The Zulus of New York

by Zakes Mda

  Soon he was in full flight, dancing on top of the buildings, spinning on one building and then, with the longest of strides ever seen in a human being, jumping to the next and waving his shield high up to the heavens and down to the roof in the rhythmic manner of isizingili dance, and then throwing himself down and spinning on his stomach, and then diving to another building and stomping his feet in the manner of isishameni dance.

  He looked down and saw his dance partners, Slaw and Samson, continuing with the rhythms of the different dances, trying hard to keep up with him, drenched in sweat despite the chill of the November air. He saw the drummer boy beating the drumhead like a demented spirit. Acol hovered silently above, egging him on. It was for Acol that he was dancing, despite the presence of the spectators, whose numbers had grown to almost a hundred. They were all agog with exhilaration and wonderment.

  Samson blew a long whistle and Mavo stopped the drumming with a final heavenly thud. The dance cannot go on forever. Em-Pee dropped to the ground, and the other dancers did likewise. The spectators burst into wild cheers and applause.

  ‘Em-Pee, you have saved the Friendly Zulus,’ said Slaw, breathlessly.

  ‘What possessed you?’ asked Samson, out of breath as well.

  ‘Acol,’ said Em-Pee, breathing as easily as one who had not danced a single step that day.

  No one knew what he was talking about.

  * * *

  At the park Maria-Magdalena hovers as Em-Pee and Acol sit on a bench. She is always within earshot, to Em-Pee’s consternation, and has told them she must be around because a park warden may kick them out, thinking they are vagrants. Acol tells Em-Pee that the only reason Maria-Magdalena is here is because she is her jailer. She is always trailing her, even when she comes here on her own to take pictures of the flowers.

  ‘Did I rape you?’ asks Em-Pee abruptly. It is almost a whisper and he is shaking, dreading the answer.

  ‘When?’ She is not whispering back. She is so loud that Em-Pee takes a quick look at Maria-Magdalena. But the jailer is pretending to read a penny dreadful while standing only a few feet away. Em-Pee wonders for how long she will be on her feet. Obviously, her gin works wonders for her knees. He wishes she would find a bench some yards away and truly enjoy her penny dreadful.

  ‘When? What do you mean, when? When could it have been possible?’

  She shakes her head, no, and says, ‘I helped you along.’

  Em-Pee is greatly relieved. But soon he goes back to wondering why she didn’t allow them to totally consummate the relationship that night. The doubts return. Maybe she does not see him as a lover at all. Perhaps she thinks he’s too old to allow him to penetrate her. That must be it. He is too old. The shame returns with the doubts. He imagines her father, wherever he might be, probably in his forties too, looking at him as a dirty old man who uses little girls. Or maybe it really has nothing to do with him at all. Maybe she has physical problems. Maybe moral issues. Maybe she’s just a teenager who has never known a man biblically before. But what her hands did to him that night spoke of experience. Maybe.

  How he wishes she would express her feelings in words, what she thinks, what she wants and doesn’t want, and why. Most of all, how she feels about him. He has told her so many times that he loves her. And all she says is ‘thank you’. Or, when pressed further, she says ‘it’s mutual’.

  ‘I dance for you,’ announces Em-Pee, gazing at her as if he is expecting praise or at least gratitude.

  ‘Please don’t,’ she says, horrified.

  ‘Oh no, I don’t mean now. I mean, at my performances with the Friendly Zulus. I perform the dances of my people for you.’

  ‘But I am not there to see them.’

  ‘Yep. But I dance for you still. I conjure you up and you are there, and I dance for you.’

  She looks at him curiously, and then says, ‘I sit in my cage for you too.’

  ‘You’re bullshitting.’

  ‘I am not. If you can dance for me at your work when I am not there, I can sit for you when you are not there at my work too. Tit for tat.’

  ‘As if it hurts.’

  ‘It hurts too. I don’t want to be idealised.’

  ‘But I do. You are my muse. You know what that is?’

  ‘I don’t want to be a muse. It’s too heavy a burden to carry.’

