The Theory of Flight

by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

  Vida and Genie never defined their relationship. They never spoke of love. They were just together. And because they were together, Vida became a well-known artist. Genie encouraged him to show the Street Dwellers to Beatrice Beit-Beauford, who, in turn, purchased them for a ridiculously exorbitant sum and then donated them to the city in a lavish ceremony where Vida and the mayor had to hold an enormous pair of scissors and cut a gigantic yellow ribbon, after which the mayor presented Vida with a golden key encased in red velvet – The Key to the City. The city planner decided to put the sculptures on the median of Selbourne Avenue opposite Centenary Park. The street dwellers felt honoured, the city was proud, and the sculptures soon became a tourist attraction, which benefited the city economically. Tourists liked taking pictures of the sculptures with the very street dwellers who had inspired them. The Survivors turned this into a lucrative business for themselves, especially since they accepted payment only in foreign currency. One of the tourists turned out to be a Dutch music producer, Shadrack was ‘discovered’, moved to Amsterdam and became a rather successful world music recording artist. Just like that, the winds of change blew and everything seemed to fall into place.

  Vida became an overnight sensation, the toast of the town. Journalists, art critics and academics wrote articles about him and his work. They called him a ‘truly postcolonial artist’. As he understood it, being a postcolonial artist simply meant that he was an artist working after independence, which was true enough. But when journalists, art critics and academics used the term he got the impression that they meant more by it. They interviewed him and published articles in which his life on the street had been interpreted to mean more than it was. According to them, the Street Dwellers represented the ‘postcolonial condition’, and he, in being able to capture that condition, was a truly postcolonial artist. Apparently, when he bent and shaped metal, he was doing more than just that, he was expressing something truly postcolonial. But more than anything the critics were in rapture over his use of scrap metal: he was a genius for understanding so implicitly how salvaged metal depicted the condition of postcolonialism as no other material could.

  Genie continued to go salvaging with him and spent hours with him in his workshop. They spoke about the work he did in words he understood: spanner, ratchet, socket, screwdriver, vice grip, welding machine. This helped to ground him, and he needed grounding because it was a very heady time; it would be easy to get carried away by the idea of being a truly postcolonial artist. Instead, he just opened the red toolbox that he had inherited from his father and Genie handed him the tools that enabled him to do what he loved.

  It was in this way that he created what would become his most famous work of art: ‘The Theory of Flight: In Three Movements’. It was a sculpture that consisted of three pieces, namely ‘Golden’, ‘Lady in Waiting’ and ‘The Firebird’. He dedicated the sculpture to Genie for reasons that were obvious to him. The journalists, art critics and academics all agreed that Vida had moved beyond realism, and because they interpreted the piece differently and could agree on very little, they all agreed that ‘The Theory of Flight’ was post-postcolonial. One critic wrote that ‘“The Theory of Flight” bravely signals the way forward.’ The way forward to where, Vida could not help but wonder.

  ‘The Theory of Flight’ successfully toured the world before finally returning home and settling at the National Art Gallery. This time, The Man Himself wielded the enormous pair of scissors that cut the gigantic yellow ribbon. History seemed ready to repeat itself.

  But now the winds of change were blowing differently and, just like that, everything seemed to fall apart. The state became politically unrestful and tourists stopped coming. The city’s fortunes changed and people started vandalising the Street Dwellers on Selbourne Avenue, finding other uses for the salvaged metal. The city had no choice but to construct barbed-wire barricades around Vida’s creations. Then The Man Himself decided that Vida de Villiers was ‘too white’ to be a truly postcolonial artist and ordered that the sculptures be dismantled and thrown away. The city had no choice but to comply.

