She gave two gentle knocks on the door. “Housekeeping,” she said.
No answer game. She listened. Silence. Unhooking a key from the chain around her belt, she unlocked the door. Opening it partially, she announced herself again. “Housekeeping,” she said.
The room was steeped in darkness. She reached in and switched on the lights before entering. The cold, white light revealed a mess of a room. A plate and glass on the table, an open packet of pre-sliced bread, butter, lettuce and tomatoes near the sink and a laptop on the counter. The laptop was still on.
A line of papers with what seemed to be handwritten notes led Candice’s eyes from the kitchen to the bed, further into a part of the room not visible from the door. She followed the papers. Before she could round the corner she heard the strange scrambling sound again. It caused her to stop dead in her tracks. The sound was coming from exactly where she was headed.
She turned the corner and was confused at first by what she was seeing. The rug, walls and parts of the ceiling were stained red. The red substance was thick and viscous, dripping from the bedsheets to the floor. She stared in disbelief at the source of the red substance, the bleeding, mutilated body of a man. On the floor beside him there lay a blood-stained meat cleaver. It may have been slow in coming, but once it arrived, the understanding of what she was seeing caused the housekeeper to recoil. She screamed, running, stumbling from the room.
Fourteen
Cursed Blessing
RHYTHMIC BEEPS. THE smell of formaldehyde. Bandile’s eyelids were heavy, so he had to rely on his other senses. Fighting against the invisible weight keeping them closed took a lot of effort. He heard whispering nearby. That made him try and use all his strength to force his peepers open. The light was blinding and caused his head to hurt. He groaned and look at his surroundings as his eyes adjusted to the light.
He saw a fairly young doctor in conversation with Kulani. The two turned to face him at the same time.
“Mr Ndala,” the young doctor said. “Can you hear me?”
Bandile answered with gentle a nod. She checked the readings in the machines that had wires that pierced and poked various veins in the writer’s body.
“You have five minutes,” she said to Kulani. “He needs to rest.”
She exited the room.
Bandile’s friend regarded him with the most pitying look the writer had ever seen. The sight of his friend alive caused hot tears to stream down Bandile’s face.
“I …” he tried to say.
Kulani brought his ear closer to Bandile’s mouth.
Bandile swallowed and continued, “I thought you were dead, mfwethu.”
The words caused Kulani to jump up and close the door that the young doctor had left open. “Don’t say things like that,” the agent said as he strode back to Bandile’s bedside. The man was near apoplectic.
“Do you know where you are?” he said.
Bandile looked around again. “Yes, a hospital. And please lower your voice. You’re making my headache worse.”
“Yes, a hospital,” Kulani whispered, between gritted teeth. “And do you know where you’re going to from here?”
Bemused at his friend’s dramatics and pleased that they were both alive and well, he ventured a guess.
“Home?”
“No,” Kulani said. “To the looney bin. They have you on suicide watch. As soon as your injuries heal it’s off to a padded cell with you, my friend.”
The confusion caused by what his friend was saying made Bandile dizzy. Psych ward? Suicide watch?
“What?” Bandile mouthed.
“Do you remember where you were?” Kulani said, barely able to contain his anger.
“Yes, Cariba Inn, room 28.”
“Why?”
It was increasingly sounding like an interrogation.
“Why are you asking me these things?” Bandile said. Even in his hazy state of mind he could deploy the classical diversion tactic. His enraged friend was clearly not ready to hear a truthful answer.
“Hmm, let’s see,” he said, cupping his chin and tapping his index finger against his cheek. “You disappear for a week. You don’t tell anyone, not even me, where you’re going. You don’t take your phone. Then, you’re found in a room at the Cariba Inn, carved up like a sacrificial cow. You almost bled out.”
“I was attacked,” Bandile cried out, between spats of coughing.
The pitying look returned to Kulani’s face. He sat down next to his friend and looked him straight in the eye. He delivered his next sentence slowly. “The doctors think all your injuries were self-inflicted.”
