The Eternal Audience of One

by Rémy Ngamije

  “You’re saying it wrong,” said Andrew.

  “No. I’m saying exactly as I mean it, Sir Kent.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “I always preferred ‘lord’, personally,” said Séraphin. “Lord Séraphin.”

  “Gotta nice ring to it,” said Richard. Andrew began rolling another joint.

  “Lords of Cape Town,” said Godwin.

  “Doesn’t sound right,” Yasseen said. Andrew puffed and passed.

  “High Lords,” said Séraphin. “Like High King Peter in The Chronicles of Narnia. Call us the High Lords.”

  “Of what?” asked James.

  “Empireland,” said Andrew. “The High Lords of Empireland.”

  They called them council meetings and they would have one every year, always at the end just before everyone went home, celebrating surviving another year in the Remms academic engine. When they showed Bianca the ritual she laughed. “I was scared you guys would do some dumb shit like ask me to get down on my knees and then knight me with your penises or something.”

  “Why didn’t we think of that?” asked Godwin.

  First they did Their Thing and then they turned around to let Bianca do Her Thing. She would turn around turn her back towards Remms and then bend over in half and splash against the wall.

  On a day, in a week, in a month, in a glorious year:

  Sans_Seraph has created the group HiLos_Of_E.

  Sans_Seraph has added @GodForTheWin, @RichDick, @AddyWale, @KimJohnUn, @JustSayYaz, @KentTouchThis.

  Sans_Seraph: Damn character limit won’t let me be great. What is life?

  GodForTheWin: I weep for you. I’m on the bus with Richard right now. Fucking murder.

  RichDick: We should’ve stayed in Cape Town.

  Sans_Seraph: Don’t worry. Addy, Yaz, Drew, and I will try not to have all of the fun. We’ll leave some for you.

  KimJohnUn: Arrived in Nairobi a few hours ago. I’m still hungry. I ate everything on the plane!

  KentTouchThis: Top night, gents.

  Sans_Seraph: Yeah. Let’s do this again next year when we’re all back.

  RichDick: Indeed, sir.

  AddyWale: We’re really going to go with High Lords of Empireland? That sounds like a children’s book.

  Sans_Seraph: So? Those always have the coolest names anyways.

  JustSayYaz: I’m home too. It’s like all the chores of the past year suddenly have to be done right now.

  KentTouchThis: I’m at the beach.

  Sans_Seraph: You went without us? Bitch move.

  KentTouchThis: Spur of the moment thing – but it’s a long holiday. The beach isn’t going anywhere.

  GodForTheWin: You guys enjoy on our behalf. I’m about to clock out. Still a little high. Check you guys later.

  RichDick: Laters.

  Addywale: Check you.

  KimJohnUn: Laters.

  KentTouchThis: Cheers.

  JustSayYaz: Peace.

  Sans_Seraph: High Lords out.

  Part 3

  The Mighty Séraphin

  Ibindi ubindi

  Other things, another time

  Rwandan proverb

  XXXI

  “—phin!”

  Andrew made two mistakes when he flung himself at Séraphin. The first was thinking his high school years spent sitting in the bleachers watching the rest of his classmates play rugby showed him how to execute a decent tackle. They did not.

  The second was thinking Séraphin would stand, frozen, like some unfortunate squirrel waiting to become roadkill.

  He did not.

  Rewind.

  St. Luke’s basketball coach, Coach Reyes, was a short, wiry Filipino with no body fat on him. His calf muscles were carved granite, and no matter the weather, hot, mild, chilly, why-did-my-parents-settle-in-Windhoek cold, he would have strings of veins on his rangy arms. Heroin addicts would have loved those arms. His eyes were black, always darting across the length of the court, spotting someone’s poor-form push-up and punishing the whole team with suicides. He turned red whenever anyone missed a layup in a game or in practice. He fumed and swore until his English ran out. Then the Tagalog came out. Coach Reyes’ tactics, especially when losing, were devious. It was not by accident opposing teams found bruises blushing on their breasts after a basketball match against St. Luke’s. Coach Reyes called it the good old-fashioned elbow-in-tits manoeuvre: “Everyone’s fast, everyone’s unstoppable until you put an elbow in their tits,” he said at half-time, ten points down. “I told you so,” he said at the end of the game, five points up. Besides stamina and a blood vessel-bursting will to win, Coach Reyes ensured putting elbows in tits was the default defence setting.

