The Theory of Flight

by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

  ‘Did something funny happen at home?’

  She frowned and then looked down.

  Anxious, he grabbed her arms. Touch. He let her go. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Did something funny happen at home?’ he repeated.

  Her eyes flew up at him – confused. ‘Funny how?’

  ‘Did something you didn’t want to happen, happen?’

  ‘Something like what?’

  He ran a trembling hand through his hair and avoided looking her in the eye. ‘Did someone touch you in a way you weren’t comfortable with?’ The words rushed out of his mouth.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You need to go back home,’ he said, hugely relieved.

  ‘It’s not my home any more.’

  ‘Did they kick you out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Like I’ve already told you, I’ve come to save you. It’s time.’

  ‘Well I’m going to Scobie’s. If you’re still inclined, you can save me after that,’ he said with resignation. He made his way to Scobie’s with her in tow.

  She shivered. Her skin goosebumped. The evening air probably had a bite to it that he could not feel. The advantages of living on the street – one became impervious and immune to so many things.

  ‘Don’t you have a jacket or a jersey in there?’ he asked, pointing at her suitcase.

  ‘The clothes in here no longer fit.’ She said this as though it made perfect sense.

  Why was she carrying a suitcase full of clothes that no longer fitted? There was definitely something wrong with her. He removed his faded army camouflage jacket – well aware that it unapologetically reeked of smoke, beer, the street and him – and handed it to her. He intended to spend quite a bit of time at Scobie’s. The evening air could be chilly, he guessed. ‘You can’t come in. No one under twenty-one. If you decide to go home, just leave the jacket outside the door.’

  He nursed two beers for two hours. When he came out, she was not sitting outside the bar as he thought she would be – or rather, as he feared she would be. Instead of feeling relief, he felt panic. But only for a moment. He saw her suitcase a few metres from the doorway, basking in the glow of a street light. His eyes quickly scanned the area. She was leaning into a car window – a light-green Pulsar – on the other side of the street. The rag doll and teddy bear were still held in the crook of one arm; without knowing it, she was probably playing into some pervert’s fantasy. Then again, she could simply be asking for a ride and the kind gentleman inside the car might be willing to oblige, Vida tried to convince himself as he ran across the street. But he had lived on the streets long enough to know better. Before he could stop himself, he was yanking her away from the car window and reaching in to grab the driver by the collar. He satisfactorily landed a few punches before the driver wised up, started his car and sped away.

  ‘He was only asking for directions.’

  ‘Nobody asks for directions at eight thirty in the evening,’ he said, dragging her back across the street. Touch. He did not care. He held on to her. ‘The fact that you’re naïve enough to believe he only wanted directions is proof enough that you need to go home.’ He picked up her suitcase and handed it to her. ‘Go home before you see things you were never meant to see.’ He tried a little tenderness. He gently touched her arm. ‘Please.’ He smiled a weak smile, but a smile nonetheless. ‘These streets are not what they seem to be during the day. You can’t stay here. You don’t belong here. Please go home.’

  ‘I am already home,’ she said with a smile of her own.

  The warm and comforting smell of baking bread gently eased Vida awake. He opened his eyes to look at the latest addition to the community of street dwellers – a street kid, Imogen Zula Nyoni. Genie.

  She was sleeping soundly and rather contentedly for someone who was lying in a strange place next to a stranger. Looking at her, one word came to Vida’s mind – responsibility. Vida felt the flutter in the pit of his stomach yet again and recognised it for what it was: fear. He did not want to be responsible because responsibility meant one sure thing – he was going to disappoint whoever was relying on him. He felt the tension in his body build, his hands clench into two fists, his lips seal in determination. Resistance was rising.

  The street changed everyone and never for the better. He would be damned if her metamorphosis into something hardened, callous, cruel and selfish would be his responsibility.

  ‘Please go home,’ he had said the night before, as convincingly as he could.

  ‘I am already home,’ she had replied matter-of-factly, and apparently more convincingly, for here she was.

  Home. The heart of the city.

