Ways of Dying

by Zakes Mda

  ‘You are up so early in the morning, Noria.’

  ‘I am going to help Madimbhaza with the children. My God, Toloki! I wouldn’t have known you in those clothes.’

  ‘These are my civilian clothes, Noria.’

  ‘You look strange in them. I am used to your mourning uniform.’

  She does not ask what brings him here so early in the morning. It is as if she has been expecting him all along. She invites him to push his trolley into the shack, and to make himself comfortable on the floor. The donkey blankets in which she has slept are still spread on the floor, and Noria says he can sit on them. But Toloki respects the bedding of a lady, and sits on the floor, away from the blankets.

  Noria tells him that Madimbhaza has many children, some of whom are physically handicapped. She goes to their shack to help her friend wash these children, and since it is Sunday today, to get them tidied up and off to church. After this she will attend a meeting of the women’s organization that is trying to improve conditions for everyone at the settlement. Toloki is welcome to come if he is interested in seeing the work she does in the community.

  ‘I’ll come next time.’

  ‘It is fine with me. I’ll be gone for most of the day. Look around and see what you can prepare for yourself.’

  ‘I’ll catch up on my sleep. I was on the road for the whole night.’

  Noria leaves, and Toloki takes out his own blanket from the trolley. He spreads it on the floor and drifts into sleep. His eyes glide over the pictures on the wall. Perhaps he should cover the ceiling with pictures of furniture, and beautiful houses, and serene gardens as well. When sleeping on one’s back, one should be able to take a walk in the garden. Just like in his shack when he first came to the city almost twenty years ago.

  He remembers his first shack. It was in another settlement, some distance from this one. He has passed there sometimes, and has seen that the settlement has since been upgraded. Proper houses have been built, and it is now a township, and not a shanty town – as squatter camps or informal settlements were called in those days. There are streets and schools and shopping centres. But when he first came to the city, the settlement was just quagmire and shacks.

  He had joined homeless people who defiantly built their shacks there against the wishes of the government. Bulldozers came and destroyed the settlement. But as soon as they left, the structures rose again. Most of the people who persisted in rebuilding now have proper houses there. Toloki would have a decent house there as well if he had not decided to follow a new path that involved sacrifice, self-denial and spiritual flagellation.

  In his old shack, he had plastered pictures from magazines and newspapers on the walls, just as he has done in Noria’s. The difference is that his pictures were mostly black and white, whereas Noria’s are all in full colour. They make the room look much brighter, and more luxurious. Sleeping here in Noria’s shack, it is as if the clock has turned back. He can see himself vividly, eighteen or so years ago, wearing spotlessly white overalls and an apron, grilling the sausages that are known as boerewors.

  When Toloki arrived in the city, he had nowhere to stay. He had no job either. But he was determined not to be reduced to begging. He had heard when men talked in the village that many of those who came to the city worked as labourers at the harbour. Or on fishing trawlers. The men told stories of sea adventures, as if they themselves were sailors. They bragged of a world that Toloki had never imagined, even for a day, he would see with his own eyes, let alone be part of. So when he came to the city, he asked people how he could get to the ships.

  Toloki got part-time jobs loading ships. At night he slept at the docklands, or on a bench at the railway station. He washed himself in public toilets. In those days, they did not allow people of his colour onto any of the beaches of the city, so he could not carry out his ablutions there, as he does today.

  He made friends with some of the labourers, and together they went to the townships, and to the shanty towns that were mushrooming on the outskirts of the city. They visited women, and joined in drinking parties. He never really had a head for alcoholic drinks. But sometimes he would drink so that his mates would not say he was a weakling. Real men drank in those days, and it was a disgrace for anyone who professed to be a man to shun the fire waters.

  It was during one of those drinking sprees that he learnt of the move by homeless people to establish another shanty town on an empty piece of land outside the city. Everybody in the shebeen was agitated. The government was refusing to give people houses. Instead, they were saying that people who had qualifying papers had to move to a new township that was more than fifty miles away from the city. How were people going to reach their places of work from fifty miles away? And yet there was land all over, close to where people worked, but it was all designated for white residential development. Most people did not even have the necessary qualifying papers. Their presence was said to be illegal, and the government was bent on sending them back to the places it had demarcated as their homelands.

  The people decided that they were going to move en masse, and unilaterally take this land on the outskirts of the city, and build their shacks there. This was Toloki’s opportunity to get himself a house. He joined the settlers, and allocated himself a small plot where he constructed his shack.

  That was the shack that he decorated with newspapers and magazines. He was very proud of it, for it was the first property that was his alone. He was very angry when bulldozers came and destroyed it. But like the rest of the residents, he immediately rebuilt it. Sometimes state-paid vigilantes would set some of the shacks on fire, but again the shanty town was resilient.

  After about a year of his doing part-time work, or piece jobs as they called them, things changed at the harbour. Times were difficult. Jobs were hard to come by. Fortunately, Toloki had saved enough money to set himself up in business.

