Sometimes There Is a Void

by Zakes Mda

  ‘That cannot be true,’ she said. ‘How do you think we got to know you were arrested?’

  How indeed? I hadn’t told anyone at work that I was in jail. I merely reported that I was delayed by circumstances beyond my control.

  When she started asking me about my family background and about my father I thought I would draw the line. I told her my father was not anybody’s business.

  ‘I can understand why the South Africans would be interested in my father. But what business is my family to the Americans?’

  Instead of answering my question she asked, ‘Why were you sponsored by the International University Exchange Fund?’

  ‘Because they funded South African refugee families. I wanted to study art and no one else would fund that.’

  ‘The South Africans would not arrest you for nothing,’ she said. ‘You must be a terrorist.’

  I flared up.

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ I asked. ‘I went through interrogation with the South African police and I must go through interrogation with you too? You think just because I work for you, you have the right to bully me. I am not answering any questions from you and I resign.’

  At this, I stood up and left the Embassy. I only went back to the American Cultural Center to clear my desk and to say goodbye to my colleagues.

  I knew that I had kissed my job with the American Cultural Center goodbye, which shouldn’t have really mattered because of my pending trip to the USA, but then I started worrying that perhaps the trip itself might fail. I was supposed to get a visa from the very guys I had pissed on, and I was not prepared to go back to that Embassy with the proverbial tail between my legs. I was not even going to try applying.

  I flew to Johannesburg with all my bags packed for the USA. Keneiloe took me to the American Consulate in the city where I applied for a visa. They turned me down, saying that they didn’t understand why I hadn’t got the visa in Maseru since I had a Lesotho passport. I told them I lived in Johannesburg with my fiancée, namely Keneiloe. On a second attempt and a third they still turned me down. I wanted to give up and return to Maseru to the good life of a starving and drunken artist, but Keneiloe was persistent. She took me to the American Consulate a few more times, at one time finding Gibson Thula, the Inkatha Freedom Party Johannesburg representative, there and enlisting his help. Thula had been a social worker at some stage and Keneiloe knew him from those circles. He was at the Consulate for his own visa and his Zulu Bantustan organisation was in the good books of the Americans, so Keneiloe figured they would listen to him if he pleaded my case. I was angry with her and told her, ‘I’d rather not go to America if it means I get a visa through the assistance of people like Gibson Thula.’

  I don’t think Keneiloe understood my vehemence against Thula because to her he was just a guy she socialised with in Johannesburg whereas to me, coming from my tradition of politics, he was a Bantustan sell-out.

  The Americans finally relented and stamped my passport with a visa. After promising Keneiloe that I would make sure she joined me at Ohio University I flew to the United States.

  ATHENS, OHIO, SEPTEMBER 1981. My first culture shock was that there was no jazz in America. I expected the air to be permeated by the trumpets of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie; the saxophones of John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, Sonny Stitt and Charlie Parker; the double bass of Art Davis and Charles Mingus; the flutes of Roland Kirk and Herbie Mann; the xylophone of Milt Jackson; the guitars of Barney Kessel and Kenny Burrell; the pianos of Thelonious Monk and Oscar Peterson; the drums of Art Blakey and Max Roach; and the demented scats of Sarah Vaughan, Lorez Alexandria and Ella Fitzgerald. But no one I met in the college town of Athens had heard of any of these cats. All the radio stations played country music. Not even soul music. Not even rhythm-and-blues. Just the bluegrass and other mountain sounds that whined in my ear like an irritating mosquito. Even my new African American friend, Reggie from Dayton, had never heard of the names. Except for Ella Fitzgerald, who was getting a lot of airtime on television doing a commercial for Memorex. I couldn’t get over the fact that Reggie had never heard of Ella Fitzgerald before the Memorex commercial. The only jazzmen we used to admire growing up in Lesotho and South Africa who were known to Reggie and most of the people in the town were Ray Charles (whom I saw in Maseru as well) and Quincy Jones – only because they were crossover artists who practised in more popular genres as well.

