‘Excuse me … And you are?’
‘Michael.’
‘Mr Awkward. I know who you are. Are we done then?’
‘Depends entirely on you. Dental student. Beautiful. Wealthy family. Dreadful public image. I would say there is a lot to talk about?’
‘Such as?’
‘My dilemma.’
‘You have a dilemma?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘Explain.’
‘Yes, because I am curious if you would, in your underwear, share a shower with me, or if you prefer the thrills of the bathtub. No, because I am concerned, not worried, that you will think me a freak and call campus security.’
She blushed. ‘I am not about to discuss my bathing habits with a total stranger.’
‘No disrespect, but undergarments are overrated.’ I countered.
‘Seriously, now. Who are you?’
‘Some fool, born and bred in Alexandra, wrestling Corporate Law, a bit of Art History. I think I am in love, maybe infatuated by a yet-to-be-confirmed reclusive snob.’
‘Would that be me?’
‘Indeed.’
Rusty burst out laughing. She had black gums. She cupped her mouth to stifle her raucous laughter. ‘Is that your best bait?’
‘No. I also have some rat poison, if you don’t cooperate.’ She shook her head in pleasure and disbelief. Pleasure from a conversation swarming with minute love detonations.
‘Rat poison?’
‘Yes. Failing which I have to steal all your clothes, torch your room so that you flee from the flames in the nude.’
‘I don’t sleep naked.’
‘I said nothing about naked.’
‘You said nude.’
‘But nude is not naked. There is artistry, a grace to nudity. Naked suggests there is something wrong.’
‘Is that what they teach you in History of Art?’
‘No. They teach no such things.’
‘What then? What do they teach?’
‘Well, dead artists who created famous artworks.’
‘Masterpieces?’
‘Some of them, yes.’
‘You have a favourite?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I live in the present, among the living.’
Rusty cracked up: ‘You’re a very sick person. Are you sure you haven’t escaped from some madhouse?’
‘I have, but don’t tell anyone,’ I whispered.
‘Law, History of Art of all things?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I would have thought South Africa needs more economists, doctors?’
‘But I am a doctor. Art and Law are medicine for all manner of injustices.’
‘I mean a real doctor. Like heal asthma and hypertension – that kind of doctor.’
‘You’re a dentist in waiting, so you’ll kill poor asthma and hypertension patients if you dared to treat them. Your science is limited to teeth. How exactly are we so different?’
‘You are so full of it. I am a dental surgeon in the making. Not just a dentist.’
‘Good. I am a capable scholar of the law, learning how to nudge people into the habits of justice.’
‘Ambitious,’ she said.
‘Yes. But aren’t all great things?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I have to go to bed now, Mr Law Scholar. See you around.’
‘Likewise.’
I was too touched not to be tearful. I, emboldened by her visit, her laughter, her assessment that I had lunatic credentials, decided not to ask her about Bon Jovi the next time we met, but to ask the real question that plagued me, the answer to which was, as already said, ‘Honey-brown.’
Rusty Bell was a more-than-capable debater. I never knew when she would turn the tables, corner me with overwhelming facts. Once a week, mostly at the stroke of midnight, Rusty knocked at my door. We spoke, laughed, argued and reflected on all things under the sun: world poverty, how sugar daddies preyed on willing campus sluts, sexual exhibitionism in America and now South African music videos. Our sudden friendship blossomed into strolls around campus, to the fury and detriment of her multitude of hibernating suitors. I cannot say I did not enjoy basking in that glory, of being chosen. Those midnight visits took a toll on my sleeping patterns, but the inconvenience of sleep was nothing compared to the bliss of seeing her throw her head back in unguarded laughter. It was during those visits that we drifted into affectionate silences, that we resisted a magnetic desire to kiss. So we kissed on the cheeks, like gangstas, conscious of the itch that got redder by the day. She, months later, developed audacious wishes: that I check her breasts for cancer lumps, for an opinion on a tattoo in a provocative place (the inner upper thigh – she wore an acceptable mini skirt and immodest silk underwear), a night in my bed whenever she was at the mercy of period pains.