  As Andrew charged, Séraphin’s elbow was instinctively raised. It caught Andrew’s nose and broke it.

  Richard caught Andrew as he buckled to his knees, pulling him away from Séraphin. Andrew held onto his face, blood streaming through his fingers, feet kicking as he was dragged away. “Fug you, Serafi! You fuggin aso. Gonna fug you up!”

  James and Yasseen tried to pry his hands apart to see the extent of the damage but Andrew would not let them. He held his hands to his face to dam the flow of red. Adewale and Godwin remained seated. Bianca remained in her chair too. She clutched the armrests tightly, sitting up. Tara was in the first stages of her disaster management protocol, a complex, step-by-step process which involved shouting, “What the fuck! What the fuck!” in a shrieking voice. Declan, Chris, Troy, Jess, Jana, Byron, and Bjorn scrambled to the safety of the lounge. Silmary emerged from the kitchen with a roll of paper towel and approached Andrew. “Let’s see it, Andrew,” she said. “Come on, let’s see it.”

  “Fug off!” He pushed her away with a claret-coloured hand, shook off his friends violently, and stood up. The sounds he made were strangled and sad. He stumbled into the apartment, head bent back. Tara followed him inside.

  Richard turned to Séraphin. “What the fuck, dude?”

  “He came at me,” Séraphin replied.

  “Why d’you have to say that to him?” Silmary asked.

  The slow-boil anger Séraphin felt cooled the slightest bit as he looked at her. Her eyes questioned Séraphin more than her voice did. He considered them to be the most eloquent parts of her body. The eyes drew things and feelings out of him. They dilated whenever his fingers sprinted down her back or caressed a curve. What he liked the most, though, was the way they alighted on him in a crowd, picking him out, choosing him, making him feel simultaneously shy and proud, like the best toy in a shop window display with all of the lights on him. He felt awkward, uncertain of what to do with himself in those moments, hands being put in pockets, being taken out, looking for a place to rest, until she came to stand in front of him and said, “Hello. Séraphin.” The most he would manage in those instances would be a soft, “Hi.”

  Those great communicators fixed on him. They were articulate in anger.

  “He was tripping,” Séraphin said.

  Her head tilted slightly to the right. “Why didn’t you just stop? Why d’you have to get him worked up?”

  “At least something worked up,” said a Séraphin.

  Séraphin turned to him with a pleading face. Silmary’s head tilted another degree.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Really, really,” said the Séraphin. Her eyes narrowed again.

  “We need to take Drew to a hospital,” said Richard.

  “We can take him in my car,” Silmary replied. She turned away from Séraphin.

  “Could someone explain what the fuck just happened?” asked Godwin.

  Bjorn walked out onto balcony. “Guys, Byron and I are taking Andrew to the hospital.”

  “We’ll go with you,” said Richard.

  “I think it’s best if you don’t. He’s really pissed off at you guys.”

  Tara came back to the balcony in the throes of the second stage of her disaster management protocol which was: “Right. Get the fuck out!”
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  “There’s no need for that tone,” Yasseen said. “You can just ask us to leave.”

  “I could,” she replied. “But I don’t have to. Not when people like this—” she pointed at Séraphin “—are acting like fucking savages.”

  Séraphin turned to look behind him. “Is there some other imaginary black person around here you think you can talk to like that?” said one of the Séraphins. “Because I’m not the one they bought you for your birthday.”

  Tara turned to Silmary. “Just get them out. I don’t need this shit here.”

  “So we’re shit now?” asked Godwin.

  “If you aren’t, you’re definitely causing it!” Tara shouted. “So you can get the fuck out!”

  “Let’s go, guys,” Yasseen said.