  Jazz or no jazz, the quaint little town with red-brick buildings dating back to its foundation at the turn of the nineteenth century and the red-brick paved streets captivated me immediately. Life had its pace here, easy-going and unrushed. A direct contrast to the hustle-bustle of Johannesburg. Even Maseru had more of a rat-race atmosphere to it than Athens. This suited me well; I was burnt-out from all the fast living.

  I immersed myself in student life and became a regular at the Graduate, a bar on West Union Street. The first few months were a struggle because I had neither a scholarship nor a job. But fortunately the head of the School of Theater, Bob Winters, and the head of the playwriting program, Seabury Quinn Junior, did their best to see to it that I got a small stipend from the university and arranged for my accommodation at the Convocation Center where I shared a room with a Japanese student.

  Ohio University was the first university I attended on a full-time basis – to date all my education after Peka High School had been by correspondence. I was admitted here on the strength of my published and performed plays, rather than my art education with the now defunct Swiss academy.

  My mentor, Seabury Quinn Junior, was a cantankerous but lovable man with a moustache and a bow-tie. He was cynical about everything. But for some reason he liked me and we spent a lot of time together. He had many questions about South Africa and seemed to be fascinated by the fact that there were white people who were either so foolhardy or so brave as to live in Africa. He invited me for his Thanksgiving dinners where it would be only the two of us facing a whole turkey stuffed with cranberries and a huge pumpkin pie that could feed a family of five. He lived in a log house in the woods, just off Richland Avenue, and I got the feeling he was a very lonely man. Maybe he was not lonely at all. Maybe he was just a loner.

  It was only after his death – years later – that I learnt from Joanna Perry, who was my fellow playwriting student under Seabury’s tutelage and now makes films in Hollywood, that our Seabury had demons of his own that were haunting him.

  ‘He adored you, but he was a troubled soul,’ Joanna told me.

  ‘I thought he was just a grumpy old man,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know he was a troubled soul. What was troubling him?’

  ‘It could not have been easy being a gay man in a time when gays were reviled in this country,’ she said. ‘And Seabury was grumpy for a reason that he once told me which was the shadow of his father, the writer, who he felt he could not live up to. He had a lot of old feelings that were never resolved in his psyche, I think, as we all do.’

  I didn’t know of Seabury’s sexual orientation and I felt very angry at his culture that was and unfortunately largely still continues to be intolerant. I knew about his father, Seabury Quinn, the famous author of the Weird Tales series featuring the occult detective Jules de Grandin. But I didn’t know that our Seabury had issues about being his son. He never mentioned his father to me.

  I was glad that Joanna told me this because I now understand Seabury better. Our friendship endured even after I had left Ohio University. We continued to correspond over the years, right up to his death, but it was always about work – about my novels and plays. He kept up with what I was doing and read every novel I wrote. Sometimes I would tell him of my play being translated, say into Catalan and being performed in Barcelona, and he would say something bitchy like: ‘Well, you know, every little bit helps.’ As if it was no big deal to have a play in Spain in a regional language!

  But that didn’t bother me because it was Seabury being Seabury.

  I never attended any of
Seabury’s playwriting classes or workshops, so I have no idea what his students did there or if they learnt anything at all. All my playwriting lessons with him were independent study. I wrote plays and gave them to him. He looked at them, chuckled a bit here and there, and gave them back to me with an A. For the three years he was my teacher and mentor I learnt nothing about playwriting from him. But that was fine. I had not come to learn anything about playwriting anyway. I had come to get a degree.

  I also took his history and criticism classes, from which I did learn a great deal, though in many instances without realising it. I particularly liked his European Theatre classes, and also classes on American Melodrama, which he conducted in a laid-back manner. We just sat around and had casual conversations about the plays. We all enjoyed his whimsical and farcical humour, which was nevertheless quite deadpan.

  Though he never gave me any feedback on my plays he must have liked them because I often heard him being brutally frank to others about their plays. I didn’t see any reason why he should save my face by keeping quiet. At the same time I didn’t understand why he didn’t praise them outright if he thought they were good. But he did produce and direct one of them as my thesis work. The Road was performed at the Little Theater at Kantner Hall.