Bandile closed his eyes and shook his head. That Molly. Even after seemingly sparing him she’s decided to play one last trick – have the world think he’s crazy and suicidal. He couldn’t help but admire her persistence in her search for justice. The writer searched his fuzzy mind for the right words to say to his friend. If anyone were to hear the unvarnished truth, understand and believe him, it would be Kulani.
“Do you remember Pastor Thobejane?” he began.
When he had relayed the entire tale, Kulani stood there next to the hospital bed, hand over mouth in disbelief. He sat down, slowly, deliberately, the weight of what he’d just heard pulling with twice the force of gravity.
“I …” Kulani said. “… I was in a car accident. Three weeks ago. Head-on with a truck. But moments before that I thought I saw something. A young woman with long braids standing beneath the glare of a lamp post laughing at my car as I drove past. Next thing I know here comes this truck out of nowhere. How I survived, I don’t know. But I walked away without a scratch.”
The heart-rate monitor began to beep at shortening intervals.
“Calm down, ndoda,” Kulani said. “You’re going to get me kicked out of here.”
Bandile tried to take slow, deep breaths, the hospital-grade paracetamol coursing through his veins, making what would have otherwise been a painful task in his condition easier. Slowly, the space between the beeps lengthened.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?” Bandile said.
“What for? I was fine. Thought it was nothing major,” Kulani said. He chuckled. “Kodwa, you on the other hand seem to be in too deep. You have been psychotic for a minute. How do we know that you still have some sane soup left in your bowl of noodles? Can the elevator still reach the top floor?”
Bandile fell into a mournful silence. His friend did not believe his story. He thought he was crazy and seemed to have other theories about Bandile’s state of mind. As Kulani prattled on about what he thought could have really happened, the writer’s thoughts turned again to the nature of his relationship with Kulani. He knew little of what Kulani did when they weren’t together – where he went, with whom. Almost nothing.
He closed his eyes and tried to visualise all the threads of his own life’s plot. But all he saw was a deep red, the bright lights of the room illuminating the tissues of his eyelids. Suddenly his eyes flung open. “Zoleka?” he said. “The twins? Are they OK?”
“Relax, buddy,” Kulani said. “Everyone is fine, except you.”
A second of silence. Relief.
“Do you want to see them?” Kulani said.
He asked the question tenderly, as if he was afraid the words might shatter his already broken client.
Bandile shook his head. “When I’m better,” he said.
Kulani nodded. He told his friend not to worry. He’d fix everything, as he usually does. “But,” he added, “don’t breathe a single word of this Molly thing to anyone. Not even a whisper of suicidal hallucination what-what, you hear me?”
Gutted and resigned, Bandile said, “Loud and clear.”
Fifteen
Nearest Exit
A WEEK AND a half later, with his health bar at around 60 percent, Bandile had had enough. Hospital food. The grumpy nurses that accused him of drug-seeking behaviour when he asked for more meds than his daily quota allowed to dull h
is pain. The regiment.
The regiment was unbearable: 6am wake up, 7am shower, 8am breakfast, followed by medication, 10am–12pm visiting hours, 1pm lunch, followed by medication, 2–6pm visiting hours, 7pm dinner, followed by medication, then 8–10pm visiting hours – only for the cycle to repeat the next day.
Worst of all, as he had only Kulani as the occasional visitor, counting dots on the patterned ceiling was the only thing he could do to pass the time and it drove him crazy. Like the typical A-type, Bandile couldn’t stand not doing anything. All that loafing around perturbed him. It made him nervous and agitated because precious time was being wasted when he could have been out there making money. Only in a brothel could one make a buck lying on one’s back.
Kulani had at least managed to bring in a bribed psychiatrist that certified Bandile as sane. Or at least as not being a danger to himself. Despite the forensics of all the other doctors showing that his injuries were self-inflicted, Kulani got him off the train to the psych ward. Somehow his agent, the best in the practice, got a respected professional to back his version of events. Bandile was very glad he had a spin-doctor like him in his corner.