  Genie opened her eyes suddenly, as though she had not been sleeping at all and caught Vida looking at her.

  The way she looked at him made him no longer feel at ease in his own environment. She seemed to see him, to already know who he was. He remembered the look her father, Golide Gumede, had given him in the field of elephant grass – all-knowing and all-seeing. Vida had no desire to be seen. He had no desire to be known.

  He got up. He had to put some distance between them. He felt that their lives were already intertwined and he had a very strong desire to extricate himself, now, before it was too late. Their eyes met and held. Belief … that was what shone from her eyes. She believed he was capable of doing impossible things. He walked away from her but it was already too late … Intertwined, interwoven, imbricated.

  At first they seemed an incongruous pair – he with his pale skin and military fatigues, she with her dark skin and colourful clothes. He was quiet and broody, she was always on the verge of laughter, with an ever-ready smile. He let the world pass him by, she was constantly finding ways to involve herself in it. But soon enough their incongruity developed its own harmony and it was as though Vida and Genie had always been walking together.

  Although Vida had a very public existence, he had a very private life and quite a few secrets, which was no small feat as everyone made it their business to know everybody’s business. Although he lived in what was technically a city, socially it functioned very much like a small town. Before you finished thinking a thought it had already travelled halfway across the city. Everything you said always came back to you distorted, everything you did was dissected, weighed and judged.

  Because they were such rare commodities, Vida valued his privacy and his secrets above all else. People saw him on the streets and thought he did nothing more with his life than eat warm, freshly baked bread from Downings’, bask in the sun at City Hall and drink his sundowners at Scobie’s. When they saw him salvaging metal all over the city, which was what he spent most of his time doing, they simply thought he was doing what all other bums, vagrants, vagabonds, derelicts, homeless persons and strays do – collecting stuff for no reason whatsoever. He liked that no one suspected anything when they saw him push his Scania pushcart laden with scrap metal, which he unsuccessfully tried to hide from their view by placing the gently folded quilt his mother had made for him on top.

  Vida’s best-kept secret was that he did not salvage metal simply to have a collection of metal. And now that Genie had entered his life, he strongly suspected that his secret would not be secret much longer. Because she was always by his side, and since she liked involving herself in all that was around her, Vida had had no choice but to co-opt Genie into salvaging metal with him. He knew the moment would come when she would ask him what he did with it and he dreaded that moment because he knew he would have no choice but to tell her the truth.

  Genie actually proved very useful when he went salvaging – she had an eye for the colourful, the unique and the precious. She saw beauty and value in things that he would have disregarded or discarded. Together, they combed the streets from the townships to the city centre to the industrial sites to the suburbs. He led and she followed. But not for long. Soon she was walking beside him, even on the narrowest of walkways. She walked beside him and mad
e her presence felt. On a few occasions she actually charged ahead towards something glinting in the distance; she would reach for it, hold it firmly in both hands and then show it to him – an offering that would inevitably find a place in his Scania pushcart.

  But not once did Genie ask him what he did with the metal.

  Apparently, if he wanted to, Vida could keep his secret safe.

  So he was surprised by the ease and casualness with which he came to share that secret with Genie. In doing so, he introduced her to the workings of his inner life – the life you would not know he had just by looking at him.

  The secret was that he had his own warehouse behind the De Villiers, Mendelsohn and Sons’ Auto Repair and Panel Beaters Garage. In it he wielded his welder and reshaped scrap metal to create larger-than-life statues of the people that made up his life on the street: Mick laughing in the sunshine, Shadrack strumming his guitar, Joseph Pereira standing tall and proud, David and Goliath in their life-or-death struggle, The Painted Ladies strutting their stuff, The Survivors in all their undignified glory – his fellow street dwellers in deed and action. He had been tinkering and welding for years without ever tiring; it was a true labour of love. He thought of the welding as the thing that kept him honest. He loved shaping metal, building structures, recreating life. He loved … the delicateness of it … the care it required … the time that needed to be spent. His love for what he did kept him true to himself. He did what he did as a way of establishing his place in the world, of giving his life meaning. He was a man who could bend metal to his will and mould it to fit his vision, and that was enough for him.

