The Theory of Flight

by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

  THE REAL REVOLUTIONARIES

  The denizens of the city go about surviving their day-to-day lives: street vendors sell and hawk their wares; cars careen at neck-breaking speeds, not because they have anywhere particular to get to in a hurry, but because they were built that way, the cars stop only to buy calling cards, newspapers, vegetables and fruits – all of dubious worth; pedestrians walk with purpose even though they know that all they will find at their journey’s end is disappointment.

  The hearse moves to the side of the road to let a wedding convoy pass by. The wedding convoy zigzags on both sides of the street, dancing with danger and cheating death, horns blowing loudly. With the wedding convoy safely in the distance, the hearse resumes its journey.

  ‘When I started this business in the sixties, I was lucky if I worked on one body per week,’ the undertaker says from the funereal confines of the hearse. ‘We had three trades back then: the white trade, the Coloured trade, the African trade. You were supposed to take care of your own kind, so I was only allowed to do the Coloured trade. If I got to do three funerals in a week, then that was a very good week. I could actually do it all on my own. Went to pick up the body at the mortuary. Brought it here to prepare it. Held the viewing. My brothers put together a contraption for me that lifted the body from the gurney to the slab and from the slab to the dressing bed and from the dressing bed to the coffin. So I really could do it all alone. Needed help putting the coffin in the hearse, but family members usually preferred to do that themselves. Took the body to the cemetery. The chaps from the City Council had the grave already dug. Family members helped lower the coffin into the earth and I always helped shovel the soil onto the coffin. I watched as crying family members walked away. I watched as the chaps from the City Council left with shovels resting on their shoulders. I was always the last one to leave. Paying my last respects to a body that I had come to know intimately.

  ‘During the war things heated up and I found myself doing anywhere between seven and ten bodies a week. There were too many people dying for the trades to really matter. The whites still primarily took care of their own folks, but occasionally would handle a wealthy African. The Africans still dealt exclusively with their own kind because there was no shortage of black bodies during the war. As a Coloured man I was permitted to work on Africans and indigent whites as well. I will admit that things got a bit hairy, but I could still do things on my own. I just no longer had the time to help with the burial. I was often the first one to leave. But I always stayed until the coffin had been lowered into the earth. In the mid-eighties I had to take on an assistant because all of a sudden I was doing twenty to thirty funerals per week. I stopped going to the cemetery altogether. I left all that to the assistant. I thought I was overwhelmed then, but now Mendelsohn’s Funeral Home and Parlour is like a factory. I have twenty employees. All thanks to HIV and AIDS. The city has gone to pot. The country has gone to pot. Factories closed. Tourism done. Eighty per cent unemployment. No money in pockets. No money in bank accounts. Yet I am rolling in it. Death is the only lucrative business. I have not touched a dead body in over ten years, but I have money sticking to my fingers because of dead bodies. I never thought I would say this, but there is such a thing as too much death. And I say this as an undertaker. All this death cannot be healthy for us as a community … a city … a country. It cannot be healthy …’

  The undertaker gestures towards something on the pavement. ‘You don’t see that every day. Time was people used to stop when a hearse passed by. Remember that? Cars would stop. Bicycles would stop. Pedestrians would stop. Men would take off their hats. Place them over their hearts. Pay their last respects. Nobody does that any more. I suppose they are all too busy burying their own dead … No. You definitely don’t see that any more. Once upon a time that is how it was done. With respect.’

  Vida looks in the direction that the undertaker’s nod has indicated. There, across the street, amid all the hustle and bustle and toing and froing of the streets, stands a man. A vagabond, to most. He has removed his hat from his head and placed it over his heart. A newspaper is carefully folded and placed under his arm. Vida knows that both the easy and cryptic crossword puzzles of that newspaper have been filled out neatly and correctly.

  ‘Stop the car,’ Vida says.

  ‘I’m leading the procession – there is too much traffic.’

  ‘Please stop the car. I know that man.’

