And that is how it came to pass that on December 31, 1974, at Stanley Hall, Dingani, while strumming his guitar and wailing ‘Don’t let me down’ into the microphone, fell in love with a girl who had a pink carnation in her hair.
The pink skirt of her dress had fluttered just so as she swayed to the music, catching his attention. Her eyes were closed. Her hands were in the air. ‘Don’t let me down.’ She was a very pretty girl, but to his surprise that was not what had attracted him to her. Instead it was that she obviously felt things so very deeply and was so self-possessed that she could allow herself to completely lose herself in a sea of people. ‘Don’t let me down.’ He instantly loved the freeness of her spirit.
‘So which is it?’ she asked when the band stopped playing and he finally mustered up the courage to approach her. ‘The Wandering Wonderers, The Wondering Wanderers, The Wonderers or The Wanderers?’
‘Which do you think it should be?’
‘I think you already know the answer to that.’
And Dingani suddenly knew the name of his band with a certainty and assuredness that he had never possessed until that very moment.
The girl’s name was Thandi Hadebe.
In the course of their relationship, Thandi was once a runner-up, twice a first princess and then crowned queen of several beauty contests. Eventually, she acquired the much-coveted spot on the cover of Parade magazine. However, as she posed for the photographer by looking into the distance as though it held a future in which she was not particularly interested, she realised that she had not had her period for three months. This discovery was most unfortunate, because not only was her career as a model taking off but Dingani had just received a scholarship to study medicine in the United States of America. America! Thandi knew the baby could not be America-bound because it would be in the way of two young people trying to realise impossible dreams. And so she decided that she would have the baby and that her parents would raise it.
Dingani married Thandi with his mother’s full approval. His mother liked Thandi for being a young woman who knew how to take care of disappointments. If her son could come home a doctor with a medical degree and bring with him a wife with a bachelor’s degree, they would automatically enter the highest levels of African society – perhaps even European society. They would be respectable. They would be envied. They would be somebodies.
Dingani became a doctor. Thandi did not pursue a bachelor’s degree, and a modelling career did not pursue her. She did, however, get a job dressing mannequins in the windows of a high-end department store and made a ridiculous amount of money doing so. Their lives were good. Their lives were very, very good. In fact, their lives were so good that they never needed to go back home to a country that was newly independent. The only thing that presented itself as a problem in their lives was the child Thandi had left at the Beauford Farm and Estate.
They were still trying to decide what to do about the child when they started hearing stories from back home about the disappearances taking place in the region where their child lived. After much deliberation, they felt they had no choice but to go and save him.
It would be unfair to suspect that Dingani and Thandi had given any consideration to the fact that they could realise the kind of life that they desired – the tranquil, evergreen and peaceful life that Dingani had glimpsed on the day he and his mother had met Emil Coetzee – much more quickly in the country that was newly independent than in the United States of America. Even though the letters Dingani received from his mother mostly contained news of the Europeans’ exodus and the high-paying jobs and the vast suburban homes they were leaving in their wake, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that these letters had any bearing on Dingani and Thandi’s decision to return home.
Besides, what matters most is that they did return and that they did save their son – Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku.
Dingani and Thandi did indeed enter the highest echelons of society, as Eunice had predicted. Dingani was even able to purchase Emil Coetzee’s mansion … for a song, he always liked to add. Although it was one of the grandest homes in the country, Emil Coetzee’s house had proved difficult to sell because Emil Coetzee had committed suicide in it on the eve of the country’s independence. This fact had not deterred Dingani. He felt that it was only proper that he should live in the house of the man who had played such a pivotal role in shaping his future. His mother moved into the house as well, bringing with her the yellow Formica table with its four matching chairs.
Dingani and Thandi entered the most respectable social circles; they sent their children to the best schools, they belonged to the most exclusive clubs and they vacationed at all the high-end resorts.
Having finally arrived where his mother had wanted him to, Dingani should have been happy, and he would have been, were it not for politics. His childhood friends, Jameson and Xolani, had not been as fortunate as to attend university in the United States of America; they had instead gone to the only university the state had to offer and, while there, they had become politicised, radicalised. They might not have had any political affiliations and leanings before independence, but they definitely did after independence and they held on to them tenaciously.
Whenever Dingani thought about politics, he saw the blue-violet flowers on his mother’s dress, and felt an overwhelming fear come over him. He remained steadfastly apolitical. But whereas Jameson and Xolani had not minded how apolitical Dingani had been before independence, they definitely minded now. They wondered what kind of man he was if he did not have political views of any kind. What did he stand for? What did he hope for? What made his life anything more than just an empty shell? He would have liked to disagree with them, but when he saw Jameson and Xolani argue into the early hours of the morning with passion (a passion that he had witnessed in his own father – a passion he had never felt himself – a passion he suspected was fundamental to being a man) he began to think that perhaps he needed some politics in his life.
