Toloki has nightmares that night. He is visited by strange creatures that look very much like the figurines that his father used to create. But these are made of glass. They make a terrible din, shouting his name and dancing around, all in step. Noria, also made of crystal clear and sparkling glass, appears among the creatures. She gives one sharp whistle, and the dancing and din stop abruptly. The creatures gather around her, and she feeds them glass hay. Molten glass drips from her fingers, and some of the creatures lap it. Toloki sees himself, made embarrassingly of flesh and blood, looking longingly at the scene. He wants to join Noria and her creatures. He walks towards them. But Noria rides on a glass horse that suddenly grows glass wings. It flies away with her. ‘Please, Noria!’ he screams, ‘Don’t leave me! Wait for me, Noria! Noria!’ He wakes up in a sweat.
A drunk sitting on a bench a short distance away from his laughs at him. Fumes of plonk fill the waiting room.
‘Who is she, ou toppie, the woman you have wet dreams about?’
‘None of your business.’
‘Then stop disturbing our sleep with her name.’
He takes a long swig from a bottle wrapped in brown paper, and drifts into a noisy snooze. His toothless mouth moves all the time, like a cow chewing the cud. He passes wind thunderously, which suddenly wakes him up. He thinks this is tremendously funny, so he cackles shamelessly. The stench of rotten cabbage drifts from the drunk, and hovers above Toloki. This is one of the disadvantages of his headquarters. They are a public waiting room, and sometimes, especially on weekends, they are full of inconsiderate and drunken hoboes.
‘I can’t stand this.’
‘Stand what?’
‘You farting all over the place. You are not alone here, you know.’
‘You get off my case, ou toppie. It’s not my fault that you have wet dreams about watchamacallit Noria.’
He laughs again. And unleashes more thunder. Toloki feels that he doesn’t have to endure this. The fact that he has taken it in his stride for all the years he has lived in waiting rooms seems to escape his mind. Nor does he question why all of a sudden he can no longer tolerate it, when it has been part of his life for so long. He gets up, and pulls on his shoes. He had slept fully-dressed in what he calls his street or home clothes. He repacks all his things neatly in his supermarket trolley, and pushes it out of the waiting room. The drunk laughs and shouts after him in the mocking sing-song voice that children use when they tease each other, ‘I want Noria! Give me Noria! Nye-nye, nye-nye-nye!’
Toloki walks along the highway, pushing his shopping cart. It is the middle of the night, and there are not many cars on the road. He walks unhurriedly, sometimes stopping to look at the stars. And to look back at the harbour. He is going to miss the throbbing life, the nightwatchmen, the dockworkers, the sailors and their prostitutes, even the inane grins of tourists from the inland provinces. He is making a major change in his life, and it is not clear in his mind why he is doing it.
He reaches the settlement at the crack of dawn, and stops at a bus shelter. What will Noria say when he arrives at this time of the morning? Will she not be angry with him if he wakes her up at this ungodly hour? What if she is with someone?
These unanswered questions are interrupted by a group of young men who approach him. They are the Young Tigers who patrol the streets at night, like a neighbourhood watch, protecting the people from the attacks of the migrants from the hostels, and from the police and the army. They want to know what he is doing there. He tells them that he has come to visit a friend. He has walked for many hours, all the way from the docklands, and is merely taking a rest at the bus shelter. He is shaking with fear, for he has heard what these boys, and sometimes girls, are capable of. If only he was wearing his venerable costume. They would surely show some respect for it. They look him over, and decide that he is quite harmless. ‘He’s just an old bum pushing his trolley,’ they declare.
He immediately hastens away from their patrol zone, and goes straight to Noria’s shack. He knocks, and she opens the door.
‘You are up so early in the morning, Noria.’
‘I am going to help Madimbhaza with the children. My God, Toloki! I wouldn’t have known you in those clothes.’
‘These are my civilian clothes, Noria.’
‘You look strange in them. I am used to your mourning uniform.’
She does not ask what brings him here so early in the morning. It is as if she has been expecting him all along. She invites him to push his trolley into the shack, and to make himself comfortable on the floor. The donkey blankets in which she has slept are still spread on the floor, and Noria says he can sit on them. But Toloki respects the bedding of a lady, and sits on the floor, away from the blankets.
Noria tells him that Madimbhaza has many children, some of whom are physically handicapped. She goes to their shack to help her friend wash these children, and since it is Sunday today, to get them tidied up and off to church. After this she will attend a meeting of the women’s organization that is trying to improve conditions for everyone at the settlement. Toloki is welcome to come if he is interested in seeing the work she does in the community.