  Adewale finally stirred. He stood from his chair. “We need to go home,” he said.

  Phones, wallets, and keys were scooped up from the balcony table before feet trooped out of Tara’s apartment. There was an embarrassed silence when everyone met at the elevator at the same time. The High Lords let Andrew and Tara’s friends take the elevator while they took the stairs. Still, everyone managed to arrive in the atrium at the same time. The elevator doors opened and out came Tara and Byron, leading Andrew, his head leaning back. At the security desk, the guard looked up from his radio. He said, “He banna! What he-ppened?”

  “Caught a bad case of the blacks,” Andrew replied thickly.

  “Rest of you’s gonna catch up with your fucking nose if you continue talking that shit.” It was not clear which of the Séraphins said this.

  “Fug you, Serafi!”

  “Fuck you, Andrew William Fucking Cunt.”

  “Guys. Enough!” Richard’s voice bounced around the atrium. “Tara, take him out of here. Yo, Drew, let us know if there’s anything you need, okay?”

  “Fug you guys!”

  Andrew was led away. Silmary took long strides towards the door. Everyone else made to do the same.

  “Can you please sign hee-ya?”

  “Chief!” Séraphin shouted. “You know what you can do? You can fuck your book. How’re you gonna let all of these people walk out without signing but make us sign?”

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  “Then do your fucking job properly and equally.” The Séraphin flared its black wings in anger. “There’s a fucking white person. Why don’t you make them sign too?”

  Silmary walked back from the door and came back to the registry. The pen scratched a signature. She walked out. Yasseen signed everyone out then they walked out of the building.

  “I’ll call Idriss.” James reached for his phone.

  Outside, Silmary said goodbye to the group. She hugged everyone politely. When she reached Séraphin she waved at his general being and said, “Bye.” Then she walked towards her car. Yoda showed an unnatural spring in his step as he accelerated away.

  “I feel like someone here is going to regret not apologising to someone else,” said Bianca.

  “I feel like someone here needs to grow a pair and speak straight,” said the Black Séraphin. “Which might be hard when you’re a full-time lesbian.”

  Adewale said, “I feel like we should all just go home.”

  They all stood on the pavement waiting for Idriss to arrive. When he did, he was in a jovial mood from a night of short, lucrative trips. “They insisted on paying me double,” he said. “Eh, my brothers, you are quiet today, eh? What is the matter?” He looked in the rear-view mirror at the taciturn company as he drove. “You know when nobody is saying anything at all it means there are women problems?” He chuckled.

  “Séraphin’s sleeping with Silmary who was sleeping with Andrew,” said Richard. He was in the passenger seat.

  “What?” Godwin turned around to face Séraphin. “Really?”

  “Godwin. Really?” Yasseen looked at him in incredulity.

  “Thought we’d agreed we’d not make moves on her,” said Richard.

  “That’s what I remember too,” Yasseen.

  “Same,” said Godwin. Adewale harrumphed something unintelligible.

  “It just happened, man,” Séraphin said. “I didn’t start it, she did.”

  “So you were an unwilling participant?” said Richard. “Things just happened and you couldn’t do anything about them? Hands tied behind your back kind of thing.”

  “Were there ropes involved?” Godwin asked.

  “Stop, G,” Séraphin said. “And I did think about it. I was going to tell him.”

  “After you’d been sleeping with her for a while. You don’t think that would’ve made him work backwards and possibly come to some bad maths? Then you had to provoke him with it.”

  “Look, I didn’t plan on it. And I won’t apologise for it.”

  “Of course, you won’t,” said Richard from the front seat. He turned around. “Anyone ever heard this guy apologise for anything? Lord fucking forbid the day he has to acknowledge anything’s wrong or that he had a hand in it.”

  “What exactly would you like me to apologise for?”

  “Specifically or generally?”

  “Whichever one you can articulate without sounding like a little bitch.”

  “Séraphin,” James said, “relax, man!”

  “You know,” Rich said. “We just need to get home.”

  “Which is what I keep saying,” said Adewale. “This talking when you are angry, what does it help?”

