Hold My Hand I'm Dying

by John Gordon Davis

  People were smooching to the record player, arms entwined. As the girls slunk past the candles you could see their contours. I saw Lola laughing near the barbecue burners with three men as she was telling them a story with much gesticulation. A girl passed with a tray and handed me a glass of punch. Her fingernails were purple and perfect and an inch long. ‘Have an aphrodisiac,’ she said and wandered on, the candlelight shining through between her legs. I took a big swallow of the punch to get rid of the heavy feeling in my head from drinking too much of Lola’s Eyetalian tycoon’s champagne. Another girl passed and popped a savoury into my mouth. ‘Excellent caviar,’ she said. I saw Lilly – Mary, I said to myself, remember her name is Mary – Mary Lilly – standing in the corner in a group of Romans of both sexes. She twiddled her fingers at me coolly, and I shuffled over. ‘Why didn’t you phone me?’ she accused. Her nightie was slung low and her breasts were definitely too big.

  ‘I lost your number,’ I said.

  ‘Liar,’ she said. ‘Anyway my husband’s in town for five days, call me on Wednesday.’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said and I took a powder, gratefully.

  The girl with the inch long nails and the punch tray passed. ‘Have another aphrodisiac,’ she said. I must lay off the booze, I thought. I am sodden through with it. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Heavy, I thought, and white and fleshy. Twenty-eight, nearly twenty-nine, and what happened to all your stout-hearted intentions? I took another punch and took a big swallow. Max passed happily. ‘Like shooting sitting ducks,’ he said. I knew most of the people, but I felt that I wouldn’t be able to laugh with them because they didn’t seem funny to me any more. I felt heavy and sober and sour and it didn’t feel as if any more booze could make me feel any different. I swallowed the punch in one go, and looked around for the girl with the tray. Automatically. Time enough tomorrow to steady up. I must get out of this way of life. I must get back close to the earth. I wish I could get back into the bush, to the Valley, to Nyamanpofu even. Lola waved to me and beckoned me over. She was standing with Mona and Max and two men. Lola was telling a yam about her Secretarial School. She said she had a magic mirror on the wall and she overheard two of her students saying to it: ‘Mirror, Mirror on the wall-i, who is-i the most-i beautiful-i of all-i?’ And the mirror replied: ‘Snow White you black bitches and don’t you forget it.’ And that’s how that story started. We were all laughing.

  The punch was beginning to work. I looked around the roof garden and the lounge. There were many women I had slept with. I began to feel good again. I went to the bar and got myself another big punch. I thought: Life is pretty good. Henry Potterton was saying to a young sunburnt man:

  ‘Let Nyasaland go, if she wants to, I say. What do we want her for, her with her two million screaming blacks making trouble. Northern Rhodesia, yes, we want Northern Rhodesia, because of her Copperbelt and she’s got seventy thousand whites, but Nyasaland?’

  The sunburnt young man said: ‘But if we let Nyasaland go, it means Federation is a failure, Partnership is a failure, it’ll create a precedent and then Northern Rhodesia will want to leave us too—’

  Potterton said: ‘Partnership, my poor aching ass. Partnership is a failure, Partnership is a myth, always was. How can we have Partnership with two countries full of savages screaming for independence. The only solution is to let Nyasaland go and to hang on to Northern Rhodesia with force and arms. We got a Federal Army haven’t we?’

  ‘I was thinking of partnership on a wider basis than just economics,’ the young man said, ‘I mean partnership between all the races, in all three partner territories, that’s what Federation stands for, not just economic partnership. The races have got to learn to live together, we’ve got to give the blacks a chance to evolve to our standard, that’s the purpose of Federation, so that on both the personal and the economic level we build a partnership …’

  Potterton snorted. ‘How can you expect to have a Partnership between a few hundred thousand civilised whites and seven million savages, except on a master and servant basis? I tell you, it’s a myth. I tell you, the South Africans have got the right idea. What do you say, Mahoney?’ He turned to me thickly.

  ‘I say let’s get among the punch.’ I didn’t want to talk about politics.

