* * *
—
My Old Becker survived to have supper with us that evening, and we had tripe and tinned peas even though it was a Tuesday. He had an appetite and a peculiar way with the fork, folding long strips of the tripe into concertinas on the tines. He had blistered his feet so badly that he could not put on his boots and was wearing rubber sandals instead with soles as thick as sandwiches. His feet put me off my food. They were pale and fleshy like vegetables, with blue veins in the ankles and sprinkles of red hairs on the toes, and the heels were extravagantly patched with sticking-plasters. There were plasters on his knees too.
That afternoon on the track I had seen myself reflected in the lid of the suitcase and heard it rattle as if it were full of pills, and I had concluded that My Old Becker was a doctor. The plasters confirmed it. But when he had mashed the last of the peas into the gravy and cleaned his plate, he began to talk about the purpose of his visit, and I learned that he was an artist. My mother, who had understood less of the discussion with Chief Phosa than she cared to admit, encouraged him with questions. I interpreted, glossing over what I didn’t grasp, inventing a little.
It seemed that he had been commissioned to make a statue for the government of the people. A statue of a man, life-size, made of metal, he said, like a hoe. We had seen statues of the saints at St. Joseph’s Mission – made of plaster, it’s true, but we understood the principle. He had to warn us, then, that it was more complicated than that: although this statue would have the shape of a man, it had to show not the man himself but an idea – the idea of courage. The government wished to honour the people for the courage they had shown in the struggle for our freedom. The statue would be put up in Fort Alexander, outside the house of the government, to remember those who had died for our freedom and those who had suffered and survived. Because, he said, some of the brave were dead and some were still living.
We were not stupid people, my mother and I, not incapable of what you might call abstract thought. My mother ran a successful business and I kept the books. We thought, with some justification, that we were two of the brainiest people in Lufafa. But we had never met an artist before.
“Ask him why he has come to make his statue here in our village,” my mother said.
“He says,” I said, “that he is not going to make it here. He is doing research. He is looking for a man to use as a model.”
“Is he going to take one of our men away with him?”
The worried look on her face made him laugh. “He finds your concern amusing,” I said. “He says your men are safe. He is just going to take photographs and make measurements, which he will take back to the city.”
“I find him amusing too,” said my mother, “he looks like a pig, but never mind. What makes him think he will find a brave man in our village? Doesn’t he know that most of the fighting was up north? He would do better looking for his model there.”
“He says the courage of the individual doesn’t matter. He wants somebody who looks like courage.”
“There are people like that everywhere. Why has the government sent him here?”
“He says Comrade Mhlandhla told him about you.”
Mhlandhla was the Minister of Finance. My Old Becker kept a straight face, which I translated, and when my mother got the joke we all laughed together.
We offered him a candle, but he had a torch with a beam as strong as the headlight of a car. I watched it bowling across the field, flashing now at the ground before him, now at the clinic ahead. In the middle of the field he suddenly stopped and stood on one leg to examine the sole of his sandal in the light of the torch. He took off the sandal to look at it more closely, propping his bare foot on his knee. Then he saw me in the lighted doorway, shouted something I couldn’t understand, lost his balance, and hopped around on one leg, laughing, while the beam of the torch tumbled against the sky. His laughter, brash as the light in the darkness, embarrassed me, and I went in.
“I’ll never understand these whites,” my mother said. “If it doesn’t matter who this statue is, then it doesn’t matter. To come all this way for something that doesn’t matter…It makes you worry about the government. I think this My Old Becker, who is actually quite a young man as you can see, is taking a free holiday. But once he’s here, I say there is only one man in this district who looks like courage, and that is Chief Phosa. You can tell him I said so.”
* * *
—
Fish said: “I know about artists. I remember one from Fort Alexander. My sister used to work for him. This one of ours is a sculptor, of course, but hers was a painter. He painted pictures of flowers and trees, and once a fire in the bush. But mostly he loved to paint fruit and vegetables. Every Sunday he would go to the greengrocer for onions, peppers, mealies, sweet potatoes, garlic. Sometimes it was bananas, oranges, granadillas, whatever was in season. He put the food in a bowl on a table and it had to stay there for a week. Mercy was not allowed to dust it. Then this so-called artist put on an apron, like the ones our mothers wear, but very dirty, all covered in paint. He had paints in tubes like toothpaste, and he squeezed them onto a plate, and he put this paint on the picture with a knife and fork. When you saw him doing it, Mercy said, it looked like he was eating something. On Friday, when the vegetables were not so fresh any more, he gave them to her to cook for her supper. He himself was very thin, because he never had enough to eat. But he was always drinking. Artists are like that.”
* * *
—
During the following days My Old Becker limped all over Lufafa, with his rubber sandals snapping at his heels, gazing into the face of every man he met as if he expected to recognize an old friend. He startled us by sticking his head in at the classroom window and staring at Mr Namabula. He had bought himself a straw hat like Chief Phosa’s at our shop, but the damage had already been done: the back of his neck, which a deep crease divided into two fleshy humps, was like a segment of lobster shell slicked with some buttery ointment, and there were puffy blisters on the tops of his ears, from which, said Fish, a host of hairy red spiders would soon hatch.
