Sometimes There Is a Void

by Zakes Mda

  ‘And these kaffirs have a lot of money too,’ said the small one. ‘Look at their houses. Look at their cars. They should bloody well buy our bike.’

  But the oldest one had more sense than to start a war in the middle of a black township. Instead he took his bike and the others followed him as he pushed it down our street to the main road that would take him to the town, and then to the white suburb.

  I moped about the bike for a long time and buried myself in Wamba, an isiXhosa children’s magazine with short stories and poems. I also tried my hand at writing my own isiXhosa poems. Most were about the zinnias, dahlias and snapdragons in our garden, but some were about Keneiloe. Things were getting back to normal with her and I resumed sending her letters and an occasional poem. I suppose her derrière was forgetting the hiding it got from Hopestill for fooling around with me.

  I shared more than just letters and poems with Keneiloe. She was a reader of a story magazine called See and I bought an occasional issue when I had money, or got well-worn copies that my mother discarded, and gave them to Keneiloe after reading them myself. These were love stories told in photographs featuring beautiful white characters in situations of anguish. There was one for black people too called She, but its love stories were not as heart-rending and romantic. I still bought it, as I did the more macho story-magazines such as Samson, about a strongman in leopard skin trunks who rooted out evil in darkest Africa, and True Africa which featured a handsome crime buster in snazzy suits called Bulldog Lawson.

  These heroes became so much a part of our lives that when Mario dos Santos, the actor who played the role of Bulldog Lawson, died in some accident in Mozambique my little brother Sonwabo cried. This continued for many days every time anyone mentioned Bulldog Lawson.

  The photo story magazine that was most exchanged by my friends, from one boy to another until it was tattered, was Chunky Charlie featuring a fat hobo who had MacGyver-like tools (it was decades before the television show MacGyver) hidden in his tattered coat. He could use them to extricate himself from all sorts of traps laid by the baddies.

  There was, however, reading material that I never shared with anyone: comic books.

  Cousin Mlungisi had taught me the art of stealing money from one’s parents’ wallets and purses in a strategic way so that no one would be any the wiser that some money was missing. He had been doing it for years and was using the money to bheja – buying presents of handkerchiefs, sweets and chocolates for his many girlfriends. I learnt the trick, but instead of buying presents for Keneiloe – I would not be so stupid as to bheja because that would put her in trouble with her strict parents; she would not be able to explain where she got the stuff – I bought comic books from Mather and Sons. I spoiled myself with DC Comics and Marvel Comics and got lost in the world of superheroes; of Spiderman, of Batman and Robin, of Superman and his alter-ego Clark Kent, of the Incredible Hulk. The last was a newcomer in my collection, having only been introduced the year before. I never really took to this superhero.

  But the best for me were not the Marvel or the DC Comics, but the Harvey Comics. Their characters had more fun and were more lovable. There was no heaving and grunting and fighting in Harvey Comics. No Wham! Whack! Pow! Thwip! Even devils such as Hot Stuff and ghosts such as Casper and Spooky were gentle. Though Spooky was an ill-tempered little ghost, he was adorable nonetheless. Casper on the other hand actually went under the title of the Friendly Ghost. These maudlin modern fairy tales appealed to me more than the manly stuff.

  Every time I entered Mather and Sons the sales staff would have Little Lotta, Little Dot and Richie Rich ready for me. The last particularly, featuring the richest kid in the world, his butler Cadbury, and his mean cousin Reggie, took me to a fantasy world of splendour and gold-plated limousines and life without pain or toil.

  The Mather and Sons people said I was the only black kid in Sterkspruit who bought that sort of rubbish. Only white kids wasted their parents’ hard-earned money on comic books. They never got to know that my parents had no idea that I was spending their hard-earned money in this manner, that in fact I was a thief and a scoundrel who sneaked into their bedroom to raid their pockets, handbags and purses to satisfy my addiction.

  THE SIGHT OF MY parents’ old house is depressing. Slowly I drive away, up the street, past Keneiloe’s home. Buses used to be parked in the yard. But today there is not a single one. Only the skeleton of a truck. I drive past the Tindleni residence, and then to Bensonvale College which is about six miles away.

