I arrived wide-eyed and hopeful, trying to ignore my sadness, pulling at some of the reasons I had wanted to leave home and yes, the thought of medical school helped. I couldn’t wait for that part to begin.
As the taxi made its way up the hill towards the university I watched the animals grazing at the foot of the mountain, the university’s stately buildings behind them. Cape Town is first-world-city-meets-jungle, an old colonialist city world both lovely and unsettling. I watched the wildebeest, so comical and ungraceful compared to other animals. The Khoi said that it was formed from all the leftovers after the creator had finished making the other animals. But just then they looked quite peaceful, going about their business, and behind the noise of the cars on the road below, they were so quiet as to seem mysterious, eerie.
Further up and closer to the mountain, a mist rose up steadily like a curtain, unveiling Devil’s Peak, the rocky mountain on which the university stood. The harmonious union of the wild and the city drew me in, if only because of its strangeness and vast difference from the flat and dry urban landscape that I had just left behind. When I caught my first glimpse of the ivy-covered buildings, a chill ran down my back. I was finally here.
I saw endless possibilities. Maybe this was where my life would finally feel complete. Maybe this was where I would stop feeling that pieces of it were always falling off as I walked through different doors.
And at first the city seemed to welcome us all with open arms. Smuts Hall was where we would stay, one of the two residences on upper campus. The university had been divided into three: upper, middle, and lower campus, and its buildings seemed to conform in elegance and stateliness to those distinctions, so that “upper” actually seemed to refer to upper class. Not unlike the township then, where the wealthiest were at the top of the hill.
I suppose as we were boys from St Joseph’s, the brother school of some upper-class British boarding schools, it seemed like the natural choice for the university to house me and some of my schoolmates at Smuts. Upper class schools led to upper class housing. Fuller, situated across a stone path, was for the girls. Smuts didn’t have a dining hall, so all our meals would be taken at Fuller. In that first week I would hear guys call it “our point of entry.”
I threw my bags on the floor and jumped on top of my bed as soon as I shut the door to my new room. Light flooded through the sparsely furnished space, a small one that would belong to me only for the first year—at least—and what I wanted to do here, who I wanted to do it with, could remain my secret if I wanted. As I saw it, what UCT had to offer was mine for the taking. It was so large and sprawling, I thought it the perfect place to hide and to seek the kind of company I desired. In fact, looking back now, I’d say I’ve never before or since approached anything with such stealth, caution and unparalleled determination.
It was sheer good fortune then that I met Rodney Myburg during Freshers’ Week. The Black student body being so small and close-knit, I guess it makes sense now that it would be a White guy with whom I escaped. Short and skinny, all his pants just a little too big for him, Rodney seemed to be waiting for me the day we met. He had a grubby look suggesting he was so easy-going that he might pull out a guitar in an instant and start strumming. He wore his sun-burnt blonde hair a bit longer than most guys, letting it cover his ears and grow down to his chin, and he was never without his leather bracelets. I found his look to be a refreshing change from the people I normally hung around with, and from the other medical-school students, who looked so serious they drew no interest from me and I wondered if I would ever get to know any of them.
It was Tuesday when I met him, our third full day at UCT, and I was late meeting my friends. We had spent the previous night in a restaurant in Muizenberg as part of the Freshers’ Week festivities. In the middle of doing tequila shots I had watched my friends watching girls, while I stole glances at good-looking guys. Everyone had generally had a very good time. But it had been my first time drinking tequila and that Tuesday morning I had a terrible hangover. So I had woken up later than I was supposed to, missing breakfast and a bus to somewhere I couldn’t remember. Then I had gone in search of one of the university’s cafeterias and bought myself an egg and mayo sandwich. I walked with it in one hand, my feet moving with caution, my eyes on the steps of Jammie, the hub of student life. It took no time to understand that this was the sun-tanning, people-watching centre of the university, where people lounged around chatting, reading, or scouting out their next date. Drama students, in capes and black boots despite the heat, business students in jeans too high and shirts tucked in, and political science people arguing about the state of the country.
All I wished for was a pair of sunglasses and a quiet corner. When I found a spot near a young woman reading, I opened my sandwich and took in the rest of the campus. The world looked startlingly beautiful from up on the mountain. It was calm, refreshing. And even as the memory of Sediba and the previous few weeks stabbed at me, I insisted to myself that I had escaped a place I had never really fitted in.
Rodney sat two steps ahead smoking a cigarette and looking slightly dazed, not entirely sober. He had an easy smile, his long hair swept in that careful side sweep meant to look effortless but that actually takes some hair gel and a bit of skill to achieve. His fingers were long in spite of his height and his jeans grazed the floor of the steps even as he was sitting.
He was looking up at me and I smiled at him and started to unwrap my sandwich. It didn’t look fresh.
“You’re not going to eat that!” I heard him say with a chuckle. I looked back up, squinting against the sun.
“I don’t have a choice. I just bought it.”
He shook his head and took a drag from his cigarette and then offered me one from a pack lying next to him. He stood up to come sit next to me.
“Have a drag and I’ll show you proper food.”