  ‘Are you Joseph Mahoney?’ the sunburned kid said. I looked at him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve heard about you,’ the sunburned kid said. ‘You used to run the Nyamanpofu post back in fifty-seven, didn’t you? I’ve just taken it over. My name’s John Swinton,’ he said.

  His eyes were blue and clear and his hair was bleached from the sun, and his smile was keen. I looked at him carefully. He was young and fresh and strong and dedicated. I used to be like that, I used to be sharp and full of determination and love for the bush and the munts once, like young Swinton.

  ‘The munts still talk about you out there,’ he said.

  ‘Do they?’ It felt good but it also made me feel bad. What had I done since I left? God, I wanted to go back.

  ‘How do you like Nyamanpofu?’ I said.

  ‘Very much, I like the work. There’s a big land development scheme I’ve just started—’

  ‘Where were you before?’ I didn’t want to hear about his challenging land development scheme.

  ‘I was number two at Sable. Nyamanpofu is my first sole command. I was sorry to leave Sable.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I had just begun to make headway with the munts.’ He smiled openly, shyly, proud. ‘They were a good bunch. When I got news of my transfer I called an indaba of the headmen and told them I was going. Then the oldest stood up and said: ‘—Swinton broke into Sindebele—’“Why does the Government send you away from us?” I said: “Old man, because I have no wife, the Government finds it cheaper to move me rather than a man who has a wife.” He said: “Why then do you not buy a white woman for a new wife, then the Government will not move you away from here.” I said: “Alas, I have not enough cattle to buy a wife.”’ Swinton reverted to English: ‘The next day I was sitting in my office and the headmen arrived driving twelve head of cattle. It was a present so that I could buy a wife.’

  Damn you, Swinton. Damn your dedication and your keen eager-beaver doing and achieving. What bloody good are you doing stuck in the bush, Swinton, playing big white chief over a few thousand munts who think the world is flat? But, Christ, I envied him. I looked at him.

  ‘I envy you,’ I admitted.

  He grinned.

  ‘I envy you having all this crumpet around seven days a week.’ He nodded across the crowded, diaphanous room. A tall blonde called Monica was smooching in a short lacy toga with Mike Sheffield, her long smooth legs looking hairless and waxen, her thighs stroking each other softly and hairlessly under her short transparent toga.

  Swinton grinned happily. His eyes were sparkling. He was very handsome. Something stung the side of my face and dropped to the floor. It was a French letter. I looked across the room and there were Judy and the girl with the long purple fingernails leaning against the wall laughing. Judy held up her finger and there was another French letter hooked over her fingertip and she pulled it back with her other hand by the teat and let it fly and it hit Swinton on the forehead and he laughed. Max came to the table to get another punch. Mona came up.

  ‘When does the orgy begin, kid?’

  ‘Right now, you greasy Greek. Come on—’

  She took Max’s hand and pulled him on to the dance space. She started to smooch round the floor with him. She locked both arms round his neck and smooched with her crotch pressed right up against him. Her spine was arched in towards him and her breasts pressed against him. The candlelight shone through the muslin and the curves and mounds of her back and buttocks showed through, the length of her legs and the candle threw fleeting shadows between the back of her thighs. She loosened one of her arms and ferreted it under the folds of sheet across his back. She began to drag her fingertips across his should
er blades, and down his spine. ‘Undo, me,’ she said.

  There are some women who are born to copulate. Their skin has a plump rubbery texture, and it is very smooth and often olive in colouration and creamy to the touch, and the flesh indents when touched only lightly, with resilience. They bruise very easily, though they are strong women. Every part of her, the flesh on her strong shoulders, the flesh on her face, her cheeks, the length of her arms and legs, her fingertips and toes, her slightly translucent fingers, her mauve fingernails, the way her toes sit snuggled together yet can stretch and spread into grass and sand and carpets, every dimple and crease of her is a sexual thing. There is a faint smell of body about her, like a sweaty musk. Her breasts are usually heavy and buoyant, and her nipples are brown and big and they become erect very easily. Her thighs touch on the inside, and curve outwards then inwards to her knee and her buttocks are large and soft and dimpled and enveloping, like the flesh of fruit secretes the pip. And when you kiss her she sucks, and her mouth inside is slimy.