  Vida exits the hearse and runs across the street, well aware that the man may not remember him. ‘David,’ Vida says.

  The man carefully unfolds the newspaper under his arm. The headline reads: ‘IMOGEN ZULA NYONI FLIES AWAY.’

  ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ David says.

  These are the only words Vida remembers David ever having uttered. It is David who walks him back to the hearse. It is David who sits with him next to the coffin on top of which rests an effusive bouquet of flowers meticulously arranged by Minenhle. Genie’s suitcase is in the coffin. In it, among her childhood clothes, are Penelope and Specs and Blue’s baby-blue slippers.

  With David beside him, Vida opens the coffin and retrieves the suitcase. He reaches into his breast-pocket, removes the sunglasses and gives them to David. There is courage in letting Genie go. There is courage, too, in not letting Genie go entirely.

  They have done it, Marcus thinks as he watches the soil slowly cover the coffin, shovelful by shovelful. They have finally let Genie go. Marcus wonders, and not for the first time, if Genie ever belonged to them. Belonging – is it an emotion? Is it a way of being? Is it an action one takes? He had felt that he belonged to Genie all these years, but now he is not sure if it was something he felt, something he was or something he did.

  He looks at his family. His father, his mother, his sister and his grandmother. Krystle’s head is resting on their mother’s shoulder, her eyes closed. All of them look bereft and exhausted. It is the look they have had ever since Dingani told them what he did in 1987. They are all silent. The silence has become a familiar companion.

  He sees, rather than feels, a hand in his. He looks at the owner of that hand. His wife. Esme.

  This is his family. Fragile. This is where he belongs.

  Marcus finds himself leading the procession out of the cemetery, but he does not feel like heading home. Home. The house with the cracked walls. The yard with the felled jacaranda trees. The family with no Genie.

  He looks at his family and is gripped by a sudden sense of urgency. There is a place that he must see. There is a place that his family must see. He feels that they have to see it now more than ever. Instinctively he knows that seeing this place could be the very thing to strengthen them.

  He changes course.

  To his surprise the rest of the funeral procession follows him: Minenhle Tikiti, Mordechai Gatiro, Jestina Nxumalo, Valentine Tanaka, Bhekithemba Nyathi, Kuki Carmichael, Beatrice Beit-Beauford, Dr Prisca Mambo, The Survivors, the war veterans, Stefanos and Matilda, David the puzzle-solver, Mr Mendelsohn the undertaker and Vida de Villiers.

  By the time the procession arrives at the Victoria Falls and stands at the banks of the mighty Zambezi River, a new dawn is breaking. They all stand there watching the sun do what it has always done – rise from the east, full of promise.

  A man, a very tall man with glasses, wearing a cap and a loose shirt that declares him to be a very rare thing nowadays – a tourist – stands a respectable distance from the motley group. He is aware that they are waiting for something to happen, perhaps some traditional African ritual that he will luckily be able to capture on the expensive-looking camera that dangles hopefully on his chest. The man blinks once. Twice. Thrice.

  ‘Krystle?’ the man says, hesitantly, obviously not wanting to disturb their peace.

  Krystle turns around and blinks at him.

  ‘Krystle Masuku,’ the man says more assuredly.

  ‘Xander Dangerfield?’ Krystle asks incredulously.

  ‘You remember,’ Xande
r says, obviously pleased.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Krystle asks, still incredulous.

  ‘I thought I should see it for myself.’

  ‘See what?’

  Xander is about to answer, then he puts up a finger. ‘Wait.’ He starts patting his pockets. ‘Aha!’ he says triumphantly, as he retrieves something from his back pocket. It is a postcard of the Victoria Falls. On the back, in Genie’s handwriting, are the words, ‘Remember, there will be the time of the swimming elephants.’

  ‘How? How could she have known?’ Krystle asks. Her hands are trembling.

  Xander blinks at her.

  ‘Oh. Never mind how she knew. She knew … and you are here now,’ Krystle says, leading him to the people waiting on the banks.