I smiled at hearing the skinniest boy I had come across so far telling me about proper food. I waved away the cigarette. “No thanks, I need to eat first.” I took a bite of the sandwich and made a face. The guy, with his hand on his mouth and his cigarette burning away between his fingers, started laughing so hard I thought it might hurt his stomach.
“Spit it out. There’s the rubbish. Spit it, spit it!” He was pointing at a rubbish bin just below the steps to our right. I stood up and ran to spit into it, hurling the sandwich in as well.
When I turned around he was standing behind me, his old leather postman bag swung across his chest and his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans.
“Come with me.” He didn’t wait for me to answer, just turned around and started walking and I followed him down the steps.
“Rule number one: don’t eat on campus except for the doughnuts. Now those are worth every cent.” Again, he gave me his charming broad grin and, extending his hand to me he said, “I’m Rodney, by the way. You can call me Rod. My mother calls me Roddie, which I don’t appreciate.”
I laughed and shook his hand. “Did anyone call you Rodz in high school? I’m Kabelo.”
“Yes! Black guys! You’re always adding a Z or an S to people’s names. Then you Anglicize your own names. Zukiswa is Zuks, Tebogo is Tebz. Mpumi is Pomz. Why?!”
I said, “I have no idea.”
“Then you must be Kabz . . . and you don’t know about the food here, I see.”
“Have you been here a long time?”
He shook his head. “Not a long time. Just long enough to have spat out a few things myself. I once had something marked ‘turkey sandwich’ but I swear it was a cow’s arse or something.” I had thought that we were going all the way down to Rondebosch on the main road for food, but at the bottom of the steps just above Fuller and Smuts, he turned left and took out a set of keys from his pocket.
“Oh, you have a car!” I said, staring at the red Golf VW whose lights had just beeped when he clicked his k
eys.
“Yup. Because, one: I got accepted into medical school. Two: I promised to never do drugs again.”
We both started laughing. Rodney had a loud, easy, from-the-belly laugh that was infectious. He threw down his cigarette butt and gestured for me to get into the car.
“You didn’t stop the drugs, I gather?”
“Nope. But the promise got me this car. Do you like it?”
I nodded.
“It’s a car, what’s not to like?”
“I feel the same way.”
We drove down the one-way street out of campus, turned right and entered Rhodes Drive. Rodney turned up techno music.
“Hey,” I said in an attempt to block out the awful music, “I’m also here for medical school. You’re the first person I’ve met so far who is doing the same thing.”
Rodney shook his head. “Not my first choice. But it is the family business.” There was something hopeless in his tone and there was the slight yet unmistakable droop of his shoulder.
“Yes, my father’s a doctor too.”
“Really? Your father is?” His surprise irked me but I tried to ignore it, since I wanted to have a nice time and I was eager to eat something better than what I had just had.
“Where are we going?” I asked, my voice rising.
“To eat! I know a place.”
“Are you from Cape Town?”
“Yes, all over Cape Town really. My parents have a few houses. That’s why I’m not in res.”
The little car went roaring up the mountain as Rodney tried to change gears but his movements were so uncertain that it made for a bumpy ride. Below us the many levels of Cape Town spread out. We were above the campus, which was above Rondebosch, Mowbray, and Observatory, and then we were turning away from the city and towards the water.
The sound of the gears changing was like a rough shove of furniture against stone floors.
“How many times have you driven this car?” I asked him, amused.
He gave me a sly smile and shook his head. “Without my brother? Um . . . twice. The first time was when I drove to campus this morning!”
Then we were going up hills, the ocean below, passing a much posher part of town, which I vaguely recognized from my family’s visits to the city.
“This is Clifton, right?” I asked. Rodney nodded with a grin.
“The parents’ humble abode—one of many—is about to present itself.”
Soon the hill was getting steeper and steeper and the road more winding. I was worried the car would roll back down with Rodney’s insecure gear changes, but suddenly we were in front of a large garage on a very quiet road. When he pressed a button above him, the garage doors slowly went up like a theatre curtain and we drove in. There was another car in there but it was covered with a white, polyester cover. When he saw my curiosity he said, “That’s my father’s Porsche. Or my mother’s. Depends who has the keys.”
“Nice.”
We went down the stairs from the garage and into the house, which seemed to descend further and further down and forward, towards the ocean. There were windows for walls. Light was all around.
“This is a nice spot,” I said, looking at the magnificent view of the ocean from the sitting room.
Rodney had gone to the kitchen, taking out several types of cheeses, cold meats, and what looked like leftover salads—then he took some sliced bread from the bread bin and put it all in a pile on the kitchen island, which was itself large, like the sofas and the tables and the TVs. He now took out a small plastic packet of grass and started rolling it into a piece of paper, moving with the focus and precision of a seamstress, barely registering my question. I was hungry but didn’t want to be rude, so I stood across from him, separated by the delicious spread of food, my mouth watering. I hadn’t eaten since the previous day.
“Eat as much as you can,” Rodney said, eyes still on the rolling paper.
I put together a sandwich with cheese and slices of turkey, worried he might have noticed how quickly I had done it and that he might think I had never seen food like this before. When I was finished eating I took puffs of the weed and lay back on the sofa. Rodney stood up and went to the kitchen, and to my surprise, rolled another one.