‘I’ll come next time.’
‘It is fine with me. I’ll be gone for most of the day. Look around and see what you can prepare for yourself.’
‘I’ll catch up on my sleep. I was on the road for the whole night.’
Noria leaves, and Toloki takes out his own blanket from the trolley. He spreads it on the floor and drifts into sleep. His eyes glide over the pictures on the wall. Perhaps he should cover the ceiling with pictures of furniture, and beautiful houses, and serene gardens as well. When sleeping on one’s back, one should be able to take a walk in the garden. Just like in his shack when he first came to the city almost twenty years ago.
He remembers his first shack. It was in another settlement, some distance from this one. He has passed there sometimes, and has seen that the settlement has since been upgraded. Proper houses have been built, and it is now a township, and not a shanty town – as squatter camps or informal settlements were called in those days. There are streets and schools and shopping centres. But when he first came to the city, the settlement was just quagmire and shacks.
He had joined homeless people who defiantly built their shacks there against the wishes of the government. Bulldozers came and destroyed the settlement. But as soon as they left, the structures rose again. Most of the people who persisted in rebuilding now have proper houses there. Toloki would have a decent house there as well if he had not decided to follow a new path that involved sacrifice, self-denial and spiritual flagellation.
In his old shack, he had plastered pictures from magazines and newspapers on the walls, just as he has done in Noria’s. The difference is that his pictures were mostly black and white, whereas Noria’s are all in full colour. They make the room look much brighter, and more luxurious. Sleeping here in Noria’s shack, it is as if the clock has turned back. He can see himself vividly, eighteen or so years ago, wearing spotlessly white overalls and an apron, grilling the sausages that are known as boerewors.
When Toloki arrived in the city, he had nowhere to stay. He had no job either. But he was determined not to be reduced to begging. He had heard when men talked in the village that many of those who came to the city worked as labourers at the harbour. Or on fishing trawlers. The men told stories of sea adventures, as if they themselves were sailors. They bragged of a world that Toloki had never imagined, even for a day, he would see with his own eyes, let alone be part of. So when he came to the city, he asked people how he could get to the ships.
Toloki got part-time jobs loading ships. At night he slept at the docklands, or on a bench at the railway station. He washed himself in public toilets. In those days, they did not allow people of his colour onto any of the beaches of the city, so he could not carry out his ablutions there, as he does today.
He made friends with some of the labourers, and together they went to the townships, and to the shanty towns that were mushrooming on the outskirts of the city. They visited women, and joined in drinking parties. He never really had a head for alcoholic drinks. But sometimes he would drink so that his mates would not say he was a weakling. Real men drank in those days, and it was a disgrace for anyone who professed to be a man to shun the fire waters.
It was during one of those drinking sprees that he learnt of the move by homeless people to establish another shanty town on an empty piece of land outside the city. Everybody in the shebeen was agitated. The government was refusing to give people houses. Instead, they were saying that people who had qualifying papers had to move to a new township that was more than fifty miles away from the city. How were people going to reach their places of work from fifty miles away? And yet there was land all over, close to where people worked, but it was all designated for white residential development. Most people did not even have the necessary qualifying papers. Their presence was said to be illegal, and the government was bent on sending them back to the places it had demarcated as their homelands.
The people decided that they were going to move en masse, and unilaterally take this land on the outskirts of the city, and build their shacks there. This was Toloki’s opportunity to get himself a house. He joined the settlers, and allocated himself a small plot where he constructed his shack.
That was the shack that he decorated with newspapers and magazines. He was very proud of it, for it was the first property that was his alone. He was very angry when bulldozers came and destroyed it. But like the rest of the residents, he immediately rebuilt it. Sometimes state-paid vigilantes would set some of the shacks on fire, but again the shanty town was resilient.
After about a year of his doing part-time work, or piece jobs as they called them, things changed at the harbour. Times were difficult. Jobs were hard to come by. Fortunately, Toloki had saved enough money to set himself up in business.
He applied for a hawker’s permit from the city council, and bought himself a trolley for grilling meat and boerewors. It was a four-wheeled trolley with a red-and-white canvas canopy hanging above it. There was a grill on one end, with a gas cylinder underneath it. In the middle were two small trays into which he put mustard and tomato sauce. At the other end was another tray for bread rolls. Mostly he put mealie-pap on this tray, as most of his customers were working people, who did not care for slight meals such as boerewors in rolls. They wanted something more solid, like pap and steak.
