by Zakes Mda
Don’t be surprised at this; some non-believers do have strange rituals which edify them and fulfil a yearning even when they know there is nothing beyond the grave, and that the friend they are talking to is imaginary. Remember: sometimes there is a void. That’s why we created God and all the other deities in the first place. Humans don’t want a vacuum. I was creating my own spirituality.
After this invented ritual I introduced Gugu to the Bee People, who became her friends as well. Then I took her to Kokstad in the Eastern Cape, a ten-hour drive away, to meet my favourite brother, Monwabisi, and his family. We had a relaxing holiday with him and my cousin Nondyebo, away from the mess I had caused in Johannesburg.
On our way back we saw a road sign for the town of Estcourt in KwaZulu-Natal. I remembered the beef and pork sausages that I used to eat with my father when I had joined him in exile in Lesotho. We drove to the town and looked for the factory that manufactured them. I was going to buy them in memory of my father. But we learnt that they no longer manufactured that brand. No wonder I no longer saw them on the shelves.
I took her to Mafeteng to meet my mother. They had met before when she was still a student at Roma fourteen years before. She hit it off with my mother immediately. She told me just before we left: ‘I can see you’re happy at last, Zani.’
I asked Gugu to join me for a few days when I was invited to the University of Cape Town as a visiting writer, a few weeks before I left for America. She was there when I had a showdown with my publishers. Mary Reynolds, the commissioning editor at Oxford University Press, was a very charming lady and we got along famously. But I was not happy with the woman who was editing The Madonna of Excelsior. I had a history with her because she was the one who had edited my very first novel, Ways of Dying. She had changed a modifier I had used and had substituted it with ‘enchanting’. I hated that word in my book because I felt that if the situation I had portrayed was enchanting at all it should just enchant without instructing the reader to be enchanted. It was as if you had a magical realist situation and then you wrote ‘the characters magically floated in the air’. That would be ridiculous. Strange and unusual events in the book should be deadpan without calling attention to themselves through silly modifiers. But it was my first novel and I had to go along with what that editor wanted. Now, in this new novel she was insisting that I change the portrayal of the Afrikaner characters and explain things and psychologise the characters when I wanted to write a naive novel in keeping with the naive paintings of Father Frans Claerhout that I had harnessed in my storytelling. I was no longer a first-time novelist and I knew my rights. I demanded that they fire the editor from working on my novel. Mary Reynolds came to my office at the University of Cape Town with the editor to plead with me not to fire her. The editor assured me she would stop trying to put her own stamp on my novel. I agreed that she could go ahead and complete the job. After all, she did have some useful suggestions. For instance, I had made the Afrikaner pastor wear a dog-collar. She corrected that because she knew that in the Dutch Reformed Church pastors did not wear dog-collars. I hadn’t known that.
I might add that the editor did have her revenge. Many years later when a Yale University history student accused me of plagiarism in The Heart of Redness because he didn’t understand the workings of intertextuality, he quoted this woman as the Oxford University Press editor who told him that I was stubborn and was not amenable to correction by editors; otherwise the plagiarism could have been avoided.
Anyway, this is a digression. I was telling you about me and Gugu. It was as though I was born again. Not in the crass Christian sense. In the sense of: Hey, I didn’t know that there could be so much laughter in one lifetime! Even my daughter Thandi said, ‘Ntate, Sis’ Gugu has done wonders for you. You are no longer an angry man. Your face is open and bright and shines with joy.’
My ex-wife Mpho agreed with her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FROM THIS POINT, THE past has collided with the present. They have merged into one. We are today’s people, and our collective life unfolds in the present.
WE ARE MET AT the Columbus International Airport by a young man, a graduate student at Ohio University, who tells us he has been assigned the pleasure of driving us to Athens. We are in America and the kids are excited about it. They have heard so much about the country from the South African entertainment media which tend to paint it as some kind of paradise. Zukile has long forgotten that he was once in Connecticut and Vermont.
We wanted to bring Thandi as well, but the American Consulate refused to grant her a visa on the basis that she could not be my dependant since she was over the age of twenty-one. What I didn’t like was the attitude of the consulate official who, when I tried to plead Thandi’s case, threatened that he would deny us all our visas if I didn’t shut up and be grateful that he was kind enough to process our applications. I thought that was insulting and I exploded right there in front of everyone.
‘I have my own country which is free and beautiful,’ I said. ‘If you don’t give me the visa I don’t care. I’ll just stay in South Africa and enjoy my beautiful life.’
Every visa applicant present was aghast. No one talks to an American consulate official like that. They were dying to be granted visas to America and here I was playing with my chances. To tell you the truth, I was already having second thoughts about going to America. I hoped he would throw the papers back at me and say, ‘Fuck off then, I am not granting you a visa.’ Then I would happily drive back to my house in Weltevredenpark and resume my life. If Adele pestered me about going to America I would smile and say, ‘Sorry, but the Americans don’t want me in their country.’
But he didn’t. He just looked at me and shook his head. He processed the papers and told me to come for the visas the following week.
