by Rémy Ngamije
As they made their way out of The Good Night, Fallon finished cleaning up another table and came back to theirs to clear their plates. The tin can had a generous tip in it. It also contained her latest composition. He hadn’t read it. She began stacking the plates on top of each other and was about to heft them to the kitchen when she felt a presence behind her.
“Sorry,” Séraphin said. “I just realised you owe me words. ”
Fallon blushed, which made her freckles flare up a little more. “This one isn’t that good,” she said hastily as he reached for the piece of paper still lodged in the can.
He took it from her and unrolled it. “You signed this one with your own name,” he said.
“I didn’t want anyone owning that one but me.”
“It’s a powerful truth,” he said. “I’m going to hang onto it.”
“Good.” She seemed as if she was about to say something else but then she stopped. Instead she said, “Your friends are waiting for you.”
“Yeah.” He tucked the paper into his pocket. “I’ll see you around, Fallon.” He turned and walked back to the entrance and down the stairs. Outside the street lights punctuated the entire length of Long Street like neatly spaced orange-yellow commas. The others were waiting a few paces up the street in a little huddle.
“Ready?” asked Bianca.
“Ready,” said Séraphin.
The High Lords of Empireland, now reunited, strolled to the evening’s final destination. Their first night in Cape Town together was always exciting. Even as they had grown older they could never escape the feeling of possibility that infected them when they were together.
Séraphin strode more confidently than the rest, leading the way. In his pocket, Fallon’s composition was neatly folded. It was destined to be forgotten, becoming wet, pulped into a mess as Séraphin’s jeans tumbled around a washing machine drum in a couple of days. He would pull the dried remnant out of the pocket when he was ironing his jeans and assume it was a grocery receipt.
It is a shame, though, because if he had been just a smidgen more alert Séraphin would have paid heed to Fallon’s words which, like so many poignant pieces of wisdoms, do not make themselves known in grand or loud ways. Therein lies their disguise, and their eventual erosion from memory, at least until their stored power becomes painfully relevant later on.
Sometimes, as Therése was fond of saying to Séraphin when he railed against her advice, against her rules, against her old-fashioned ways, the most important things were just everyday things, things around him. Things like family and not constantly looking down at them; like his brothers’ company which, when younger, had been steadfast and close; like his father’s counsel, which always told him to take things slowly, not to be fooled into believing that what was not inside could be found outside.
“Ni ibintu bitoya, Séraphin,” his mother would say. “bigira akamaro.”
“Yeah, yeah. Small things, big differences,” Séraphin would reply, bored. “I know that one already.”
But see here. Rwandans have this saying and it is one of those truths that is true: utazi nyakatsi ayinnya ho. Because, heck, when you do not know the good root from the poisonous one you will shit on both just the same.
Ni ibintu bitoya bigira akamaro. Small things make the biggest differences.
And, perhaps Fallon was correct: wisdom is easier to remember when it comes from a man, even a man who did not exist. For Fallon, she of Remms financial exclusion, there was no such glory or immortality and more is the pity because had Séraphin but noted her careful composition and taken one of her daily mantras to heart some things that would happen to him later could have been avoided.
Alas.
Utazi nyakatsi ayinnya ho.
And nyakatsi ya Fallon utazi nyakatsi:
“Time, in its infiniteness, is the most powerful force in the universe. It cannot be escaped. But it is also the most uncreative. It spits out the same shit, but on different days.”
XVIII
Facts, once they are so confirmed, do not need human faith to sustain them. They simply are. The only option left to a person is whether to live in deliberate ignorance of them or not. Facts do not need a group of friends out in Cape Town to feed their egos or to make them feel better. They only demand that the group decides what they will do when they are faced with them.
Here is the first fact.
