Small Things

by Nthikeng Mohlele

  Even he, Gabriel, did not succeed in protecting his marriage by killing Rafael Lopez, for it is the memory of incidents past that clouds his expectations, his desires from life. Is Gabriel, in a way, saying ‘disappoint me, but not too much’? But how much disappointment is forgivable – given that love of his daughter is not without puzzles? If love were to be put in a pond filled with clean water, how would it look? Would it dissolve into nothingness, or gently cruise around, like a loved goldfish? At the moment of shaving his eyebrows, stuffing them into envelopes, how does Benito’s love look? Is it a goldfish, battling to find freedom from a fisherman’s hook?

  Is the hook of life, of dead ends, the force behind Benito’s shredding of his wardrobe, his prophesying to disembowel himself if his pleadings are not heeded? A question remains: Benito and I are not the first to suffer for love, so why do we torture our hearts so? What is Gabriel Sanchez asking me, precisely? If a man walks to a public square in the nude, he is condemned as insane; yet the same man, captured on oil canvas, blurred and in unnatural colours, a bad shadow of himself, is hailed by art scholars and newshounds, in lit galleries over cheese and wine, as giving meaning to life. How am I not giving meaning to life with my love for his daughter, that Gabriel Sanchez feels entitled to interrogate me, to caution me to ‘make my intentions clear’? What will Gabriel make of Benito’s letters, the envelopes with eyebrows, the rosary beads dating back to many Cuban Catholic Masses?

  Gabriel Sanchez visits me at the Tourism Information Centre, says Mercedes is feverish. We sit in silence, nodding into oblivion. He plays with his beard. I sense torrents of thoughts wrestling in his aged head, pulling his mind to multiple dead-ends. His brow is furrowed, his eyes narrowed, as if in an effort to arrest some thread of logic. To set his spirit free. He stirs, speaks: ‘I don’t have much life left in my bones. I am terrified we will let each other down.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘My daughter. How great is your commitment to her?’

  I don’t answer but smile reassuringly.

  ‘My intentions, Gabriel Sanchez, are to clothe your daughter in poetry for as long as we breathe. To count and name every hair on her head. To be a master of the trumpet under her tutelage.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘My love for Desiree cannot be wished away. I have to live with it, receive your blessings knowing you know and approve of my decades-long predicament. Desiree is undeserving, I know, but I have never known greater bewilderment.’

  Gabriel Sanchez sobs briefly and intensely, stands up to leave. Just then, my cellphone rings. The husky voice is unmistakable: Mercedes of the maple-leaf birthmark.

  ‘Hi. Please bring me some oranges and something for a sore throat, poet of mine.’

  ‘Will do. Has Mussolini written?’

  ‘He has utterly lost it now. The post box is totally jammed.’

  ‘Have you thought of writing back?’

  ‘No, my poet, I haven’t.’

  ‘Maybe you should.’

  ‘Completely push him over the cliff?’

  ‘The man was conceived hanging over a cliff. What is a little nudge between friends?’

  We laugh. But it is not funny, in the moral sense.

  10

  It is early afternoon. My contract with the Tourism Information Centre ends today. I return home to find Mercedes asleep. The key under the door carpet lets me in, and a glance at her teaching schedule on the refrigerator confirms she missed a trumpet improvisation class. I place the oranges on the dining table, decide against waking her; sip left-over wine from a bottle and ease myself onto a recliner chair in her library. My focus settles on book spines, ranging from studies on Vivaldi and the Four Seasons, to African Traditional Instruments, to Modern Orchestral Conductors. I, as is the Mercedes tradition, light a scented candle next to her porcelain dolphins – and the library is bathed in vanilla scents. My thoughts are scattered, my mood edgy. The wine warms the belly, fools the brain into temporary bliss, leaving nerve ends aroused and twitching.

  Something unexpected happens. I watch a moth, proud of its brown and deep-orange wings, circle the candle, drawn to the beauty of the flame. The love affair is at first full of caution, before becoming increasingly daring, reckless even; then, disaster. In an instant, quicker than fate, the moth wing dips into the candle wax – ending the moth’s playful flight in smoky cremation. I watch as the flame consumes the insect, leaving a helpless head dripping with crystallising wax. The scene is very reminiscent of Desiree and I – with Desiree the confident flame, and I the suicidal moth.

