by Zakes Mda
As the taxi drives out of the city through the winding highway on the hill, his heart pounds even faster with the anticipation of talking with Noria. He wonders what could have killed her son. A bullet from the police maybe? He has been to funerals of children who died from police bullets. Not long ago he mourned at a funeral of a five-year-old girl. The Nurse explained that a police bullet ricocheted off the wall and hit the child who was playing with her mudpies in the yard of her home. We have seen many such cases. Police bullets have a strange way of ricocheting off the walls of township houses, and when they do, there is bound to be a child about whom they never miss.
No, it can’t be police bullets. Remember that the graveyard quarrel started when the Nurse blamed our own people for killing the boy. Perhaps it was a death that was similar to that of a six-year-old boy he mourned last week. The Nurse told a gruesome story of how the mother and father were sitting in their living-room watching the news on television, when a picture of an unknown corpse flashed on the screen. It was their son who had been missing for the past two days. He had gone to school in the morning and never came back. The parents had asked his schoolmates about him, but they did not know where he was. Then they went to the police but were told, ‘Children go missing every day. There is nothing we can do about it.’
‘You mean you won’t even try to look?’
‘Look where? These children run away from their homes to join terrorists.’
‘But he is only six.’
‘It is the six-year-olds who throw stones and petrol bombs at us, woman. All we can say is that you people must learn to have more control over your children.’
The body of the little boy was discovered in the veld. He had been castrated, and the killer had also cut open his stomach, and had mutilated the flesh from his navel right down to his thighs. The police who were called to the scene said it was the work of a crazed muti killer who preyed on defenceless children in the townships. All his victims, whose ages ranged from two to six, were found without sex organs. The police knew exactly who he was, and had been working for three weeks around the clock trying to track him down. He was a thirty-year-old man from the same township, who had a young woman as his accomplice. Her role was to entice the children to lonely spots, where he butchered them and mutilated their bodies for vital parts that he used for making potent muti. The police turned and asked the onlookers if any of them knew who the dead boy was. But no one knew. They took the grisly corpse away, and it became an item on the evening news. The parents were obviously horrified when they saw their son on television. They went to the police to claim the body.
Since the crazed killer has not been arrested yet, the residents of the townships ask themselves who will die next. But if it was the crazed muti killer who murdered Noria’s son, why were people angry with the Nurse when he publicly displayed his anger with the killers? Why did they say that he was giving ammunition to the enemies of the people: the government and its vigilante groups and its police? Why did they not want reporters from the newspapers to get near Noria? No, it was not the muti killer. No one would have had reservations about condemning the muti killer, and about publicizing the fact that he had struck again. Well, perhaps Noria might tell him what really happened. He will not raise the subject, though. If Noria wants to tell him, she will volunteer the information.
He alights from the taxi at the rank in the middle of the squatter camp. He walks among the shacks of cardboard, plastic, pieces of canvas and corrugated iron. He does not know where Noria lives, but he will ask. Squatter people are a close-knit community. They know one another. And by the way, he must remember that they do not like to be called squatters. ‘How can we be squatters on our own land, in our own country?’ they often ask. ‘Squatters are those who came from across the seas and stole our land.’
The fact that he has become some kind of a spectacle does not bother him. It is his venerable costume, he knows, and is rather proud. Dirty children follow him. They dance in their tattered clothes and spontaneously compose a song about him, which they sing with derisive gusto. Mangy mongrels follow him, run alongside, sniff at him, and lead the way, while barking all the time. He ignores them all, and walks through a quagmire of dirty water and human ordure that runs through the streets of this informal settlement, as the place is politely called, looking for Noria.
3
There she is, Noria, in a rubble of charred household effects next to her burnt down shack. A lonely figure. Tall and graceful. Sharp features. Smooth, pitch-black complexion – what in the village we called poppy-seed beauty. She wears a fading red dress with white polka dots. If it was shorter and brighter Toloki would have sworn that it was the same dress that she used to wear as a little girl back in the village, dishing out pleasures to the community. She is not wearing any shoes, and is standing quite still, as if lost in thought. She hears the noise, and sees Toloki being followed by dancing children and barking dogs. ‘Voetsek! Go away from here!’ she shouts, and the children scamper away laughing. And the dogs flee in shame.
‘They are just children, Noria.’
‘They have no behaviour, those children.’
‘They mean no harm.’
‘They must respect their elders.’
He gives her the flowers. She smiles. He has made Noria smile.
He remembers years ago, when they were children, he was sent to the general dealer’s store to buy yeast. On the way he saw a crowd of people, mostly adults, but a sprinkling of youngsters as well, standing around Noria, feasting on her laughter. Rubber Face Sehole was capering in front of her, making his famous faces, and she was laughing so much that Toloki thought her ribs would be painful. He joined the crowd. But when they saw him they shouted, ‘What does this ugly child of Jwara want here? Go away, Toloki, go away!’ They said that his ugly face would make Noria cry, and that this would spoil their enjoyment. He was furious at this treatment, for Noria had been his playmate when they were younger, and his face had never made her cry. And here, on this Boxing Day, he has painted a smile on Noria’s sad face.