Outside Avec there is a line of club-goers waiting to enter. Some shiver from the excitement of entering Avec from the first time. Some are regulars. When the baseline of a song reverberates through the walls the pulses of those on the outside thump a little faster with desperation to be on the dance floor. There is a wiggling of hips and tap-tap-tapping of feet on the pavement. Since it is late and the club’s hottest hours are approaching, the line to get inside Avec snakes from the door and around the corner into Long Street. Shapely legs, framed between figure-hugging skirts and dresses, and high heels step forward inch by inch like a flamboyance of flamingoes performing a choreographed dance on a lake surface. Ill-fitting loafers, unpolished brogues, and an assortment of high-top sneakers scuff the sidewalk or break into impromptu dancing when a familiar tune is heard. At the back, the line grows longer as more people turn up. At the front of the line people are trickled past the red rope controlled by three pale, giant bouncers in black. One is seated by the door on a high bar stool; the other two have planted themselves on either side of the entrance. They pay more attention to the posteriors of passing women than they do to the identification cards handed to them. The one sitting down is Romeo. The shark smile which serrates his face when a trio of women with stilt-high heels approach is hungry. He lifts the rope. They approach and hug him and exchange words before they enter Avec, making the short climb to the hostess’s desk.
The next group approaches for judgement. They are five male twenty-somethings, fashionably dressed in the way that anyone with enough money looks trendy when they simply purchase everything the mannequin is wearing. They are dismissed with a flick of his head. It is not clear what criteria they have failed to meet. The dismissed group attempts to lodge an appeal. Romeo looks at them impassively. He waves them away and calls the next group. The rejected now stand in the way of prospective entrants. Romeo looks at the two towers next to the door. One of them unfolds his arms. The group moves off. When they are further away the one who did the objecting shouts out, “Fuck you, Romeo! Racist faggot!”
Romeo shrugs. He turns his attention back to the supplicants before him – three women – who satisfy some internal admission criteria. Two of the women hug him, and then introduce the third. The shark beams at her. Perhaps the third woman is sacrificial. Maybe tribute is necessary when passing the bald-headed gatekeeper. The unclear process of rejection and acceptance goes on. As arbitrary as it seems, it is a fact. Everyone who stands outside waiting to enter Avec has only two choices: they can be patient and wait for their turn to appear before Romeo and run the risk of being turned away, or they can leave and go to another establishment where the chances of them entering it before the night ends are higher.
Here is the second fact.
The High Lords and Silmary finally arrive at the front of the queue. Romeo looks over their party and says, “Gents, not dressed like that.” Séraphin, Godwin, Yasseen, and James are in the front. They step aside. Adewale, Andrew, Silmary, and Richard are just behind them. Romeo stops them. “You, you, you, and you are fine.” The four successful Avec candidates stand hesitantly for a moment.
“Don’t worry, guys,” Séraphin says. “We’ll see you in a bit. Go on ahead.” He waves them away and they ascend into Avec.
Romeo watches the breaking of this fellowship and then turns his attention to the latest quarry, a group of four boys in their late teens. They have made a special effort to dress up and they look handsome. Collared shirts, bowties, smart jeans, and polished oxfords. He refuses them entry. The boys look shocked. This is their first night out in Cape Town and they were told
that Avec was the place to be. They decide to go somewhere else.
The next group approaches. Even the most generous interpretation cannot prove the three men in front of the bouncer dwell in any reality with men’s fashion magazines. The first man’s jeans appear to have been savaged by something with claws and vengeful teeth. The second one wears a Tottenham Hotspurs shirt. The third one could induce an epileptic fit if he moved quickly enough. Despite their fashion faux pas, they are allowed to enter Avec without any questions asked.
Séraphin, Yasseen, James, and Godwin remain silent. The obvious fact is not voiced. It does not have to be. All of those who have been turned away, regardless of dress code, have been black. Séraphin and his company have one choice: to slink away or go to another club.
Here is the third fact. Hopefully, it shall explain the second.
Last year Avec changed ownership and came under new management. The club’s old black walls were lined with mirrors; the harsh blue and green lights which made teeth and shoelaces glow eerily in the dark were substituted with rows of erotic red and amber lamps. Before the dance floor had been flat, every reveller had been deemed equal. Now, the VIP couches, on raised daises in corners, permitted those with enough money to book them and lord it over the plebeians.
