The List

And what can I tell you my brother, my killer?
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you.
I guess I forgive you
I’m glad that you stood in my way
– LEONARD COHEN, ‘FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT’

Coming back from my pub, this evening, dear Bongi – yes, I call it ‘my pub’ now as it serves really as my sitting room, my bedsit having sparse room to sit – tipsy as I was, I would never have even glanced at the rack of pale wooden post boxes in the narrow, dark passageway that serves as an excuse for a foyer to this boxed tenement they call an apartment block. There’s never anything in my post box other than leaflets calling me to the local supermarket for better prices, or begging my vote in an election I don’t know about, or another unctuous announcement from my landlord about new occupancy rules or a scribbled reminder that my rent is once again late.

Tonight, though, as I moved wearily towards the stairs preparing to summon some momentary sobriety to get me up the two flights to my room, my eye was caught by a flash of white protruding from the slit of my mailbox, top right of the bank of boxes just before I was to mount the stairs. It did not look like the usual junk. I snatched at it with my left hand as my right gripped the banister for the long haul upwards. I held the envelope out in front of me like a torch.

In my room, in the dim light of the single shadeless lamp, a cracked glass of cheap whiskey on the over-varnished round table that held the lamp, I see now that this is a letter. A letter. A real old-fashioned letter, such as we used to write in those early years of exile. A letter, with a stamp (digital, I’m sure, but designed to look like the ones I used to collect as a boy), and with an address, my address, handwritten as we used to write addresses. Handwritten and in your handwriting, Bongi, that jumped out at me, dragging from the thin paper on which it was affixed sudden memories such as the ones that would come from a long-forgotten photograph found in the recesses of a cupboard during a move of house or some other packing or unpacking – there were so many of those.

My dearest Jerry it starts – the letter, I mean – after I have managed to slip my crooked finger under the flap and gently pry the contents loose in fear of damaging the words inside.

What should I read into that? Why not just ‘Dear Jerry’? A little formality to represent more accurately the time and space between us. But the possessive pronoun ‘My’ signifies a continued ownership that I thought had long been surrendered. And the ‘dearest’? That implies the upper limit of dearness, the superlative. Did you think about these opening words? Or was it a sop to diplomacy, to kindness?

My dearest Jerry,
First, I must say, don’t worry. I have used a safe route to get this letter to you. And don’t ask me how I got your address. That too is safe.

I write to raise some things with you, and there was no other way but this letter. Some of these things are not good, very bad. Things here are very very bad. I don’t know what you know, what you’ve heard from where it is that you’re hiding. I don’t know how you are, what you are now, what you are thinking, feeling. Jerry, I miss you. Yes. I love you. I still do not understand what happened, what dragged or pushed you away from me. I have never stopped loving you. And, no, I have never been unfaithful to you, if that is what you still believe.

This is a difficult thing to tell you. I’m not sure how much of our news you’re able to follow. Do you know that Sandile is gone? Dead. He was blown up by a bomb, right in Bryntirion, not long after the president.

Bongi, I read your words. I hear your words – your voice is here in a space in my head, a special vault or device, perhaps, that vocalises the written word, like computers do for the challenged of sight. You love me, you say? Ndaba is dead? No, I didn’t know. I do not follow the news. I am shackled to the more distant past. Sandile gone? I mourn, but I am not surprised. And Vladimir? What of Vladimir?

I don’t know how to tell you this, Jerry, but Vladimir is not doing well. In a coma, for many months now, since February. The story is that he was hijacked, shot in the head. They say he was on his way back from seeing Sandile, just before Sandile himself was killed. They say Vladimir won’t make it, and if he does, if he does wake up, he will be a cabbage. That’s the word they use. I’m sorry, Jerry.

Vladimir a cabbage? No! They have shot a hole in the revolution, the trajectory of the bullet erasing our history, our memory, our story. Bongi, I too have a hole that is killing me, a dank hole, a dark, diseased pit in my stomach. We all go down the road to journey’s end.

There are more bad things, Jerry. Terrible news, I am sorry. Stephen and Gail burned to ashes in their house, their house burned down, nothing left. The Room, as you called it, is gone, ashes and molten metal, they say.

I am okay, Jerry. I am safe. I am in hiding. I have left the house, our home. I have left it empty. I am not going into the office. After the president and Ndaba, DG Mthembu set the counter-intelligence investigators on me. But I am safe.

And, Nadine is safe. For some reason they do not visit the sins of the father (and the mother) on the child. I am glad to tell you that your daughter, as part of her training, has been posted to the London station as an intern for six months. You will see her soon. That is the real reason I am writing to you now. And that is how this letter has got safely to you ...