  With the wine bottle for company, shielding me from my over-cautious nature, I think: what in the nature of some insects attracts them to light, to fiery ends? Surely, the red wine suggests, there should be more important things in life than why moths continue to be humiliated by candle flames? It should be possible to admire flames from afar. But I cannot deny that the true nature of flames is that they offer warmth; an even truer measure is the fact that they burn. My companion, the wine, takes effect, blurring life’s conundrums into tolerable irritants. Mercedes is fast asleep, her breathing peaceful. I place the oranges next to her, together with the pills for a sore throat, and walk to the bridge. To think. All of three hours.

  I return home to find Mercedes watching Larry King in the library – not really watching, but sobbing. Long, drawn-out, quivering body sobs, with both her palms wiping away tears that refuse to dry up. Those beautiful hands, mopping up the tears, as if they were windscreen wipers. My attempts to rub her shoulders, her arched back, only intensify her weeping, which has left her perfect eyes bloodshot and swollen. I have never seen her so overwhelmed, inconsolable. She takes an eternity to calm down, to say, almost inaudibly: ‘Dad wants us to return to Cuba.’ Gabriel Sanchez, failing to get satisfactory answers from me, has decided to hang me by the testicles in a public square. Knowing me as he does, he has dismissed me as a failure: a mildly accomplished journalist, a hesitant revolutionary, a looming failure at the institutions of poetry and marriage, parrot of tourism information, laundryman checking hospital sheets for stains, promising trumpeter, futile philosopher thinking in circles about love and life without reaching any conclusive opinions.

  ‘When?’ I ask her.

  ‘In a week.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Dad prefers dying on Cuban soil. That has always been his covenant with the family.’

  ‘What is wrong with South African soil? I thought he liked it here.’

  ‘So did I. You could come with us to Cuba.’

  ‘I don’t want to be buried on a tropical island.’

  There is a long silence, a silence of wounded thoughts. What are you doing with my daughter? People. One never truly knows with them. One moment Gabriel is volunteering pearls of wisdom on what makes life complete, the next he prefers to die on Cuban soil. What do I know about Cuba, except bits and pieces gathered from conversations with Mercedes? The little that everyone else seems to know: Cigars. Castro. Che. Not much else. In truth, the greatest blow is in acknowledging that I am no different from any other moth; that some candle flames follow you. Two betrayals in one: the first from a reluctant father-in-law masquerading as a friend; the second from a passionate would-be wife with daughter obligations, a void to fill for a wayward mother and her Rafael Lopez misdemeanours. How could I possibly abandon Johannesburg? How is love of Mercedes greater than love of home? The South Africa in an Africa stirring with hope and abundant possibilities; an Africa that is a moth refusing to burn.

  A week. Imagine.

  A windy morning. I visit Gabriel Sanchez at the workshop. The For Sale sign is replaced by telephone numbers of the new owners, Jaco & Seun. There are three cars standing in line, washed and awaiting collection. A Ford Custom. A Toyota hearse. A bright red Chevrolet El Camino with a flat front tyre. Discarded parts are heaped on a tractor trailer, the workshop itself clean and empty, except for a refrigerator with a missing door.

  Gabriel is busy with a lawnmow
er, a rusty orange thing with oil leaks and blunt blades. Something has snapped between us. His body language has changed. He takes too much time sorting and selecting his tools, folding and packing oily rags, as if I am invisible. He normally requests a hand with moving heavy engine blocks or holding the torch to detect leaks; but not today. He seems brutally relaxed for someone with a trip to Cuba pending, uprooting many years of existence in a foreign country. His lunch box is untouched, his eyes dart with a borderline resentment. He hammers at a scrap lawnmower engine, robs it of its useful parts to fix the other one, until sweat drips from his forehead, from his aged and fluffy-haired scalp. I sit and wait for him to finish his lawnmower diagnosis; to collect his thoughts, or at least say something about the weather. He says nothing. I expect hostile stares from him, but when he speaks his eyes are kind, his voice gentle.

