Soweto, Under the Apricot Tree

by Niq Mhlongo

  Aunt Salome and the three women stopped on the road near the park and looked at the homeless man. He was pointing into the air and laughing out loud. He had a green plastic toy gun stuck in the back of his dirty jeans. It looked as if it had been abandoned by a toddler because it was useless and broken. With his left hand, he took out the toy gun. He pointed it at the tree with both hands, and then at his temple with his left hand.

  “Phaa! Phaa! Phaa!” He mimicked shooting the tree and then himself. “Phaa! Phaa! Phaa!”

  All of a sudden he fell down, acting dead. I caught a glimpse of my aunt and her friends clamping their hands over their mouths in shock. The man started kicking, the gun still in his hand. Then he shouted again.

  “Shut up! Come here!”

  He was talking to no one in particular. His face glowed with the ecstasy of his escape into the world he preferred.

  “Come here. I just killed you.”

  That day no cars parked at the park. Life has its ups and downs, especially when you are in the job that we do. When the evening appeared to be winning its daily battle with the day, we threw the water from the buckets on the grass, took our things and left. There was a chill in the air, so I went straight home. At the dinner table, my aunt asked me, “Did you see what he did today?”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Who else do you think I’m referring to? Of course I’m talking about the homeless man at the park.” She sounded worried. “I think he is getting worse.”

  “But he always does that.”

  “You know, Loyiso, I have this feeling about him.” She contemplated for a few moments. “I think we must do something before something bad happens to him. God will never forgive us if we don’t try to save him.”

  “But aunty, he has been there for a long time,” I said, uninterested. “I’ve seen him at the park for more than eight months now.”

  “Maybe God is using him to reach our hearts. He wants to see if we are true Christians.”

  “Okay, tomorrow then. Let’s report him at the police station,” I said, just to please her. “At least they will do something.”

  “The man is getting worse. It takes all one’s strength to fight hunger and abandonment.”

  “Do you think the police know nothing about him? I don’t think so. I mean, everyone knows him here in Zone Two. He is a sort of a landmark of the park. Even the toddlers going to that crèche along our street know him.”

  “I must pray for you, Loyiso. You don’t have a heart, my boy. Maybe that’s why things are not going well with you. Wait until you’re forced to spend a week walking around the township, home­­less, penniless and hungry. Then you’ll understand the cruelty of life.”

  “I was just saying—”

  “Just close your eyes and let us pray. God, send Your Holy Angels again today to guide us as we try to save the homeless man in the park. Now there is more need than before as the merciless winter is approaching. We’re ready to go with You, Lord. I’ll speak what You say I must say as my nephew and I go to the police station tomorrow. God, bring the Angels again, this evening and in the morning. Bring the Holy Ghost and fire, and cleanse my brothers’ and sisters’ hearts everywhere. May they be such an influence that others will see and want to follow too. Amen.”

  You see, my aunt has given herself to God and I have surrendered myself to alcohol. It’s not that I hated praying. But sometimes I felt that she was exaggerating the importance of Jesus, the Bible and prayer in our lives. Like every poor and unemployed person that I knew in my township, my aunt stuck to her religion like a tick on a bull’s testicles. She acted as if she already owned a mansion in heaven with air conditioners and free Wi-Fi. She prayed before and after she ate, before and after she took a bath, before sleeping and after waking up, and before peeling her potatoes for dinner. She prayed before spraying Doom at strategic corners of our kitchen for the cockroaches to die. She even prayed for the rat poison that she placed near the rat holes in her bedroom. I’m not exaggerating; I have often heard her thanking God and Jesus for the smell of decaying rats killed by the poison. This is what confused me the most.

  Sometimes I asked myself why religion here in the township appeals to old retired people, especially women. Was it because they were scared of dying? Why does Christianity sound attractive to us, the poor and lower class of the township? Is it because we think religion will help us to live in this world of scarcity? But in all my twenty-seven years of living here, I have been convinced that poverty is reproduced from generation to generation. If you’re poor and have more kids, like Phiwe’s grandfather and father, those children are bound to be poor unless you do something extraordinary, like robbing a bank, rather than praying.