“Still going?” I asked in a daze. With me it only took two puffs and I was out, mind swirling with funny images: trees all around me, everything wrong side up, talking animals. I loved being here: Everything I needed to forget was even farther away: Kasi, my parents, Sediba. I could stay.
“Do you come here a lot?” I asked him.
“Whenever I need food,” Rodney laughed and offered me a few more puffs. I’d reached my limit, but what the hell. I accepted.
“Do you cook?”
“No, we pay someone. She lives in Juju Le Toi.”
“Where?”
“You know. Gugulethu. I heard someone call it that the other day. Thought it was funny.”
“Juju Le Toi,” I sounded it out in a drugged haze. “Juju Le Toi,” I kept saying. It made Rodney laugh and he fell off the sofa, shoulder hitting the coffee table. I could see it wasn’t the first time.
“Oh, Monsieur! Say it again. It turns me on,” he was saying as he rolled around on the floor. Soon I was laughing so much that I was also on the floor, and our day turned into an evening and the evening turned into the night. We would smoke then eat and repeat. He seemed to have an endless supply of zol. At one point we were feasting on gherkins from a large jar that we found at the back of the fridge. The swoosh of the waves outside sounded so soothing that I put my finger on my lips and said to Rodney, “Sshhh . . . the sea is putting us to sleep. Sssshhh.” He also put his finger on his lips and said in a whisper, “Ssshhh, I hear it. I hear it.”
We didn’t leave the house until the early hours of the morning, to search for more food.
This was the first place I had been to in a very long time where I felt at ease. Rodney dropped me off at the res sometime after lunch and I slept through the afternoon, in my dream swimming in the ocean outside Rodney’s house. Sometimes his house was my parents’ home in Kasi before turning back into Rodney’s, and then back again. I felt sad when just as I was about to step into the shower, Mohale, an old school mate and one of the guys in my Res flat, poked his head round the door. “Hey Kabz? Your parents have phoned about ten times. I spoke to your mom, she says you haven’t phoned home much since you arrived.”
He sounded disapproving , and I was embarrassed. He stopped to think a minute and then, “Actually, where have you been? You’re not the sort of bloke to just disappear and I haven’t seen you since Monday night.” He stepped into the next shower, turned it on and spoke above the water’s noise. “Have you not been feeling well?”
“I think it was those tequilas that first night. I’m still recovering.”
Mohale laughed out aloud. The thought that he believed me brought on a familiar feeling of satisfaction followed by disgust with myself. Yoh! I could lie. I could lie so well that sometimes I even convinced myself that, in a way, when I really thought about it, it wasn’t really a lie.
I pushed aside the guilt, saying I would phone my parents, but I couldn’t stop hoping that Rodney would come and find me, because now the house on the hill overlooking the beach was the only place I wanted to be.
The sun had already gone down by the time I finally steeled myself and made my way down to the phones in the poorly lit basement below our rooms. I knew my mother would still be at the shop and my father would be at the surgery, so I had to make two phone calls. I played with the coins in my hand and bit my lip, knowing that what I was about to do was the easiest and most cowardly thing. I phoned our home line and let it ring, left a message and put down the phone.
Walking back upstairs I kept thinking: You can have a whole life that people close to you
know nothing about.
Longing for some fresh air, I went to sit outside on a small bench near the main entrance to Smuts. Students were out, standing in groups or sitting alone, some gathered around the Cecil John Rhodes statue, talking with old friends and getting to know some new ones. The evening was thick with summer heat as is typical for February. I leaned back against the old stone of the residence wall, feeling it cool my back through my thin cotton shirt. I didn’t smoke cigarettes very often, but at that moment I wanted to be holding one between my fingers, just to have something to do. It worried me that to passersby I might look lost and in need of company; people don’t like the burden of being needed, feeling they have to make an effort towards some lonely fresher. So I struck a pose that I hoped made me look aloof and was glad I had my sunglasses this time to cement the effect, even as there was no sun. I listened to the chatter around me, piecing bits and pieces of conversations, working out where I belonged—if anywhere. But I was too jittery, the guilt getting the better of me as I remembered Mohale saying my mother was worried. So then I did have to get up again and phone home and this time I made an honest effort.
As I dialled with trembling fingers I willed my voice to be cheerful. You’re never far enough, I thought.
My mother’s voice was hoarse as it tended to be when she was upset. She couldn’t say she was angry, you had to think she was sick and feel worried and then guilty for not checking on her, that was the point.
“I’m just thinking now we should just come.”
Someone had left a piece of paper above the phone: “Lilian, E Flat, room 6.”
I felt it between my fingers. It was about that time. Not even a week had passed and they needed to get away from each other, come find me and work on . . . what? My schooling? How clean my room was? Who I was dating? My mother was nothing if not relentless, so saying she couldn’t come would have been useless.
So I said: “When?” and started preparing myself.
The day they arrived I felt twitchy, trying to remember if Rodney and I had made firm plans as I saw him walking up the steps on his way to Smuts.
Such a Lonely, Lovely Road Page 5