  ‘Old age is more about fading away than making new plans. You work within your limitations, without the luxury of second chances.’ Gabriel dabs a rag in petrol, wipes oil-leak grime from the lawnmower engine. He uses a small brush to clean the tight corners, to restore the ancient engine to acceptable levels of decay. The attention he pays to the minutest speck of dirt is not merely diligent work, but punishment by silence. It is punishment meant to break but not crush me, to burn yet still leave redeemable valuables; to convey deep displeasure without resorting to disdain. But I did not send Rafael Lopez to prune Sanchez’s vineyard, nor did I compel Gabriel to commit murder. Yes, he is disappointed that there are no guarantees for his Summer Breeze. Understandably so. But also puzzling. Infuriating. Perplexing. Yet I seek to understand, to dismantle him bolt by bolt, make sense of his abrupt silence. Like violin strings snapped in mid performance. Eighteen years of wrestling my temperament, of thinking myself in and outside of existence, guide me to calmly state: ‘I am not that important, Mr Sanchez, that you should wrack your soul so. I have accepted that you return to Cuba with your daughter. It is most admirable how you have raised her, how well she speaks of you. I wish, lastly, to say that the world has changed since Castro’s Cuba. The idea of family is, in our century, but a fantasy. We are, in these times, in the business of random fucking, of maiming hearts. Even in Cuba. Mercedes is all you have, I know. But a part of her belongs to me. I pray it were possible for you to be granted a century more of life – but even that extension will some day come to an abrupt end. Then what? Absence is as important as presence – for both have the power to mould and alter things.’

  He is disarmed, yet amazingly blunt: ‘So, are you also in the business of random fucking?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Of maiming hearts, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In your own words, you say she belongs to the universe, to this century. Isn’t the randomness that you speak about the product of a century where family is a fantasy? How are we any different from a troop of monkeys then?’

  Good listener, Mr Sanchez. There is in his thinking, however, a certain faulty reasoning; insanity, if you like. And no one seems to know where to find the keys to the mad house. I recall few times when I have felt this bad, this sick – as if I have drunk gallons of vinegar.

  True to his word, the possessive Mr Sanchez, protective of his daughter, terrified of the plagues of old age, leaves Johannesburg. Not without his Mercedes. But Mercedes’s departure is not a simple matter of flying out on South African Airways Flight 1337. It signifies not only the end to an era, some minor adjustment to be made along life avenues, but an injustice of major proportions. What more is there to say, to ask, to understand? She left. ‘You are the loneliest creature I know.’ Those were her words.

  Three years pass. In time, I forget her.

  The Moolman Laundry Services was gutted by fire yesterday. An electrical fault or some such. Black, billowing smoke and multiple destruction. Under-insured, Mr Moolman had little choice but to count his losses and let everyone go. I am behind with my rent. Ms Tobin, the agent at Renaissance Properties, is relentless with her threats of eviction.

  My defence is honesty.

  I don’t make up stories about non-existent emergency funerals or delayed bank deposits. I tell her that not only do I not have the money, but that I also don’t have a plan. As months one and two pass, Ms Tobin becomes increasingly impatient, writing a letter a week to remind me of my breach of the rental agreement. Mr Bemba, the building owner, is headed for South Africa for a week or two and ‘it is only sensible to have all the paperwork and money above board’. Ms Tobin presses me to make a plan, to which I answer:

  ‘I play the trumpet for donations.’

  ‘So you are not a professional musician?’

  ‘Almost, but no.’

  I clear a hundred and fifty rand on a good day from passers-by to whom I have not yet become a nuisance. But good days are few and far between – so I make do with a vase full of cents for bread rather than rent for a Johannesburg suburban apartment.

  Raising enough rent money would mean I would have to be on my trumpet thirty days non stop, in five different city spots at the same time – praying that the day ends with a few crumpled notes (thrown in grudgingly) and not rusty coins.

  It makes sense to me why people stay in soul-denting jobs: to avoid worse humiliations – sneers and jeers from strangers armed with disdain for artistic expression. Johannesburg can be saintly, giving; but it takes a while to distinguish the carefree spendthrifts from stone-hearted stingy souls – those that rebuke me for unspecified transgressions, rather than applauding my heartfelt ballads. I live on bananas and bread, sometimes with sour milk, to save extra from my earnings. But there are unexpected consequences: the milk loosens the bowels, making trumpet-blowing a risky prospect. Another sore point: I have to put something aside for the Metro Police, whose enforcement of municipal bylaws is synonymous with free lunches and dipping into my meagre earnings.

