In addition to the mobile library, a mobile clinic came once a week. A MacKenzie bus came twice a week from the city, resuming the schedule that had been suspended during the liberation war. Within Brown Car things had also changed. Penelope had been joined by Specs, a teddy bear who wore glasses that had been a Christmas present to Genie from her father. Penelope left the permanent security of Genie’s back to be with Specs on the back seat.
The death and resurrection of the sunflowers were now things Marcus and Genie were accustomed to, so they were content to look on miles and miles of barren reddish-brown soil. They felt so secure in their happiness that when the second strange thing happened, it took them a while to realise that it was actually a threat to that happiness.
A flashy car drove up the dirt road at a very high speed, which was strange enough in and of itself because most vehicles had the good sense to travel slowly and carefully on the dirt road, knowing it was highly unpredictable and never to be trusted. The car whizzed by so fast that there was no way Marcus and Genie could tell who or what was in it. Truth be told, they did not particularly care to know. A few minutes after it had disappeared they ceased to think about it altogether.
Some time later the imprudently fast car made its way back down the dirt road. This time, though, it seemed to have learned its lesson and proceeded slowly and with caution.
Marcus and Genie were surprised when everyone they loved – Genie’s parents and Marcus’ grandparents – alighted from the back of the car. From the front, two people alighted, a man and a woman who looked too … shiny. Their clothes were shimmery, their skin (unburnt by the sun) looked burnished, their too-long hair (both his and hers) was glossy and incongruously curly as it glinted in the sun. Marcus was at first embarrassed for them, then he immediately felt guilty for being embarrassed, because he knew without being told that these were his parents, fresh from America.
The woman – he supposed he had to think of her as his mother now – came rushing towards him, arms outstretched, yelling ‘Honey!’ Marcus got out of Brown Car, hesitantly, cautiously, reluctantly. Genie understood his apprehension, so she got out of Brown Car with him and held his hand.
The woman – his mother – frowned at Genie before hugging Marcus. ‘You’re just as beautiful as I knew you would be,’ she said, covering his face with kisses. She smelled of something so sweet that it made Marcus and Genie sneeze at the same time. ‘Aren’t you precious?’ the woman said, looking at Genie and smiling a smile that did not reach her eyes or remove the frown from her forehead.
‘Yes, I am precious,’ Genie replied matter-of-factly, which only deepened the woman’s frown.
‘Is her name Precious?’ the woman asked no one in particular as she finally stood up and smoothed her shiny appearance.
‘My name is Genie.’
‘Oh? How … precious.’
The man – Marcus supposed he had to think of him as his father now – came forward but seemed not to know what to do next. Marcus strongly suspected that the man – his father – felt foolish, looking so shiny next to his grandfather and Genie’s father, who looked like real men. ‘Oh, Dee, you are hopeless. You both are,’ the woman said, laughing and pushing the man towards Marcus. Finally, the man – his father, Dee – offered Marcus his hand, and Marcus and he shook hands.
‘Oh!’ the woman squealed. ‘I wish we had brought a camera. We should have thought of it,’ she squealed some more. ‘Oh, this is just too precious,’ she said, clasping her hands together in sheer delight. ‘We have a surprise for you in the car,’ she announced, reaching out her hand to Marcus. When he took her hand hesitantly, she lifted him up with such surprising force that he had to let go of Genie. Without warning, his mother started walking rather quickly towards the flashy car and away from Genie.
Marcus looked at Genie over his mother’s shoulder as the distance between them grew at an alarming rate. Even though his grandparents and Genie’s parents were there, he felt that he was in danger and that something horrible was happening. ‘Genie!’ he all but screamed. She ran after him, shouting, ‘Marcus?’ The worry in her voice matched the fear in his.
‘Perhaps there is another way to do this,’ Golide was saying.
‘Surely you see how very attached they are to each other,’ Elizabeth added.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman – his mother – said, holding him tighter. ‘It is not our intention to be cruel. But you all know what’s going on. It’s no longer safe here.’
