by Wole Soyinka
Columbus had, in life, had his funeral wishes written down, detailed instructions deposited in a safe box of Spencer & Young Inc., the Wentzel family attorneys on Twelfth Street, Melville. I had the honour of assisting Pete in the interpretation of some of the peculiarities: in other words, advising him which of Columbus’s instructions could be ignored, without it being grossly offensive to the deceased. ‘C. Wentzel Funeral Commandments’ was a detailed list, typed on a typewriter, with perfect punctuation.
The perfectionist in him ensured that not only were his Commandments legible, he also took the trouble of attaching a separate page with explanatory notes: how to interpret, understand and administer the Commandments. The separate page included explicit task allocations to specific people and a list of substitute persons in the event that delegated people were unavailable. It was, therefore, not an accident that: Professor Mbembe gave a moving eulogy, Zubeida Patel from the History of Art class read out the notes on the wreaths, while I was left alone to mourn. Columbus ensured this was crystal clear: ‘My dear friend should be left alone to mourn.’ This is exactly what I did by the graveside. I, between my repressed sobs, greatly admired Columbus’ foresight, that not even death clouded his meticulous planning, so thoughtful that it took into account even the dreary and depressing dramas of death and burials. It was a peculiar occasion. Columbus had, two years before his death, reflected on the exact details of his funeral: the polished mahogany casket, the tulips in clay pots at the foot of the grave, the twelve white pigeons that were to be released at exactly fifteen minutes before midnight, as well as the custard and the pineapple jelly that was to be served by the graveside, failing which mourners were to be served strawberries and cream.
Columbus insisted, in capital letters, that funeral hymns were completely off limits, that the only scripture permitted was the Song of Solomon. It was a sensual funeral, full of memorable charms that chiselled the grief off our collective bosoms. The week of the funeral was brimming with memories of him – stories of love and kindness: how he bought heaters for old age homes, spent hours at Christ the King Care Centre, his bottomless patience with lazy freshmen who attended his History of Art tutorials, his generosity with his limited finances.
It was proper that our hearts bled, sank with the purplish brown casket, to the meditative grooves of Bon Jovi, playing ‘Something to Believe In’. I remember all two hours as a painful blur of mourners in their pyjamas, each clutching a lit candle, resulting in a half sombre event that from a distance resembled a mute rock concert. This was consistent with Columbus’ Commandment 8, which clearly stated: ‘Bury me in the evening, under glittering stars from above and a sea of lit candles from among yourselves.’ Commandment 7 was Columbus at his best: ‘For those who understandably feel the urge to weep, please do so with some level of composure.’ The lunatic in him then concluded, still under Commandment 7, ‘Like all things under the sun, composure is relative. So: bawl your lungs out if so moved by the tragedy of my passing (till we meet again), but please, don’t forget the strawberries in your howling; they are there for your sensual delight.’
Professor Mbembe read the Commandments out loud. We giggled. Laughed. Sobbed. Ate strawberries. Licked cream off our quivering mouths. It was a delightful, memorable evening, devoid of the grief that makes funerals sombre, weepy things. Columbus had, with ten brief requests, ensured the posthumous presence of his peculiar mind – how we in our pyjamas fobbed moths which somehow understood the gravity of our collective mourning, descended on the candles with moderate and guarded interest, a cautious display of insect empathy.
Commandment 4 explicitly declined use of anything remotely resembling a motorised hearse, instructing that the casket be pulled by a single white horse. That horse, with its metal shoes on the tarmac, with its twitchy tail and wet nose, street lights along Jorissen Street bouncing off the polished casket, the clay pots with their tulips, the strawberries and bowls of cream, the unlit candles, the coy pigeons in their temporary cages, constellations of stars above seen from under and through cemetery tree branches, the modest cortège (family and close friends) in pyjamas walked into the Braamfontein Cemetery wherein the silence was molten by AC/DC riffs, where I saw Zubeida Patel’s beautiful collarbones lit by her candle, her dimples encouraging inappropriate thoughts, taught me that funerals did not have to be depressing, but that with the right measure of madness, funerals had the potential to be light-hearted and enjoyable things.