As much as we knew we were playing with a live grenade, the pending moment for looming wild indiscretions, we also knew that would taint our atypical amusements. It always felt out of place, incestuous even, every time we almost caved into desire. Besides being tempted by Rusty’s elaborate sensuality, I resolved to live with my raging nocturnal hungers, my self-inflicted depravations.
But how – amid such rampant fornication, new-found and abundant campus freedoms, away from glaring prison walls of mothers, fathers and religion – was it possible that we could uphold such brittle chastity? It seemed like the seventies all over again, only without the rock ’n’ roll, without such promiscuity being synonymous with Aids and ruin. It was then that I figured there was never such a thing as the History of Art. It was, quite alarmingly, within the walls of David Webster Hall that I observed the foundations of adult life: lessons in deception, accidental pregnancies and abortions, flexible romantic thrills without the traumas of marriage.
The sum total of all the triumphs and frustrations of later life seemed to me born out of the pursuit of the true self – an opinion of oneself – while at the same time conforming to the smirks and valour of intentional campus cruelties: hunting Rusty Bells come rain or shine, bedding ugly lovesick girls and later accusing, dismissing them of being ambitious stalkers. I submitted a paper on this, ‘The History of Life’, for which I dethroned Columbus with an unheard-of 95 per cent.
To fortify my defences against the inevitable, the gangsta kisses that would ultimately evolve into other things, I introduced Rusty Bell to Columbus at a Schindler’s List screening at the School of Drama. That was the day Columbus, laughing as always, disclosed his medically induced hepatitis diagnosis. It was only weeks later, with Rusty Bell now firmly the matriarch of The Triumvirate, that we knew Columbus would require surgery, an organ donor.
He, Columbus, correctly predicted, ‘Death comes in a million guises.’ He was not, as Rusty Bell and I had expected, killed by tragedies of the liver.
I met Christopher Wentzel – handsome, with curly brown hair and tearful ocean-blue eyes – in a History of Art class. It was inevitable that we would be friends, that it would be a perfect friendship, ruined by laughter, by minor perversities of the mind. I, out of fondness and fooling around, pet named him Columbus. We debated everything. Dali’s molten and deformed watches. Modigliani’s Reclining Nude. That sly Mona Lisa smile. Kentridge. Noria Mabasa. It was remarkable how Columbus could sit through an entire semester without a whisper, and then shock everyone with a single penetrating comment. All of art, Columbus once said, with the exception of a few unrelated artworks, in some way celebrates the beauty of the human body – particularly the nude woman. Artists, he argued, are obsessed with capturing longing and desire and, in their fantasies, capture naked beings in wood, stone and iron. On canvas. Art, according to Mr Wentzel, was the sum total of human depravations. I had never seen Professor Mbembe so elated, so agreeable, so exalted. So agreeable that he declared the course ‘The History of Human Depravations’. Columbus was quick to add, not without Professor Mbembe grinning from ear to ear, that it was ‘The History
of Measured Human Depravations and excesses and All the Splendour in Between’.
Rusty and I visited Columbus at Eugene’s apartment on Louis Botha Avenue, Orange Grove. He was horsing around as usual, said he was tired of lectures on dead artists of ‘meagre’ talents. He laughed until he collapsed, clutching his chest. I thought Columbus was clowning around, pulling faces, until paramedics, half an hour later, solemnly declared the unthinkable.
Medically, explained the paramedic, it is rare but indeed possible to die from laughter. Cardiac arrest. It is possible that Columbus had, unbeknown to him, problems with his heart.
He would have, if he had lived a few minutes longer, known the purpose of our visit. He would have been pleased at the news of being elected godfather to our seedling; Rusty intended conceiving on the dentist’s chair, amid bloody cotton wool and needles in a trash basket – remnants of extracted rusting molars. His death certificate, according to Pete, said Columbus succumbed to natural causes. Laughter seemed too morbid an excuse for such a solemn incident. A story waited our friends of the future: we had a friend we called Columbus. He was killed by laughter.