But where to find politics? He was already a man over thirty, with responsibilities, and politics was something that seemed to germinate when one had just entered adulthood and was finding one’s self and one’s place in the world. Then, one evening, as he and Jameson and Xolani sat on his veranda having sundowners and discussing whether or not everyone who had taken part in the civil war should be considered a revolutionary, Dingani said casually, without much thought: ‘Now you see, a man like Golide Gumede is the kind of man that this country really needs. The man is building an aeroplane from scratch. Believes he can do it, too. He is innovative. Radical. Fearless. If this country had even just one hundred such men and women, then this thing we call independence would hold more promise. I think you both make the mistake of thinking that revolutions have to involve masses of people. Real revolutions happen on farms, in workshops, in garages and in basements, usually in the middle of nowhere, propelled simply by the need to realise a dream.’
Xolani and Jameson looked at him but did not say anything. Dingani thought that perhaps he had said something wrong, but this was something he thought he felt passionate about. ‘A man like Golide Gumede has the kind of vision that leads not to thousands of people dying senselessly on the battlefield but to thousands having their lives actually change for the better. Visionaries, and not politicians, are the real revolutionaries,’ Dingani said, very satisfied with himself and not quite caring, for the first time, what his friends thought.
‘How do you know what Golide Gumede is or is not doing?’ Xolani asked, his voice neutral.
‘Because I saw him in the process of building the aeroplane.’
Another silence followed, but this time the look in their eyes held something that Dingani wasn’t able to read.
‘You know Golide Gumede?’ Jameson asked, sounding awestruck.
And that was when Dingani realised that his friends were looking at him with respect. His chest puffed out a little bit. ‘Of course I know Golide. He practically raised my M
arcus when I was in the States,’ he said, exaggerating for simplicity’s sake.
‘And … and … you saw this aeroplane he is building?’
‘Of course I did. I already said I did.’
‘And … and … do you know what he intends to do with this aeroplane?’
‘Fly it, I suppose.’
‘Are you sure this is Golide Gumede, civil-war hero, we are talking about?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does he look like? The man was so elusive. They were never able to capture him – physically or photographically.’
‘I have always imagined him as big, boxy and bald,’ said Xolani.
‘He is none of those things,’ Dingani said, his voice swelling with authority. ‘He is tall, almost impossibly tall, lanky, and an albino.’
Xolani’s drink actually shot out of his mouth, spraying Dingani’s moccasins. ‘An albino?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you are absolutely sure the man you are speaking of is Golide Gumede?’
‘Yes,’ Dingani said, sounding somewhat irritated, ‘I am absolutely sure.’ There was another long silence.
‘Perhaps some day you can take us to meet Golide Gumede. Both the man and the aeroplane will be a sight to see.’
‘Perhaps,’ was all Dingani said in response, as he allowed himself to feel his importance.
* * *
When The Organisation came to pick Dingani up at his private practice the next day and took him to The Tower to process him, all he wondered about was which one of his friends was a spy for The Organisation – Xolani the lawyer or Jameson the advertising executive? He did not know. At times it seemed to him that, based on the questions he had asked, Jameson must have been the spy, and then at other times it seemed to him that, based on the questions he had asked, it must have been Xolani.
He had a lot of time to think before a man he would later learn was The Man Himself entered the room and asked him one question: Why is Golide Gumede building an aeroplane? At first Dingani said that he did not know, which was the truth. But after the question had been asked several more times in the same measured voice by The Man Himself, Dingani suddenly remembered Thandi’s laughter as she sat in front of their dressing mirror, applying a sweet-smelling lotion to her hands and wearing a red, satin nightdress: ‘Can you believe he really thinks he can fly Elizabeth all the way to Nashville in that thing?’
‘He wants to take his wife to Nashville, Tennessee,’ Dingani said, relieved. ‘His wife has dreams of being a country-and-western singer,’ he added, to make the story more convincing.
The Man Himself was not convinced by this and asked the question again, ‘Why is Golide Gumede building an aeroplane?’ The Man Himself did not seem to be in a hurry. He did not seem angry. He seemed as if he had the kind of patience to sit there for days and continue asking the one question.
‘Why is Golide Gumede building an aeroplane?’
But Dingani had no such patience. ‘Because he is planning to overthrow the government,’ Dingani said. For years afterwards, he all but convinced himself that he had said those words because he had fully expected The Man Himself to laugh at the ludicrousness of the notion, the way Emil Coetzee had laughed when Dingani’s mother had said the same thing about his father in 1965. But The Man Himself did not laugh. He simply looked at Dingani and allowed the expected silence to fall between them, after which he said: ‘You have not disappointed me.’ Then he got up and left the room, leaving the door open behind him, giving Dingani his freedom.