  Such a woman was Mona.

  Max undid her. As he undid her she took a long slug of wine. She grabbed a handful of Max’s hair and tugged it as he undid her. Then she danced off with him against her, with only her sandals on, her big mouth smiling red and creamy into his neck. The olive of her body was broken only in the line across her back and a triangle across her buttocks where her bikini covered her at the swimming pool. The backs of her thighs were luscious below the cleft of her silken buttocks and her buttocks had two dimples at the base of her back.

  The rest was very confused. I don’t remember whether I made a date with the girl with the long purple fingernails or with Monica. I remember arms and legs and bodies and togas whirling and swaying and shaking and laughing. I remember going to the bedroom to lie down and finding it all infested with bodies. I remember Lola passing out stone cold on top of the piano. I remember leaning over the top of the roof garden wall with Adeline, looking down into the street and telling her I loved her and seeing the convoy of police trucks screaming along Main Street and turning up Seventh Avenue towards Mzilikazi. I remember the telephone ringing above the thump of the music and the clatter of voices and the swing and sway of the bodies and Mona shouting into the receiver: ‘I’m not going to let a bunch of bloody kaffirs break up my party, what else do we pay you policemen for?’ The girl with the long fingernails said: ‘What’s happening?’ and Mona said: ‘The natives are revolting,’ and Potterton said: ‘Oh, my dear, they don’t smell that bad,’ and everyone laughed.

  Swinton grabbing the phone and shouting into the receiver with a hand over his ear and then shouting: ‘Trouble in Mzilikazi, all Police Reservists to report to their Stations immediately—’ Boos and cheers. Plummeting down in the elevator, grinding at the starter button of the Chev. Then blank.

  I woke up on the settee in my lounge at dawn, with a hangover like a Boeing wing. I was stiff and aching. I tottered through to my bedroom. Lola was lying across the bed in her Christian Dior nightgown with a pair of handcuffs dangling from one wrist. I couldn’t even bear to think how she came by those or how she got home, and I didn’t try. I pulled on my blue denim Police Reserve overalls and left the flat.

  When I got down the street I couldn’t find the car. I walked the six blocks to the Central Police Station, and I walked into the Charge Office, up to the counter. The sergeant looked tired.

  ‘Reservist Mahoney reporting for duty,’ I said thickly.

  The sergeant looked at me. ‘You sober now? How’s your girlfriend?’ He rubbed purple teeth marks on his wrist.

  I blinked at him. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  I shook my head.

  The sergeant glared at me, then he decided not to say it. ‘It’s all right, sir. We cleaned the trouble up. You can go home again and sleep the rest of it off.’ He peered at me closely and then he said: ‘Your car’s parked in the yard at the back.’

  I drove back to Fort Street slowly. The natives were just beginning to come into town on their bicycles from the townships, a black, straggling river. I let myself into the flat and went to the window. I saw the morning, the sun already shining brightly on to the red rooftops, and the sanitary lanes with their garbage cans and Africans and the brown horizon, and I smelt my own body, tobacco smoke and beer and gin-punch upon me like a fuzz and my tongue smarting and my strong breath, and the thud in my head and the prickling, and I knew that a lot of days had been like this for a long time, ever since Suzie had left. And every day would be like this, unless I took hold. And I carried my garbage can of remorse and I hankered for the cleanness of Suzie.

  Useless!

  Useless useless useless.

  It had to be Swinton who grabbed the phone and took the police message, while the rest stood grogged like Roman fools. Swinton who took command, Swinton with the brown sunburnt face and the keen blue eyes, the boy from the bush, the boy doing a good keen day’s work amongst people who needed him, helping and organising people who needed his help if there was to be Partnership, Swinton who was concerned about the drought and the crops and the cattle, Swinton using the patience of Job and delivering the judgments of Solomon, Swinton whom black people respected so much that they gave him lobola for a wife. Emergency, therefore take command. I was like that once. But I stood grogged with the other Romans. Decadent Romans while the townships were afire. And too drunk to go on Police Reserve duties when needed. And the cops had to drive me home and fight with Lola, drunk and biting. Take hold.