  And that is when they appear with their formidable grace. Majestic. A herd of elephants, raising dust beautifully in the early morning savannah sunlight. The bull at the head of the herd raises his trunk and trumpets terrifically. All the elephants come to a gradual standstill on one side of the Victoria Falls. And then the elephant dives in close to where the waters plunge over the edge. Every breath is held in unison. The ancient river and the mighty animal in perfect harmony … A rite of passage made sacred by its sheer audacity. There is a wonder to it all … The possibility of the seemingly impossible … And there’s this feeling that you get … a knowing … You become aware of your place in the world … You understand that in the grander scheme of things you are but a speck … a tiny speck … and that that is enough … There is freedom … beauty even, in that kind of knowledge … It is the kind of knowledge that finally quiets you. It is the kind of knowledge that allows you to fly. You have to experience it for yourself.

  Overhead an aeroplane flies; its silver wings flash in the golden sky.

  Acknowledgements

  First, a great many thanks to the extraordinary Jenefer Shute, whose immaculate and insightful reader’s notes showed me what was possible. Thank you for seeing my vision so clearly when even I had difficulty articulating it, and for believing in that vision and advocating for it. I can never thank you enough for making the editing process such an enjoyable partnership.

  To the wonderful people at Penguin Random House South Africa, there is so much to thank you for. Fourie Botha and Beth Lindop, thank you so much for believing in this novel, for encouraging me at every step, for involving me in other creative aspects, and for always being understanding. Gretchen van der Byl, thank you for the amazingly beautiful cover that tells the story.

  A special thanks to Jessica L. Powers and Vaidehi Chitre for, through our writers’ group, providing me with a creative outlet when I needed it most. Thank you for all the feedback and support that helped The Theory of Flight take shape. Thank you for all the conversations, laughter and red velvet cake. Keren Weizberg and Donni Wang, thank you for being another set of eyes when I needed clarity.

  My creative journey has definitely been marked by intellectual forces: Maria Koundoura at Emerson College; Ruth Bradley and Jonathan Butler at Ohio University; Sean Hanretta, Saikat Majumdar, Andrea Lunsford and Kathleen Coll at Stanford University; and Rhonda Frederick at Boston College. Thank you all so much for challenging and encouraging me along the way.

  To my friends over the years, thank you for believing me when I said I was going to be a writer someday. Paula Waters, thank you just for being. Kendra Tappin and Dominika Dittwald, thank you for long conversations in parked cars. Yvonne Edmonds and Tara Thirtyacre, thank you for your support at pivotal moments. Arnold Tshuma, thank you for the many years of much-needed laughter. Wandile Mabanga, thank you for believing even when I doubted.

  Joy Mountford, Hillary Smith, Devora Weinapple and Patricia Frumkin – thank you for the sisterhood when I needed it most.

  And last, but definitely not least, thank you for the most precious gift of all: family.

  To my first family – Njabulo, Ntokozo, Nicholas, Thembekile and Sibongile – thank you for welcoming me to the fold. More importantly, thank you for allowing me to spend hours in sunflower and maize fields with my imagination.

  A great many thanks to my grandparents, Sibabi Charles Ndlovu and Kearabiloe Mokoena-Ndlovu, for providing me with a worldview that put the men in the red berets in their place. Gogo, thank you for doing many marvellous things, the most fantastic of which was weaving absorbing and engaging stories seemingly out of thin air and creating wondrous worlds in front of my very eyes. Khulu, thank you for throwing me in the air, cheering me on when I was second to last, answering my never-ending stream of questions with a smile and, most importantly, teaching me how to treat people who leave scars on the body.

  Most of all, I am incredibly grateful to my mother, Sarah Nokuthula Ndhlovu, for being brave enough not only to bring me into the world, but also to allow me to be. Thank you for saving your walls by buying me a giant scrapbook. Thank you for being an African parent who let her daughter major in Creative Writing. Thank you for always being proud of my achievements and accomplishments, no matter how small. Thank you always for being the epitome of formidable grace.

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