Toloki conducted his trade in the central business district of the city. He had many customers, some of whom would come all the way from the docklands to buy their lunch from him. He knew how to spice steak in such a way that it was suitable for the taste buds of men who were tortured by the demons of a hangover. His was the first business of that type, and he had no competition. As a result, he made a lot of money. You must remember that this was in the early days, before such street businesses became fashionable. Today there is a proliferation of them in the streets of every city in the land.
He left his shack in the mornings and caught a train to the city. Trains were still safe those days. Preachers preached about eternal damnation in them, and passengers sang hymns and clapped their hands. Souls were saved in the trains, not destroyed. The only nuisance was the pickpockets. In the city he first went to the butchery to buy meat and boerewors, and then to the bakery where he bought bread rolls. He brought the pap, which he cooked on his primus stove at home, in a big plastic bag. Then he went to the Jewish shop where he stored his trolley overnight for a small rental. He pushed his trolley to his usual corner, which the customers already knew. He wore his white overalls and an apron, and soon the air was filled with the spicy and mouth-watering aroma of grilling meat. From midday onwards, a line of hungry people would form, and his pockets bulged with profits.
He was able to furnish his shack. Soon he was going to build himself a real house. Then he was going to send for his mother in the village. At that time, Jwara had not yet completed the process of dying. He was still in his workshop staring at his figurines, but we had already given up taking offerings of fruit and food to him. Toloki did not know what was happening to Jwara. Nor did he care. He was only interested in looking after his mother in her old age.
It was not to be. One day, business was particularly brisk. He ran out of meat. There was no one he could send to the butchery, so he chained his cart to a pole on the corner of the street for half an hour while he went to buy meat. When he came back, his cart was nowhere to be seen. He heard that city council employees had used bolt cutters to remove the chain and had taken away his trolley.
Toloki immediately reported the matter to the officer in charge of the informal trading department of the city council. He was told that his cart had been taken to the dump, and when he got there, it had already been squashed. All that was left was the front wheel. The officers of the city would not say under which regulations the action had been taken, nor who had given the instructions to demolish the cart. They said the matter was being investigated. To this day, it is still being investigated.
Toloki was reduced to cooking boerewors on a small gas cylinder cooker at the same spot where he used to park his trolley. But the customers did not come. It was not the same without the trolley.
For a while, he did not know what to do. He had some money in his post office savings book, but it was not going to last forever. And it was not enough to buy another trolley. His life had become reckless and free-spending. He had many friends who always kept him company in the afternoons and during weekends. He bought them drinks, and they swore eternal friendship. Women, too, were his ardent admirers. Not once did anyone mention his looks. He had finally found the love and fortune he had been yearning for. But when he could not maintain his life-style, the friends who loved him very much began to discover other commitments whenever he wanted their company. Women began to discover faults in him that they had not previously been aware of, and proceeded to derisively point them out.
Soon his money ran out, and he stayed in his shack all day and all night racking his brains on how to improve his lot. Then he remembered Nefolovhodwe, the furniture maker who had been his father’s friend back in the village. He had been very close to Jwara and Xesibe, and the three of them used to sit together in those distant bucolic afternoons, drinking beer brewed by That Mountain Woman, and solving the problems of the world.
Nefolovhodwe used to be the poorest of the three friends. Xesibe was doing well in his farming ventures, and in animal husbandry. He was the wealthiest of the three. Jwara was not doing too badly in his smithy – until Noria destroyed him, that is. There were always horses to shoe, and farming implements to mend. Nefolovhodwe, on the other hand, was barely surviving. He had learnt carpentry skills in his youth when he worked in town. He was very good with his hands, and knew how to make chairs and tables that looked like those that were sold in stores in town, or those which were pictured in magazines. But who in the village could afford chairs and tables? Both Xesibe and Jwara had each bought a set of four chairs and a table from their friend. There were very few other men of means in the village.
Once in a while someone died, and Nefolovhodwe made a coffin for this our deceased brother or sister. His coffins were good and solid, yet quite inexpensive. At times, an order for a coffin would come all the way from town, two hours away by bus. He looked forward to the deaths of his fellow men – and women – for they put food on his pine table. But the deaths were not frequent enough.