The word got around that the strange white man was an artist, an official artist, with instructions from the government to immortalize one of us. The prospect didn’t appeal to everyone. Some of the men said they didn’t want to be a statue, of courage or anything else, and that they would refuse to do it, even if they were chosen. When these men saw the artist coming towards them, sweating in his windbreaker like a loaf of bread in a plastic bag, they turned away their faces; the extremists among them even ran off into the fields. But most of the men were taken with the idea. They went out of their way to bump into him, and when they did they pursed their lips and narrowed their eyes, and caused the muscles in their jaws to pulsate. Every evening, as we sat eating, a string of hopefuls came to our door, on the flimsiest pretexts, and dangled their faces in the light.
Although My Old Becker had said clearly that he was looking for a man, some of the women thought they had an equal chance. “Women fought for our freedom too,” I overheard one of them saying. “Women are also courageous.” When my mother tried to explain the finer points of My Old Becker’s project, she was unmoved. “If it comes down to appearances, women are just as courageous-looking as men. More so.”
We children had no illusions about our suitability as models. If Fish and I took to following My Old Becker around, sometimes with and sometimes without his knowledge, it was simply that we wanted to be the first to know when he made his decision. And, for my part, I wanted to learn about the ways of the artist.
One afternoon we followed him down to the beach and spied on him from the dunes while he bathed. I had thought of him as a pink man, as if “white” was just a way of speaking – but the parts of him usually concealed by clothing were as white as paper. I pointed out to Fish that his cock did not seem to be made of rubber, but of the same pale flesh
as the rest of him, although it jutted comically from a nest of hair like a rusty pot-scourer. He had shocking quantities of hair on the white bulb of his belly and in the small of his back, and even on his plump shoulders, like tufts of wiry coir peeling from an old armchair.
He chose the worst place to swim, in a little bay where the currents hoarded seaweed. I might have shown him a better spot, but for Fish’s judgemental presence. My Old Becker didn’t seem to mind the mess at all. He flung himself down in the shallow water and bobbed there with the wrack in the cross-currents. He let the sea spill him out on the sand and drag him this way and that in the backwash, spinning him around, running him aground and refloating him again and again, scraping and scouring him on all sides. He let himself be bumped against rocks and rolled over in the jagged shells and slimy kelp on the waterline, until a wave finally beached him. He lay there for a moment, with his limbs at crooked angles, like driftwood, then roused himself with a fearful glance at the sky, and quickly dressed.
“This white is mad,” said Fish.
Later, when he tired of digging things up at the water’s edge and gazing into pools, he went and sat on his usual ledge, with a pad on his knees, and began to draw the sea. At last: the artist at work. We scampered out to watch.
It was an education. He was drawing with wax crayons, like those we used in the classroom. I had pictured an elegant pen, like Mr Namabula’s, or long, slim pencils striped like drinking-straws. Instead, these stubby, childish things. He held them back to front what’s more, with the point cupped in his palm like a cigarette coal on a windy day, and drew with the blunt end. The paper had the texture of a crêpe bandage, and he was covering it with little marks, jabbing at it irritably, as if the wind was strewing sea sand on his picture and he had to keep brushing it away with his knuckles, dropping one crayon and taking up another every minute. His whole body rolled over the drawing, buffeted by memories of waves, and his pale feet flip-flopped on the rocks.
Fish and I came closer and closer, drawn by the tidal swirl of colour, until we were each gazing over one of his shoulders. At close quarters his flesh was overpowering. His temple was stuck with sea salt and grains of sand. His cheek was like a well-seasoned steak. The blisters on his ears had burst and the skin was peeling off in curls like pencil shavings. I held my breath. The thought of breathing in the slough of My Old Becker turned my stomach. He seemed totally unaware of our presence. Soon I too forgot everything but the hand on the page and the sea spilling out of it.
At last he stopped. He tore the page from the pad and held it out for us to inspect. I had never seen anything like it. When you looked at it properly it was nothing like the sea, just a solid mass of wriggles and curls, something the sea might have spat out. But under the impulse of mysterious laws, which the eye could not fathom but had to obey, the mass would liquefy. Running water.
“What do you think, boys?”
I searched for words to contain what floated on the page. But before I could speak Fish said, “It’s rubbish. I can draw better than that. It looks like spinach.” And spat.
“Don’t be unpolite, Fish,” I said in English, so that My Old Becker would appreciate my support.
But My Old Becker had the audacity to rebuke me. “Let him have his say. He doesn’t have to like it if he doesn’t want to.”
He was trying to teach me a lesson, and it was one worth learning. Why should I stand up for him, after all? He was big and fat enough to stand up for himself. All the same, his words stung.
“What do you think?” he asked, with one of his fixed smiles.
My answer took both of us by surprise. “It’s like shit from a cow. The colour.”