‘You always knew so much about flowers, Toloki. What are these called?’
‘Zinnias.’
‘Thank you very much, Toloki.’
‘I am sorry they don’t smell nicely . . . like roses.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Toloki. They remind me so much of the flowers you used to draw with crayons at school.’
‘I could have put a dash of perfume in each one. But I had left it at my headquarters when I picked them for you.’
‘They are fine the way they are.’
She tells him that she is staying with friends, until she can rebuild her shack. She explains that after killing her son, they came and petrol-bombed her home. She fled with only the clothes on her back. Toloki wonders about the identity of ‘they’. She talks as though she is talking with someone who knows the facts of this tragedy. But he will be discreet. He will not ask too many questions.
She touches his hand. Her hand is warm and slightly damp. Something stirs in him. Something he has not felt in his life. Could it be pity? No. She certainly is not a pitiful figure, in spite of those plaintive eyes. She exudes strength that Toloki can definitely feel. She looks beautiful, this Noria, standing surrounded by debris, holding flowers of different colours. For the first time in his life he sees her as a woman. Not just as Noria the stuck-up bitch, daughter of That Mountain Woman. What he is feeling now is perhaps akin to what people have described as love. But then he made up his mind a long time ago that he was not capable of such feelings. They are common feelings for common people. They are taboo in his vocation, since he has cast himself in the mould of holy men in remote mountain monasteries. He has not had a personal relationship of any kind with a woman since he became a Professional Mourner. Before that, when he had just arrived in the city, he had a number of intimate friendships with many women. He has long forgotten who they were and how they looked. Perhaps he has met some of them in the cemeteries, o
r maybe others have passed him at the quayside as he has watched the cargo ships clumsily disembark sailors into the arms of eager prostitutes. They wouldn’t remember him either, for the salty winds have ravaged his face, leaving deep gullies. There is one thing he never forgets though, by which he can identify each one of them: their moans and screams. Each steamy moan has a life of its own in his memory. These breathless sounds have sustained him through many a drought, and through them unformed children who would never know the warmth of the womb have been spewed on his hand.
‘I shall help you to rebuild, Noria.’
‘You are very kind, Toloki.’
‘Where I live, at the docklands, there is a lot of material that you can use for rebuilding.’
‘How would we get it here?’
‘Plastic and canvas would not be a problem. I can carry them in a bundle in the taxi. Sheets of corrugated iron would present a problem. But one can always find a way.’
‘Let us go to Shadrack’s place. He might help us.’
They walk to another part of the settlement, to visit Shadrack, who is known to his friends as Bhut’Shaddy. There are two shipping containers in his yard. One serves as his house, and the other one is used as a spaza shop. Noria explains that the spaza shop, which means pseudo-shop, because it is not licensed and operates from his home, sells essential groceries such as matches, candles, paraffin and mealie-meal. It is much more expensive than the stores in town, or even in the townships, but it serves a very useful purpose for the residents of the informal settlement as it is close and convenient. Toloki notes that Noria never refers to the area as a squatter camp, or to the residents as squatters. Shadrack, Noria says, is the wealthiest member of the settlement. That is why he lives in a shipping container, instead of a makeshift shelter of newspapers, plastic, canvas and corrugated iron sheets, like the rest of the residents. He recently bought a taxi that conveys commuters between the city and the settlement. He has been blessed with good fortune because he is a good Christian, and is a member of Amadodana, the men’s league of the Methodist Church.
The skorokoro van of the funeral is parked outside. From underneath it, the slight driver he saved from the wedding party bully yesterday emerges. He apologises for his dusty and greasy look, for he has been repairing his van. Then he reaches out and shakes first Noria’s hand, and then Toloki’s. Noria says, ‘We need your help, Bhut’Shaddy. Toloki knows of a place where I can get some material to rebuild my house.’ Shadrack says yes, he would like to help Noria, just as he did yesterday. But she would have to pay for the petrol. ‘I do not have any money,’ Noria says. ‘Even yesterday the burial society paid for the petrol.’ Toloki wants to know how much it will cost, and when he is told the price, he says, ‘I have some money. I’ll pay for the petrol.’ He thinks it is rather steep, but fortunately he can afford it.
‘No, I cannot take your money, Toloki. You need it too.’
‘Take it, Noria. Your need is greater than mine.’
‘But what will you do?’
‘As long as there are funerals, I’ll survive.’
Shadrack laughs. ‘How do people survive on funerals?’ he wants to know. Toloki explains to him, and also for Noria’s benefit, the intricacies of his vocation. ‘Oh, so that is how it works? I have never been to a funeral where there is a Professional Mourner,’ Noria says. Shadrack wants to know why, if his services are to the benefit of humankind, the people did not want him yesterday.
‘Those were people who wanted to hoard all the mourning to themselves. We do come across such greed sometimes.’
‘You did not know it was Noria’s child they were burying?’
‘I did not know. For Noria’s child, I would have mourned free of charge.’
‘I did not know of your profession, Toloki. Homeboys and homegirls say you work as a beggar in the city, and you go to funerals to mooch food off the bereaved.’
