by Wole Soyinka
A breeze comes to him, hinting that the night is cooling down. Jabu inhales the cool air, but with it he gulps down a sharp smell that burns his nose, windpipe and lungs. The attack is so sudden, so disorienting, that he unknowingly pulls in another breath and croaks into a phlegmy cough. It hits him hard – physically it looks as if he has taken a heavy punch that has winded him. He kneels and spits. A collective sigh from the crowd of elders cuts through the silence. Jabu takes off his T-shirt, folds it, wraps it over his nose and ties it tight at the back of his head. His eyes itch and water, his torch falls. He picks himself and the torch up and waves the light back at the originals, showing them he is up and moving on.
The lump is large. If it is indeed a human body, it is a big fellow. The odour that fills his throat steams off the lump, which he now sees is covered by a green plastic sheet. Three steps from it he looks back at the crowd.
When he peels back the green plastic, the cool breeze blows away the sharp smell for a few seconds. Jabu has seen his share of gore but it still shocks him that there are two bodies under the green sheet, one on top of the other. The top body has a single gunshot wound, a clean shot – just a hole exactly the size of a bullet in his left temple. Jabu’s torch reveals a young man, twenty or so years old. Pulling on the latex gloves, Jabu feels that heaviness that slumps his shoulders every time he comes across a fatality.
The young man died in expensive clothes – a YSL big buckle belt, T-shirt and jeans, ankle-high Lacoste sneakers and a Diesel chronograph. Jabu lifts the designer T-shirt and checks for injuries on the young man’s torso. There aren’t any. And he bled only slightly from the gunshot wound – the red line does not even reach his jaw. His pockets are empty.
Jabu drops the torch and rolls the first body to the side. Picking up his light, he starts at the feet of the second body. This young man died in even better clothes. Sneakers are Iceberg. He is bound by rope at the ankles, knees and waist. Jeans are True Religion. His hands are tied behind his back. Torchlight exposes stumps where his fingers should be, they have been severed at the first joint. His belt is genuine Louis Vuitton. His T-shirt is soaked in so much blood that it is impossible to make out its original colour. Jabu moves his torch up from the torso to examine the face, estimate age, but the second body has no head.
A gust of the vapour coming from the windpipe of the decapitated body puts a halt to Jabu’s shocked inspection. The sharp smell cuts through the layers of the T-shirt over his nose, it burns his throat and eyes. He bolts away from the bodies, but the breath he holds is full of the foulness of death. He needs fresh air and he runs to it. Halfway between the crowd of originals and the bodies he can hold on no more. He removes the T-shirt and gulps in.
It is the second lungful of fresh air that does him. That second gulp brings the smells of the weekend flying back to him. Stinking goat sellers, the smell of the slaughter, the persistent reek of goat hide, the stink of slippery innards, torn tendons and dismembered joints, wood smoke, whisky, Card’s cologne, frying onions, weed, the wetness of earth, the plate of food he warmed and ate before he came to the crime scene, a fruiting mango tree, latex gloves, the bitter, lung-singeing smell of death.
He kneels, sick, and his stomach empties violently. Exactly three times he bellows like a bull on its last breath after it has been fatally wounded. Thrice his internal organs attempt to jump out from under his skin and overtake it so that all that is inside is out, the out in.
‘He’s dying in front of us! Call for help! My son, what is wrong?’
And a few screams from the grandmothers in the group of Umlazi originals. Cries of the vagabond rise again. Jabu hears a sound that rings from inside his ears, a shrill continuous buzz that blocks out all other sounds. He stands up, lighter than a feather. The ground sways side to side then round. The track gives out from under him. Next thing he knows he weighs nothing, and then the track crashes into his face.
Jabu mistakes the hiss in his ears for the breezy winds of heaven. His eyes open just as the oxygen tank shoots out an especially dense white mist that escapes through the sides of the mask. He is sure the white fumes are the famed fluffy clouds of heaven, but the whiteness clears quickly to reveal a starry sky.
He hears the baritone of Commander Sithole in the distance and feels a tightness gripping his left arm. Yet another hit of white from the oxygen mask clouds his view. When it clears he sees the source of the tightness – the inflatable cuff of a blood pressure monitor strangles his upper arm.