A man from the city visited the village one day. He was one of the village people who had gone to work in the city many years ago, and had decided to live there permanently. He had come to the village only to lay a tombstone on the grave of his long-departed father, and to make a feast for the ancestors so that his path should always be covered with the smooth pebbles of success. He was drinking with the three friends when all of a sudden he said, ‘You know, Nefolovhodwe, you are satisfied with living like a pauper here. But I tell you, my friend, you could make a lot of money in the city. People die like flies there, and your coffins would have a good market.’
This put some ideas in Nefolovhodwe’s head. He discussed the matter with Jwara, who encouraged him to go. But he warned him to be careful not to get lost in the city. Many people went to the city and did not come back. They forgot all about their friends and relatives in the village. Nefolovhodwe promised that he would always have the village in his heart. After all, he was leaving his two best friends behind, and his wife and nine children.
In the city, Nefolovhodwe soon established himself as the best coffin maker. Like everyone else, when he first arrived, he lived in one of the squatter camps. Unlike the village, death was plentiful in the city. Every day there was a line of people wanting to buy his coffins. Then he moved to a township house. Although there was always a long waiting list for township houses, he was able to get one immediately because he had plenty of money to bribe the officials. The township house soon became too small for his needs, and for his expanding frame. He bought a house in one of the very up-market suburbs. People of his complexion were not allowed to buy houses in the suburbs in those days. He used a white man, whom he had employed as his marketing manager, to buy the house on his behalf.
The secret to Nefolovhodwe’s success lay in the Nefolovhodwe Collapsible Coffin which he invented soon after his arrival in the city. The coffin could be carried by one person, like a suitcase, and it could be put together in easy steps even by a child. It was cheap enough, yet durable. The instructions that accompanied it were simple to follow, and were written in all the languages that were spoken in the city. Although it was lightweight, when it was assembled, it could carry the heaviest imaginable corpse. People came from all over – by train, by bus, by private car, and on foot – to buy the Nefolovhodwe Collapsible Coffin.
There was also the Nefolovhodwe De Luxe Special, which was a much more expensive type. Only the wealthiest people could afford it. This was also very much in demand. It was made of oak and of ebony. It had handles and hinges of gold or silver alloy. The lid had carvings of angels and other supreme beings that populate the heavens. By special order, for multimillionaires only, some of the carvings would be made of ivory. Ivory was still easily available those days.
However, a problem arose. Smart people did not want to be buried in a Nefolovhodwe – and when people talked of a Nefolovhodwe they meant the De Luxe Special; the more popular and cheaper type was just called the Collapsible – even if they could afford it. They knew that at night, unscrupulous undertakers went to the cemetery and dug the de luxe coffin up. They wrapped the corpses in sacks, put them back in their graves, and took the coffins to sell again to other bereaved millionaires. An undertaker could sell the same coffin many times over, and no one would be the wiser. Many wealthy families thought that their loved ones were resting in peace in a Nefolovhodwe. They were not aware that they lay in a condition that was worse than that of paupers who had to be buried by prisoners. At least in pauper burials, the corpses were wrapped in strong canvas.
Nefolovhodwe knew about the digging up of his coffins, and was very disturbed by it. Although he was making millions every year, this corrupt practice affected his business and the reputation of his products. But he did not know how to stem it.
Toloki decided to go to his father’s old friend. If there was anyone who could help him, it would be Nefolovhodwe. He recalled that there had been a time when Nefolovhodwe was the butt of the jokes of village children because of his poverty. He had once given a black eye to a boy who had made stupid jokes about Nefolovhodwe’s tattered and gaunt appearance, and his malnourished children. ‘You can’t talk about my father’s friend like that!’ he had said, before he floored the boy with one nifty left hook. The teacher punished Toloki for fighting at school, and reported the matter to his father. Jwara never raised the issue with Toloki at all. Instead he told Nefolovhodwe about it when they were drinking That Mountain Woman’s beer. Nefolovhodwe smiled when he next met Toloki and said, ‘I heard what you did on my behalf when children who have no behaviour were insulting me. You are a great soldier who will grow to protect us all.’ From that day on, Nefolovhodwe never skipped the opportunity to display his affection for Toloki. Even when his father referred to him as an ugly boy, Nefolovhodwe would protest.
‘You don’t talk like that to your own child, Jwara.’
‘What would you know about it, Nef? You have never had a child like this.’
‘I have nine children of my own. Some are ugly, and some are beautiful. But since they are all my children, they are all beautiful to me.’