  ‘Okay, I just want to marry you then. You don’t have to be a muse or anything. Just marry me.’

  This unsettles Maria-Magdalena and she moves closer, pretending to admire a winter bloom on a nearby leather-leaf mahonia shrub. She forces out a concocted cough to warn them she is here, can hear everything and does not approve of the direction of the conversation. Acol, on the other hand, is expressionless, as if nothing earthshattering has been said.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’

  She looks at Maria-Magdalena and shakes her head, no. He feels frustrated that he has no way of knowing how she feels. Sometimes it is just yes, or no, and nothing beyond that. She communicates in one-word answers, or no answers at all, making it difficult for him to fathom her. He idealises her, and he now realises she has been resenting that in her uncommunicative way, until she blurted it out today. Perhaps she should have added that all she wants in the world is to be left alone to spend her days in the crowded solitude of her cage. Her actions and non-actions seem to be saying that. The fact that she is so cold and distant from his idolisation. But he has raised the topic. There is no turning back.

  ‘I find it difficult to believe a nubile Nubian Princess like you has no suitors and does not want to entertain even one.’

  ‘I vowed never to marry,’ she says curtly.

  They are silent for a while. Maria-Magdalena hovers even closer, indicating that it is time to go. But the man and the woman sit there defiantly, neither making the slightest attempt to stand up.

  ‘You have no business idealising me,’ she blurts out. ‘You scare me when you idealise me. You make me afraid of you. It is creepy to be idealised like this. I am not the person you have created in your imagination.’

  This is the longest sentiment he has heard her express, and it leaves him dumbfounded. But also hopeful that it augurs more coherent communication in their future.

  ‘You heard her,’ says Maria-Magdalena.

  ‘How can there be any meaningful courtship in your presence?’

  ‘She has no time for courtship.’

  ‘But I love her. Not for here. She does not belong in the world of the White man, which is a prison; all of it, not just her cage, all of it is a prison. I want to take her to my kingdom, to enjoy the Festival of the First Fruits with the free maidens of my land. I want to dance for her. Dance until she knows I am the one. Dance until I drop dead if she won’t have me.’

  Acol’s eyes widen and she smiles the broadest smile he has ever seen on her, her teeth glistening in the winter sun. This encourages him, and he goes into a flight of fancy about the two First Fruits Festivals, which are highlights of the year. He and the other military men wear full battledress. Just before the summer solstice, which is about this time of the year but a different season from what they have in New York, is the time of ulwezi, when young men scour the coastal areas of the country for fresh new calabashes to be used for drinking potent beer from the season’s first fruit of sorghum. They also bring back to the Royal Place the fibrous imizi plant from which the king’s garment will be woven. It is also the time the warriors move to every corner of the kingdom collecting the soul of the nation in the form of natural substances that have been touched by or brushed against friends and foes, chiefs and generals, lovers and haters of the king and his kingdom. These materials, in the form of grass, wood, dirt or stone, are brought back to the hut at the centre of isigodlo, and are used to rejuvenate the iNkatha, the conceptual-art piece of natural and found objects where the king sits when he wants to listen to himself or is having his ceremonial ablutions. During all this time, young men and young women separately practise s
ongs for the feasting to come.

  All these activities culminate in the big festival, the uzibandlela, which is the core of the First Fruits rituals. Acol, with her long limbs and the kind of height that has never been seen on any woman or perhaps man of the amaZulu people, leads the dances of her regiment. The song is meant to entice the king: ‘Woza, Nkosi, woza lapha!’ ‘Come hither, King, come over here!’ Em-Pee – actually, he is no longer Em-Pee now but Mpiyezintombi, He-Who-Washed-His-Spear-With-The-Blood-Of-A-Lion – smiles to himself as he stands in the company of warriors waiting for their turn to dance. He knows that Acol is his, and the king has no chance at all. Even John Dunn would have no chance at all with Acol if he were still there. Not after all the experiences Acol has had in being caged by White men.