  The following day, my aunt and I walked to the police station at the Hekroodt Circle. It was not because I was afraid of being punished further by her God and becoming forever unemployed. My aunt has been praying for me every night to get a job and stop loitering at the park. My main concern was that she would soon win the homeless man’s heart and try to make us share our house with him. That was what I was afraid of, and I had to do something before that happened. I knew my aunt’s heart well, and it was sweet as honey. Since our house had only two bedrooms, I was convinced she would make me sleep with the homeless man on my bed. I would have no say because it was her house and I was unemployed, surviving on her pension grant.

  As we approached the Engen garage on Odendaal Street near the Pick n Pay Centre, the faint smell of fried chicken from the nearby KFC brought a yearning to my stomach. We saw the homeless man standing by the clinic wall carrying his plastic bag. Like his face, the rags he wore were getting greasier by the day. He stood against a wall with vulgar graffiti of a man’s erect penis and huge egg-shaped testicles on it. Next to the depiction were the words:

  LEGAL ABORTIONS, QUICK & SAME DAY,

  100% GUARANTEED, SAFE & PAIN FREE

  CALL 086277

  My aunt stopped and looked at the man, trying to smile at him. My eyes concentrated on the graffiti.

  “Dumela, papa,” she greeted him in Sesotho.

  He jerked his head to show that he had heard something, but walked away without answering her. He crossed the street without looking left or right. After a few fast steps, he slowed to a gentle, thoughtful pace. The blare of a car horn sheared through his daydream and he leapt off the road onto the pavement. He moved on slowly, glancing without any interest at the car that had just hooted. My aunt stopped and looked at him with concern. The homeless man stood under a tree with branches arching over that part of Hekroodt Street. A cardboard sign was nailed to the trunk of the tree:

  PENIS, BOOBS, HIPS ENLARGEMENT

  There was a cellphone number at the bottom of the sign. This part of the street was already carpeted with yellowish leaves. The homeless man watched a bird as it settled and chirped on the topmost branch of the tree. He stared at it gravely. Then he picked up a stick and swung it as hard as he could at the base of the tree as if to scare the bird. As the bird took flight, the stick broke into two pieces. My aunt looked at him and shook her doeked head before she spoke to me.

  “Poor soul of God, may the Lord bless him.”

  I didn’t answer her. I just looked up at the white clouds chasing the sun.

  “I wonder what being without shelter or warmth feels like,” she said as she followed behind me. “That man is always wandering, from morning until night. I wonder how it feels to lower oneself to do the most disgusting things, like eating rotting dustbin food.”

  At the police station my aunt reported the homeless man to a female police officer who sounded very doubtful about even taking her statement. The nametag on her uniform read Sergeant Queen Mashaba. She asked my aunt what she hoped the police would do with the homeless man. My aunt told her she was afraid that winter was around the corner and that the homeless man might die in the park. I was embarrassed, but I wrote the affidavit for my aunt as she listed about five instances of people dying
of cold in the park, just here in Meadowlands alone, as far back as 1976.

  “Please do something, I beg you. No person must be homeless or without relatives to look after them. That homeless man, just like you and I, probably has his own people. At the moment he is a sad man for whom breakfast does not mean a bowl with cereal and milk, like it does for you and me. Imagine if he dies there, my daughter. God will punish us.”

  “I understand, gogo,” said the sergeant. “But what do you want us to do?”

  “I don’t know, but just do something. You know winter is approaching. Homeless people are dying in numbers around this time.”

  “What about other homeless men, women and children all over Soweto? What do we do about them?”

  “Everything has a beginning. Let’s start doing positive things with this poor man. God will bless us in heaven.”