Jabu quickly realises that he is lying on a stretcher. He tries to sit but fails and turns his head to the side instead. He sees old people, the originals of D section. The regaining of his bearings ends with the last thing he saw before the track rushed into his face and it was lights out, he sees it again in his mind – the bodies, the absent head. He deliberately inhales hard on the aerosol for an oxygen high to banish the gore he witnessed from his mind.
Jabu is out for no more than a minute. The oxygen buzz wears off and he wakes to see the railway track in the distance. It is now better lit, not pitch dark like when he foraged, found the mess and blacked out. His partner, the old hand Shezi, is in and out of view, holding a flashing camera. Commander Sithole is also in and out of view. He looks around and finds the source of the sudden brightness – the new light from the station. There is yellow police tape around the horrors, right where the track disappears into the tunnel; it barely flaps in the windless night. Commander Sithole and Detective Shezi have secured the scene.
Jabu turns back to the originals and tries to raise his head. The elders nudge each other. A few grandmothers smile encouragingly at his valiant attempt. He strains and tastes his own blood as his tongue runs over a burst lip.
Jabu tries to sit up. He fails four times, only succeeding when the helping hand of Commander Sithole pulls him up. The inflated cuff on Jabu’s arm is about to burst. He adjusts to the sitting position, closing his eyes to the sudden dizziness that overwhelms him.
Sithole is next to him. He looks at the scene – Sithole does – and at the elders, then back to Jabu. ‘The force of the fall cut your lip. You were bleeding profusely when we arrived. Totally out. Your face half-buried in crushed stone,’ he says.
‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ Jabu says through the oxygen mask. The mask seems to reflect what he says back into his head. His words ring inside his cranium and he is within a whisker of gagging.
‘Once. When I had just started on the force. It happened on the N2 near Mtunzini – a bus full to capacity rolled and caught fire. We arrived before the fire engines and there was nothing we could do. We watched for fifteen minutes while the people trapped inside burned alive. We watched, waited for the fire engines, helpless, and heard, one by one, their screams fall silent. But that was an accident. This is murder.’
Jabu recalls the crudeness of the smell that burned his nose, throat, eyes. It is tattooed in his memory. Luckily the oxygen tank thwarts his recollection with another hit of white mist. A government mortuary van reverses into the yard, stopping as close as possible to the edge of the track. They are quick in their recovery. Jabu watches, seated on the stretcher, only half believing what is happening in front of him. He is there but not really there, watching himself from above, not as high as, say, a news helicopter but maybe two metres over the unravelling scene. From this view the undertakers return with only one body bag.
‘Where is the other body? There were two bodies . . .’ Jabu says from behind the oxygen mask. His words echo back into his head. He hates how he sounds – weak and shaken.
‘We took him to hospital. He was still alive. We found a faint pulse,’ says Sithole.
‘What? The boy with a bullet in his brain is alive? How come?’
‘It baffled everyone. His pulse was faint, though. I doubt he will make it through the night.’
‘Commander, I don’t believe you.’
‘Believe it.’
The paramedic is back from a smoke break. He take
s Jabu’s blood pressure and deems it time to remove the oxygen mask.
‘You will be fine. Your blood pressure is stable,’ he tells Jabu, taking off the inflatable cuff. ‘Try to stand up.’
Jabu sits for a while then he stands and takes a step, then another.
‘Is it true he is alive?’ he asks the paramedic.
‘I was also shocked when I checked him and found a pulse. He is in surgery at Prince Albert Luthuli as we speak.’
A call crackles on the young paramedic’s two-way radio. He collects the stretcher and equipment and takes it all to the ambulance. There is another emergency and he is quickly gone.
‘This is yours, you and Shezi,’ says Station Commander Sithole. ‘You go home, get some rest. I’ll help collect the evidence, seeing as you are in no condition to work, but when morning comes this case is yours.’
‘Are you sure he is alive? The boy with a bullet in his head?’
Jabu looks at the ground, trying to get it to steady. When he looks up again he finds that Sithole is on his way back to the heart of the crime scene.