  ‘You know you hate to drive at night, with the lights of oncoming cars shining in your eyes,’ says Gugu.

  ‘We’ll make it to Johannesburg, don’t worry,’ I say. ‘I just want to show you something.’

  But Bensonvale College is no longer there. Only the ruins. I almost weep. The whole college that used to be vibrant with students walking up and down the paved paths is gone. Ivy still covers those walls that have been defiant enough to remain standing. I stop the car on the edge of an open field and get out of the car. Gugu follows. I can hear the voices. At first they are soft, but as if carried by a gust of wind towards me they gather volume and become so loud that I lift my arms in supplication. They are the voices of the beautiful men and women of the Today’s Choir. And indeed the choir materialises in the field – women in black skirts and white blouses, men in black pants, white shirts, black jackets and black ties. My father in his black suit standing in front of them. Waving his arms, conducting the choir with gusto. The choir is composed of hundreds. Thousands more people fill the grounds, listening. Many are in school uniform – black gym-dresses and white shirts. Black and white predominates.

  I remember how this came about … how I was grateful that I had more time to read my comic books and to draw pictures and write stories because for a number of weeks my father was not calling his meetings or demanding that we draw water for his flowers and vegetables. He was busy rehearsing with a mass choir he had named the Today’s Choir, which had been assembled from all the choral societies of the Herschel District for the commemoration of the centenary of Bensonvale College.

  Although we had some respite from meetings and garden work, one thing he never forgot even when he came back home late at night was to give us our nightly doses of cod liver oil and Scott’s Emulsion. That was one assignment he didn’t trust even my mother to undertake with the diligence it deserved.

  When the day of the centenary celebrations came I joined a group of pupils from Tapoleng – including Cousin Mlungisi, his younger brother Bobby and the twins – and walked to Bensonvale, about six miles from Sterkspruit. We found a place in the open field where the rest of the multitudes had gathered. My mother, sister and baby brother got a ride from the neighbours as my father did not have a car. Speeches were made and the Today’s Choir sang Reginald Spofforth’s glee Hail Smiling Morn. My father’s slim frame was dwarfed by the hundreds of singers in front of whom he was standing, fervently conducting them. There were tears in my eyes when the choir sang Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, J P Mohapeloa’s Obe and Fisherman’s Goodnight. I never got to know the composer of this last one.

  There are tears in my eyes as I stand in the grounds among the ruins listening to the ghostly choir. To this day, when I hear these songs I get a lump in my throat and my eyes moisten. The void widens.

  AS I DRIVE BACK from Bensonvale I wonder how things would have turned out for me, my brothers and my sister if we had not left Sterkspruit. We would have lived here for the rest of our lives, and become teachers and nurses like everyone else, without the exposure to the world that was a result of the single occasion the Boers came for my father in the middle of the night; a whole contingent of white policemen with bright flashlights. They turned the house upside down, looking for ‘terrorist’ documents and banned books. My father’s Communist books were nowhere to be found. I later learnt that he had earlier that week asked our nanny to bury them underground at her place. How did he know he was going to be raided by the p
olice? He must have got a tip from an insider – maybe from a sympathetic black cop.

  They took him away in a kwela-kwela police van with bars on the windows. My mother sat at the kitchen table and wept.

  The following week was very important for me because I was representing Tapoleng Primary School in a track meet where Herschel District primary schools were competing. I had outrun all competition in middle and long distance races at my school, and it was time to use my famous long strides to bring the trophy to Tapoleng. But how could I do it with my father in jail? It was not so much for him that I felt sorry, but for my mother. I knew he was strong and could handle any situation. After all, we were all terrified of him. I didn’t see how he could fail to terrify the Boers as well. But my mother did not take the arrest well. She worried about how they were treating him in jail and whether they were torturing him or not. Fortunately, she was allowed to take him some food, but never to see him. She cried a lot even as she kept on reminding herself that she needed to be brave for the children.

  I lost the race.

  The following Monday I went to school as usual, but something unusual happened at the morning assembly. After the prayers the principal Mr Moleko, also known as Mkhulu-Baas, made a speech about the folly of trying to fight against the white man in South Africa.