In the city, fortune had really smiled on Nefolovhodwe. His house was surrounded by a tall security fence, which had warnings that it was electrified attached. There was a well-trimmed hedge inside the fence. Toloki went to the gate, but it was locked. He stood there for a while, not knowing what to do next. A security guard with two big Alsatians approached, and demanded to know what the hell he was doing there.
‘I want to see Nefolovhodwe.’
‘Just like that, eh? You want to see Nefolovhodwe?’
‘I am Toloki from the village. He is my homeboy.’
The guard thought the whole thing was a joke. He laughed mockingly at Toloki.
‘Your homeboy, eh? A great man like Nefolovhodwe is your homeboy? Does your homeboy want to see you too? Do you have an appointment?’
‘No, I do not have an appointment. But he is my father’s friend. Please tell him that Toloki, son of Jwara, wants to see him.’
The security guard hesitated for a while, then decided that he might as well just call the house and share the joke with his master. He spoke on the phone that was in the guard room by the gate, and came back to open the gate for Toloki.
‘The master does not remember you. But he has a vague memory of someone called Jwara in some faraway village. He says I should let you in, but you had better have something very important to say.’
Of course the guard was lying, thought Toloki. Nefolovhodwe was not an imbecile with a short memory.
He was led by another guard across the spreading lawns, past a dozen or so German, British and American luxury cars, to the back of the double-storey mansion. They entered through the kitchen door, and Toloki was searched by another guard, before he was led through numerous passages to a big room that was expensively furnished. Nefolovhodwe, who had ballooned to ten times the size he used to be back in the village, was sitting behind a huge desk, playing with fleas. Toloki later learnt that he ran a flea circus for his relaxation. He took it very seriously, and his fleas were very good at all sorts of tricks. He believed that they would one day be skilled enough to enter an international competition.
Nefolovhodwe did not even look up as Toloki entered, but continued playing with his fleas.
‘And who are you, young man?’
‘Toloki? Who is Toloki?’
‘Toloki, sir. The son of your friend, Jwara.’
‘Well, I don’t remember any Toloki. What do you want here?’
‘I am looking for employment, sir. I thought that since you are my homeboy, and a friend of my father’s, you might be able to help.’
Nefolovhodwe looked at him for the first time.
‘You come and disturb my peace here at home when I am relaxing with my fleas just because you want employment? Don’t you know where my office is in the city? Do you think I have time to deal with mundane matters such as people seeking employment? What do you think I employ personnel managers for?’
Toloki knew immediately that wealth had had the very strange effect of erasing from Nefolovhodwe’s once sharp mind everything he used to know about his old friends back in the village. He wanted to turn his back, and leave the disgusting man with his fleas. But the pangs of hunger got the better of him, and he made up his mind that he was not going to leave that house without a job. He knelt on the floor and, with tears streaming from his eyes, pleaded with the powerful man to come to his rescue.
‘I lost my business, sir. I need a job. You are the only one who can help me. Even if you don’t remember me, sir, or my father, please find it in your good heart to help one miserable soul who will die without your help.’
‘One miserable soul! Every time I am asked to help one miserable soul. Do you know how many miserable souls are in this city? Millions! Do you think it is Nefolovhodwe’s job to feed all of them? Go to the kitchen, and tell them that I say they must give you food. Then go away from here. I do need my peace, you know.’
‘It is not food I want, sir. I want a job. So that I can feed myself, and send some money to my mother. I do not want to beg, sir, or to get something for nothing. I want to work, sir, so that I can be a great man like you.’
Nefolovhodwe loved to hear that he was a great man. Although it was ridiculous to imagine that Toloki would one day be like him, he liked the part about his own greatness. Unknowingly, Toloki had pressed the right button, and he was offered a job.
‘But what you’ll earn depends entirely on you. I’m employing you on a commission basis. I want you to do guard duty in the cemeteries at night.’
‘Guard cemeteries, sir? Who would want to steal from cemeteries?’
‘You are to go to cemeteries only after funerals where a Nefolovhodwe has been used. Your task will be to hide, and wait there until someone comes to dig the coffin up. I want to catch all those undertakers who are making illicit profits from my sweat. You must admit it’s an ingenious profit-making scheme, this digging up of my coffins. I should have thought of it first. If anyone is going to profit from a Nefolovhodwe, it should be Nefolovhodwe himself, don’t you think so, young man?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Toloki was happy that he had found a job at last. He was asked to report directly to Nefolovhodwe, and not to personnel managers in his offices in the city. He was employed directly by the great man, and was going to be paid from his own pocket, rather than from the funds of his company. This meant that he was Nefolovhodwe’s personal employee. He was going to impress this big shot. He was going to catch as many thieves as possible, and earn a lot of commission in return. He pictured himself recovering from his financial difficulties, and recapturing his old life-style. But of course this time he was going to be more careful about the friends he chose. No more of the kind that loved you only when you had money. Homeboys and homegirls were the worst of the lot in this respect.