  Nothing happened, at least for a few weeks. Winter was indeed fast approaching. One Friday, I saw the homeless man at the park again as Phiwe and I were waiting for cars to wash. This time the man had picked up the metal casing of an old TV from one of the rubbish bins along the street. He had placed it against the tree and pretended to be watching a live broadcast of a soccer match between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. I watched him as he raised his arms, laughed, shook his head and clapped loudly. He pointed at the black metal casing at regular intervals as if he was seeing pictures.

  “Selfish. Pass him, score, offside, Mr Ref, halftime.” He hit his chest three times. “Orlando Pirates 1, Kaizer Chiefs 1.”

  All of sudden, he switched from his imaginary soccer match and shouted, “Master, here, send me. Speak, my Lord, and I’ll be quick to answer Thee.”

  He looked around and then walked towards the park rubbish bin with short, nervous steps. His hands were hanging by his sides and he was whistling to himself. Before he picked something out of the bin, he sniffed his armpits.

  “You’re a liar,” he said to no one but himself. “You’re not God. You’re a God of Evil!” His face was coarse and pimply, and his voice sounded hoarse and jarring.

  It was from this day that I agreed with my aunt that the man’s madness had reached a state of crisis. His eyes looked pained and anxious. He crept, bounded and leapt about the park in the most curious way. He stopped in full spate and scratched himself.

  “You’re deaf. You’re not invisible.” His words were accompanied by a great many gestures and disgusted spitting. “I can see you. You’re lying. They’re yours, Lord. I commit them to you now. And I may never see them. And if I come back a year from today, there are many sitting there. You’re deaf, you’re deaf, you’re deaf . . .”

  He shook his rags as he talked loudly to himself, repeating the same words over and over again. Then he made his way to another tree and leaned against it. The slight movement of his lips indicated that he was now talking softly to himself.

  The 1 May public holiday came, and there was a huge party at the park. This meant lots of money for me and Phiwe. Many cars parked there, and most people were drinking, eating and dancing or were drunk. The smoke of braais was everywhere. House music was playing on the speakers of a red Golf 7 GTI that township people call VruuuPhaaa. Two girls dancing to the music of DJ Black Coffee looked damp and flushed. They danced with open mouths and reverent faces, showing off their new style of dance and their plaited hair. Phiwe and I were over the moon as well because eight guys had offered us forty rand each to wash their cars.

  “If we can do this last one quickly we can go and ask those guys over there if we can wash theirs as well,” said Phiwe as he pointed at the guys on the left side of the park. “We can make four klipa today.”

  “Sure, boy. Let’s do that.”

  The guy turning the meat on the braai stand next to us joined the dancing girls, an oily fork held in his hand. He pranced and spun behind one of the girls while pointing with one foot. The girl clicked her heels loudly on the pavement. The homeless man passed and no one looked at him. He walked around aimlessly, and stepped gracefully on the park lawn. Cans and bottles of Castle Lite, Amstel, Heineken, Hunter’s Dry, Hunter’s Gold, Savanna and Windhoek Lager lay littered on the grass. The homeless man licked his lips, as if suddenly conscious of his thirst. As he bent down to collect one of the cans, I saw a piece of soiled cardboard that he had used to plug a hole in the sole of his left shoe. It hung out like a tired dog’s tongue. He shook one of the cans to feel if there was anything left inside. He swallowed the contents before tossing it aside and picking up another can. He seemed lucky with the second can of Hunter’s Dry because apparently it was still half full.

  “Look at him!” Phiwe pointed to the homeless man. “People must never drink on an empty stomach. He will get drunk and start showing everyone his four-five here at the park.”

  “Kanjani, boy? Of all the things you think he can do, showing his penis is what you can come up with,” I said jokingly. “The Bible says do not drink water only, but take a little wine to help your digestion, since you’re ill so often. Timothy 5, verse 23.”

  “The Bible surely referred to people who have food in their stomachs, not people who have not eaten anything.”

  The homeless man drank some more leftover beer, but threw down the last Castle Lite dumpie like an infant when it has drunk up its milk. The bottle smashed on the ground. I was certain that his thirst was not fully appeased.

  “Let the people drink, whether they’re hungry or not.”