For weeks nothing happened and Dingani told himself that his conversation with The Man Himself had not amounted to anything, but then news came from the Beauford Farm and Estate, informing him that Thandi’s parents, along with many of the compound’s residents, had been killed.
When he did everything in his power to adopt Imogen Zula Nyoni, he refused to think too deeply about why he needed to have her belong to him. He was almost successful in convincing himself that there was no direct connection between his conversation with The Man Himself and what happened on the Beauford Farm and Estate. But then one day he received a cheque for an exorbitant amount in the mail. It was from The Man Himself, and it was made out to Dingani Masuku in respect of services rendered. He looked at the cheque for a long time, not believing what he saw: the blue-violet flowers of his mother’s dress. They were all over the cheque, and they were spreading onto his hands, onto the desk, onto the walls, onto the ceiling – intent on covering every surface. He hid the cheque in his desk but the blue-violet flowers still covered every surface.
Similar cheques arrived on the twenty-second of every month, and every month Dingani religiously hid them and reconciled himself to the omnipresence of the blue-violet flowers. Then one day he received a call from The Man Himself telling him that it would be advisable to deposit the cheques. From that day on, on the twenty-third of every month, Dingani deposited the cheques in a trust fund for Genie. He chose to look at this as a kind of victory, but he had to admit that it was a victory that left the bitter taste of ash in his mouth. It was also a victory that was short-lived. As the economy began to falter and the Masukus’ lifestyle became more difficult to maintain, Dingani found himself having to put the monthly cheques to other uses and even, eventually, having to squander the ash-tasting trust fund in Genie’s name.
PART II
REVELATIONS
THE SURVIVORS
Beatrice Beit-Beauford knows that she can no longer trust her mind – too often now, it fails or deceives her – but she is sure, almost, that this place that she is looking at is the place of her birth, her home, the Beauford Farm and Estate. But it cannot be. Beauford Farm and Estate is lush and verdant, something is always growing or being harvested. Beauford Farm and Estate is always busy with people and livestock. This great, great expanse of dust fields and mud huts cannot be Beauford Farm and Estate, therefore her mind must be playing tricks on her … again. And yet, those blue hills, hazy and distant, look so familiar … and the skeletal house they are driving towards now could be the house she grew up in … if it were stately. But it is not.
Kuki had told her that they were going to Beauford Farm and Estate, so why is she taking her somewhere else?
‘When will we get to Beauford?’ Beatrice asks Kuki, who is leaning over her steering wheel and squinting at the dust, trying to see the road ahead.
Kuki looks away from the road and smiles at her sympathetically, which is the only way that Kuki smiles at her now. Kuki squeezes her hand briefly before returning her focus to the obscured road ahead.
Whatever her faults may be, you cannot ask for a truer friend than Kuki, Beatrice thinks, and just then a field of sunflowers bursts into view.
‘Home!’ Beatrice beamingly exclaims. ‘Beauford.’
* * *
Valentine is well aware that the situation in which he currently finds himself is far from ideal. When he had imagined this moment, he had seen himself driving up to the Beauford Farm and Estate with a few people – Vida de Villiers, Jestina Nxumalo and perhaps a member of the Masuku clan, probably (but not preferably) the son. But now here he is, at the head of what can only be called a convoy – the Masukus in their entirety, of course, had to come, Kuki Carmichael and Beatrice Beit-Beauford had to come, even Bhekithemba Nyathi had to come, but he at least generously gave a ride to Minenhle Tikiti and Mordechai Gatiro, who also had to come. A procession of four cars … a cavalcade … a column.
Valentine hopes that he has parked his car in the right place. In front of him is a skeletal house, a crumbling edifice that is held together by ivy and the memory of its former grandeur. There is absolutely no sign of life. He and his passengers – Vida and Jestina – alight one by one and stand in the barren dustiness, at a loss as to what to do next. They watch the other cars park.
That was one bumpy and dusty road, Valentine thinks as he looks back at the long, thin stretch of patchily tarred road that has been eaten away by years of neglect.
&nbs
p; Almost imperceptibly, a torn lace curtain moves behind one of the windows. Proof of life. A few moments later the front door yawns open and a man comes out. Even though he is small in stature and still standing in the distance, Valentine can tell that the man has an axe to grind. He is probably also carrying some kind of weapon in the hand he has behind his back.
‘I will handle this,’ Valentine says to the others, sotto voce.
‘Private property!’ the man shouts, not breaking his stride.
‘I don’t doubt it for a minute,’ Valentine says. ‘Is this the Beauford Farm and Estate?’
‘Fair and square,’ the man says, finally coming to a stop a few metres away from Valentine.
‘Is that what you’re calling the place now? Fair and Square?’
‘We are here, fair and square. We buy property from Miss Beatrice. We don’t land-grab.’
‘Oh. I see. So this is the Beauford Farm and Estate?’
‘Private property. You are trespassing. Go now!’
The Theory of Flight Page 25