A strange oddity was added to the bathrooms. A bronze-skinned man with his front teeth missing and a faded tattoo of a skull with a knife driven through it on the inside of his forearm stood in the corner of the male bathroom. He was dressed in a constricting waistcoat and a bowtie. It was his task to listen to the sounds of release coming from the cubicles and then hand out soap and drying napkins to those who remembered to wash their hands. He would suggestively push a ceramic bowl towards a hastily departing party animal. Some coins would bounce into his bowl. Fifty cent coins, one rand, maybe five. Drunk white guys paid more. But black people would shit the longest, the hardest, the loudest, leave the foulest stench, and then depart without dropping him a few coins to soothe his olfactory chambers. As a rule he never greeted them, reluctantly handed soap to them, and made them get their own drying towels from the rack. He believed that the back of a black man’s ass was their best part and so he was always glad when they turned around and walked out of the bathroom.
It was also decided that Avec’s cover charge would be raised. The jump from thirty rands to fifty, seemingly small, would effectively surround Avec with a class moat which would drown all but the most financially sound. Then, finally, a dress code would be enforced. A bouncer – they called him a personnel controller – would weed out the suitably dressed from the undesirables.
Bit by bit, week by week, club-goers would be confronted by a litany of transgressions which barred them from entering the club. One day it was incorrect shoes, the next it was the absence of a collared shirt; thereafter it would be not dressing to a particular theme. Then the management found Romeo and his shadows and gave him the brief: let some in, keep most out; black women, yes, black men, not so much; white people, yes, for that is where the money is. Indians were unhindered. Coloured people were forced to try their luck each night. Some days they were lucky, sometimes Avec was not shopping for them.
And now for the fourth fact – which brings us to the present day, with Séraphin, James, Yasseen, and Godwin standing outside Avec. They are quite aware that the winds in Avec and the rest of the clubs in downtown Cape Town do not blow in their favour. There was a time when they could leave their residences dressed in jeans and T-shirts, certain to gain admittance into all but the poshest clubs. Not any more.
“Maybe it was always like this and we just weren’t paying attention,” said Séraphin the first night Romeo stopped them from entering Avec. That had been the previous year, just after the club had undergone its exclusionary transformation. Richard and Andrew, who had been standing in front of them in the queue on that occasion, had already been let in and they had gone on ahead. Once inside they’d received a message from Séraphin letting them know they’d been bounced. Richard came back out and left Avec in solidarity. Andrew chose to remain inside. There were other people he knew there. Plus, he had already paid his cover charge. To expect conscientious objection from Andrew might have been too much. When they all regrouped at the end of the night, driving home with Idriss, the ride was filled with severe polite small talk and barbed wire.
“How was it inside Avec, Drew?” asked Séraphin, while everyone found something of interest outside the taxi’s windows to concentrate on. Andrew volunteered information with gusto.
“Crazy,” he said. “I was with Jared, you know him? He’s also at Remms. He was with some chicks from UCT. They were cool. You guys missed out. Where’d you guys go?”
“Marvel,” replied Séraphin. “It was cool, too. Good music, pretty girls. And black people. So many of them.” James, Adewale, Richard, and Yasseen kept mum.
“Come on, man,” said Andrew. “You heard Romeo, you guys weren’t dressed properly.”
“And you were?” said Godwin.
“People like Andrew are always suitably dressed for things in Cape Town.” Séraphin rubbed the top of his forearm with a finger.
The bitterness of “people like Andrew” was felt by the whole group and Richard’s exemption soured the simile. It was not fair of them. Andrew did not make the rules. Still, the anger had to be directed somewhere and Andrew was a nail in a taxi full of hammers.
“Are you saying something without saying it, Séra?” asked Andrew. “Because if you are, then just say it.”
“I ain’t saying anything, bro. Just saying that all the black guys got bounced but you and Richard were not.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. There were many black guys inside,” said Andrew. He looked around the taxi for some support. “Seriously, there were many black people in the club.”