  Luckily, there was an international outcry, and various art collectors, galleries and museums around the world offered to buy Vida’s work. The city happily sold them. Mick laughing in the sunshine ended up in the Cleveland Cultural Gardens in America; Shadrack strumming his guitar ended up in the Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum in Belgium; Joseph Pereira standing tall and proud ended up in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in South Africa; David and Goliath frozen in their life-or-death struggle ended up in the Changchun World Sculpture Park in China; The Painted Ladies strutting their stuff ended up in the Windsor Sculpture Park in Canada; and The Survivors in all their undignified glory ended up in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in America.

  The Man Himself then commissioned work from artists he considered to be utterly postcolonial in order to replace the Street Dwellers. These postcolonial artists made sculptures of The Man Himself, which he placed outside select state buildings. However, the statues were vandalised and graffitied so often that The Man Himself enacted a law that made it a crime punishable by life imprisonment to be found defacing any of his statues.

  The only time Vida and Genie were apart was when Vida went by invitation to an artists’ retreat in Stockholm every year. Genie imagined Stockholm to be too cold a place to welcome her and stayed at home. Every year Vida would return to find Genie waiting for him on the veranda. She would open her arms wide. ‘Vida. Finally. Home,’ she would say, beaming, before hugging him and kissing him full on the lips.

  And so it should have been when he returned from Stockholm just before his fiftieth birthday. But it was not. Instead, he found Matilda and Stefanos waiting anxiously on the veranda. Before Vida could even ask where Genie was, Matilda blurted out, ‘Madam, sir. Something is wrong.’

  ‘Matilda, how many times must we tell you? We’re not madam. We’re not sir. We’re Genie and Vida,’ Vida said, surprised by the calm in his voice.

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’

  ‘Madam … she is not eating,’ Stefanos said, nervously crushing his hat in his hands. ‘We are trying to feed her and she is saying she have got no appetite.’

  ‘We are not knowing what to do, sir,’ Matilda said, almost in tears.

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Five days,’ Matilda and Stefanos said simultaneously.

  ‘I’m sure all will be well,’ Vida said, reassuring them both with a smile.

  ‘It is good to be having you home, sir,’ Matilda said with relief.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ Stefanos said as he opened the front door for Vida.

  When Vida saw Genie, he was shocked by the difference five days had made, but he did not show it. He found Genie sitting on her own: she was calm as she looked at something that he could not see. It seemed to reside in one of the corners of whatever room she happened to be in. He felt she was giving herself over to this something and that giving herself over to it made her calm. This something was rapacious. It ate away at her body. It stole the light from her eyes. It made murky the luminescence of her skin. It was obviously intent on taking her away from him, and she was letting it. Vida felt that her giving in was a betrayal.

  Genie had been gravely ill before but had always bounced back. Vida took a lot of comfort in that. He tried his trusted regime of marijuana and moringa again, but Genie would take neither. A change had taken place in Genie herself.

  She had fought everything that HIV had put in her path. Even when she outwardly looked healthy, he knew there were battles raging within. So why had she given up the fight?

  He might have accepted it years ago … in the beginning. In the beginning, they really had thought that their time together was borrowed. When they were being realistic they expected to have three, maybe five years together. When they were being dreamers they had imagined being together for ten years. But that was before the ARVs.

  They had survived so muc
h before. Why could they not survive the something in the corner? The answer was simple – they could not survive it because Genie did not want them to.

  Frightened, Vida stood in her field of vision, obscuring the something in the corner. She slowly adjusted her gaze and looked at him, not because she wanted to, but because he had made her. She made him feel the obligation of looking at him.

  The something in the corner was an uninvited and unwelcome guest that came between Vida and Genie. After years of being together, it came, settled between them and seemed intent to leave only when Genie left with it.

  The something in the corner made Vida desperate. He had accommodated abrupt changes in his life before, but he would not accommodate this one. Not without a fight.

  It took three attempts for him to get Genie to let some sustenance pass through her lips. By then Vida was anxious, impatient and angry.

  ‘You need to let me go,’ Genie finally said in a tired voice. She said it easily, as though she was simply asking him to fix something in the house that was broken.

