‘Baby Michael, I believe,’ I said.
‘You the father?’ she asked, adjusting her epaulettes.
‘Technically speaking, yes. Morally and philosophically, no. But it is a very long story.’
A cloud descended over her radiant face. She cleared her throat, placed a professional and motherly hand on my shoulder. ‘Your lovely girlfriend is stationed at Bed 8C, next to Baby Benton at that corner. She’s undergoing tests on the fifth floor. But her mom and dad are with Michael Junior. Come with me,’ she added, the motherly hand rubbing and squeezing my shoulder. I was unprepared for the paediatric ICU – but it had nothing to do with Abednego weeping over the longest prayer I ever heard, complete with the trials and tribulations of the children of Israel, how even pharaohs were no match for the Righteous Might of the Lord.
What I saw weakened my knees, snapped every nerve end of feeling. So, I concluded, this is the result of Rusty’s long-fingered coup d’état, her ambivalent robbery of a Michael who lay starving, a crime unlikely to ever be understood, prosecuted, punished to the furthest and yet most appropriate sanctions justice permitted. The wall inscriptions, signs pointing out directions to the maternity and other wards, reminded me of arrows drawn on the wall tiles of campus toilets, arrows that drew attention to specific jottings amid a web of insults and poetic fumbling, a battle for prominence between graffiti and selected wall vandalisms (someone had rubbed a coin, defaced the white tiles until they turned a rusty green), amid lewd drawings and confirmations of loneliness (please call Maxwell on 088 773 4344 anytime), general outbursts without provocation or purpose.
Three particular inscriptions stood out: the ‘Don’t sit and wonder, shit like thunder’ note inscribed with a red marking pen in cubicle 3 of the Senate House restrooms, the ‘I came looking for knowledge, but found pussy instead’ in cubicle 4 of the Africana Library toilets, under which an anonymous poet was inspired to record: stop it already/ this bullshit about nation/ about negation of alienations/ impressions calculations estimations/ fragments of nation/ draped in mysteries of what ifs/ colourless/ like water. Such impatience. Such bleak resignation of a fledgling poetic talent.
A Cat Named Clinton K
I cannot help that the world is swarming with sceptics. Dr West, for one, never believed me, which is a shame to his profession. But I know what I saw. I swear on my life that a cat visited me during my eleven-day fasts. Clinton, as far as I understand him, was a prankster and crude show-off, polished only in his hogging of the limelight. He not only gave animals a voice – something even I, in my ramblings, had never given a second thought before our encounter – but was also both entertaining and serious. Perhaps, in a way, I saw Clinton as my complement … Were we both not cerebral in our views. What I know for sure, however, is that we were not diametrically opposed, Clinton and I. He sat on the windowsill of my David Webster dorm room, next to my jug of water, and addressed me thus:
‘Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Bruno. That is what I am expected to answer to, these days. I have been called many things before, depending on the household and the imagination of its inhabitants. I was Julius Caesar once (how charming), when I belonged to the Smiths in Somerset West, Booby (erotic, I tell you!) when I pranced around the Zulu home in Port Elizabeth, Neptune to an aged plumber in Soweto. I was Butch to a Johannesburg vet who saved me from a lung infection (you’re not completely useless, humans) and Tyson to the Buthelezis, despite my revulsion and utter disdain for sweaty half-dressed men punching each other for money.
‘There was that not-so-bright Professor Newton, who named me Knock Kness – KK for short – a human defect, or maybe out of pure laziness, I could never tell. I came very close, as close as close shaves go when it comes to yonder worlds. It’s a miracle that I, a cat, am here, talking to you, for in reality, I should long be dead. I don’t have to mention that a human had something to do with my near demise. Big Bruce, the veteran pimp at Purple Moon, a seedy nightclub downtown, shot at me – all six bullets and missed. You would think I’d committed treason. When asked, Big Bruce – his thick, meaty and sweaty neck draped in necklaces thick as chains on construction sites, his eyes bloodshot, his gold-plated front tooth hinting at a predisposition for chaos – simply hissed: “Because I can.”