In the van Jabu attempts to get himself together, a cigarette burning in his trembling hand. His recollections are repetitive, each one ending with the absent head. The shrill whistle of his phone shakes him back to reality, but his trembling hands drop it and he has to fiddle between the pedals until he eventually finds it. The message is from Zinhle.
‘Where are you?’
‘Coming home,’ he replies.
from the forthcoming novel My New Home
Glaydah Namukasa
Today Jjaja did not smack my ankles. She did not call me devil’s pet. She did not even spit at me! She simply handed me the plastic jug and a one thousand shilling note and asked me to wait about for the milkman. Mukulu has been away for two days now. I want him to return soon so that I can tell him about Jjaja. Mukulu loves me. He calls me his grandson.
The morning air is freezing. A few moments ago, the sun glanced at me. I saw its face peeping through the branches of the kifenensi in the middle of our small compound. It blinked and gave off warm, fluorescent light that gracefully danced through the leaves. Then the sun closed its eyes and disappeared, leaving the gloomy grey clouds to gaze at me. I do not look back. My life is no longer that shade of grey.
For the three years I have lived with her, Jjaja’s hatred for me has been steadfast. Her hatred was born the minute she opened the door of her mud-and-wattle house to let me and Aunty Lito inside. When Aunty Lito introduced herself as Mama’s former friend and explained that I was the child of Jjaja’s only son, the late Damulira, Jjaja told Aunty Lito not to talk ill of her dead son, and then she hurried to the bedroom and returned with a bowl of water. She darted around the house, dipping a small bundle of bisenke grass into the bowl and spraying spurts of water in the corners and on the walls. She said she was safeguarding her house with holy water because I wasn’t her grandchild but a curse.
I was seven years old then. Now I am ten and I know that she sees me as a pest. She tells me that I am different from the other children because I don’t have a mother or a father. Or any known relative. That I am a destitute orphan rambling through life like a plastic bag flapping about in the wind.
But yesterday the routine of my days changed. Jjaja did not pull me out of bed at cockcrow so I could make the fire for smoking her leftover tilapia and Nile perch. Instead she served me millet porridge with milk and sugar! She let me smear my whole body with Movit Herbal Jelly for the first time. Last night she served me a piece of fish ball. First I delicately peeled off the crust. Then I slithered the pieces of fat in my mouth, enjoying the salty cream.
I am sitting on the small veranda of our house with my knees drawn up to my chest. The milk jug is safe beside me, the money secured in my right hand. I cannot understand the meaning of Jjaja’s goodness. This new pattern is scary. But I love the fish balls. The milk and sugar, and Movit Herbal Jelly. The milkman is taking too long to come. I grab the jug and hop my way to the kiosk that separates our house from the bucket latrine shed. This is where the milkman parks his bicycle.
A band of boys charge from J.J’s film shack across the trench. J.J racing after them. He has a bamboo rod that he keeps swiping and hitting in the air. He gives up. Last week these boys were rounded up by police for going to film shacks during school time. Their punishment was five strokes of the cane each but they didn’t learn the lesson. One of them, the one with a head shaped like a Sejembe mango, waves a hand in my direction. ‘THAT BOY DRINKS ALCOHOL.’ They all stop and turn to stare at me.
‘No. He doesn’t!’ another one shouts. I know this one. Juma. He lives with his mother at Kadopado where Jjaja sends me on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays to buy fried fish balls. He is short and has a big stomach that protrudes through his shirt, like mine. I don’t like Juma. He never shares fish balls with me.
But now he is defending me.
‘He goes to bars with his grandfather,’ Sejembe-head.
They think I drink alcohol but I don’t. At the bars, Mukulu buys me mubisi, a sweet juice made from ripe bananas. At Tongo’s bar, Mukulu buys me Fanta soda, my favourite.
‘I tell you he doesn’t drink. He only goes because he has to hold his grandfather’s walking stick.’ Juma.
‘Lujuuju!’ Sejembe-head.
Juma lunges forwards and grabs Sejembe-head’s throat.