  He chose to ignore her and instead tried to force a spoonful of porridge into her mouth. It took too long a moment for her to open her mouth.

  ‘I’m tired, Vida,’ she whispered after swallowing the porridge slowly, painfully.

  He ignored the sorrow in her eyes as he shoved another spoonful into her mouth, all the while aware that he could have tried a little tenderness.

  This time she gagged, bringing up the two spoonfuls she had just taken in.

  He tried to force another spoonful into her mouth. This time she clamped it shut.

  Tears – he could not tell if they were his or hers – fell onto his hands.

  He pressed his forehead against hers. ‘Please, Genie. You have to eat. The medication is too caustic – you can’t take it without food. You know that,’ he said, opting to be gentle this time.

  ‘I’m not taking the medication either.’

  He looked at her. She looked at him, determined.

  ‘The war veterans have taken over the Beauford Farm and Estate,’ Genie said.

  The neutrality in her voice did not let Vida know what this had to do with their current situation.

  ‘You need to let me go.’

  And that was when he knew that this change had not unfolded over a mere five days. It was something she had planned. Deliberate. Determined. Decided. While sitting across from him at breakfast. While lying next to him. While running her fingers idly through his hair. At some point in all that normality she had decided to give up the fight. Carelessly. Callously. Cruelly.

  Fear, desperation, anger and something dangerously akin to hatred coursed through his veins, boiled his blood. He shoved the spoon in her mouth.

  She spat the porridge in his face.

  ‘You want to die?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I want to die,’ she said calmly. It was the calmness that scared him the most. It was a resignation; evidence that she had already reconciled herself to the idea.

  He walked away but did not get too far before crumpling to the ground. ‘How could you want to leave me?’

  ‘I thought that love was a giving thing. Now I know that it is selfish.’

  ‘But we agreed that we would never speak of love.’

  ‘This was because I was so sure you would keep your promise.’

  ‘This is not what the promise held.’

  ‘You cannot save me, Vida,’ Genie said. ‘Not this time. This time you have to be brave.’

  But he had saved her. He had taken her to Mater Dei Hospital (she was too weak to put up much resistance) and watched as a nurse tried to find a viable vein for the intravenous drip, pricking needle after needle in both arms and only succeeding on the eleventh try. He saw the accusation in Genie’s eyes with every prick of the needle and chose to ignore it.

  A few days later, Dr Mambo, looking almost happy, said that Genie’s hospitalisation had been a blessing in disguise because lesions had been found in her cervix just in time … before they turned cancerous. They would have to be monitored, of course. More medication would have to be administered, of course. More precautions would have to be adhered to, of course. But, all told, it had been a blessing in disguise.

  Vida was grateful but did not feel the blessing.

  A week later, Genie came back from the hospital healthy, and seemingly back to her old self. She carried on as though nothing had happened – as though she had not deliberately tried to leave him. As though she had not wanted to leave him. He could forgive her many things, but, at that moment, he could not forgive her initial willingness to leave him.

  The years, mostly happy, went by and he grew to forgive … and forget.

  On the morning of his fifty-seventh birthday Vida woke up to feel Genie’s warm breath against his skin. ‘Happy birthday, dear Vida,’ her lips whispered softly against his before kissing him lightly. ‘Happy birthday to you.’ What man on earth would not want to turn fifty-seven this way? He opened his eyes then to find her smiling down at him.

  His right hand reached up to pull her face down towards his. She did not stop smiling when their lips met.

  Later, her legs locked around his waist with a tenacity that let him know that in that moment he was the only thing that mattered to her. Her eyes fixed on his with a fiercely singular focus that was suddenly overwhelming. He found himself about to say something. There were only so many things a man’s heart could contain. There were things that he had managed to find only with her … he could not deny that … beautiful things that he felt blessed with. Before he could stop the words, they were already travelling the space between them. He heard himself say ‘I love you.’ Then he watched as her eyes lost focus. She looked at him intently and intensely, but she no longer saw him. She had given herself over to the feeling. Her brow furrowed. Her mouth opened and one word breathlessly came out: ‘Vida.’ Then she let go of it all in wave after wave. And inevitably he crested one of those waves.