‘Paloma, a sadistic young devil, raised amid drunks and talented pole dancers, had been brutalising me with a plastic sword for months – between which she relished twisting my tail, laughing heartily when I writhed in pain. Bruce urged her on, showered her with praise. “That’s my little pirate,” he grinned. “Tough as nails.” His Little Pirate burnt me with molten candle wax, sent her shoes (oh, the terror of that giant buckle on one of her particularly solid pairs of winter boots) flying towards me like scud missiles under tables, behind couches, and from under bar stools where I had run for my life. There was a broken broomstick, with which she was particularly vicious. I limped for seventeen solid days following that assault, which was, like the others, unprovoked. It rained blows – with anything Paloma could lay her hands on: ashtrays, wine bottles, leftover T-bones from patrons’ dinner plates. Yet I remained calm, even though seething inside, so enraged and on the edge that I could have killed that Little Lucifer.’
Someone flushed a toilet somewhere in the direction of the television room.
‘Since when is being born a cat such an unforgivable crime?’ continued the cat. ‘Why did such abuse continue unabated? With lukewarm, half-hearted, absent-minded and matter-of-fact admonishing of that sadistic little tyrant who reigned supreme? She was Bruce’s daughter, you know. Legend has it that this was a man who seldom slept. His drug-fuelled anger was legendary, earned him a reputation and, unless suicidal, no one dared to, as he cautioned, “push his buttons”. It was this mean streak that was also evident in his Little Pirate, that chubby little devil, whose cruelty was beyond malice.
‘What was a cat to do? What hurt me the most is that it never occurred to Bruce or his sordid clients that what that depraved little child thought amusing was not in the least funny – me having to always look over my shoulder for variations of pain that seemed to stretch to eternity.
‘Aren’t cats also flesh and blood? Two years of that torment drove me to the unthinkable, when following an evening of unprecedented torture, I finally – not without great difficulty, I have to say – decided to teach the little Lucifer a lesson, so brutal that it left the repugnant little horror one-eyed. A swift strike with determined claws, then gasps from Purple Moon patrons and a bloody eyeball drove Bruce into a murderous rage, resulting in those gunshots, which, by the grace of I-don’t-know-what, all missed, of course.’
A butterfly, small and insignificant, missed perching onto my water jug and plunged into my drinking water; an accident Clinton K observed with a sense of detachment, plunging back into his story: ‘I met little Paloma at Purple Moon,’ continued the cat, ‘uninvited, scavenging for food. That pest’s abuse of me will go down in history as the greatest injustice against an esteemed member of the cat family, bringing back – as it did – unpleasant terrors lurking in the shallow graves of memory. I must stress that I was, before I found myself at Purple Moon, never in the habit of hanging around whorehouses. It happened quite by accident, a shameful development, following me running away from home. It was not really running away – I simply got tired of being a pet to one Marcus Broderick: a useless, talentless, would-be poet who never published a single stanza.
‘A bachelor, never married, a face choking under facial weed, the bony poet almost starved me to death with his lack of ambition. The skeletal Mr Broderick lived on a diet of bananas, expecting me to hustle for my own food. I hated him, sometimes pitied him, how he dragged his bony frame around that average house: not plush, somewhat promising, generally depressing. It wasn’t a house, really, but a three-bedroomed flat at Casablanca Heights in Hillbrow. I could not stand his mumbling into the phone, battling to convince editors and publishers that there was, in fact, literary merit to his poems
. Failing, he slammed the phone – smashed anything within reach against the walls: notebooks, coffee mugs, a photograph of his brother.
‘I found this throwing of objects traumatic. I got fed up with Marcus mumbling into the phone, his temper tantrums, his wanting to own a pet when he couldn’t even afford tea bags (a single tea bag recycled, expected to miraculously yield twenty cups?) … Shameful, if you ask me. I did not even bother saying goodbye, more so because Marcus had a lady friend visiting, an occurrence that happened once in a blue moon: that Thelma with facial moles and mauve skirts. Marcus conveniently forgot that cats are prone to hunger and thirst. On those hideous green couches they sat, he and Thelma, looking into each other’s eyes, transfixed, awkward, unlikely romantic figurines.