However, things were not as easy as Toloki first thought they would be. To begin with, he did not know how to find funerals where a Nefolovhodwe had been used. He went to cemeteries during the day to attend funerals, and to spy on the type of coffin used. In most cases, he found that people were using the Collapsible. The Collapsible was too cheap for anyone to dig up. He went back to report to the great man that in all the cemeteries he had visited, no one was using a Nefolovhodwe. It did not dawn on him that the sort of people who would use a Nefolovhodwe De Luxe Special would not be buried in the popular cemeteries he frequented.
‘Stupid boy! You will never find a Nefolovhodwe in cemeteries in shanty towns and townships where the rabble are buried. Go to private cemeteries, ugly boy, and to church yards, foolish boy. That is where you will find a Nefolovhodwe. In the suburbs, ugly boy, in the high-class suburbs.’
Toloki was beginning to hate this new Nefolovhodwe. In many ways he reminded him of his father, Jwara.
He went to graveyards in the churches and to private cemeteries to do more spying. But they drove him away, and called him a tramp. So he stood outside the graveyard, and hoped that the coffin that was being used was a Nefolovhodwe. At night he went back and hid himself behind the trees. Months passed without his catching a single undertaker. Once a week or so he went to report back to the great man. The guard at the gate would open up for him without further ado, saying ‘Come in, homeboy. Your homeboy must be expecting you.’ At first Toloki thought that the guard was a homeboy. But later he realised that he was merely mocking him.
Sometimes instead of Nefolovhodwe, Toloki would find the woman who was called his wife. Toloki knew Nefolovhodwe’s wife in the village, and his nine children. He had fought battles in their defence. And in defence of the honour of their now ungrateful father and husband. He refused to accept that this tall, thin girl, with straightened hair, red lips and purple eyelids, and a face that looked like that of the leupa lizard, was Nefolovhodwe’s wife. She was kindhearted though, poor thing, and gave Toloki some food every time he came to report on his lack of progress in the investigations. Toloki promised himself that one day he was going to refund every cent’s worth of food he had eaten at the despicable man’s house.
His luck turned one night. He was waiting among marble tombstones in some posh graveyard as usual. Four men came in a van, and parked just outside the gate of the graveyard. They went to a fresh grave, and began to dig with their spades and shovels. Toloki suddenly realised that in all the briefings that he had received from the great man, there was absolutely nothing on what he should do if he caught undertakers digging the graves. He decided to confront the grave-robbers. He leapt out from his hiding place, shouting.
‘At last I have got you, you dirty thieves!’
‘What the hell is this? Who are you?’
‘I have been looking for you for many months. I am taking you to Nefolovhodwe. You have been stealing his coffins!’
‘Do you see any coffin that we have stolen here?’
‘Ha! You think I am a fool. You were going to steal it.’
One man hit him hard on the head with a shovel. He fell to the ground, and spades rained down on him. The men left him for dead.
Toloki lay unconscious throughout the whole night. In the morning, he woke up with a gash on his head. His clothes were all bloody. He stood up and staggered to the grave. It was intact. He was not sure whether the thieves had continued with their digging. He went to the suburb to report to his master.
‘You ugly boy, I ask you to bring me thieves, and you come with a foolish story instead. You are fired!’
Toloki had wasted months working for this man, with nothing to show for it. He was a very bitter young man. He went back to his shack and locked himself inside while he thought very hard about what to do next. Such thinking sessions usually paid off. When he had come up with the idea of selling boerewors from a trolley, it had been after he had spent days in the shack, his mind incubating new ideas. Even when he had come up with the idea of seeking Nefolovhodwe’s help, it was after the same process. Well, Nefolovhodwe was a loss. But how was Toloki to know that homeboys who did well in the city developed amnesia?