The distorted version of events went a little something like this: Bandile spent a night with a random prostitute he’d picked up in his car and taken to the Cariba Inn. She turned out to be a dominatrix – a psychopathic dominatrix who got off on seeing Bandile hurt himself. Each time he refused to hurt himself, she’d deliver double the dosage of pain. Bandile said he didn’t want to open a case with the police against her, because it was too embarrassing. He didn’t want end up the subject of tabloid headlines again.
Bandile liked the irony. The story wasn’t far from the truth. But it kept him out of a sanatorium. It was hard to imagine himself strapped into a bed at his forehead, wrists, waist and ankles as Molly delivered electroshock therapy, wearing a sick smile the whole time.
The wild thoughts almost made him laugh out loud. If a writer’s imagination could still create collages of colourful chaos it meant that he was still sane.
Bandile even thought it was a good idea to store the image of a strapped-in patient undergoing electroshock therapy in his mind’s archive for later use.
By the end of that week, Bandile’s entire being felt that he had endured enough. He had to get out of there. The wounds on his chest had not fully healed, especially the gash below his left collar bone. But the miserable man couldn’t stay there much longer or he’d go mad as the March hare.
He hauled himself out of bed, unplugging all the tubules and wires that connected his body to machines that beeped and booped all day. He winced. Every motion hurt, but he had to get out of there. He found the bag Kulani had brought for him and pulled out a fresh set of clothes. He was delighted to see his laptop inside the bag. He wondered for a second if Kulani had read Untitled and what he thought of it. If he had read it, his agent had said nothing of it in the regular visits he’d been paying Bandile.
The writer made a mental note to ask Kulani. For now, he had to hurry. Visiting hours were his best chance to slip out unnoticed. They were almost over. He dressed himself steadily but briskly.
Wearing a cap, light jacket, t-shirt, tracksuit pants and sneakers, he made his way down the corridor. He’d been in many hospitals over the years, but this one he didn’t know. He navigated using the signs displayed all over – following those magic words: “Exit”. Nobody even looked at him twice. Nonetheless he hurried towards the world that awaited him beyond the double automatic doors of the hospital. A script to fine-tune and prepare for production. Another idea brewing in his head that he had to put down to paper.
When the doors came into sight he tried to act normal, even though all his aching body wanted to do was jump for joy. He walked to them casually and slipped out unnoticed. He thought Molly would be proud that during their week together he’d learned a thing or two about acting. He’d been thinking a lot about her. Molly. Nothing coherent. She was just on his mind.
He plopped himself into a metered taxi, and used what little money he had and his smooth-talking skills to get home. Once there, in a house as vacant as the day he left it, he hauled out his phone and dialed.
After two rings, Kulani picked up. “How are you feeling, chief?” his agent asked.
“Not bad, not bad at all. They let me leave today,” Bandile said.
“What?” Kulani said.
“Yebo,” Bandile said, acting cool. “Don’t worry. Someone more sickly needed the bed.”
Kulani was silent for a while, long enough for Bandile to know his agent had not been fooled. The sickness of familiarity is that you are cheated the comfort in the lies that people tell.
“Bandile, Bandile, Bandile,” Kulani said, finally. He dotted each syllable like a mother scolding a child. Before the writer could mount a defence, or attack, Kulani said, exasperated, “You just keep your head down. I’ll fix this … again.”
“Enkosi,” Bandile said. He added, singing the words with hope, “See you on Monday? There’s a project I’d like to discuss.”
“Whatever, chief,” Kulani said. He ended the call abruptly.
Sixteen
Bitter Pill
IT WAS A murky Monday evening when the taxi driver took a long and twisting route, racking up more Rands with each kilometre. He was playing old-school kwaito. Ma-dollar and Olaz, back when they still ran the game. His passenger listened impassively, thinking himself also a has-been. He, Bandile, would only realise when he checked his receipt the next morning that he’d been taken for a literal ride.