  It was only when he saw Genie looking at the things he had created with awe and wonder, only when he saw one hand travelling to her mouth to cover an ‘O’ that had already escaped, only when he saw the other hand reaching out to touch him gently on the shoulder, only when she looked at the things he had created as things of utter beauty, only when she whispered, ‘I knew it. I knew you were special. I knew it’, her brilliant eyes never leaving the sculptures, it was only then that he realised that the things he created could actually have lives of their own – beyond him.

  When he was younger he had been told that he had a talent as an artist, and he had entertained the possibility of becoming an artist when he grew up. However, when he grew up the country was reeling from war, and art did not seem to be the order of the day – and he, having been ravaged by war, thought art too precious a thing to be culled from his own hands. The look in Genie’s eyes let him know that perhaps he had been wrong, that something precious, something beautiful for the eye to behold, could perhaps be created by these hands that he had deemed unfit. At the time, he felt that Genie had entered his life for this exact purpose – to let him know this particular truth about himself.

  Then, one day while they were salvaging scrap metal, she cut herself badly – a gash in the thigh, blood everywhere. He moved to help her but she told him to stay away. She would not even accept the hand he offered her to help her stand. He knew he was being tested. This was the moment of truth. She stood up on her own, looked him straight in the eye, and, without warning, told him about sunflowers, sojas, saviours and secrets. She told him the story of her life. And then she waited for him to respond.

  ‘So, I didn’t save you at all,’ he said without thinking, and realised, too late, that that had not been the right thing to say. He felt her retreat. Suddenly terrified of losing her, he knew he had to proceed with caution. He knew what she was waiting for. And he knew that it was something that he could give. He heard his father’s voice say: ‘There are many ways to be a man. Always remember that.’ He knew that in uttering these words his father had prepared him for precisely a moment such as this. His father had spoken the words at a time when Vida had needed absolute understanding and acceptance. And this was a time in Genie’s life when she needed absolute understanding and acceptance.

  At thirteen, walking down the streets of Thorngrove on his own for the first time, Vida had felt like an adventurer – until a group of boys he had known all his life, boys he considered his friends, had followed him and started calling him ‘moffie’. They screamed it for all to hear, ‘Moffie! Moffie! Moffie!’ He had never heard the word before but immediately knew what it meant, knew that it was not a nice word, knew that it was meant to shame him, knew that it had something to do with the fact that he had let Robbie McKop kiss him behind the school tuck shop one Thursday afternoon.

  It had been a dare; it had not mattered. Well, it should not have mattered. Robbie McKop had done the right thing and said ‘Sies man’ as he wiped his mouth in disgust. But Vida had kind of liked it. Maybe it had showed. Maybe he should not have closed his eyes. They had laughed then, these boys he had known all his life. They were not laughing now. They had not called him a moffie then. They were calling him a moffie now. Now, he understood that they, like vultures, had been waiting for the moment when he would be alone and vulnerable.

  He walked at an even pace. He was proud of the fact that he did not run. He was proud of the fact that he did not cry. He was strong until he saw the carefully cultivated hibiscus hedge of his home – then his endurance started to crumble. A stone whizzed past his ear. ‘Moffie!’ one boy called out for the last time before they all ran back laughing and jeering, seemingly proud of themselves.

  To his mortification, when he opened the gate he saw his father, Ezekiel de Villiers, sitting on the steps of the stoep, wearing his overalls, beer in hand and red toolbox, as always, by his side. It was what his father did with his Sundays, the only day he found himself not working at the De Villiers, Mendelsohn and Sons’ Auto Repair and Panel Beaters Garage: he took apart the engines that lay in their front yard and put them back together again. Vida stood some distance from his father and blinked away the tears. He did not wipe them off but stood still and waited for the air to dry them before advancing. He hoped, futilely, that his father had not heard what the boys had called him. He had recently begun to understand that his relationship with his father was changing – that his father now had expectations of him. He had no idea what those expectations were but he felt overwhelmed by them nonetheless. He felt that he was going to disappoint his father in some way.