  Do something. What happened to the undergraduate zeal that made you quit the bush to come to the reality of the City to do your goodness? Undergraduate, yes, but at least it was zeal, not this flesh-potted bluntness’ Do something. Take stock. Stop drinking.

  I went to the bathroom and soaked my head in iced water for ten minutes. Then I went to my cupboard and hauled out the big cardboard box containing my manuscript and thumped it down on the table.

  Part Five

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  For Samson it was like the old days: the Nkosi did not bother him provided he produced enough food to keep him full and provided he found clean clothes in his cupboard and his bed made when he came home. At five o’clock the Nkosi came home from the office, and he threw off his clothes and shouted: ‘Samson, fill the bath.’ For the next three-quarters of an hour the Nkosi was silent as he lay in the bath and the only thing Samson had to do was to hang up the Nkosi’s suit. He wondered what the Nkosi lay there thinking about. He was a strange one, the Nkosi. He came out from the bathroom naked and he went to his bedroom and pulled on a pair of short trousers. When Samson heard the bathroom door open he made coffee. The Nkosi sat down at the dining-room table and pulled his pile of papers in front of him and he rolled a cigarette and started reading his pile of papers with a frown. Sometimes the Nkosi spent a long time staring in front of him thinking his strange thoughts. Then the Nkosi would start writing on his papers again, slowly at first, then more and more quickly. At half-past seven or eight o’clock Samson would go to the Nkosi’s side and stand there until he looked up and said ‘Yes?’ and Samson said: ‘Your skoff is ready, Nkosi,’ and usually the Nkosi said: ‘Put it in the oven and you can go.’ And in the morning at seven o’clock or thereabouts when Samson went back to the flat in Fort Street the ashtray on the Nkosi’s table was full of stubs, and the floor too, where the Nkosi had flicked them. He had to shake and keep at the Nkosi to make him wake up and get up so that he would not be too late for the Court. Sometimes, but not very often, he came into the flat and found the Nkosi still sitting at the table and writing.

  But the Nkosi, although he spent much of his time writing on his paper, was also a sensible man: the Nkosi had some girlfriends. Sometimes there was a girl in the Nkosi’s bed when Samson came into the flat, and sometimes the Nkosi was not in the flat when Samson came to work in the mornings. Sometimes there was a stranger in the Nkosi’s bed, but usually it was one of the three.

  Another umfazi who came to the Nkosi
’s house often nowadays while he was writing on his papers was the woman Jek-i, the tall umfazi with the long red hair and the big slanted eyes, the one with the very good bosoms. But she only came in the daytime, and she was never in the Nkosi’s bed. He could not understand this because he could tell that the woman Jek-i was much bothered by the Nkosi and the Nkosi was much bothered by the woman, yet they did not make love. In Samson’s view she was the best umfazi. Samson quite liked all the Nkosi’s umfazis, and he approved of his having three or four women, for then he was less likely to take it into his head to marry one of them. So it was a good thing that the Nkosi did not sleep with the woman Jek-i.

  So Joseph Mahoney wrote his book. He went at it like a bull at a gate. It was all steaming round in his head now. It was not easy, for Mahoney was not writing a story. He was writing a philosophy, a poetry, a jumbled collection of thoughts and feelings. It was hell. It threatened to contain everything he had ever thought, felt and imagined, and it was hell being imprisoned in that turbulent ocean without the lifeline of a story to hang his thoughts upon. He knew what he wanted to say, but the agony was finding a place for it. The pages ranged in huge strides from fantasy to God to atheism to politics to the seasons to the myths to the glories of life and love, to the futilities of life and love, the horrors of suburbia. Suburbia, the crest and the trough of being alive, of being a taxpayer, a parent, a neighbour, a car-owner, a school-fee payer, the stultification of the lawns and hedges and the nice little house, the Club and the holiday once a year at Margate, clubs, pubs and adulteries and the Loyal Women’s Guild, beer, cigarettes and sex under the hot dry sun.