  He applied for a hawker’s permit from the city council, and bought himself a trolley for grilling meat and boerewors. It was a four-wheeled trolley with a red-and-white canvas canopy hanging above it. There was a grill on one end, with a gas cylinder underneath it. In the middle were two small trays into which he put mustard and tomato sauce. At the other end was another tray for bread rolls. Mostly he put mealie-pap on this tray, as most of his customers were working people, who did not care for slight meals such as boerewors in rolls. They wanted something more solid, like pap and steak.

  Toloki conducted his trade in the central business district of the city. He had many customers, some of whom would come all the way from the docklands to buy their lunch from him. He knew how to spice steak in such a way that it was suitable for the taste buds of men who were tortured by the demons of a hangover. His was the first business of that type, and he had no competition. As a result, he made a lot of money. You must remember that this was in the early days, before such street businesses became fashionable. Today there is a proliferation of them in the streets of every city in the land.

  He left his shack in the mornings and caught a train to the city. Trains were still safe those days. Preachers preached about eternal damnation in them, and passengers sang hymns and clapped their hands. Souls were saved in the trains, not destroyed. The only nuisance was the pickpockets. In the city he first went to the butchery to buy meat and boerewors, and then to the bakery where he bought bread rolls. He brought the pap, which he cooked on his primus stove at home, in a big plastic bag. Then he went to the Jewish shop where he stored his trolley overnight for a small rental. He pushed his trolley to his usual corner, which the customers already knew. He wore his white overalls and an apron, and soon the air was filled with the spicy and mouth-watering aroma of grilling meat. From midday onwards, a line of hungry people would form, and his pockets bulged with profits.

  He was able to furnish his shack. Soon he was going to build himself a real house. Then he was going to send for his mother in the village. At that time, Jwara had not yet completed the process of dying. He was
still in his workshop staring at his figurines, but we had already given up taking offerings of fruit and food to him. Toloki did not know what was happening to Jwara. Nor did he care. He was only interested in looking after his mother in her old age.

  It was not to be. One day, business was particularly brisk. He ran out of meat. There was no one he could send to the butchery, so he chained his cart to a pole on the corner of the street for half an hour while he went to buy meat. When he came back, his cart was nowhere to be seen. He heard that city council employees had used bolt cutters to remove the chain and had taken away his trolley.

  Toloki immediately reported the matter to the officer in charge of the informal trading department of the city council. He was told that his cart had been taken to the dump, and when he got there, it had already been squashed. All that was left was the front wheel. The officers of the city would not say under which regulations the action had been taken, nor who had given the instructions to demolish the cart. They said the matter was being investigated. To this day, it is still being investigated.

  Toloki was reduced to cooking boerewors on a small gas cylinder cooker at the same spot where he used to park his trolley. But the customers did not come. It was not the same without the trolley.

  For a while, he did not know what to do. He had some money in his post office savings book, but it was not going to last forever. And it was not enough to buy another trolley. His life had become reckless and free-spending. He had many friends who always kept him company in the afternoons and during weekends. He bought them drinks, and they swore eternal friendship. Women, too, were his ardent admirers. Not once did anyone mention his looks. He had finally found the love and fortune he had been yearning for. But when he could not maintain his life-style, the friends who loved him very much began to discover other commitments whenever he wanted their company. Women began to discover faults in him that they had not previously been aware of, and proceeded to derisively point them out.

  Soon his money ran out, and he stayed in his shack all day and all night racking his brains on how to improve his lot. Then he remembered Nefolovhodwe, the furniture maker who had been his father’s friend back in the village. He had been very close to Jwara and Xesibe, and the three of them used to sit together in those distant bucolic afternoons, drinking beer brewed by That Mountain Woman, and solving the problems of the world.

  Nefolovhodwe used to be the poorest of the three friends. Xesibe was doing well in his farming ventures, and in animal husbandry. He was the wealthiest of the three. Jwara was not doing too badly in his smithy – until Noria destroyed him, that is. There were always horses to shoe, and farming implements to mend. Nefolovhodwe, on the other hand, was barely surviving. He had learnt carpentry skills in his youth when he worked in town. He was very good with his hands, and knew how to make chairs and tables that looked like those that were sold in stores in town, or those which were pictured in magazines. But who in the village could afford chairs and tables? Both Xesibe and Jwara had each bought a set of four chairs and a table from their friend. There were very few other men of means in the village.

  Once in a while someone died, and Nefolovhodwe made a coffin for this our deceased brother or sister. His coffins were good and solid, yet quite inexpensive. At times, an order for a coffin would come all the way from town, two hours away by bus. He looked forward to the deaths of his fellow men – and women – for they put food on his pine table. But the deaths were not frequent enough.

  A man from the city visited the village one day. He was one of the village people who had gone to work in the city many years ago, and had decided to live there permanently. He had come to the village only to lay a tombstone on the grave of his long-departed father, and to make a feast for the ancestors so that his path should always be covered with the smooth pebbles of success. He was drinking with the three friends when all of a sudden he said, ‘You know, Nefolovhodwe, you are satisfied with living like a pauper here. But I tell you, my friend, you could make a lot of money in the city. People die like flies there, and your coffins would have a good market.’