We load our ten big suitcases and bags in a fifteen-seater bus; I had specifically told Ken Daley, the head of the English Department, that I was coming with my whole tribe and its baggage. We have just driven out of Columbus on Route 33 when Zenzi spots a familiar fast-food place and exclaims, ‘Look, Daddy, they have McDonald’s in America too.’
The freeway from the airport to Athens doesn’t look familiar at all. There have been lots of improvements since the last time I was here, eighteen years ago. We pass through more built-up areas during the almost two-hour drive. I never thought I’d be back here. I never thought I would be back in the academy. Period. After seven years as a full-time writer I was enjoying the freedom. I could come and go and travel the world as I pleased. Now I am going to be restricted by university schedules and some of the silly meetings that I had come to dread the last time I had formal associations with a university.
It is getting dark already but the kids’ excitement is unabated. Adele is talking with the driver who is curious to know about Africa. It is obvious that his view is that it is one big jungle out there. But I am not paying attention to their discussion. I am thinking of an email that I inadvertently sent to Ken Daley. After he had made his offer I wrote to Mbulelo Mzamane who had alerted me to this post: Before I respond to the Ohio University people: do you think this is a reasonable offer? The figures you gave me in your previous email were for a semester rather than an academic year. I have no problem in accepting it provided it is reasonable by American standards because I do not want to be taken as cheap labour from Africa. But foolishly I sent the email to Ken Daley instead of Mbulelo. That’s what happens when you click ‘send’ without making sure that the mail is addressed to the correct person. I only realised my mistake when Daley responded to the effect that they regarded the offer as especially generous for a one-year appointment – far more than any other one-year term person is making here and more than many of our permanent faculty. I was embarrassed, although it was good to know that I was not cheap labour. I wrote to apologise and to explain that the letter was not intended for him, and also that I was glad to accept the offer.
After I had told Mbulelo about my gaffe he e
ncouraged me to take the post even if I were not satisfied with the offer because it was just for one year. It’s all right to take it up Zakes for the leverage we can get out of it, not least because of Adele’s case. Like me, he was very concerned that Adele should get a place and do her PhD.
Anyway, I am here now and there is no turning back.
Once in Athens the driver first takes us to Kroger to buy groceries and then delivers us to our new apartment. It is a fully furnished double-storey red brick duplex, one of two buildings that look similar. A wall separates us from an Indian family comprising a young man who, we later learn, teaches at the business school, his wife and their three-year-old son.
It is a comfortable apartment, but it is nothing like our grand home with its sprawling garden and swimming pool in a quiet Roodepoort suburb. I hope Xoli Norman will take care of our house. He is the playwright who attended my workshops at the Market Theatre. I helped him develop his play Hallelujah! for the stage. He has agreed to stay in our house and take care of it for the year I’ll be away. Resentment begins to build in me. Not only about my house, but about the beekeeping project in the Eastern Cape, the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust in Sophiatown, the Market Theatre, and all the opportunities that could be accruing to me by virtue of being a black man in a new South Africa. I chuckle to myself at this last bit. I am not part of the politically connected black elite. I have no such opportunities in the first place. Instead, the rulers of South Africa, even those that are most revered by the world, go out of their way to marginalise me. But still, despite their attempts to slam all doors in my face, I had created my own life as a full-time writer for seven years, and now I am giving all that up.
I hope Xoli Norman will look after my original artwork on the living room walls and the two wooden sculptures in the front garden. One is a woman standing like a tree and the other is of a stylised Chris Hani lying prostrate on the ground. I only knew that it was Chris Hani because there was the word HANI carved out on the chest. I bought them from an artist in Newtown and it took a heavy-duty truck to deliver them.
The driver brings me back to the present.
‘These are the Ridges,’ he tells us. ‘These houses used to be the doctors’ quarters for the famous mental hospital that used to be here. The place is reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of inmates who died here. Up the hill there’s a cemetery where they are buried.’
I don’t know if it’s wise to be telling us about ghosts; this is our first night in a strange house.
On the second floor there are three bedrooms and a bathroom. Adele and I agree that we will share a bedroom so that the kids can have one each. Nothing conjugal is happening between us at this stage, which has been the case for a while now. We are – or at least I am – used to it. The first thing we both notice is that there is no en suite bathroom or walk-in closet, which is what we were used to at our house in Roodepoort. For me, this is no big deal. Remember, even though my father was a lawyer, I grew up on the poor side of town. Some of the houses my parents rented didn’t even have running water.
It is night already so we gather in Zenzi’s room and look out of the window. We switch off the lights so that we can see outside without being distracted by our own images. I tell them that I am hoping we’ll see one of the famous ghosts. Our backyard is a public park. In the distance we can see the lights of cars on the road. A group of animals comes prancing into the yard.
‘Daddy, look! The buck-like creatures in our garden!’ said Zukile.
There are two adult creatures and a young one.