  The turn for the warriors to dance arrives. They also dance according to their regiments, each trying to outdo the previous one in its prowess. They all want to impress the king. But Mpiyezintombi, leading his regiment, wants to impress only Acol. He dances facing in her direction, much to the annoyance of the grandees, who have been looking at her with desire hanging from their mouths, actually salivating. He breaks away from the rest of the dancing warriors, and dances in front of Acol.

  Maria-Magdalena is scandalised. Acol stands up from the bench and backs away from his gyrating movements. He suddenly stops, ashamed of himself. He is not at Ondini, the capital of kwaZulu, but in Madison Square Park.

  ‘It is different from the ways of my Dinka people, but somehow it relates, as if it is a world not far removed from them,’ says Acol.

  At least his flight of fancy to the world of his fathers has drawn her out of her shell. Even her face has lost its tension. It is smooth but not taut.

  ‘Tell me about it, what you remember of it, your own First Fruits Festival,’ he says to Acol.

  Even Maria-Magdalena seems keen to know. She sits on the bench as if she has been invited into their company and pays attention. Em-Pee wonders why she never attempted to find out about Acol’s pre-captivity life, if she was interested at all.

  ‘I don’t remember anything like that.’

  But she remembers huts built on stilts. The land that is flatter than any flatness that you have ever seen in this country, the flatness that you can follow right up to the entrance to thick forests. Lush green lands for miles on end until you get to the whiteness of the of the desert sand. She remembers the land more than anything. The land. And the landscape. Honey and butterflies.

  Acol adds, ‘Sometimes I come here to take photos of squirrels and rockeries and flowers in spring. And then I remember myself as a little girl, and I will the bees and the butterflies to hover above my head. I walk out of the park with the bees and butterflies following me.’

  ‘You never told me that,’ says Maria-Magdalena, obviously feeling jealous that she has not been part of this

  story for all these years and he is. ‘I’ve never seen no bees!’

  ‘Well, I have,’ says Acol adamantly.

  She talks! Now she talks!

  And fishing parties. She remembers fishing parties. She is disappointed when Em-Pee tells her there are no fishing parties in kwaZulu; amaZulu do not eat fish. How would she dance in valleys where rivers and seas don’t overflow with fish? She learns they are teeming with fish all right, but fish are not part of what amaZulu consider a delicacy. This is disappointing. But it is their problem, not hers.

  Her father was the Master of the Fishing Spear. He was endowed by Divinity to look after the fish in the river that passed through his village. She remembers women of her village, young and old, spending days on end at the river, catching and drying fish, all to song and dance.

  Sometimes the women fought among themselves, particularly older women sickened by the disrespect of the younger ones. And the river deities became angry. The Master of the Fishing Spear was angry because the deities of the river were angry. He waved his fishing spear, uttering incantations, and all the fish swam upstream to other rivers where they were not disrespected. When that happened, the village women came to Alcol’s home bearing gifts of fish to sue for peace. They also presented the Master of the Fishing Spear with one dance after another, until he relented and waved the spear with more incantations. Soon the fish flowed back to the river.

  Those were the most wonderful moments of her young life, because the sound of songs and drums and dance reverberated through the valleys, and the aroma of fish cooked in a variety of ways permeated the village.

  Soon Em-Pee’s eyes are misty with tears of nostalgia for a world he has never known. She is taken aback, thinking she has said something wrong. Maria-Magdalena decides to take discipline into her hands, and says sternly, ‘I do not think Monsieur Duval will be happy to hear that your head is full of all these heathen things. You must wash your tongue with soap and water as soon as you get into the house.’

  At this, she lifts Acol up with both hands, forcing her to stand. But Em-Pee will not let her go and he stands in front of them.

  ‘I love her,’ he says to Maria-Magdalena. Turning to Acol he repeats, ‘I love you.’

  ‘Get out of our way!’ screeches Maria-Magdalena.

  ‘You must say something, Acol. I love you. You can’t be silent.’

  ‘It is mutual,’ says Acol softly.

  Both women look amazed when this enrages Em-Pee. They are oblivious of his frustration at being unable to draw the words ‘I love you too’ from her.