  This put some ideas in Nefolovhodwe’s head. He discussed the matter with Jwara, who encouraged him to go. But he warned him to be careful not to get lost in the city. Many people went to the city and did not come back. They forgot all about their friends and relatives in the village. Nefolovhodwe promised that he would always have the village in his heart. After all, he was leaving his two best friends behind, and his wife and nine children.

  In the city, Nefolovhodwe soon established himself as the best coffin maker. Like everyone else, when he first arrived, he lived in one of the squatter camps. Unlike the village, death was plentiful in the city. Every day there was a line of people wanting to buy his coffins. Then he moved to a township house. Although there was always a long waiting list for township houses, he was able to get one immediately because he had plenty of money to bribe the officials. The township house soon became too small for his needs, and for his expanding frame. He bought a house in one of the very up-market suburbs. People of his complexion were not allowed to buy houses in the suburbs in those days. He used a white man, whom he had employed as his marketing manager, to buy the house on his behalf.

  The secret to Nefolovhodwe’s success lay in the Nefolovhodwe Collapsible Coffin which he invented soon after his arrival in the city. The coffin could be carried by one person, like a suitcase, and it could be put together in easy steps even by a child. It was cheap enough, yet durable. The instructions that accompanied it were simple to follow, and were written in all the languages that were spoken in the city. Although it was lightweight, when it was assembled, it could carry the heaviest imaginable corpse. People came from all over – by train, by bus, by private car, and on foot – to buy the Nefolovhodwe Collapsible Coffin.

  There was also the Nefolovhodwe De Luxe Special, which was a much more expensive type. Only the wealthiest people could afford it. This was also very much in demand. It was made of oak and of ebony. It had handles and hinges of gold or silver alloy. The lid had carvings of angels and other supreme beings that populate the heavens. By special order, for multimillionaires only, some of the carvings would be made of ivory. Ivory was still easily available those days.

  However, a problem arose. Smart people did not want to be buried in a Nefolovhodwe – and when people talked of a Nefolovhodwe they meant the De Luxe Special; the more popular and cheaper type was just called the Collapsible – even if they could afford it. They knew that at night, unscrupulous undertakers went to the cemetery and dug the de luxe coffin up. They wrapped the corpses in sacks, put them back in their graves, and took the coffins to sell again to other bereaved millionaires. An undertaker could sell the same coffin many times over, and no one would be the wiser. Many wealthy families thought that their loved ones were resting in peace in a Nefolovhodwe. They were not aware that they lay in a condition that was worse than that of paupers who had to be buried by prisoners. At least in pauper burials, the corpses were wrapped in strong canvas.

  Nefolovhodwe knew about the digging up of his coffins, and was very disturbed by it. Although he was making millions every year, this corrupt practice affected his business and the reputation of his products. But he did not know how to stem it.

  Toloki decided to go to his father’s old friend. If there was anyone who could help him, it would be Nefolovhodwe. He recalled that there had been a time when Nefolovhodwe was the butt of the jokes of village children because of his poverty. He had once given a black eye to a boy who had made stupid jokes about Nefolovhodwe’s tattered and gaunt appearance, and his malnourished children. ‘You can’t talk about my father’s friend like that!’ he had said, before he floored the boy with one nifty left hook. The teacher punished Toloki for fighting at school, and reported the matter to his father. Jwara never raised the issue with Toloki at all. Instead he told Nefolovhodwe about it when they were drinking That Mountain Woman’s beer. Nefolovhodwe smiled when he next met Tolok
i and said, ‘I heard what you did on my behalf when children who have no behaviour were insulting me. You are a great soldier who will grow to protect us all.’ From that day on, Nefolovhodwe never skipped the opportunity to display his affection for Toloki. Even when his father referred to him as an ugly boy, Nefolovhodwe would protest.

  ‘You don’t talk like that to your own child, Jwara.’

  ‘What would you know about it, Nef? You have never had a child like this.’

  ‘I have nine children of my own. Some are ugly, and some are beautiful. But since they are all my children, they are all beautiful to me.’

  In the city, fortune had really smiled on Nefolovhodwe. His house was surrounded by a tall security fence, which had warnings that it was electrified attached. There was a well-trimmed hedge inside the fence. Toloki went to the gate, but it was locked. He stood there for a while, not knowing what to do next. A security guard with two big Alsatians approached, and demanded to know what the hell he was doing there.

  ‘I want to see Nefolovhodwe.’

  ‘Just like that, eh? You want to see Nefolovhodwe?’

  ‘I am Toloki from the village. He is my homeboy.’

  The guard thought the whole thing was a joke. He laughed mockingly at Toloki.

  ‘Your homeboy, eh? A great man like Nefolovhodwe is your homeboy? Does your homeboy want to see you too? Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘No, I do not have an appointment. But he is my father’s friend. Please tell him that Toloki, son of Jwara, wants to see him.’

  The security guard hesitated for a while, then decided that he might as well just call the house and share the joke with his master. He spoke on the phone that was in the guard room by the gate, and came back to open the gate for Toloki.

  ‘The master does not remember you. But he has a vague memory of someone called Jwara in some faraway village. He says I should let you in, but you had better have something very important to say.’