagined him squirming in discomfort. That must qualify as too much information.
‘I’m serious, Karabo,’ he said after a while. ‘If you need anything, I can always make a plan.’
Make a plan. That most South African of expressions. In its vagueness, it conjured up images of Teacher moving heaven, earth and everything in between to help his daughter if she were in need. It evoked a sort of Hindu Ramayana; only, this epic would be fought in Africa.
‘Really, Teacher. I’m all right.’
‘Your tuition and accommodation is paid for, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Your scholarship takes care of that.’
But Teacher knew all those details already. There was no way Karabo would be at the Bartlett School of Architecture without the scholarship from the Mthatha Women’s Club.
‘Really,’ Karabo said. ‘I’m easy. Just like Sunday morning.’
She could feel him smiling and he followed it up with another old-school line.
‘If there was a problem you know I’d solve it.’
Karabo squealed with excitement. Trust Teacher to counter with Vanilla Ice. Her father was strictly into black R&B artists but he surprised Karabo every now and then and she loved that about him.
‘I know, Teacher. I know.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t recognise that one,’ he said gravely, pretending to be serious all of a sudden.
‘Can I come and visit you in Ghana?’
‘Of course.’
‘Will I have to ask Ma?’
‘You’re old enough to come on your own.’
They both knew her mother was the reason Karabo had never been to Ghana for Precious was forever manufacturing one excuse after the other. Karabo was either too weak to withstand tropical diseases or she didn’t have a passport, the same South African passport Precious never applied for. Then when Teacher obtained a Ghanaian passport for Karabo, Precious insisted they had to go as a family, only to turn around at the last minute and say she was too ill to come along. Once, in a fit of pique, she’d even claimed that Karabo would come back with tribal marks scoured across her cheeks. She had the feeling her mother thought Karabo would fall in love with Teacher’s country and never come back.
‘Can I come next summer?’ Karabo had assumed she’d be staying in London over the summer holidays but the thought of visiting Teacher in Ghana made her very excited indeed.
‘Of course,’ Teacher replied.
‘I want to see your house. I want to see where you live.’
‘I sent you pictures. Didn’t you get them?’
Teacher had sent Karabo a photo of a double-storeyed house next to a dusty, untarred road. It had a balcony on the upper floor with iron railings that ran the length of the house. There was a dog in the shot, a sharp-eyed mongrel standing with one paw raised in the air.
‘It’s huge, Teacher! It’s like a palace.’
Teacher chuckled. ‘Houses look much bigger in photographs.’
‘But who cleans all those rooms for you?’ she asked.
‘I have a lady who comes in.’
‘A lady?’
‘Yes, a lady.’ He didn’t seem inclined to say any more so Karabo let it go. She didn’t know how much houses that size rented for in Ghana but it must be a lot. And
she didn’t want to embarrass Teacher by saying she didn’t think he could afford it. She was just glad he wasn’t living in a small, dark room at the back of somebody’s house.
Karabo dreamed of Inspector Thulisane that night. They weren’t in church, they were driving in his patrol car, the one with POLICE stencilled in large blue letters on the side. She was driving and Inspector Thulisane was in the passenger seat. He was wearing a pair of mirrored shades and was grinning darkly like she’d seen Nigel do at times.
‘Faster, Karabo,’ he said and she realised with a shock that it was indeed Nigel. He reached across and stroked her thigh and each time he did so, she pressed down a little harder on the accelerator. He kept stroking her thigh until the speedometer needle was banked over hard to the right and they were flying through the countryside like birds fleeing a storm. They hurtled forward at a terrifying speed until they ran out of road. She looked at Nigel – or was it Teacher? – and the car skidded across the sand and plunged into the sea. Karabo awoke with a violent start. She was wet all over.
CHAPTER 26
The next Friday after class, André went home to change in preparation for the recital at Mrs Summerscales’ house. The occasion deserved that he dress up and he chose a pleated white shirt and a black jacket he’d bought at the flea market in Pimlico. He caught the underground at Golders Green and found a seat in the middle of the carriage, right next to the doors.
He’d discovered there was a certain cachet that came with travelling around London with a battered violin case in hand. It set him apart and gave him an air of rebellious civility. People stepped aside to make room for him on the tube and on the bus. Older women in particular tried to catch André’s eye whenever he had his violin with him, smiling shyly at him or nodding their heads with appreciation.
The train carriage had been newly refurbished and the seats were bright and clean. There was a fresh-off-the-showroom floor smell about it that added to André’s sense of contentment. The rhythmic swish and clatter of the train lulled him to sleep and it wasn’t long before his head nodded onto his chest.
He awoke with a start as the train pulled into Tottenham Court Road. He sat up just as a gaggle of teenage girls in bubble jackets and ripped jeans tumbled into the carriage. They were loud and animated, shouting and gesticulating to each other as if they were all hard of hearing.