Only Columbus could manage such a twisted view of existence, only he could, even in death, pour on to life bucketfuls of pranks. That is why I loved him: for his madness. One last detail about the funeral: when the pigeons were freed, fluttering in the evening light, I in my mind’s eye saw my friend at the Heavenly Gates Undertakers, lying cold on a stretcher: calm, rigid, in a soulless, handsome, refrigerated kind of way. It was only when Alfred, a bow-legged aged mortician, replaced the white sheet that covered Columbus that the post-mortem scars bared their ugliness. My friend: butchered and sewn, like an old shoe. It was then that I caught sight of something unlike Columbus: a golden brown nest of curly, rich textured pubic hair. Cheeky, this discovery, for Columbus had in life been an exemplary custodian of male grooming – which I erroneously concluded would include manicured carnal gardens. That unfortunate oversight aside, Columbus was a charmer of the finest breed, a rare specimen. Intense. Sobering. Of peculiar thoughts.
I have never in my life imagined I would be committed to psychiatric help. I was wrong. I ended up seeing a Dr West, for eight months at first, and countless others that followed. Though besotted with Rusty’s beautiful navel – her ferocious intellect, all her sleep-talking about red tractors and aeroplane crashes in sunflower fields, my visits to his office meant I had my eye and heart elsewhere. Audrey.
I confused dates and times for my twelfth consultation. Dr West had indicated he would be travelling (visit to a love child?), during the week of 8 March. It was only when Audrey answered the doorbell that she reminded me of this detail. She invited me in, requested that I pardon the mess caused by her rearranging Dr West’s filing system. She wore a black mini dress, a brilliantly tailored gem of a garment with trimmings and openings in the right places: polka-dot collar, a discreet slit over the right thigh, a giant red button that secured the dress over her remarkable neck. A deep red cardigan took care of the upper torso and her red-soled stilettos lay neatly next to one of the couches.
She walked barefoot, thoughtfully, from one filing cabinet to the next. Gorgeous legs. A devastating rear profile. Those pouty lips, begging to be kissed. She mouthed alphabets, mentally arranging surnames of patients. She was, strangely, pleased to see me – all her blushing, all the coy yet deliberate glances. Her toenails could do with a fresh coat of nail polish – a revival of the purplish shade in various stages of peeling off. She offered me a seat, Dr West’s chair, the throne from which he deciphered human tragedies, from which he patiently asked questions with discreet judgments, from which he had to think ahead, predict how to deal with unexpected meltdowns. It was from that chair that Dr West blended into the background, seemed insignificant, the master of weighing emotional pauses.
His choice of interior decor had ensured witnesses to his theatre of sobs and hisses: pictures of Bill Clinton surrounded by a group of singing children in Uganda, Gabriel García Márquez receiving the Nobel Prize, a jubilant Idi Amin in full Scottish regalia, Mandela sewing a garment on Robben Island, a shot of John Kennedy, Jr. saluting JFK’s horse-drawn coffin, that Kevin Carter image of a vulture stalking a starving child. It dawned on me that each picture, no doubt carefully selected, said something (I was not quite sure what) about existence. And what perplexing juxtapositions!
Audrey opened and sealed boxes, discarded out-of-date psychology journals, continued mouthing alphabets: C. Cromwell, D. Dikobe, Z. Maharaj, P. Woodhouse. I, in an effort to seem at ease, helped myself to dried mangoes, on which Audrey nibbled between her filing. ‘I better get going,’ I said. She loo
ked up, a typed report with red pen underlining in her hand, said, ‘I won’t die if you stay.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Stay.’
‘Well, isn’t it inappropriate, with all these secrets scattered around the consultation room?’
‘Says who?’
‘Well, doctor-patient confidentiality?’
‘Here. John Cromwell: filthy as a practicing paedophile ever gets. Preyed on two-year-olds.’
‘Audrey!’
‘Audrey what? Some of these psychos are either languishing in jail or dead.’
‘What will Dr West think?’