Toloki observed that Nefolovhodwe had attained all his wealth through death. Death was therefore profitable. He made up his mind that he too was going to benefit from death. But unfortunately, he had no practical skill to market. Unlike Nefolovhodwe, he had no material items that he could make and sell that concerned death. But he had the saddest eyes that we had ever seen. His sad eyes were quite famous, even back in the village. We used to sing about Toloki’s sorrowful eyes. Slowly he reached the decision that he was going to mourn and that people would pay him for this service. Even the fat Nefolovhodwe had told him, ‘Your face is a constant reminder that we are all going to die one day.’ He was going to make his face pay. After all, it was the only gift that God had given him. He was going to profit from the perpetual sadness that inhabited his eyes. The concept of a Professional Mourner was born.
The experience that he gained while working for Nefolovhodwe and looking for corrupt undertakers came in handy. He knew where and when funerals were held. He boldly approached the bereaved and told them that he was Toloki the Professional Mourner. His costume, which in those days was still new, gave him the necessary aura. He suggested that he mourn for their departed relatives for a small fee of their choice. Some people thought he was a madman or a joker. They drove him away. Others gave him some money just to get rid of him, but he mourned at their rituals all the same. He had not yet sharpened his mourning skills at that early stage. He just stood there and looked sad. It was only later that he developed certain sounds that he deemed harrowing enough to enhance the sadness and pain of the occasion.
Soon enough he learnt that it was only at poor people’s funerals that he was welcome. Rich people did not want to see him at all, so he did not bother going to their funerals. When he approached poor folks, they would give him some coins, and tell him to come and mourn with them. Some, especially those who were new arrivals in the city, were puzzled. They thought that perhaps they had missed something that they ought to have been doing. Maybe it was one of the modern practices of the city to have a Professional Mourner. It was the civilised thing to do, they thought. So they engaged his services. Some believed that the presence of a Professional Mourner brought luck to their funerals. Yet there were also those who continued to see him as a nuisance.
At first, Toloki engaged in this unique profession solely for its material rewards, to profit from death like his homeboy Nefolovhodwe. But after two or three funerals, his whole outlook changed. To mourn for the dead became a spiritual vocation. As we have already seen, sometimes he saw himself in the light of monks from the Orient, and aimed to be pure like them. It was this purity that he hoped to bring to the funerals, and to share with his esteemed clients.
Noria returns at midday. She is carrying scraps of pap in a brown paper bag. She shares the food with Toloki, and tells him that this is how she has been surviving for the past few years. She helps people in the settlement with their chores. For instance, she draws water for shebeen queens. They give her food in return. Most times she helps Madimbhaza, because she has so many children, and cannot cope on her own.
‘I have lived like this since I came to the city.’
‘I didn’t know, Noria. I could have helped.’
‘You forget that I do not take things from men.’
‘As a homeboy, Noria. As a brother. Not as a man.’
Noria patiently explains to him that she is not complaining about her life. She has received fulfilment from helping others. And not for one single day has she slept on an empty stomach.
Before she arrived in the city, she thought that she was going to lead a cosy life. People in the village, and in the small town where she lived in a brickmaking yard, had painted a glowing picture of life in the city. She believed that it would be possible to immerse herself in the city’s glamour and allurement, and would therefore be able to forget the pain that was gnawing her as a result of losing her son. She did not want to forget the missing son, only the pain. She believed very strongly that one day Vutha would come back to her. She was going to get a job, maybe cleaning offices, or as a domestic, and build a new life. If things didn’t work out, she could always fall back on her old profession of entertaining men. But on second thoughts, for Vutha’s sake, she would not go back to this profession. In any case, there wouldn’t be any need – the streets of the city were paved with gold and diamonds, after all.
She had a rude awakening when she arrived. There were no diamonds in the streets, nor was there gold. Only mud and open sewers. It was not like anything she had seen in her life, nor anything she had imagined. However, there was no going back. She had nothing to return to in the village.
Homegirls welcomed her. Some were doing well, working as domestics in the suburbs. Others brewed and sold beer – a practice that was illegal. But then their whole lives in the shanty towns were illegal. Word spread around that Noria had arrived in the city. She stayed with an old woman who took her under her wing because That Mountain Woman had cured her of bad spirits that had deprived her of sleep. She was still grateful, and wanted to be of assistance to the daughter of her old doctor. In return she hoped that That Mountain Woman, who was now among the revered ancestors, would look at her kindly and bless her aging life with good fortune.