When he got home, he went straight for the bar and poured himself two fingers of whiskey and knocked it back, neat. He poured himself another. And another. Then, he turned to face the emptiness of the house. He was still not used to the absolute silence. He reached for the remote and awakened the stereo, turning the volume up. Plopping down on the couch, he lit a cigarette and pulled the smoke into his lungs. He held it there for a moment before releasing it slowly. Playing on the sound system was a man dropping rhymes about constantly feeling like he’s hitting a dead end, despite his best efforts.
Fitting, he thought. Earlier that day he’d hit his own dead end.
Two hours prior, he was sitting in his agent’s office, with panoramic views of the city. Kulani was standing, taking in the view as his client sat anxiously on the other side of a polished desk. Between them, on the desk, was a 55-page draft of a proposed screenplay, Untitled. The agent had presented it at a meeting with the executive producers at TV Networx.
“Well?” Bandile said. He couldn’t take the suspense.
“Look, Bandile,” Kulani started. He did not turn to face his client. “The concept is great. The story’s modern – relevant to the youth market.”
“But?” Bandile said, anticipating what was coming next.
Kulani turned and sat across from him. “But,” he said. “TV Networx doesn’t see it that way.”
“How do they see it?” Bandile shifted in his chair.
“It’s too …” Kulani said. He paused, seemingly unsure what to say next. “It’s too white.”
“White?” Bandile roared.
“What’s making waves right now are authentic kasi stories – not the politics of rich brats fighting over love and money. That wave is gone,” Kulani said. “You wrote this for the big screen anyway. It’s not what they want.”
“It can work as a mini-series,” Bandile pressed. “The story can be slowed, chopped up and the characters pulled in all sorts of directions.”
“Bandile,” Kulani said.
“What do these execs at corporations know about real township stories anyway?” The writer’s tone was belligerent.
“You know how it goes, man,” Kulani said. “They sign the cheques.”
Bandile sniggered. “And we sing and dance on their command,” he said.
“Here we go,” Kulani said. He massaged his temples.
“We’re being forced to produce content based on
the clichés and stereotypes about black people. Do you know how patronising it is to think people elokshini can’t relate to a story like this?”
“That’s not it,” Kulani said, annoyed. “Your project lacks flavour. Give me a kasi story and I’ll sell it. This thing,” he said, gesturing at the manuscript, “you didn’t even bother to give it a name.”
“I was working on a name.” Bandile was on the verge of shouting. “But the story is there. All you had to do was present it well to TV Networx. Trust me, mfwethu. The public doesn’t want another pity-the-poor project. But these producers just don’t get it. In fact, it seems they can’t get enough of black suffering. If it isn’t about crime, poverty, disease or apartheid … then it’s not ‘authentic’ enough to be black. Can’t they see how most of these local films perpetuate racist stereotypes?”
“Look,” Kulani said, also unable to hide his irritation, “I know you think you’re a great artist and that business undermines art. But art is business. You were happy to play this game before and now, when you need to most, you’re being … precious.”
Bandile pushed his chair away from the desk and stood up. “I always feared this day would come. The day when you, the great Kulani Moyaba, would be found brown-nosing for some gold.”
“Calm down, Bandile. I’m on your side—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down,” he snapped. “You’re my agent, but I don’t see you doing anything to promote my work these days. I get it. I’m not the goldmine I used to be. You think I’m over and are writing me off. So much for being friends.”
Kulani’s voice softened. “Mfwethu, I’m trying to help you. Put this story away and come up with something else … something set in the hood. Ghetto lingo, romance, humour. Give me loxion, your style, with complex, compelling characters.”
Bandile began to pace.
“Essentially all you need to do is to change the setting. That’s it, and Bandile Ndala will be back on our screens. I guarantee it,” Kulani said.
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