  “But that refers to wine – grapes, not beer. Isn’t beer made of hops or hay?”

  “Probably not grapes, but the man has to improvise and drink a cider that is made from apples. If this was Cape Town, where there are lots of vineyards, I would understand your point of drinking wine.”

  At that point, a few boys who made a living from collecting cans for recycling on our street came with a huge black plastic bag to collect the empty cans.

  “It’s getting late, ndoda,” said Phiwe, who was polishing a rear tyre. “Let’s work fast. Otherwise we can forget about making more money.”

  “I’m already done with the windows of this car. I’m only waiting for you.”

  The homeless man walked away slowly, wobbling and counting his steps. His only conversation was his own soliloquies and his continued clowning. He hugged the tree in front of him. He carried on with his unending flow of patter against the tree, a mixture of dreams and nonsense. He sat down, then stood up. He started walking very slowly around the tree while counting his steps. He walked backward, as if he was imitating his unfortunate life, I thought to myself as I stood with a damp rag that I had just used to wipe the windows of an Opel OPC.

  “Why don’t you go and speak to those guys over there with that red BMW 4 Series to see if we can wash their car in the meantime?” asked Phiwe.

  “Okay, let me do that.”

  I walked to the middle of the park. I could hear the famous old dance song called “Sister Bethina” by Mgarimbe. The homeless man was still walking backwards around the tree. Maybe he thought that he had lived his life stepping backwards, without progress. I tried to make sense of what he was doing. He paused and then resumed his incoherent monologue. It looked like his fantasy world was therapeutic. The monologue seemed to have reduced his fear of the world by giving him a sense of control over his life and the park. Raising his right hand above his head, he burst into loud and long ululation. Then he danced with confidence, abandon and happiness. It was a song that he alone could hear. He was lost in a newfound bliss. It looked like he was free from suffering, craving, anger and other afflictions.

  The guys in the 4 Series politely said no to my offer. As I walked back to where Phiwe was standing and stretching his arms, I saw some young boys and girls walking towards the homeless man. Some of them lived along our street and had been playing in the park. They had noticed the homeless man and were now approaching him. Some of them held their noses, and two of them used their cellphones to film the man walking backward around the tree. One naughty
boy walked slowly behind the man. He pressed his fingers to his nose as if to keep out the odour of decay.

  “Sies!” said a young girl who was filming the man. She spat on the ground. “Your shadow just touched his. You will go mad like him.”

  “That means bad luck,” teased another girl. “You must immediately run home and wash your hands before you take a bath.”

  Following the advice from his friends, the boy ran home. Before I joined Phiwe I chased the kids away from the homeless man. I scolded them for making fun of him. The homeless man didn’t care what was happening around him. As always, he was in his own world of fantasy.

  As I left the park, I was thinking about how the children liked making fun of the homeless man. They seemed to enjoy how he composed dramas in his head. Adults and children alike gave him sceptical sideways glances as they passed the park. At first I had been one of them. I used to give him a glance that indicated he was not one of us. Now, thanks to Aunt Salome, I understood why he had built a wall of silence around himself. I wondered what he thought of his situation in the secrecy of his conscience when he was alone at night. But, then again, to him a conversation was no longer about one person speaking to another. It was about one person hearing many different imaginary people in his head. Spewed out by us, his own kind, in the township, the man had been adopted by the imagined world.

  One Tuesday afternoon in the first week of June, I came home to find a man in a fashionable navy suit standing with my aunt in our yard. There were four other people with him, two in police uniform. I immediately recognised one of the police officers as the lady my aunt and I had spoken to at the police station. I struggled to remember her name until I was close enough to read it on her uniform: Sergeant Queen Mashaba. Sitting on my favourite camp chair near the lawn was the homeless man. I was angry that my aunt had given him my chair. I loved that chair, and now he was wiping his greasy hands on it. His torn trousers were even greasier than before. It was one of those expensive chairs that some rich guy had forgotten at the park during the May public holiday. It still looked new, and now my aunt had let the homeless man sit on it.