  There are also random demands by them for specific songs to be played at the drop of a hat. Talk of salt in the wound! To rob a man, and then expect him to provide the musical ambience while you feast. Like a jukebox. Tragic. I can, above the wail of the trumpet, sometimes hear someone say: ‘This thing is just flesh and bones. Is he trying to commit suicide, blowing that damn trumpet?’ Or The Hugh night-watchman, muttering: ‘Lazy shit, he thinks money grows on trees.’

  My trumpeting is marked by an eerie detachment. By my age, life expects of one to have prepared a cushioned nest for retirement, to have accepted the blunders committed during youth and be prepared for a life of increasing solitude. ‘Old age is more about fading away than making new plans. You work within your limitations, without the luxury of second chances,’ said Gabriel. But fate singled me out for an uncertain life, a life of futile aspirations, stillborn in a Pretoria penitentiary.

  It is true that I look gaunt; a recluse, an irritation. My humiliations at the Mary Fitzgerald Square continue, as do the exasperated phone calls from Ms Tobin. Mr Bemba’s trip has been postponed by a month or two. I begin to doubt if he exists at all. I sleep badly, fearing Renaissance Properties will lock me out, throw my modest belongings on the street. This year’s winter is devilish, eliminating any prospect of my returning to park benches. Apart from freezing to death, I cannot afford to risk losing my trumpet to theft or mugging. The profound sentimental value aside, the trumpet is the only thing that keeps my soul intact.

  In other matters my life is no less bleak. Desiree has attempted to resume contact. I finally make my decision, decades too late, to rid myself of her. I avoid her phone calls (a high-flying career woman with obscene job demands, and a rent fugitive too embarrassed to ask for food); ignore her knocking at my front door, once or twice a fortnight; her vague notes: ‘I am not a plague. Call me. Desiree.’

  From behind the curtain, I see her Jaguar in the driveway, the ever-adoring Amazu smiling blissfully in the passenger seat. I am afraid of Desiree, the way one fears a lightning bolt known to set fire to things.

  My shock is profound when Amazu, a few weeks lat
er, leaves a note on my door, saying: ‘Urgent. Desiree in hospital.’ A phone call from Rosebank Medical Centre confirms she has asked for me. What could possibly be wrong with her? Her bedside is full of her lawyer colleagues, legal minds speaking in murmurs. They applaud her diligence, her profound knowledge of the law, so persistently that it sounds like an obituary. None of them pay me much attention – probably dismissing me as one of her poor relatives; Africans and their intricate family trees, multiple relatives crawling out of the woodwork on days of trouble. None of them know anything about how well she sings, or that she never believed in love.

  I immediately feel out of place, yet press on to greet them. She lies in typical hospital helplessness: big pipe in her mouth, smaller pipes in her nostrils. Twice, her heart failed. Technically speaking, she was dead for twenty seconds, but quick reflexes from the doctors ensured she was electrocuted back to life, followed by sixteen-hour surgery, to fix the clogged arteries. But there are complications. An undetected fault in the oxygen tank means Desiree is no longer Desiree as I know her. Where will I ever get answers, now that she is brain dead? All that fiery temper and tonnes of guilt, finally confirming one thing: she is human after all. But at what point did she call for me? Did she know, sense, that her brain would suffocate, succumb to accident under local anaesthetic? Was her calling for me a moment of repentance, to say she believed in love now? There is the impression of a smile playing about her lips; or maybe it is just the involuntary twitching of a body under siege.

  But weren’t the notes she left, the message calling me to her bedside, in themselves acts of love? I am not a plague. Call me. Why are you running away from me? Call me: so that I can tell you of my profound discovery of love. You are now free to stare at me. Was she sensing impending loss of control, a jittery heart threatening to engulf her in eternal regrets? But would her transformation have endured, had she seen me as I now am, gaunt from a banana-and-sour-milk diet? I am certain she would not have recognised me; the destitute trumpeter chasing donations at Mary Fitzgerald Square.