‘It never was safe, but we survived, we’ve always survived,’ his grandmother said. Marcus turned to look at her. Her voice had sounded hard but there was a tenderness in her moist eyes, which were fixed on Marcus. His grandmother had never looked at him like that before. His grandmother had never cried in his presence before. It was when he looked at his grandmother that the reality of what was happening to him became clear.
The surprise in the car was simply a ruse. This woman and this man – his mother and his father, his parents – were here to take him away. Suddenly feeling trapped by his mother’s arms, Marcus struggled to release himself, kicking his feet and f lailing his arms. He knew he was hurting her. Perhaps he even meant to hurt her. But his mother’s hold on him only got stronger. He dug his fingernails as deep as he could into her neck and then dragged them. She let out a startled, sharp cry of pain but still did not let him go. ‘You’ll thank us for this one day,’ she said. Marcus seriously doubted it.
Since he had no intention of leaving the Beauford Farm and Estate, he grabbed hold of one of her loop earrings and pulled as hard as he could. As the earring ripped through her earlobe and Marcus felt her warm blood ooze into his hand, his father opened the passenger door to the imprudent car. It was then that Marcus sank his teeth into his mother’s cheek, but it was already too late, she was already sitting in the car and hugging him to her body. He heard the door lock after his father banged it shut. He saw Genie reach the door and try its handle before her own mother swept her up, saying: ‘Let him go. You have to let him go.’ It was then that he saw something enter Genie’s eyes as she looked at him. It made him give up the fight entirely. Everything became a blur.
‘I’m sure in time we’ll be able to put all of this behind us,’ his father said, getting into the car. Marcus could not tell whether he was saying this to the people in the car or to the people outside. Marcus blinked away the tears in time to see Genie give him a smile. He knew it was not a genuine smile. It was a smile meant to give him courage. He did not want someone to give him courage. He wanted someone to save him. And then Genie did the unthinkable. She raised her hand in a sharp angle and brought it to her forehead. Goodbye. She waited for him to do the same. But he absolutely refused to say goodbye. Suddenly there was dust all over as the car sped away, and then Marcus could no longer see the sunflower field. He wondered for a long time afterwards if Genie, believing he had returned her salute, had completed the gesture by bringing her hand sharply down. Had she really said goodbye to him and let him go for ever? Just like that? Or was she still waiting, her right hand at a sharp angle to her forehead?
In the car his mother pressed her cheek to the top of his head and rocked him gently. ‘You’ll see. You’ll thank us for saving you. You’ll thank us some day.’ She repeated the words over and over again as though she was reciting a lullaby. His eyes grew heavy. His body was tired from the fight. It was only as his eyes struggled to stay open that he noticed the other woman in the car – an older woman – and in her arms she held a sleeping child, a girl who seemed encased in frilly pink. ‘That’s our surprise,’ his father’s voice said. ‘She’s your little sister and her name is Krystle.’ Marcus looked at his father, who smiled at him, obviously happy about something. He looked back at the unsmiling older woman holding the girl. ‘That is your grandmother. My mother.’
‘We are your family now,’ his new grandmother said, still not smiling. They all looked beautiful, the members of his family, but Marcus felt that their beauty was
not to be trusted. It was a dangerous beauty. He was suddenly more terrified than he had ever been before. He let go of his bladder then, well aware that his urine would soil both his shorts and his mother’s shiny dress.
BHEKITHEMBA
In 1988, a couple of years after the Masukus took Marcus away from the Beauford Farm and Estate, Bhekithemba Nyathi drove stealthily, under the cover of darkness, up that same road. He had first driven up the road in the light of day a few months earlier, and it was because of that first trip that he was making this second trip. He parked his car some distance from the compound, walked through the barren sunflower fields and was astounded by the eerie silence of the place, where even the dogs refrained from howling at the full moon or barking at him. The life that was once here had disappeared. Bhekithemba shone a torch into a disused well when … something glimmered at the bottom, shocking him with its sudden unexpectedness. As he stole away from the compound feeling both relieved and wary that he had found nothing – no one in the well – he tried to reconcile the man he now was with the man he had thought that he would be.