“Of course there were. That’s why five more would have upset the balance and brought the whole universe crashing down,” said Séraphin. “Open your eyes, Drew. Lately when we go out only some of us get frisked, or carded. Romeo doesn’t mess with you. Or Rich. Even Addy, who dresses like there’s a runway call-up waiting for him, gets harassed. If haircuts could fix it we’d be sorted because we’re fresh as fuck. If it was the dress code then half of the people in Avec shouldn’t be there. But you know it isn’t, man. You know it.”
“So what the fuck am I supposed to do with that information, Séra?”
“Know it,” said Séraphin. “Just fucking know it.”
“Well, thank you, Séraphin. Now I know.”
The clicking of the indicator as Idriss turned up to Remms was the only sound for a few minutes. Then Andrew said, “If you know this shit about places in Cape Town, Séra, then why the fuck are you going to them in the first place?”
“Because,” said Séraphin, “we know, Andrew. And if we know, we can’t just let it go. Avoid places just because we’re black? Fuck that back-of-the-bus bullshit. In Cape Town? In Africa? Fuck that. If we get bounced, fine. I just want everyone else who gets in to know that the shit is rigged and fucked up.”
“Okay, Séraphin,” said Andrew, “the next time we’re out I’ll be sure to feel guilty about all the places where you’ve been frisked, which is only, like, everywhere. I’ll pass on the message to every white person I know, yeah? Then everyone’ll feel shit and that will resolve the problem. Clever fucking plan, Séraphin.”
“Thanks, Andrew,” said Séraphin.
“You’re most welcome, Lord Séraphin.”
“Fuck you, Drew.”
“Fuck you too, Séra.”
“You can’t blame Andrew for not seeing things as they are,” Bianca had said the next day in class when Séraphin told her the story. “He’s not really white because he has black friends. Avec isn’t racist because they let in some black people. He’s never been good at seeing things for what they are. Nobody in South Africa is.” She looked around the rest of the law class and shook her head. “Can you imagine if anyone did? It would be chaos.”
“Why?” asked Séraphin.
“Because then people would have to pick up their blame and actually try to fix it,” said Bianca.
The group avoided Avec for a few weeks but Séraphin and Andrew had not apologised to each other, choosing, instead, to let time and continued proximity do the work that a few words should have done.
Tonight Avec’s quota of blackness has been filled. The five compatriots could take their ebony skins to other places where they would be more welcome, but instead they wait for Bianca to show up. When she does, she doesn’t bother standing in the queue. She walks straight to Romeo and gives him one of those boob-grinding hugs that Séraphin is so fond off. As she pulls away she lets her arm linger over his shoulder and they exchange pleasantries like intimate lovers. Then she points to her friends standing beyond the red rope and whispers something in his ear. Romeo throws them an unconcerned look and signals them over. He pulls the rope aside for them. Bianca leans in to Romeo and gives him another contour-crushing hug. Together the five of them pass into the club’s ante-chamber to pay their cover charge. Bianca’s is paid by Séraphin. She has provided the necessary feminine front for their blackness. It is a cheap compromise and when Séraphin brings it up later on in the night, on their way home, all she will say is, “The things I do for you guys.”
“I don’t know why we keep coming to this place,” says Séraphin as they walk down a corridor towards the dance floor.
“You know why, Séra,” says Bianca. “There’s nowhere else for you to go. Not with your tastes.”
There is no time for Séraphin to shoot back a response because as they round a final corner of the corridor all of the preceding facts are swept away by the noise which coordinates the pulsating, fist-pumping crowd. In the grips of the DJ’s spell, colour frontiers have seemingly been eroded.
Bianca leads the foray onto the packed floor, looking for Richard, Andrew and Silmary. When she finds them they hug like they have been parted for a long time. Arms wave in the air like the tentacles of sea anemones in an ocean current trying to trap the fun floating in the air and channel it downwards towards the hungry dancers’ mouths. When the song ends and the dance floor has been sufficiently churned into a sweaty mess the next song is queued. The introductory notes make Séraphin roll his eyes. He shouts to the rest of group that he will see them in two songs’ time.