  Séraphin reached for his phone.

  Sans_Seraph—BeeEffGee: Sorry for what I said. That was out of line.

  BeeEffGee: Forget it. It’s fine.

  Sans_Seraph: It isn’t and we both know it.

  BeeEffGee: Yeah. But we can talk about it later.

  “I like her.”

  Everyone turned to Séraphin. Even Idriss flicked his eyes towards the rear-view mirror.

  Richard said, “You? Like someone? Buddy, I’ve known you for seven years now. Like is strong language in your world.”

  “Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t tell me your powers of interpretation have lessened, Séra.”

  “They haven’t shrunk as much as your balls if you’re not going to say what you want to say, Rich.”

  “Séra, I’m not sure you’d know whether you liked this girl or not. At best she’s going to entertain you for a month. And at worst, well, we saw what happened tonight? This’ll all be some joke or story tomorrow with The Mighty Fucking Séraphin in the lead role.”

  Séraphin was about to start laying about him with words, but just then a police van behind Idriss’s car turned on its siren. Idriss looked in the side mirror. “Merde!” he said. The blue and red lights spun around the interior of the taxi. He slowed down and pulled over to the left. “My friends, you just keep calm? Nothing to worry about. Issokay.”

  XXXII

  Séraphin’s father liked cop action flicks like Lethal Weapon where justice caught injustice, asking his sons to record them for him whenever they came on television. He would rewatch them often, laughing at the same jokes, entertained by the same fight scenes. “These things can only happen in the films, though,” Guillome said.

  He said the only time police lights moved quickly enough in Africa was when they were heralding the arrival of a traffic-stopping convoy of executive sedans while some important dignitary made their way from a buffet lunch to a cabinet dinner. “There is always someone eating on either end of police sirens in Africa,” he said.

  Séraphin inherited this worldview.

  “You know what,” he said one night when the High Lords, en route to a party in town, passed a taxi stopped by a police car, “most people say only the guilty fear the police. Most of those people are white. The remainder are the police.”

  The flashing lights behind Idriss’s car continued their red-blue whirligig. Two police officers stepped out of the car and walked towards it.

  “So you say you haven’t been drinking, Idriss?” The first officer, th
e senior, was more stomach than man. His boots and trousers were so tight they made him look like a tube of toothpaste squeezed into his torso. His head was smooth from a haircut that would have made Maxime angry. He had a calm face, friendly even. Séraphin decided to call him Officer Toothpaste.

  “No,” said Idriss. Then he added the necessary “Sah.”

  “Not even a little?” asked Toothpaste. “You must be lying.”

  “No. Sah.” Idriss did not talk to him directly.

  “What about smoking then? You don’t have anything hidden in the car?”

  “No. Sah.”

  “What about you guys? Are you students?” Toothpaste looked into the car. Richard was their envoy to the law. He nodded for all of them. “Not even a stukkie for me and my partner? Even us we like to puff every once in a while.”

  “No, sir,” said Richard.

  “So you’re not carrying anything tonight, Idriss? You are lying you. You lekwerekwere are always up to something? You can tell me, Idriss. What are you carrying?” His left elbow leaned through the window, his other dangled a torch. His tone was jovial enough but no person between Cape Town and Cairo could hear that tone used with so many rhetorical questions and fool themselves into thinking a friendly conversation between friends was going on.

  In the back seat, Séraphin shuffled. He said: “It’s who, not what.”

  The torch stopped its hangman’s twitch and flicked into Toothpaste’s hand. He shone the light from face to face. They all averted their eyes from the beam.

  In the back of the car, Séraphin put a palm in front of his face and said: “What is for things, who is for people. As you can see, we are people. So you should be asking who he is carrying, not what he is carrying. Though a better way of phrasing the question would be to ask who he is driving.”

  The boldness of the italics in Séraphin’s words made Toothpaste turn to Idriss, who kept looking straight ahead. “What kind of foolishness are you carrying, Idriss?”

  “Nothing. Sah. Just students. Remms students.”