Columbus had, in life, had his funeral wishes written down, detailed instructions deposited in a safety deposit box at Spencer & Young Inc., the Wentzel family attorneys on Twelfth Street, Melville. I had had the honour of assisting Pete in the interpretation of some of the peculiarities: in other words, advising him which of Columbus’s instructions could be omitted, without it being grossly offensive to the deceased. ‘C. Wentzel Funeral Commandments’ was a detailed list, typed on a typewriter, with perfect punctuation.
The perfectionist in him – the part of him that refused to allow him to simply surrender – ensured that not only were his Commandments legible, but he also took the trouble of attaching a separate page with explanatory notes: how to interpret, understand and administer the Commandments. The separate page, also neatly typed in single spacing, included explicit task allocations to specific individuals and a list of substitute persons in the event that delegated people were unavailable. It was, therefore, not by accident that Professor Mbembe gave a moving eulogy and Zubeida Patel from the History of Art class read the cards attached to the wreaths, while I was left alone to simply mourn. Columbus’s instruction ensured that this was crystal clear: ‘My dear friend should be left alone to mourn.’ So this is exactly what I did by the graveside. Between my repressed sobs, I greatly admired Columbus’s foresight, that not even death clouded his meticulous planning, so thoughtful that it took into account even the dreary and depressing dramas of death and burials. It was an unfunereal occasion. Columbus had, years before his death, reflected on the exact details of his funeral: the polished mahogany casket, the tulips in clay pots at the foot of the grave, the twelve white pigeons that were to be released at exactly fifteen minutes before midnight, as well as the custard and the pineapple jelly that was to be served by the graveside, failing which mourners were to be served strawberries and cream.
Columbus insisted, in capital letters, that funeral hymns were completely off limits, that the only scripture permitted was The Song of Solomon. It was a sensual funeral, full of memorable charms that chiselled the grief from our collective bosoms. The week of the funeral was brimming with memories of him – stories of love and kindness: how he bought heaters for old-age homes, spent hours at Christ the King Care Centre, his bottomless patience with lazy freshmen who attended his History of Art tutorials, his generosity with his limited finances.
It was proper that our hearts bled, sank with the purplish-brown casket, to the meditative grooves of Bon Jovi, playing ‘Something to Believe In’. I remember the funeral, all two hours, as a painful blur of mourners in their pyjamas, each clutching a lit candle, resulting in a half-sombre event that from a distance resembled a mute rock concert. This was consistent with Columbus’s Commandment 8, which clearly stated: ‘Bury me in the evening, under glittering stars from above and a sea of lit candles from among yourselves.’ Commandment 7 was Columbus at his best: ‘For those who understandably feel the urge to weep, please do so with some level of composure.’ The lunatic in him then concluded, still under Commandment 7, ‘Like all things under the sun, composure is relative. So howl your lungs out if so moved by the tragedy of my passing (until we meet again), but please don’t forget the strawberries in your howling; they are there for your sensual delight.’
Professor Mbembe read the Commandments out loud. We giggled. Laughed. Sobbed. Ate strawberries. Licked cream off our quivering lips. It was a delightful, memorable evening, devoid of grief, sorrows that make funerals sombre, weepy things. Columbus had, with ten brief requests, ensured posthumous presence of his peculiar mind – we, in our pyjamas, fobbing off moths, which somehow understood the gravity of our collective mourning and descended on the candles with moderate and guarded interest, a cautious display of insect empathy.
Commandment 4 explicitly forbade the use of anything remotely resembling a motorised hearse, instructing that the casket be pulled by a single white horse. That horse, with its iron shoes clacking across the tarmac, with its twitchy tail and twitchy nostrils, street lights along Jorissen Street bouncing off the polished casket, the clay pots with their tulips, the strawberries and bowls of cream, the unlit candles, the coy pigeons in their temporary cages, constellations of stars above seen from under and through cemetery tree branches, the modest cortège (family and close friends) in pyjamas walked into the Braamfontein Cemetery wherein the silence was made molten by ACDC riffs, where I saw Zubeida Patel’s beautiful collarbones lit by her candle, her dimples encouraging inappropriate thoughts. This – all of this – taught me that funerals did not have to be depressing, that with the right measure of madness, funerals had the potential to be light-hearted and enjoyable things.