  As Vida watched Genie walk tow ards him carrying his suitcase for his trip to Stockholm, he tried not to think too much of his unrequited ‘I love you’. She placed the suitcase in the boot of the car and then fixed his collar, hugged him from behind and kissed his neck twice. ‘You remind me of rivers I swam in a long time ago. You are home to me,’ she whispered in his left ear, and then, through the pure cotton of his shirt, she kissed the jagged keloid on his shoulder that had been made by Goliath’s broken Castle Lager bottle, all those years ago, before he became a saved man.

  He did not understand the words. Was this her way of speaking to him of love?

  When he turned to ask her what she meant, she kissed him so sincerely that once again he found himself transported to the field of tall, yellow, almost golden elephant grass, transformed into the man with the familiar tingle in his fingers.

  BOOK TWO

  PART I

  EPISTEMOLOGY

  GENIE

  When Genie was among the sunflowers it was like a remembering; a remembering of a self all but forgotten. There was nothing she enjoyed more than digging her toes into the moist reddish-brown soil first thing in the morning. She loved the prickle of her skin when her bare arms came into contact with the long, thin stalks of the sunflowers. She would turn her face towards the sun peeping through the sunflower petals and, eyes closed, listen to the hum and buzz of the busy bees above. She strongly suspected that she had once upon a time been a sunflower, for she too was thin and tall, reaching for the sky; she too had a brown face that was turned up towards the sun; she too loved the gentle sway of the breeze. The only difference between herself and the sunflowers was that they had yellow halos and hers was reddish-brown like the soil, but differences in life were allowed and to be expected.

  Her childhood among the sunflowers dances and flashes in Genie’s mind as she watches the bloodstain grow and morph on the white sheets. For a while the bloodstain had looked like a butterfly, a moth, some winged crimson creature. Now … well, now it looks like t
he map of a country … a country with rather fluid borders … a country she knows well.

  She wishes more than anything that she had been able to save the mattress, but she fears the blood – her blood – has soaked right through the sheets and onto it. Vida will have to buy a new one. She feels a deep sense of regret because this has been his favourite mattress. They have been together for more than twenty years and have had three mattresses: the first proved too lumpy, the second too springy. It was this one, the third, that had been just right – firm with a little give. Once she started bleeding she should have shifted to the floor, saved the mattress, and saved Vida the trouble of having to buy a new one. But now she is too weak to do anything but lie here and wait. Alone. With nothing for company but Vida’s absence.

  It was Marcus who had taught her an important lesson about absence. Because of him she had discovered that an absence, like a presence, occupies space – it has proportions, parameters and a sense of permanence. Because of him she had realised that an absence is actually more steadfast than a presence: you cannot take another’s presence with you wherever you go, but another’s absence need never leave you. Because of him she had learned that an absence, like a presence, is something you could come to know intimately.

  And suddenly, as if conjured by all this absence, there is a presence.

  A boy, Sikhumbuzo, who sits a few rows in front of her in class, points an accusatory finger at her as he screams ‘You are dead! You are dead! You need to lie down on the ground. I have killeded you! I have killeded you! On the ground now!’ His chest is puffed up with something that truly terrifies Genie. They must be playing either ‘RF vs Terrs’, ‘War’, ‘Bazooka’ or ‘Take Cover’, because all these games involve having to make rat-a-tat-tat sounds while you point handmade wire AK-47s at each other, lob imaginary grenades and detonate equally imaginary landmines. The gleeful eagerness required to kill off all of your friends and be the last one standing is what defeats Genie in the end. She throws down her wire AK-47.