  One thing Seabury was always grateful about was that I made him aware of African theatre. He had not known that there was such an animal. His only encounter with Africa was through the tunnel-vision of American media whose reports on Africa comprised only war and famine. For my history and criticism credits I devised an independent study course on African theatre with a long reading list of such playwrights as Robert Serumaga, Femi Osofisan, John Ruganda, Ama Ata Aidoo, Wole Soyinka, Efua Sutherland and many others. He had to read these books in order to supervise and grade my essays. This independent study also helped me by introducing me to many African playwrights whose work I wouldn’t otherwise have read.

  Seabury enriched my life in other ways too. I worked with him when he produced Derek Walcott’s plays The Joker of Seville and O Babylon! It was a great event when Derek Walcott himself came to town to direct his works. It was the first time I had closely observed a professional director at work. You will remember that my own plays were produced and performed in Johannesburg and Cape Town in my absence; I never even got to see them, except for The Hill which went to Lesotho. Athens was so honoured by Walcott’s visit that he was given the key to the city. I haven’t heard of anyone being given the key to the city of Athens since. I wonder what happened to that practice.

  My life as a student at Ohio University, however, was not only confined to the activities of the School of Theater. In fact most of it was out there in the town with the many African students who became my friends. Besides my sojourns at the Graduate, a bar popular with international students, I spent a lot of time at Wilson Abok’s house which was a gathering place for some of us. He and his Motswana girlfriend, Tebogo Molefhe, were always gracious hosts. We sat in their living room until the early hours of the morning and had heated debates on how to rescue Africa from its malaise. And of course such debates could only make sense when accompanied by huge quantities of Miller or Michelob.

  I don’t remember the name of the Japanese student who was so kind as to let me share his room, but I owe him an apology. He was a pleasant, quiet guy who minded his own business and I took advantage of that. Like him, I was a nice guy. But only during the day. In the evenings I went to Abok’s and came back in the middle of the night with my South African friend Simphiwe Hlatshwayo, and held long drunken debates in the room, disregarding my host whose sleep we were disturbing. Then I phoned Keneiloe in Johannesburg at 3:00 a.m. and sighed and laughed and giggled while my roommate was trying very hard to sleep.

  With this kind of behaviour I wouldn’t have lasted that long at the Convo. The guy didn’t kick me out, but his attitude made it obvious that I was no longer a welcome guest. I moved out and shared an apartment with two white American girls whose hygiene was not of the best. They washed their hair in the kitchen sink, which was unheard of where I came from, and kept a small bucket in the kitchen where they dumped their used sanitary pads and tampons. They just left the bucket by the sink for weeks on end until the contents were black in colour and smelled like a dead rat. I have no idea why neither of them thought of dumping it in the dustbin outside. I never saw the girls’ rooms but I can imagine how untidy they were, judging from the fact that some of their clothes and frilly undergarments were scattered all over the floor, even in the corridor and on kitchen floor. They had a well-fed cat that pooed all over the house even though there was a cat litter box in the kitchen. I had to be very careful when I walked in the corridor and in the kitchen. And yet these beautiful girls were talented artists who produced some of the most wonderful intaglio at Siegfried Hall where they were students.

  I wanted to leave and find an apartment of my own but I couldn’t afford it. The stipend from the School of Theater was too small for such a luxury. I couldn’t even afford food sometimes and had to sell my blood for a few dollars to survive. On two occasions my blood was rejected. They didn’t tell me why. I had become anaemic and suffered from dizziness. Maybe I was harvesting too much plasma in order to buy my favourite subs at Rax Beef Sandwiches. Or a few items of groceries and toiletries at the Super Duper Store on Stimson Avenue.

  It was at this time that I remembered Jane Fonda. When we had dinner at the Lesotho Hilton she had said to me, ‘Next time you are in the United States do see me.’ Normally people say such things to be nice, you know, just to make small talk. But I told myself that I didn’t give a damn if she meant it or not, I was going to take her up on that. I had kept her postal address and telephone number in Santa Monica where she lived with her husband Tom Hayden.