The year was 1980 and Bhekithemba, perhaps for the first time in his life, felt rooted – connected to everything and everyone around him. A son of the soil, in a real, literal sense. He was something that had germinated and sprouted – broken through the earth – from this very spot. His eyes stung. His throat choked. His lungs filled with something heavy and bitter. People ran, helter-skelter, seeking safe spaces. Chaos. Confusion. Panic. Uncertainty. Fear. All around him. And yet here he stood unmoved. Rooted. Connected. Certain. The tear gas would clear, and when it did he would still be in this moment in history.
He had come all this way to see Prince Charles and hopefully shake his hand. His own grandfather had shaken the hands of various members of the British Royal Family: King George VI, the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. By the time his grandfather passed away he had lost most of his memory: he had forgotten his own name, which was Cosmos Nyathi; he had forgotten the name of his Christian wife and those of his two common-law wives; he had forgotten the names of his thirteen children and those of his twenty-eight grandchildren. He had even forgotten that he was a successful businessman whose enterprising spirit had seen him leave his life in the family village at the age of sixteen, to work as a stock boy for a Mr MacKenzie at the MacKenzie General Goods Store.
By the time he died, Cosmos Nyathi had forgotten that at the age of seventeen he had suggested to Mr MacKenzie that he open a bottle store. Although Mr MacKenzie’s General Goods Store was the only store for kilometres, his business was failing because people seemed to prefer the travelling goods men who always gave you a little extra something – a bonsella – as an added bonus for patronising their business. Since the MacKenzie General Goods Store was located just outside a mission station, Mr MacKenzie doubted that a bottle store would have enough customers, considering it would be within the ever-watchful purview of the missionaries. But because Mr MacKenzie was at his ‘wits’ end’ (a favourite phrase of his whenever he spoke of his relationship with the colony), he agreed to open a bottle store on condition that Cosmos would manage it himself. The MacKenzie Bottle Store proved so successful that Mr MacKenzie soon decided to open another one in another village, and once again sent Cosmos to manage it. Because of the popularity of the two Bottle Stores, ‘MacKenzie’ became a household name and the General Goods Store became successful by association.
By the time he died, Cosmos Nyathi had also forgotten that when Mr MacKenzie had come to another ‘wits’ end’, this time not with the colony but with the situation brewing in Europe, he suddenly returned to Scotland in 1938 and had been generous enough to bequeath the MacKenzie General Goods Store and the two MacKenzie Bottle Stores to the very man who had made them a success.
In 1938, most African men would have been very happy to own three successful stores, but Cosmos Nyathi was not. He grew his business to include the MacKenzie line of buses and the MacKenzie Bioscope. He was what was known in the colonies as a ‘good African’ – primarily Christian, mostly hard-working, generally clean and sober – and because of this, whenever there was a royal tour, he was brought forward as an example of the progress the colony had made with its African population, which was how he came to shake the hands of King George VI, the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. Of all the things that he had done in his seventy-two years, he was proudest of the moments when he had shaken the hands of royalty, and so, as he entered the twilight of his years, he forgot all but these moments. When he passed away, he left his family with two inheritances: the MacKenzie businesses and his pride in the family’s connection to the British Royal Family.
This was why, when Bhekithemba made his way to the stadium to see Prince Charles receive the Union Jack and witness the flag of the newly independent country being raised in its place, he was filled with the family pride and a great deal of sadness over the sun finally setting on the empire. At the age of eighteen, he had enough hubris to believe that he would have a private moment with Prince Charles to say: ‘My grandfather, Cosmos Nyathi, owner of the MacKenzie businesses, knew your grandfather and your mother. He was a good African. He shook their hands.’ And Prince Charles would say in turn: ‘Cosmos Nyathi, of course, my grandfather and mother talked of him often. He was indeed a good African, very enterprising for one of his kind.’ Then Bhekithemba would tell Prince Charles that he was strongly opposed to his country ceasing to be a British colony, that he had deliberately not joined the armed struggle led by the terrorists, and that he, at age eighteen, was very much saddened by the fact that he and all his future children would not be British subjects.