‘Those are people who want to dirty my name, Noria. You know that even back in the village they never liked me.’
‘You will have to excuse me, people. We can talk while I repair the van. Then I can drive you to the docklands.’
He gets under his skorokoro van again, and while he is tinkering away, he tells them about the occupational hazards he encounters on a day-to-day basis while trying to improve his life, and the lives of his fellow residents. When he bought the kombi, he says, he was sure that he had cursed hunger away from the door of his house forever. But that kombi has caused him more problems than it is really worth. First he had to struggle to get a taxi licence. He had to join one of the two taxi associations that are at loggerheads with each other. He had to pay bribes to middlemen and to government officials. Then he got the licence, and thought that all his problems were over. They were not. Taxi wars erupted, with the two taxi associations fighting over routes. His driver was gunned down in one of these clashes.
As if this was not enough, his own son was killed by migrants from the hostels. They abducted him, together with three other people they picked up at random in the streets. They took them to the hostel where they set them free and asked them to run away. As they ran, the inmates fired at them to test their guns. His son, who was a matric student, and another young man were instantly killed. ‘They don’t know me, and they don’t know my child. Why did they do it?’ Noria tells him that indeed all our deaths are senseless. ‘And you know, what is worse is that I am of the same ethnic group as those hostel dwellers. The tribal chief who has formed them into armies that harass innocent residents merely uses ethnicity as an excuse for his own hunger for power. I am from the same clan as this blood-soaked tribal chief.’
Toloki remembers that these arguments have come up in some of the funerals he has attended. Various Nurses, and other funeral orators, have blamed the tribal chief for all kinds of atrocities. He has concocted a non-existent threat to his people, telling them that they are at risk from other ethnic groups in the country. Whereas other leaders are trying very hard to build one free and united nation out of the various ethnic groups and races, he thinks he will reach a position of national importance by exploiting ethnicity, and by telling people of his ethnic group that if they don’t fight they will be overwhelmed by other groups which are bent on dominating them, or even exterminating them. Their very existence is at stake, he teaches them. ‘The rotten tribal chief is exploiting ethnicity in order to solidify his power base!’ funeral orators have eruditely explained.
Some members of his ethnic group, especially those from the rural areas who still believe in the tribal authority of chiefs, follow him ardently, and have taken up arms whenever he has called upon them to do so. They are often fired up at rallies by his lyrical praise, and panegyrics, of their superiority as a group ordained by the gods; a chosen people with a history of greatness in warfare and conquest. They have internalised the version of their own identity that depicts them as having inherent aggression. When they attack the residents of squatter camps and townships, or commuters in the trains, they see themselves in the image of great warriors of the past, of whom they are descendants. Indeed the tribal chief, in his rousing speeches, has charged them with what he calls a historic responsibility to their warrior ancestors. Sometimes the police and the security forces assist them in their raids of death and destruction, because this helps to divide the people so that they remain weak and ineffective when they fight for their freedom.
There are many people from the tribal chief’s clan who do not agree with him, and who are eager that the various ethnic groups should not fight, but should unite in their struggle for freedom. Shadrack is one of these people. And he says, ‘You know, long before the bloody tribal chief contrived to use hostel dwellers from our ethnic group to do the dirty work for him, we, the township residents alienated ourselves from these brothers. We despised them, and said they were country bumpkins. We said they were uncivilized and unused to the ways of the city, and we did not want to associate with them. It was easy for the tribal chief to use them
against us, for they were already bitter about the scorn that we were showing them.’
Noria agrees with him. She says that indeed we call them amagoduka, those whose roots are in the rural areas and who return there after their contracts in the city are finished. It was not unusual for a hostel inmate to go for a drink in the township, or to see a girlfriend, only to come back with a stab wound, or as a corpse, for the sole reason that he was a country bumpkin.
Toloki is out of his depth in this discussion. He knows there is war in the land, and has mourned at many a funeral of war casualties. But Noria seems to know more details about this whole matter than he thought possible. She talks with authority, and the man under the van seems to take her views seriously.
Shadrack says the taxi business is affected by this woeful situation. For instance, the chairman of his taxi association is deeply involved in factional violence. His luxury house, which is in the township and not in the informal settlement, is heavily guarded. He is said to support the tribal chief, and maintains close links with the police. He has recruited hostel dwellers as taxi drivers, and has kept legitimate drivers on existing routes out of work.
Taxi owners are required to pay a weekly subscription to the association, but recently they have been refusing to do so, because they have discovered that the money is being used by the chairman to purchase arms. As a result, drivers have been intimidated, several of them have been killed, and scores of taxis have been gutted. Some of the taxis are used for gunrunning in the hostels. ‘I have spoken up against all this,’ Shadrack says, ‘and I hear rumours that they want to discipline me. Some say that my days are numbered.’ He says this so casually, as if there is nothing to worry about when your days are numbered.
At last Shadrack has finished tinkering with his van.
‘Your friend will sit in the back, Noria.’
‘I will sit with him.’
‘No ways. A lady will not sit in the back.’