He turned his smile on the drawing. It’s a thing of no worth, I thought, perhaps he’ll give it to me, so I can draw on the other side. But instead he said, “You’re right, it is a piece of shit,” crumpled it up and threw it into the water.
* * *
—
That night Chief Phosa came to supper at My Old Becker’s invitation. It was unorthodox, but what could we do. We had meat for the third time that week.
“The men are making my job very difficult,” My Old Becker complained.
“How can that be?” You could tell from his tone that Chief Phosa did not think of My Old Becker as a man with a job.
“Many of them are avoiding me. When they see me coming they run off into places where I can’t follow. They are hindering my research. I want you to call a meeting of the whole village so that I can see everyone.”
“Have you taken a look at Namabula?” Chief Phosa asked. “He is a fine-looking man, and educated too.”
“The teacher? Yes, he has a beautifully shaped head, and lovely thoughts inside it, I’m sure. But his eyes are too close together. Makes him look shifty.”
My mother understood perfectly the gesture My Old Becker made with two fingers. “That’s just what I always thought!” she said, and tinkled like a cash register. Mother had taken a shine to the white man, which made my disillusionment with him complete.
“Shabangu then? A brave fighter with a stick.”
“Shabangu! What about his ears?” my mother said, and pulled out her own for My Old Becker’s entertainment. She was enjoying herself. My Old Becker confirmed all her prejudices.
They proceeded to work their way through the presentable men of Lufafa. My Old Becker recalled most of them, and he had something good and something bad to say about each one. It seemed that our village demonstrated just how unequally physical resources were distributed in a population. Those whose bodies were well shaped invariably had something wrong with their heads, and vice versa. Those whose bodies and heads passed muster were always let down by their faces. And the faces themselves were a mixed blessing. They had too much chin or too little, the eyes wouldn’t stay put, the noses rebelled.
“Why don’t you take all the best parts and stick them together,” Chief Phosa was inspired to say. “You could come up with a perfect man.”
“A monster!” My Old Becker cried with a knowing snort. “Try the worst bits rather, you might have more luck.”
Chief Phosa dangled his face resolutely and waited for my mother to nominate him, and I waited too, but she disappointed us.
* * *
—
Chief Phosa departed with My Old Becker’s letter of appointment on the letterhead of the new government, and so on Saturday morning the entire village gathered on the field in front of the clinic. The Chief and my mother sat on the benches in the shade, with My Old Becker between them, while everyone else sweltered. The children were playing on the edges of the crowd, but I was seated next to my mother, a small, asymmetrical appendix to these historic proceedings. Like most villages we had our share of the old and the misshapen, but we had strong, healthy men and women too, fishermen and farmers, people who worked hard, people we admired. Today I looked on them all with new eyes. They seemed like a sorry lot, full of unexpected weaknesses and little flaws that disqualified their claims on posterity.
Chief Phosa made a long speech about My Old Becker and his quest, although there could not have been a soul in the district who did not already know. The fact that attendance at the meeting was compulsory had deepened the rift between those who did not want to be a statue and those who did. The former slouched around in their work clothes and huddled under cowardly sunshades. The latter were baking courageously in their Sunday best. There was a smattering of camouflage gear, designed to make the wearer stand out in the crowd. The bravest ones strutted up and down with their chests stuck out or adopted statuesque poses. Some people from other villages had turned up uninvited, and not everyone thought they should be allowed to stay.
At last Chief Phosa sat down and My Old Becker stepped forward. He was wearing, for the occasion, a purple beret with a toggle like a teat sticking out of it. He had put on his boots and slung a camera around his neck
. His nose was painted white. He paused on the end of the stoep and with agitated circles of his arms stirred everyone to their feet. Then, fixing a look of troubled concentration upon his face, he limped out among them.
An excited, embarrassed silence fell. It was the sort of fidgety silence we knew in the classroom, when Mr Namabula patrolled the rows to see who had done their homework and who not. Like a privileged monitor, I saw all the people of Lufafa as Mr Namabula might have seen our class, cupped in the palm of my hand. My Old Becker went up and down, gazing at bodies and faces, adjusting a pose with a flick of the wrist, circling and squinting, patting here and there, as if he was at a livestock auction.
The attention of the crowd rolled in on My Old Becker like a tide. Waves of glances beat forward and spattered us where we sat on the stoep. Then the waves began to clash and churn, for those in the front were turning to watch My Old Becker as he passed. There was a moment of disturbing calm, when he reached the middle of the mass and the attention swirled around him, like ripples round a fisherman’s float. Then he bobbed on and the tide of attention turned and beat out to the backwaters of the crowd, and beyond, to the green slopes and the distant blue of the ocean.
In the stagnant reaches at the back of the crowd My Old Becker stopped. There was a man there sitting flat on the ground. My Old Becker’s fingers fluttered around his bowed head, as if he was chasing flies. Then he stooped and raised up the chosen one. The people fell back in alarm.
In the clearing we saw Kumbuza.
My Old Becker walked towards us. The people parted. Someone handed Kumbuza his crutch and he skipped along in the artist’s wake.
Flashback Hotel Page 23