All the resentment that has been building in me about being here from the time we arrived at the airport begins to dissipate. We live with the buck-like creatures and my children are thrilled about it. Perhaps things are not that bad after all.
The next morning John, our Indian neighbour, and John, his little son, tell us the buck-like creatures are in fact deer.
That day I go to East Elementary School where the kids had already been admitted and meet the principal, Mr Denny Boger. The kids will travel by bus to and from school. He personally comes in the school bus the next morning to make sure that Zenzi and Zukile know how to change buses at Morrison Elementary and take the correct bus to their school. I am quite amazed to see a principal who takes such a special interest in the students. Where I come from principals don’t give a damn. They just sit in the office and pretend to be important. I see Mr Boger after school helping students cross the road to their buses, and even cleaning one of the buses. What dedication!
When the kids have settled at their school I go to mine and try to get settled as well. The English Department is on the third floor in Ellis Hall. I have been allocated the office of a professor who is on sabbatical for the whole academic year. I meet Ken Daley but we don’t talk about my gaffe. He is a very nice, helpful man who even invites my family to his house out there in the woods. I meet my colleagues and find that they are a decent bunch of people, many of them dedicated scholars with national and international profiles. But, of course, like every university, one does come across instances of pettiness, people guarding their little empires with their lives, and a fair amount of backstabbing and backbiting. There are those who take themselves seriously to the extreme despite their meagre contribution to scholarship and creativity. This situation, however, is not an aberration; it is inherent in academia the world over. I have found it at every institution of higher learning with which I have been associated in Africa, Europe and the Americas.
My friend the ex-model Nakedi Ribane once told me that I have a reputation of aloofness out there in the real world. My outsiderness continues unabated. I do my job to the best of my ability as long as everyone understands that I am not your conventional professor. I just want to teach, consult with my students for individual tutoring and advising, and then go home to write and paint. I am not looking for anything more from the academy. I don’t want to be the head of the English Department one day, and then the dean, and then the president of the university. I just want to teach and create and be left alone.
And at the moment I am writing the second chapter of The Whale Caller. I wrote the first chapter in Johannesburg. I am much enthused because my two novels, The Heart of Redness and Ways of Dying, have been receiving great reviews in newspapers throughout the United States. The Heart of Redness even featured as a cover story in the New York Times Book Review. Both books become the Editor’s Choice. They are also featured in the weekday New York Times.
I am allocated a graduate fiction class to teach, which I think is baptism by fire. These are PhD and master’s students who have done workshops all their university lives and I have never been in a creative writing workshop, let alone taught one. I am not counting the one conducted by Marc Crawford in Maseru during my wild days. When I tell my students that I have taught some playwriting but never fiction, they are even more enthusiastic about my classes. I find that they are prepared for me, and most of them have read my novels. Some have only read the reviews. But they think it is wonderful to be taught by someone who has not been ‘polluted’ by the workshop system.
‘Yours is a fresh approach,’ one of them, John Kachuba, tells me.
I realise that some of my students are highly experienced as writers. For instance, Elly Williams has a novel – under the pseudonym E W Summers – for which she received a one hundred thousand dollar advance. I have never received a hundred thousand dollar advance. John Kachuba has also published widely and has an instructional book on how to write humour. I am wondering, what are these guys doing here learning how to write?
These two in particular become more than just students, but friends. They are so enamoured with my style of teaching that they take other classes of mine which have nothing to do with creative writing. One such class is titled Narratives of Memory, Truth and Reconciliation: South Africa and Rwanda. I introduce them for the first time in their lives to the works of other writers outside the United States such as J M Coetzee, Antji
e Krog, Njabulo Ndebele, Veronique Tadjo, Goretti Kyomuhendo and many others. Later, I supervise Elly’s PhD.
My teaching does not confine itself to the Ohio University campus. I fly to Switzerland to conduct workshops on Fiction in the Classroom for the Swiss Association of Teachers of English in Zurich, Switzerland. Here I am hosted by a wonderful couple, Ulrich Gerber and his wife, Doris. I am impressed by their love for each other. But they also love The Madonna of Excelsior and South Africa. They have many stories to tell about the country, which they visit every other year.
I also tour the United States, courtesy of my New York publishers, promoting my two novels and reading at the Miami Book Fair, at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and at the Du Bois Center at Harvard University.
To the consternation of my publishers, I have to cancel other venues that they have already booked because Adele decides to return to South Africa to complete a project she was doing for a private company as a consultant in educational programming for the SABC. She also tells me that she has to consult with her lawyers about our divorce. I look after the kids until she returns after a month or so.
One of the first things we do after buying an old red Nissan is to drive to Columbus in search of my brother Sonwabo. Thanks to Bob Edgar’s Internet detective work, he discovered through some letters to the editor of the Columbus Dispatch which Sonwabo wrote on some local political issue, that he was living in Columbus. My mother is glad to hear that at least he is still alive, and asks me please to look for him. I am going to persist this time and will not give up as I did on my previous sojourns in the United States. I have written to him via the Columbus Dispatch and he has responded, so now I have his address.