  His father looked at him as he stood there waiting for his tears to dry. Ezekiel did not say a word, only moved to take a swig of his Castle Lager, his expression hard to read. Then he got up from the stoep and went into the house. Vida took the opportunity to wipe the traces of tears from his eyes. Having done so, he did not know what else to do. His father came back, stood by the front door and opened a bottle of Stoney Ginger Beer using the door frame. He sat back down on the stoep and held out the bottle to Vida. Vida let out a breath – only realising then that he had been holding it in – and went to sit next to his father. With the red toolbox between them, they drank in silence for a while.

  Eventually his father spoke. ‘You can cry if you want to. I’m your father. Nothing you do will change that. Nothing you do will change my love for you.’

  Vida tried to be strong and stoic but the tears came anyway. He wondered if his father would love him if he knew about Robbie McKop and the kiss. If he knew that he had closed his eyes? If he knew that he had enjoyed it?

  His father did not put his arm around him. His father simply took off the Ivy cap that had been a permanent fixture on his head for as long as Vida could remember and placed it on his. He opened his omnipresent red toolbox. In it were the many tools that seemed to be an extension of his father. There were also two pairs of gloves – one big and worn, the other smaller and brand new. His father handed Vida the second pair.

  ‘There are many ways to be a man. Always remember that,’ his father said.

  Vida felt his chest swell with a mixture of love, pride and gratitude. Being the son of Ezekiel de Villiers was indeed a wonderful thing.

  ‘Let’s get to work,’ his father said, getting off the stoep. Vida followed him, and it was then that his father introdu
ced him to the things he loved: a spanner, a ratchet, a socket, a screwdriver, a vice grip. Together they took apart an engine and together they reassembled it. And when the day was over, they both knew that it had been a day well spent.

  Now, looking at the girl who had just told him her story – her story of sunflowers, sojas, saviours and secrets – he realised that it was not just his father’s words that had mattered; it was both what his father had said and what he had done. His father had shown him by word and deed that he accepted him just the way he was.

  Now Vida had to find the thing to say and the thing to do to be the right man for this moment. He reached out and wiped the tears from Genie’s eyes. Touch. She let him. He told her his own story: the enchanted childhood, the violent and tragic death of his parents, the boy he had loved and lost, the girl he had also loved but not lost … not quite, the war he had fought, the battles still raging within, the anger, the anger, the anger, meeting her father in a field of elephant grass … experiencing the heralding. He poured it all out until there was nothing left. They stood there with nothing standing between them … no secrets. Genie reached up and wiped away his tears. Touch. Laid bare and armed with the knowledge of each other’s truth, they had no choice but to accept each other as they were.

  It was a liberation.

  GENESIS

  Finally, Vida took Genie to The House That Jack Built.

  The House That Jack Built was the house that Vida’s eccentric Afrikaner great-grandfather, Jakob de Villiers, had built at the turn of the nineteenth century. In keeping with Jakob’s personality, the double-storey house had been built into a hillside – nature and culture coming together to create an incongruous but ultimately spectacular structure. Victoria, Jakob’s very English wife, had lived long enough to plant a very English garden that would one day be the pride of the country, before she succumbed, as most very English wives did, to some very tropical disease.

  Vida’s grandfather, Frederick de Villiers, the son of Jakob and his maid, Blue, had been born in the house but had only been able to live in it as a servant, given the zoning laws of the land at the time. Vida’s father, Ezekiel de Villiers, like his father before him, had also been prevented by law from residing in the house as anything other than a servant. However, unlike his father, he had had no desire to reside in the house and had left it at the age of thirteen never to return. In 1980, at the age of eighteen, Vida had come back from the war to learn that his great-grandfather had bequeathed the house to him. He had done absolutely nothing to deserve or earn it, but suddenly The House That Jack Built was his. It was a weighty inheritance and Vida felt burdened by it. His was a definite embarrassment of riches.