  So, I got in touch with her and told her of my predicament. She told me that in fact I had contacted her at the right time because she was planning to make a movie set in South Africa and was looking for the right property. She immediately engaged my services as what she called a script consultant, and sent me a cheque in advance.

  With her money I was able to rent myself a nice basement apartment on East Carpenter Street from Professor Gifford Doxsee. It was fully furnished with a big kitchen, a living room, a bedroom and a laundry room with a washer and a dryer. I lived like a king. I was even able to send flowers to Keneiloe occasionally through Interflora. Now I could entertain as well. Abok had long completed his studies and returned to Kenya. But I had a number of friends from Africa. There was Baratang Mpotokwane from Botswana who was doing her PhD in Education; Zanele Mfono and Simphiwe Hlatshwayo, both from South Africa and both doing African Studies; Mike Kirubi and Macharia Munene both from Kenya and doing PhDs in International Business and History respectively. Another special friend was Augustin Hatar from Rwanda. Hatar is the only one who I met later in life on African soil. He had been the head of the Rwandan broadcasting services during the period that led to the genocide. He was able to escape and found refuge in Tanzania, where he continues to live and teach at the University of Tanzania. He and his wife once visited me at my house in Johannesburg.

  I remember all these people very fondly because we had such wonderful carefree times together, which were nevertheless very intellectually stimulating. I felt for the first time that I was becoming a real scholar. Here my promiscuity ceased, my excitement at discovering sex so late in life had waned, and the only vice that remained was drunkenness.

  In the meantime the South African establishment got to hear that Jane Fonda was planning a movie set in South Africa and became hysterical. Alden Library at Ohio University subscribed to the Sunday Times, published in Johannesburg, and one day I saw the headline: Though not fond of it, Jane wants SA’s story. A columnist by the name of Adrian Monteath wrote:

  I have news of quite extraordinary gravity this morning. Jane Fonda, the famous ageing banshee, wants to write, produce and direct a film about … South Africa. Since her views on the world are only margin
ally less extreme than those of the crazed Redgrave woman, I shudder at the possible result. She has been obsessed with the project since her 1981 visit to Lesotho, when she was ‘held’ at Jan Smuts. There is yet no story for the film, which is still very much in the planning stages. But it is known that she wants to make it in Lesotho.

  Jan Smuts was the airport in Johannesburg, now known as O R Tambo International Airport. I hadn’t known that Jane Fonda had been detained there by the South African authorities when she was in transit to Lesotho.

  The article went on to express the hope that since Fonda had engaged my services as a consultant I would help with the authenticity of the script.

  And this paranoid diatribe was from a supposedly liberal South African English newspaper! You can only imagine what the conservative Afrikaner newspapers were saying.

  There were other things that were happening in southern Africa besides the paroxysm over Jane Fonda. The African students at Ohio University, especially those from the subcontinent, were outraged when they received reports that on December 9, 1982, South African commandos crossed the Mohokare River into Lesotho just before dawn and massacred a number of South African refugees and Lesotho nationals. They called the raid Operation Blanket and claimed it was a pre-emptive strike against ANC terrorists who were preparing a raid of their own into South Africa. For a long time we were in the dark as to who had been killed. I worried about my ANC friends, especially Jobodwana. Newspapers from South Africa only reached us after two weeks, via the Alden Library. I was shocked by the Sunday Times headlines that extolled the raid even though twelve of the forty-two people who were killed were Basotho people who had nothing to do with the ANC. Some of these were women and children, including a woman we grew up with in Mafeteng when her father worked for the education department before he joined the diplomatic service and then became a cabinet minister in Chief Leabua Jonathan’s government. The woman, ’Matumo Ralebitso, allegedly fell from the window when South African soldiers barged into her flat near the Victoria Hotel, guns blazing, looking for Limpho Hani. The rest of the casualties were South African refugees. Apparently the agents of the apartheid government pointed out what they believed to be houses occupied by the so-called ANC insurgents all over the town and its outskirts. A lot of their information was either wrong or outdated and many innocent people died.