‘Nothing. Do you really think he walks around agonising about deviants who fuck watermelons, pathological liars who defraud orphanages, alcoholics who butchered their wives? Is that what you think: that Kevin lives his life cringing and wincing at every blot contained in these files?’ She picked up the files, pulled out Dr West’s meticulous notes: ‘Let’s see. What have we here? Amanda Dube, a prostitute who found and lost and found Jesus, Elizabeth Reed drowned her twin daughters to spite a philandering boyfriend, and Colonel Maritz, a Vlakplaas kingpin, specialised in making Africans disappear. These files, all five hundred of them, contain the most hideous, most depraved and ruthless tales you can ever imagine. Do you think Kevin kisses his children goodbye at the school gates thinking of all the rot in these patient files? Most of these horrors are perfectly normal and capable people simply being full of it. Granted there are some, a small percentage, that genuinely need help and affirmation, but the rest are fuckheads abusing their good medical insurance – drowning in self-pity and guilt.’
She smiled, transferred pre-arranged blue and yellow files into filing cabinets, all the while double-checking the alphabetical sequence. Those calves of hers. Those small, efficient hands. The small wristwatch she says was a gift from an ex-boyfriend, ‘a perfectly capable, marriage-averse software programmer with a zero-attention span. Besides his computer codes, really shocking lack of concentration. Sleep-with-shoes-on kind of delinquency. Genius? Oh, yes. Looks? Double tick. Style? Spadefuls. Money? Bank vaults. Father is a controlling shareholder of East Platinum, so the Smiths defrost their refrigerators on to bank notes. Bedroom antics? That is private. And, let’s see: Dependability? Zero. Bucketfuls for culinary skills. Bruce cooks sinfully tasty meals. And here I am, rearranging confessions from fucking Cromwell (God, he is a dick!) and other delusional, depraved creatures of his ilk.’
One hour, and the files were neatly in their respective filing cabinets – leaving Audrey to polish furniture and empty the trash basket’s negligible contents: a twisted paper clip, shredded papers, a perfume box. I knew without asking that Audrey had read my file, though she downplayed her prying eyes by volunteering stories about Cromwell’s. I also knew there was something very special about Audrey – something feminine, carefree, something profound – complex even – in how she switched from one topic to the next with breathtaking agility, how she could discuss paedophiles and boyfriends and Dr West in one passionate conversation, a conversation that lingered long after she had moved on with her tasks. She was interesting, hiding her true self, a self far removed from the obedient and efficient PA serving bottled water and dried fruits to psychopaths.
Dr West had, unbeknown to either Audrey or me, never left for Spain. This was the reason I felt safe to will pleasure into being. My hand travelled halfway up Audrey’s thigh, almost all the way, inches short of her humid horizons, transmitted oppressive sensations, while my eyes crept through the giant red button of her dress, where a pair of turgid breasts guarded her muted sighs. I lifted her on to Dr West’s desk, stood between her slightly parted legs, fed on her lip-glossed pouty lips – lips that tasted like strawberries, only with citrus undertones. It seemed the longest seven minutes I ever imagined possible, during which Audrey saw, over my shoulder, Dr West staring in absolute horror. We composed ourselves, acknowledged it had to end, that all seven minutes had to be forgotten. But we also (on the telephone) agreed that life would have been explosive had we entered the eighth minute, and every other minute thereafter. How could I explain this to Dr West: strawberry lips with citrus undertones? I would be accused of remorselessness. Loathed. Condemned. I would be crucified for a seven-minute affair, for twelve seconds of weakness; for three seconds of letting my hand wander under Audrey’s dress. I thought of Audrey Adams, whom I had, technically speaking, not bedded. How would Dr West weigh the conclusiveness of my intentions – if I would have indeed let my hand travel the remaining sprint to her forbidden spheres? I tossed and turned that evening, stared at the ceiling, plotted and raged and despaired; at how Dr West seemed to enjoy punishment by silence – how he simply walked away.
Cinema Demons
Linda Musita
It was one of those days when a man has done all he can to make sure he goes back home with food. Derrick had tried everything, even offering to do a woman’s laundry for just 200 bob. But she refused. She said she did not trust a man to clean poop out of her baby’s napkins, scrape vaginal crust off her panties and rub skid marks from her husband’s briefs. It was unnatural and how dare he ask?