I put the milk jug down and watch Juma go. Warm blood streams through my veins and wakes up my entire body. The chill disappears. I am filled with warm laughter and it is a good feeling. So different from the cold fear that always pinched my heart when Jjaja looked at me before.
Juma is Jackie Chan. Springing forwards snake-style to bite Sejembe-head. My happiness is unstoppable. It’s like the sunlight seeping into every crevice in our locked-up house in the mornings. I chant, ‘Juuuma, Juuuma, Juuuma.’ The other boys join in.
Juma! I will forage the neighbourhoods for marbles and janto. Together we will dig small holes in the ground and play duulu. We will live our playtimes in delight; laugh, play, roll in the dust, run about. I will share my thoughts with him; tell him that when I grow up, I will work hard, get money and buy fried fish balls daily.
Oh, no! Jjaja is bending the corner of the kiosk! The boys disperse.
I missed the milkman.
‘He hasn’t come yet, Jjaja.’ I am on my knees now and a piece of gravel has dug into my skin but I swallow the pain.
‘That’s OK. We will go to the shops and buy fresh dairy milk instead.’ As she passes by me to enter the house, she hands me a black kaveera containing clothes. I receive new clothes instead of a clout on my head! This is more frightening.
Joshua Mondo dressed in a blue T-shirt with the picture of my favourite footballer, Didier Drogba at the front. A smiling Didier Drogba. Joshua Mondo clad in a pair of jeans! That’s me. A few moments ago Jjaja scrubbed me up with a rag she cut from the worn-out burlap sack we no longer use to keep coffee. Soaked me up in a foam she made with Dettol soap. Scraped my head hairless with a piece of broken glass – a quick, rough experience that left too much broken skin – and smeared my body with Movit Herbal Jelly. Then she dressed me up in the smiling Drogba and the jeans.
It’s already dark. I love it that I am dressed in new clothes but I hate it that I cannot go out to show off my smiling Drogba. I don’t even know why I am dressed up at this time. I am sitting on the fibre mat in Mukulu’s bedroom where Jjaja told me to sit and wait. Mukulu is drunk asleep. He returned after sunset with a half-litre empty sachet of kasese peeping from his coat pocket. Before I could tell him how my day had rolled on fresh diary milk, fried Nile perch, rice, new clothes, and Jjaja Mukyala’s baffling goodness, he slumped across his bed, feet hanging over the side. I am waiting for Mukulu to wake up.
A knock? A persistent, impatient knock on the front door. Rapid blows obviously made by a fist not the knuckle of the forefinger. I jump off the mat and sneak to the bedroom door and position my face against t
he slit in the lower hinge.
Two people enter the house; a man and a woman, both wearing kitenge fabric. The man has a matching cap that makes his head look like a box. He sits down on Mukulu’s stool, facing away from me. The woman takes the mat that Jjaja spreads next to the heap of my rolled-up bedding. She is facing me. The scarf on her head is wrapped so that there are two stiff ends hanging beyond her ears. The ends appear like horns. A buffalo head on human shoulders.
‘You came at the perfect time. The old man is out of our way.’ Jjaja is down on her knees, her fingers moving. She is plucking at her skirt as if she is picking sere spikes from the fabric.
The man rises, picks up the left side of the kitenge to reach into his trouser pockets. He extracts something which he holds towards Jjaja. She instantly jumps up to receive whatever is being handed to her. She doesn’t plant her palms down for support as she rises. Whatever she has received has given her the strength to rise unaided.
She is smiling. I see her clearly. As she buries that something in her brassiere, she faces the kerosene lamp. I have seen this smile before. Last Monday I sneaked up on her in that matovu shrubbery behind our house. She was counting a wad of shillings which she later secured in her bra. She had that smile: a rapid movement of the lips twitching, nose flaring. A rabbit happily chewing kanyebwa weed.
The man bends towards the light; he pushes his arm forwards and looks at his watch. Then he turns back to stare at Jjaja. I scuttle back to where she left me because this time Jjaja is shambling into Mukulu’s bedroom. I sit down and rest my head at the back of their bed and feign sleep.
‘Joshua, dear.’