Homeboys and homegirls came to the old woman’s shebeen to see Noria. They cracked jokes and made funny faces, hoping that Noria would laugh and fill their miserable lives with joy. But Noria could not laugh. She tried very hard to live up to their expectations, and to make her homeboys and homegirls happy, as she had willingly done so many times back in the village, but her laughter would not come. She could only manage a strained grin; which, according to those who saw it, looked like that of someone who was constipated. It was as though the well from which the pleasant laughter flowed had run dry. Soon, everyone decided to give up, and went about with their day-to-day business.
Noria learnt the skills of brewing from the old woman. Even though her mother had been an expert brewer, Noria had never been taught the art at home. Her mother had never made her work. She, according to Xesibe, treated her daughter like an egg that would break. But in the city she worked hard. Some people from the village said that the old woman worked her like a slave. Right up until the time that she set up her own shack after the death of the old lady, she was not paid a penny, but was given food and a place to sleep instead.
Most of the people who came to drink at the old woman’s shebeen were from the village. From them Noria learnt that Napu had come to the city with Vutha. As soon as her hopes were raised that at last she was going to see her son again, they looked at her with eyes that were full of pity. ‘Don’t you know, poor child, of the things that happened? Your son does not live anymore.’ Immediately these fateful words were uttered, Noria wailed in a voice that pierced the hearts of the drinkers. The old woman was angry with them for revealing the sad news in such a tactless manner. ‘Why do you think I kept quiet about it all the time? It was because I wanted to tell her myself when the time was ripe.’ The drinkers apologised, explaining that they were not aware that Noria was in the dark about her son’s death.
Noria learnt that Napu came to the city with Vutha. But they stayed away from everyone from the village. The home-boys and homegirls heard that Vutha was crying for his mother every day. Noria, they gossiped, had deserted her family, leaving the poor man to raise the child alone. Napu had no job, and would spend the whole day begging for money from passers-by in the city. He would sit with Vutha at a street corner, and people would throw coins into a small can that Vutha held. Most people gave money because they pitied the little boy in rags, who was pitch black with the layers and layers of filth that had accumulated on his body. Napu knew that if he went on a begging spree with Vutha, he would get a lot of money.
However, he did not spend any of this money on Vutha. When he got home – he had established a rough cardboard shelter under a lonely bridge on a disused road outside the city – he chained Vutha to a pole, and went off drinking. He went all the way to those shanty towns where he knew people from his village did not live, and crawled from shebeen to shebeen drinking, until the money was finished. Vutha would cry for Noria and for food. But Napu would only go back to unchain him and take him to the city for more begging. The only time they had anything to eat was when some kindly people would give them scraps of food, instead of money.
One day Napu had scored a lot of money from begging. As usual, he chained Vutha to the pole under the bridge and went drinking. He was gone for many days, and forgot all about the boy. During all this time he remained in a drunken stupor, and when fellow-drinkers asked where his son was, he said he had forgotten where he had left him. The shebeen queens laughed.
‘How can you forget where you have left your child?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t have time for children. His mother will take care of him.’
‘Which mother, now? Didn’t you tell us that your wife died in a flood, leaving you to take care of the boy alone?’
‘It’s not my business. His mother will take care of him.’
The shebeen queens laughed again. They knew that the boy didn’t have a mother. But they praised themselves for brewing beer that was so potent that it made Napu delirious about a wife who did not exist.
When Napu finally returned to the bridge, it was to a horrific sight. Vutha was dead, and scavenging dogs were fighting over his corpse. They had already eaten more than half of it. Napu bolted away screaming, ‘They have killed my son! They have killed my son!’
He ran for many miles, without even stopping to catch his breath. He did not know where he was going. He kept on repeating that they had killed his son, and he was going to chase them until he caught them. He was going to kill them and feed them to the dogs as they had done to his son. He had taken his son away, he howled, to get even with cruel Noria. But she and her wicked mother had now murdered the poor boy. People gave way hastily as he approached. He ran until he reached the big storage dam that was part of the sewerage works of the city. He dived into the dam, and drowned.
There is a long silence after Noria has told this dreadful tale. They sit lost in sad thoughts, but Noria’s eyes remain dry. Toloki remembers something from earlier days.
‘You know, Noria. I used to see a dirty beggar with a small child. It was when I had just started my business grilling meat in the city. I did not know they were your husband and your son.’
‘I cannot speak about my troubles any longer. Did you hear about Shadrack?’
‘No.’
‘He is in hospital.’
‘What is he doing there?’
‘I heard he was injured by the police. He is in a very serious condition. We must go and see him this afternoon.’