He had a wife, two girls and a boy to take care of. He wasn’t really sure why he’d ever married Beatrice. Those things that happen when you live in certain places and certain things are expected of you. Derrick was an educated man. He had gone to primary and secondary school, gotten into a university as a regular student. Being a regular student meant his parents would not have to struggle to pay his tuition fees. Neither would they have to fork out the ridiculous fees that parallel students pay, as if to compensate the university for their failure to get the right grade to be considered for a loan. The government would definitely grant Derrick a HELB loan that he would start paying back with interest as soon as he got a job.
The Joint Admissions Board assigned him to study for a Bachelor of Science in Recreation and Leisure Management. Beggars are not choosers so he entertained himself for four years and graduated with first class honours.
Derrick looked for work everywhere. People laughed at his papers. They thought he was a very good joke. Ha! Ha! Ha! Recreation and Leisure Management? What the fuck is that, boy? Yes, Derrick, why didn’t you change the course? What sort of qualifications are these? Such a waste.
His father told him that a degree is just a degree and he could get a job as a bank teller if he applied himself. He had to remember he had a loan and yadda yadda yadda. Words that only served disillusion and bitterness. Forget employment, he told his father. I will become a life coach. A few seminars and I will deposit a lump sum at the HELB office, just wait and see. He tried to sell his ‘I know exactly what you should do with your life after work’ muck to corporates and housewives but they all had things to do and hardly any time to spare until December when they would holiday overseas. He wrote a book, Ten Ways to Become Leisurely, applying all he had learned at school. He was sure it was going to be a bestseller. It ended up a green leaflet covered by polythene at a few newsstands.
No money. Loan looming. Needs arising. Tired and confused. Derrick looked for hope elsewhere. He found it in Beatrice. She lived in the next plot and was permanently awed by his one-bedroomed iron sheet house that had electricity, would you believe it? Hers was one timber room that did not have cement but mud on the floor, no electricity and she was always being attacked by every odd kind of insect. But Derrick’s house? Wow. Things were in separate rooms. You had to go through a doorway to find a bed. And another doorway to find the stove, pans and plates. Plus all that netting, lace and crotchet around the sitting room wall to cover the rusted iron. How did he afford that? Wow. Beatrice, you have found a man among men.
Thanks to his 200-bob-a-month house in Kawangware, Derrick got a girlfriend. She was not of his class; he had a degree and all. But location, location, location. That is why she was perfect. His ideal woman probably lived in an extension in Bururburu but he smelled of kerosene and pit latrine all the time. For that reason
, Beatrice would do.
And she did get fat and pregnant successfully, three times. Fourteen years later, he was the oldest tenant, paying 3,000 bob for the same old tin. Going out every day to look for money.
The Bachelor of Recreation and Leisure Management had built houses, sold scrap paper and metal, cleaned toilets, washed cars, cut trees, delivered letters, sold onions, lost some coins in a Ponzi scheme, cooked and sold mandazi, pickpocketed, cut hair, made soap and cobbled shoes to make sure his progeny ate. Just food. No one was going to go to school, even though Daddi had told them that it was a fantastic place to be. And what was the point anyway if a tin was as far as school took you?
But food they just had to have. Derrick knew it. Except for this one day. He was tired and it was too early to go back home. He sat on a City Council bench opposite the Junction Mall, under a city clock, near that great corner and watched the rich go crazy with the paper in their purses and wallets.
To be honest with himself, he was afraid of money. It had caused him so much pain without even allowing him to touch it properly. Money was that woman. The one who hates you so much yet you have done nothing except desire her. The sight of you makes her puke. Derrick made money sick. Money could not believe he wanted anything to do with her and his love grew into fear that if one day he conquered her, he would mistreat and abuse her. He was not really sure he wanted much to do with her. The money game was exactly like playing Double Dutch with barbed wire.
‘Praise the Lord, my brother,’ a man sat next to him.
He was wearing a white shirt, white trousers and white shoes. The shoes and the cuffs of his trousers had some red dust on them. A sign that he had walked some distance before he got to Derrick. The man was holding pamphlets and a Bible. He was yellow. Not a white man, not Chinese and not Indian. A yellow curiosity that looked foreign and believable.