  ‘There are people who think they can win against the white man,’ he said out of the blue. ‘That is very stupid. Umlungu mdala – the white man is old and wise. What do you think a black person can do to make South Africa a better country? A black person is a baby. If you try to stand up against the white man you will end up in jail.’

  I knew immediately that the nincompoop in the threadbare grey suit was talking about my father and I hated him for it.

  One evening when we were eating dinner father came home. He was on the run from the police and had come to take a few of his things and to say goodbye.

  He went into exile in the British Protectorate of Basutoland, as Lesotho was then known.

  We pieced things together later. He was being accused of holding secret meetings all over the Cape, planning the violent overthrow of the state. We had not been aware of all these nocturnal activities because he seemed to be a looming presence at home all the time. A few days after he had been locked up there was a line-up, an identification parade. A certain Mr X was to point out the man who addressed a secret meeting of a PAC cell in a town called Elliot where some acts of sabotage were planned. Mr X was a secret state witness who had attended the meeting, and therefore could not be identified by name. My father knew immediately that the police had already tutored Mr X on how to identify him. He therefore took off his coat and gave it to the man next to him to wear – the people in the line-up were black men picked from the street, and he knew the particular man to whom he gave his coat. He also changed the order of the line-up. Mr X arrived wearing a mask, looked at the men in the line-up and pointed at the man wearing my father’s coat.

  ‘That’s the man,’ he said. ‘That’s the man who addressed the meeting in Elliot.’

  Of course the man would not have held a meeting in Elliot or anywhere else for that matter. The police were angry that their identification parade had been foiled by my father’s cunning. They had to release him, but he knew that was only temporary. It would take them hours rather than days to find other ways of getting him. They would never give up. That was why he didn’t wait for them to rearrest him but escaped to Basutoland.

  Once more we were without a father.

  The first place to knell his absence was the garden. Old Xhamela had long gone to work for the South African Railways and Harbours and father’s peach trees lost their sculpted shapes. Weeds grew rampant and the seedbeds lay without new seedlings of cabbages, tomatoes and beetroot.

  For many days after my father left I could see that my mother’s eyes were red from crying. But soon she got used to the idea of his absence. After all, she had lived alone in Johannesburg for many years while he was either serving articles in the Transkei or was travelling the length and breadth of South Africa, first organising for the ANC Youth League and in later years for the Africanists. She kept herself busy by playing tennis at the township tennis courts whenever she was off-duty from Empilisweni Hospital and sometimes I joined her. Until one day she beat me six-love. I gave up tennis for ever.

  I must admit that I enjoyed the freedom that resulted from my father’s exile. For the first time I was able to build a loft and keep pigeons, which my father would never have allowed. Also, my mother was at work for the whole day most days. Or she was doing night-duty, which meant that I could join Cousin Mlungisi in some of his nighttime activities. For instance I could go stand outside Keneiloe’s gate and whistle until she came out of the house. Cousin Mlungisi’s girlfriends came out to him when he whistled, and then they would repair behind the outhouse toilet to do naughty things. But my Keneiloe could never come to me. Her parents were too strict. She only stood at the door and waved at me so that I could see she had heard the whistling. Then she walked back into the house before Hopestill got suspicious. That was good enough for me; I had ‘checked’ my girl. I was a fulfilled boy as I walked back home where I had to sneak into my room even though my mother was absent because the nanny was likely to squeal on me if she discovered I had gone to ‘check’ girls.

  When Hopestill visited, she and my mother talked about the hardships caused by my father’s absence. They giggled like school girls at something she said to Hopestill. Then Hopestill whispered something back and they burst out laughing. I loved Hopestill at those moments. She was so beautiful. She looked very much like Keneiloe. Then my mother said in a solemn tone, ‘But, Hope, I think it’s a good thing he left when he did. Look at what the Boers have done to Bhut’ Walter and Nel.’ She was talking about her friends Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela.