‘So I left, raided dustbins for anything edible, threw up at the filth that humans generate: bloody rags, rotting meat crawling with maggots, rubbery and oily bag-like things dripping with mucus-like secretions – the true identity of which I learnt years later: birth-control tools humans use to shield themselves from unwanted births and embarrassing ailments – an odd chicken wing here, a half-eaten grilled fish there, some meatballs under orange peels and, on a good day, some KFC remains.’
I cast my eyes on a stack of books that adorned my study table: musings on divorce, mortality and Aristotle. The cat paused, and then continued.
‘There were new tragedies to deal with. Stray dogs suddenly leapt out of nowhere, fangs bared, spoiling for a fight. Dreadful Johannesburg thunderstorms and motorists whose driving antics seemed a single-minded crusade to run over cats. It was during one of those chilly downpours, with explosive thunder claps, that I fell down a manhole (why was that gaping hole left to swallow me whole?), tossed and sucked by a whirlwind of raging storm drainage water, the closest I have ever come to drowning. I held on for dear life, my claws sunk into some rusty and rapidly perishing steel pipe, wide-eyed at the possibility that that was to be my last day on earth. It was my desperate miaows that caught a passerby’s attention.
‘Who would have thought that humans are capable of hearing, of summoning a rescue team: fire engine, dive swimmers, blinding searchlights to save handsome me, a cat, from what seemed like certain death? They spoke of hypothermia, dehydration and trauma, before imprisoning me in a mobile penitentiary, whisking me to some animal care centre named Noah’s Ark. It was at that centre, on a cushioned prison cell, with annoying hounds for neighbours barking their heads off, that I drifted into terse sleep.
‘The food was good (but nothing to rave about), the head veterinarian had foul garlic breath, and the obviously lazy cleaners reluctantly cleaned away dog droppings and urine that assaulted my nostrils. None of them seemed clever at all – so I kept to myself, for I despise shallow conversations, useless navel gazing. Rabbits. Parrots. Pythons. Owls. Other cats. A tortoise. Hamsters. Of course humans came to adopt a pet or two, their little terrors for children in tow, chubby little fingers browsing our caged enclosures for an animal friend, something to rule and preside over, something to brutalise.
‘It was a hopeless time, unworthy of the grand plan of my life. I was, by week three – even given my general wariness of human beings – begging for human companionship: all that barking, that chirping, that horrid-looking tortoise estimated to be 73, the occasional mouse (how I trembled, fearing a bubonic plague outbreak) that ventured past our temporary prisons in search of food and warmth. Three more weeks and still not a soul granted me a second glance, something that would have happened (some human, taking interest in me), had it not been for those seedy, over-enthusiastic, uncouth dogs.
‘I found their whines, their melodrama, their wagging of tails nauseating to say the least – all that yelping and prancing about, tongues dripping with unmentionables, the inferior beasts. I must admit that being ignored wounded my ego, forced me to almost submit to the grand lie that humans are masters of earthly existence. New dogs came. Human fingers pointed, and chose. I wallowed in despair, retreated to the furthest corner of my kennel, played dead. No one seemed to care: there were simply too many admissions, too many mouths to feed, and those attention-seeking hounds to compete with.’
The butterfly finally gave up trying to escape the water jug, submitted to death by drowning. The cat was unmoved, and continued as if nothing had happened.
‘Which brings me back to Paloma. I’ve been rather harsh, I know, but in truth, in my deepest of bosoms – the broomstick assaults not considered – I had great love and admiration for that girl child: her lovely moonlike eyes, those chubby cheeks, and that sculptured little mouth worked itself into scornful twitches as she rained broomstick blows on me. Watching her sleeping was humbling; how innocent and harmless she became as her sleepy nostrils twitched to a bothersome housefly, as she stretched her torso (wrapped in pink pyjamas, with red elephant artwork) to sleep-induced numbness, the magnetic pleasure of watching that tiny mouth yawning and the little body tossing, settling into an invisible sleep cocoon, those sadistic paws away from the broomstick.