Of course, that is not how things had turned out. The Union Jack had indeed come down, been folded and handed over to the future king of England, and Bhekithemba had surprised himself by feeling absolutely nothing. He was confused by this, his lack of feeling. Prince Charles had seemed ill at ease, anaemic, and far removed from everything that was happening around him; whether he was just above it all or whether he was simply uninterested, Bhekithemba could not tell. Instead of being a prince, he seemed to be playing at future king in his bright-white military regalia. Bhekithemba suspected that the shoes the prince was wearing were slightly too big for him. In all honesty, the prince had proved to be something of a disappointment.
Just as Bhekithemba was reconciling himself to an anticlimactic evening, a man in dreadlocks got on the stage, raised up a fisted hand and called out, ‘Viva!’ The crowd went wild and Bhekithemba felt something stir within him – something nascent, a beautiful beginning. For the first time he became fully aware of the throng around him and of its elation and euphoria at finally being independent and free. He was jostled this way and that, but he did not mind – this closeness, this tight togetherness was actually comforting. The dreadlocked man, eyes closed, strummed his guitar. Three women, sirens really, made melodious sounds. The crowd moved as one and carried Bhekithemba along. For the first time Bhekithemba felt part of something larger than himself. The man opened his eyes and looked directly at Bhekithemba. ‘Viva!’ the man called out again. The crowd went wild shouting ‘Viva!’ in reply and Bhekithemba found himself joining them with his own ‘Viva!’ even though he did not know what the word meant. Then he felt something travel through his body, a jolt of electricity that travelled from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet – grounding him, connecting him to the soil. The crowd, with Bhekithemba in it, became one moving, breathing, almost menacing force. Bhekithemba could do nothing but look at the dreadlocked man, mesmerised. It was the dreadlocked man who was doing this to the people. He seemed to possess a certain power, a power that Prince Charles did not possess – the power to move, unite and inspire people. Later, Bhekithemba would know that this power was called charisma. This dreadlocked man, Bhekithemba was certain, was going to lead him to something great.
The dreadlocked man closed his eyes again. There was a flash of light. The air g
rew thick with smoke that stung the eyes and filled the lungs with something bitter. The crowd panicked. Helter-skelter. Bhekithemba would not move; he felt too connected … too rooted. He waited patiently for the dreadlocked man to open his eyes again. If it so happened that he was destined to die here, on this spot, in his eighteenth year, so be it; he would gladly die, but only after the dreadlocked man had opened his eyes. The smoke cleared. The sting left his eyes. He took a deep breath. Clean, clear air filled his lungs. The man on the stage opened his eyes, looked straight at Bhekithemba again. Something like a smile – a lazy smile – played on his lips. A look of respect entered his eyes. The dreadlocked man’s band and his melodious backing singers returned to the stage. It was only then that Bhekithemba realised that everyone else had run away as soon as the smoke had filled the air. ‘Now I know who is the real revolutionary,’ the dreadlocked man said, still looking directly at him.
Bhekithemba felt as though he had been anointed.
For the rest of his life he would feel a strong connection to that man. He would speak of his ‘encounter’ with the dreadlocked man with just as much pride as his grandfather had had in speaking of shaking the hands of British royalty. Bhekithemba was known to find the perfect moment, whatever the occasion, to stand up in a gathering and regale them with the story of how Bob Marley had looked at him through the smoke of a tear-gas-filled stadium and told him that he was a real revolutionary.
That encounter changed him. It had filled him with a pride in his country and in his blackness that he had never had before. He wrote of this life-changing encounter as a ‘Letter to the Editor’ for the local, state-run newspaper. The letter was printed and a few days later he received a call from The Man Himself praising his writing and offering him a scholarship to study journalism at the local, state-run university. Bhekithemba, the anointed one, happily took up the offer. Soon after graduating, he went to work for one of the local, state-run newspapers, his pride in his country making him a great mouthpiece for the state. He was a nationalist. He was a patriot. He was a revolutionary. He firmly believed that he lived in the country that Bob Marley had sung so proudly and so passionately about. And now he wrote about his country with equal pride and passion.
The Theory of Flight Page 5