Only Columbus could manage such a twisted view of existence, only he could, even in death, pour onto life bucketfuls of pranks. That is why I loved him: for his madness. One last detail about the funeral: when the pigeons were freed, fluttering in the late night, I in my mind’s eye saw my friend at the Heavenly Gates Undertakers, lying cold on a stretcher: calm, rigid, in a soulless, handsome, refrigerated kind of way. It was only when Alfred, a bow-legged and aged mortician, replaced the white sheet that covered Columbus that the post-mortem scars bared their ugliness. My friend: butchered and sewn, like an old shoe. It was then that I caught sight of something unlike Columbus: a golden brown nest of curly, rich-textured pubic hair. Cheeky, this discovery, for Columbus had in life been an exemplary custodian of male grooming – which I erroneously concluded would include manicured carnal gardens. That unfortunate oversight aside, Columbus was a charmer of the finest breed, a rare specimen. Intense. Sobering. Of peculiar thoughts.
I secretly made up my mind that, though besotted with Rusty’s beautiful navel, her ferocious intellect, all her sleep-talking about red tractors and aeroplane crashes in sunflower fields, it was impossible for the me of the future – post our seemingly concluded forthcoming marriage – to have her parents as my in-laws. How was it that her mother, Catherine, pretty and rumoured to be an efficient nurse, interesting in parts, awkward with her five-minute hugs (her breasts were, for someone her age, 58, mysteriously firm and too warm for comfort) would allow herself to be bullied, silenced and generally disregarded by that pot-bellied tyrant of a husband with big ears, bad skin and vice-like handshakes?
How did she put up with his autocratic and suspicious ways? Did she have to defer to him even on the simplest, most pointless details? ‘Will Papa appreciate a foot rub? Does Papa fancy a long or short visit? How is Papa’s ingrown toenail now?’ For her trouble, Catherine only ever got half-groans, heavy breathing and blank stares from Abednego.
For his arrogance and tyrannical tendencies, I, in my quiet reflections, made it clear – by deed rather than word – to Abednego that I was unwilling to be a scared mouse around him. I was forthright with Rusty: ‘Your father,’ I said, ‘is a malicious swine.’ She was shocked, not su
re whether to laugh or cry. I empathised. But that did not change my opinion of Abednego. I still thought he was a swine, the way he treated Catherine.
I, with Rusty sleep-talking about one-legged dogs and balloons in swimming pools, thought about Pete and Kate, about Abednego and Catherine, Rusty and me. I concluded that marriage could be purgatorial, a cage crawling with ingrown toenails and foot rubs, festering with silent judgements that made life almost unbearable. Of grave concern was Rusty’s misguided complicity when it came to Abednego’s excesses, how she as an only child saw nothing wrong in being indifferent. Did she expect me to, like Catherine, be a hound on a leash? What did she make of Abednego’s unsolicited lectures to me: on sacrifice and good moral standing, his storm of questions: what did my parents do, what church did I go to, what did I plan to do with my life, had anyone in my family been to prison, for what offences, where were they now and what were they doing with their lives, did I believe in God, why or why not, was anyone born out of wedlock in my family tree, any peculiar deaths or cases of mental instability – until Catherine, for the very first time, cautiously said: ‘Would you like a back rub, Papa? I am sure Michael won’t have answers to all your questions.’ Abednego simply groaned, and stood up to leave.
Consultation Twelve
I confused the dates and times for my twelfth consultation. Dr West had indicated be would be travelling (a visit to that Spaniard, the head doctor? I dared to surmise) during the week of 8 March. It was only when Audrey answered the buzz of the intercom that she reminded me that Dr West was away. But she invited me in, requested that I pardon the mess caused by her rearranging Dr West’s filing system. I have to confess that I, when not unravelling the conundrums of philosophy, thought about Audrey sometimes, allowed myself to imagine certain pleasure, liberties. Unsure, vulnerable, yet real possibilities. She wore a black mini dress, a brilliantly tailored gem of a garment with trimmings and openings in the right places: polka-dot collar, a discreet slit over the right thigh, a giant red button that secured the dress over her remarkable neck. A deep-red cardigan took care of the upper torso and her red-soled stilettos lay neatly next to one of the couches.
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