‘I loved her because she was so lovable, adored her, for what else is one supposed to do with children but love them? I do think, in hindsight, that I might have perhaps, just a little, overplayed my hand in scratching her eye out. But wasn’t my anger, my fury, completely within reason, every living thing’s God-given right to defend itself, against an innocent child in the company of grown men and women, even if they were more concerned with swinging their bare buttocks in the faces of awestruck admirers, oblivious to the broomstick blows that ultimately pushed me beyond limits, resulting in a marble-eyed Paloma, who will for the duration of her life be reminded: never piss off cats.’
‘I spent sixteen weeks in captivity at Noah’s Ark. There is no shred of doubt in my mind that I was mildly depressed, exhausted, and generally suicidal. My life had been, at least up until my confinement at that animal shelter, largely lonely and unremarkable. For someone of my intellect, my inbred humour in the face of breathtaking stupidity leaking from so-called pet lovers – sordid and depraved creatures not entitled or qualified, not even in the remotest of possibilities, to own and preside over a cat’s life, let alone a polished specimen of my calibre – allowed me brief moments of comic relief.
‘To be brought into a household, under the pretext of hunting and murdering rats, is to me the greatest insult ever to be cast on dynasty after dynasty of self-respecting cats, who – unaware of this abuse – go so far as to risk their lives killing pit vipers, which as it was evident from one or two isolated and unfortunate incidents, had no intention of showing them mercy. Death by puff adder venom. In your limited thinking and, dare I say dim conclusions, you humans have somehow concluded that the horrors of the world, including snake bites and the tortures of bubonic plagues, is something cats do not reflect about, hold any opinions on. So the world has rat populations, greasy eyesores the size of rabbits breeding under Johannesburg’s sewers: but why is this a problem of cats?
‘Why was I, at Purple Moon, expected to simply pounce on and murder rats without provocation – complete strangers? For the love of pets, I hear you say. Love? What love, of a cat, rests on the expectation that cats should always murder rats? Not that I am sorry that dogs are expected to bark at strangers, provide false security to helpless humans by baring fangs at would-be intruders. Far from it. My revolt is based on principle: the view that – as far as I can see, established human expectations notwithstanding – I will never blunt my claws pouncing on mice, creatures that by their very design thrive in filth!’ The butterfly had in its struggle, its denial of death, of drowning, sheared a wing off, a wing that now floated independently in the water jug.
‘Likewise,’ continued Clinton K, ‘I will never, to the amusement of observing humans, risk my life or waste cat acrobatics killing snakes, in whose intended destinations and life stories I haven’t the faintest interest. I, therefore, refuse to be drawn into obscure and vague grudges between human and mouse, between human and snake. To that end, my intellect do
es not allow me to degrade myself, to – even with facts and superior reason staring me in the face – make a fool of myself amassing rat corpses for the rest of my days. There is, surely, or at least must be, more inspiring and stimulating aspects to life than murdering carriers of bubonic plague? That said, I am not against anyone objecting to my analysis, this momentous contradiction of children’s love affairs with Mickey Mouse, and their parents’ murderous instincts at the mere suspicion, a possibility, of Mickey in the flesh, cohabiting with them.
‘You would have by now, if you are wise, deciphered that I am not of average intellect, Michael (that’s the name on your student card), that my reflections about life and living are far greater than the mess humans have landed us animals in: animals in zoo cages the world over, experimental breeding with the most depressing and grotesque of results, and the great lengths humans go to to breed animals for the sole and profane purpose of slaughter. Some of us, particularly domesticated cats of my ilk, witness humans at their most vulnerable, in their most despicable of states: following wives from room to room, trousers bulging, begging for knickers to be lowered, unleashing belt thrashings on otherwise innocent kids in the name of uprooting ill discipline (a lost pencil case), when the real frustration is the wife accusing the husband of having little or no ambition (“Your friends own beachfront homes”, “Of all the world’s sluts, you had to succumb to Molly Stevens of the facial moles?”, “I dread the day when that balding will take full effect, Tom – your head already looks like a casket lid.”).
Rusty Bell Page 9