  ‘It is mutual? What does that even mean? I say I love you; you tell me it is mutual?’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘And now you are throwing a tantrum about it? What kind of a man is this?’ says Maria-Magdalena.

  ‘Love you too,’ Acol says with great difficulty.

  He’s still not satisfied. She has not taken ownership of her feelings. It is all so impersonal with the absence of ‘I’. But she is adamant she won’t go a single step beyond that. It is her turn now to jerk her jailer by the sleeve, urging them to go.

  ‘You will never get the “I” from her,’ says Maria-Magdalena, wagging her finger as they walk away. ‘It would be the death of you if you did.’

  Em-Pee can only fold his arms and take a deep breath as he watches them go.

  She is becoming more and more beautiful as she is moving further away from him.

  8

  New York City – July/August 1889

  The Aesthetic of Dignity

  This is why he stayed away for almost seventeen months. In the long run you cannot love what does not return your love, whether we are talking of sentient or sapient beings, animate or inanimate objects. Reciprocity comes in many ways, some of which are silent. At some point unrequited love turns to hate, for the two passions are closely related. Sometimes the line that divides them is so blurry it is difficult to see.

  She has receded as a woman but has remained as a muse. The three-man dance of the Friendly Zulus continues at the Tenderloin, at both outdoor and indoor venues. Em-Pee summons Acol and dances for her. He goes into flight and mesmerises the spectators with a variety of time-honoured dances of amaZulu people in all their authenticity, delving into variations of umzansi and khwexa once popularised by warriors and maidens of uKhahlamba Mountains, isizingili and isishameni, much beloved in uMsinga, and changing to other movements such as isicathamiya, yet to be invented by the progeny in decades and centuries to come. That is the power of her musing; it draws the future from his sinews.

  She fuels his flight, yet he hates her. Even as she materialises at every angle he turns, clapping her hands and egging him on, he hates her with a passion.

  His dance partners would hate him too if his agility had not changed their fortunes. He is showing off and exposing their inferior skill. But they can live with that. As long as this gives them more engagements in the nightclubs, saloons and dance halls of the Tenderloin. Even though in many instances they are employed as a supporting act to acts that are more vaudeville, o
r in smaller clubs and bordellos that are more risqué, the three men have recovered their livelihood. Even Samson is no longer heard voicing his regret for having left The Great Farini and works fewer shifts as a bordello security guard.

  Em-Pee has told them to whom the success should be attributed. A caged woman who was known as Dinkie the Dinka Princess before he got to know her as Acol, so named by her father after his favourite black cow. In the taverns over beer after the performances he tells them of his encounters with this woman, and how he has absolutely failed to fathom her. But he does not tell them of the one encounter, the impenetrable night. He will not be laughed at by these crude jokers for not being savvy enough to have his way with a woman delivered by the gods to his bed for the night. He tells them about her influence as a muse, and how he now hates her, though he will continue to exploit her as the proverbial feminine part of himself.

  Sometimes Davis joins them for a drink. They ask him about The Wild Zulu. His act is still going strong after six years, he tells them, though he seems reluctant to say much about it. They long moved from Longacre Square to an indoor venue, but he doesn’t want to say where. Em-Pee suspects things are not as rosy as Davis pretends. Otherwise why has he become so close to Slaw, who really has nothing to offer, and why is he showing more enthusiasm for the Cetshwayo Project, as they now call it? Why is he showing so much interest in The Friendly Zulus, as if he wants a piece of the action?

  Despite the tension between them, Em-Pee and Davis meet intermittently, sometimes at Five Points, and at others at a convenient tavern, but never at Davis’s mansion. Davis is no longer limping. Instead he has a broken arm in a sling, which makes writing a bit difficult. He says he slipped and rolled down a spiral staircase. He must be extremely accident prone.

  This morning at Em-Pee’s tenement, Davis paces the tiny floor while Em-Pee sits on a rickety chair reading the script.

  ‘What is this?’ asks Em-Pee. ‘I see monsters and little devils and demons that drive the savage king and imbue him with evil powers? That’s not my king. That’s not the Cetshwayo I knew.’