  Although we no longer had to draw water from the communal borehole for father to water his plants, and we didn’t have to stand to attention and repeat ‘ewe, tata’ after every one of his admonishing sentences, we still had to work in the house. My mother was no pushover. We had to clean the house, scrub the linoleum floors and apply Cobra Floor Polish. As was the case growing up in Soweto, where there was no distinction between work for girls or for boys and we all performed the same chores, it was the same here in Sterkspruit. That was how our mothers brought us up. I learnt to cook at an early age. I was also an expert at keeping the red stoep outside my father’s office gleaming with Sunbeam Polish.

  On Sundays my mother insisted that we go to the Roman Catholic Church which was located at Makhetheng Township on the other side of Sterkspruit. Before my father’s exile neither of our parents minded that we frequented the Methodist Church instead of our own denomination. Everyone in Tienbank, except us, was a Methodist. So we preferred going to the Methodist Church near Tapoleng Primary with the rest of our friends. After all, it was the church that Keneiloe attended and it gave us the opportunity to walk home from church together. Going to the Catholic Church was quite an ordeal because it was more than an hour’s walk just to get there. And another hour back. Taking into account that Mass lasted for one hour, it meant that we had to invest three whole hours on Sunday just to make my mother happy.

  I also had to go to the church on some Saturdays because I was training to be an altar boy. A bigger boy was assigned to teach me the ropes, and on those Sundays when I had to wear the red cassock and white surplice I swelled with pride and felt that the three hours were worth it. It was just unfortunate that Keneiloe was not there to hear me chant Kyrie Eleison Kristu Eleison or to see me, in the absence of the regular thurifer, wave the thurible with pomp and ceremony, filling the small church with nostril-stinging incense; or, in the presence of the regular thurifer, to hear the ring of my altar bell.

  On some Saturdays the altar servers rehearsed the Monody of Gregorian Chants. The rotund white priest whose name I have long forgotten paced the floor in front of us chanting in a shaky voice: Adoremus in
aeternum sanctissimum Sacramentum. Laudate Dominum omnes gentes: laudate eum omnes populi. Quoniam confirmata est super nos misericordia ejus: et veritas Domini manet in aeternum. Adoremus … We will adore for eternity the most holy Sacrament. Praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise Him all ye peoples. Because His mercy is confirmed upon us: and the truth of the Lord remains forever. Let us adore …

  We repeated the Latin chants after him. But the thurifer was more interested in gossip than in adoring the Sacrament. He whispered to me that the priest was pretending to be engrossed in Gregorian Chants whereas what he was really doing was checking out the thighs of the boys in their shorts for the one he would invite to his room.

  ‘To his room? What for?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, to eat him mawutwana, of course.’

  I didn’t understand this eating business so I whispered back, ‘What do you mean to eat him? What is mawutwana?’

  The boys laughed at my naivete but soon shut up when the priest glared at them sternly while continuing with his chants. He walked out of the door, still chanting.

  ‘Where does this one come from?’ asked the thurifer staring at me incredulously. ‘Don’t you know that priests eat pretty boys like you?’

  ‘But this one is a good priest,’ said a tiny server in defence of the man of the cloth. ‘He does not hurt boys; he only puts his thingy between the thighs. The Father before him put it in the sebono.’

  ‘Mama’s little boy! Mama’s little boy!’ chanted the thurifer to the tune of Gregorian Chants. But the return of the priest put an end to the teasing and the banter. The priest was still chanting and had a cane with him, which he gently beat against his hand while looking at the thurifer as a way of warning him and any other server who was bent on chattering instead of focusing on the Chants that the cane would eat into the offender’s flesh.

  My concentration was no longer on the Monody; it worried me no end that I was ignorant of what the servers were talking about; that I was not in the loop; that I was an outsider who knew nothing about eating mawutwana. At least I knew sebono was a Sesotho word for anus. Most of the servers came from Basutoland where the Catholic Church was much stronger, so they spoke in Sesotho most of the time. Even the Holy Mass at our little church was conducted in Latin and Sesotho. I would be sure to ask Cousin Mlungisi what mawutwana was. He was a man of the world and would know about it, especially since it was associated with sebono which sounded quite dirty. Cousin Mlungisi knew all things dirty.