Rusty Bell

by Nthikeng Mohlele

  ‘I have seen them, Michael, seen them all: noses dripping with mucus, in the throes of influenza; stuffing their offspring with pork chops – a recipe for premature heart disease; observed them butcher each other during jealous love skirmishes; fishing and sniffing panties of visiting relatives from laundry baskets; prancing about the house in the nude; men nursing skew potbellies and pencil-thick stretch marks; winces and bellows of pain from behind lavatory doors as piles dealt their anal blows; midnight sneaking and tiptoeing to balconies to appease cigarette and whisky addictions; the heart-wrenching disdain with which wives treat their mothers-in-law; the inconsolable sobs of mourners at the funerals of people they hated when alive; and humans generally being human: watching way too much television, groping each other in the presence of startled children.

  ‘How can you possibly be the superior species, worthy of being custodians of God’s grand plan, sitting at the apex of decency, for – as we often hear – humans are not animals, and therefore somehow entitled to the most perplexing of contradictions?’

  The cat paused, raised a paw as if gesturing to stress a salient point, and continued:

  ‘I am quite aware, Michael, that I risk this – my considered reflections on the greatest lie dwarfing creation, that humans are masters of creation – coming across as rants from an arrogant cat with certain justified mouse and snake phobias. The heart of the matter, in part, is this: no one, not even God, had the courtesy to understand the world from the point of view of cats, that is, domesticated cats that in many instances end up as part of the furniture in obscene households of frustrated poets dabbling in tantrums and intimacies with whores, that misguided Paloma child with her broomstick-wielding ways, or the indifference of care places with their animal orphans, man-made sewer pipes in which, were it not for my appreciation of the gravity of life, I would have perished.

  ‘It is possible, and I suppose not unreasonable, that you will think me a voice in the wilderness: callous sentiments are to be expected from human sympathisers – who, following centuries of brainwashing, cannot tell the difference between milk and good tea. I must hasten to add that I am a great lover of tea, and not – as is popular opinion – foamy liquids from udders of cows. Is that strange, that inconceivable, that a cat would be lactose intolerant? Why has it been assumed that all cats, millions and counting, somehow have a natural inclination to milk, an inferior drink in my opinion, that does nothing but brew bloated bowels? I learnt of the beauty of tea, its majestic assault on the taste buds, from sucking on newly discarded tea bags in dustbins, weeks following my escape from Purple Moon, from Paloma, whose unprovoked broomstick blows would have eventually crippled me.

  ‘It was in those dustbins, while I was on the run from Paloma and her father’s bullets, from that untalented and depressed poet, that I experienced some of the appalling variety of foods that pass human plates and palates. This is, in itself, not a problem – except that we animals, cats included, are expected to risk oral hygiene murdering rats! Not that I promote the massacre of birds, but there is a certain grace, a nobility, in cats catching birds mid-air, for if truth be told – bearing in mind isolated cases of avian flu – birds are not too bad a meal for an adventurous cat. Besides, it can and should be argued that repeated, mid-air capture of birds is good exercise for cats, for though naturally agile, no self-respecting pussy wants to be fattened into a furry, bulky irritant that spends hours crouching on couches and under tables, with no zest for life. The nimbler the body, the sharper the mind.

  ‘Put simply, I would not be sharing this tale, with its precisions, were it not for my good fortune, an incident that almost redeemed mankind, when a certain judge, whom I mistook for a bachelor, rescued me from the animal welfare centre. It was at his apartment, Apartment 1806, Maude Street, Sandton City, that I was introduced to the charms of scholarship, Constitutional Law, and a dash of International Relations. For a man with that amount of money, of such esteemed social and professional stature, Judge Peterson is amazingly solitary in nature, measured in temperament and studious to a fault.

  ‘The apartment, on the eighteenth floor, presides over the Sandton cityscape, and offers the most spectacular views of traffic moving soundlessly along tree-lined streets by day and horizons of dazzling lights come evening. I must admit to it being intimidating, terrifying even, being so high up in the clouds, where Johannesburg thunderstorms brew unsettling clouds, explosive lightning strikes.

  ‘A three-bedroomed apartment, 1806 is deceptively small on entry, but the space seemed to grow as I strolled past the exquisitely furnished reception and living areas, past the visitor room, that majestic kitchen that rivals the best on celebrity home television shows, the private study, and the master bedroom that boasts all sorts of heart-stopping charms – the most pronounced of which is the painted ceiling, depicting a little girl, basket in hand, running through an open field. The vastness of the space, of that girl running barefoot across the field, along a farm road towards a distant windmill, the road dotted with an odd lamb here, a guinea fowl there, almost moved me to tears each time the Judge, a small man eternally in three-piece suits, points at the running girl and says: “Life is not mysterious at all, Clinton. It’s for free spirits.”

  ‘I cannot say I am not tickled by the great name the good scholar bestowed on me – for what cat, between here and the Strait of Gibraltar, as far as Budapest, Mongolia even, shares a name with the forty-second president of the United States? To make the distinction from and, I suspect, with respect to the former president, the Judge adds “Kitty” to my name. He addresses me as Clinton K in private, and abbreviates it to CK whenever we are in the company of others. I cannot say I have qualms about either variation of the name, for pompous as it may sound, I do, not without good reason, fancy myself capable of thinking reserved for distinguished heads of state.

  ‘I swear I saw a lone tear drop into my companion’s wine glass one afternoon – faintly heard him say, “Life. When are we ever gonna learn?” He brushed my back with an open palm, ever so gently, in slow jerky motions, and concluded: “Don’t judge us too harshly, Clinton K. There are fools among us.”’

  I heard the wind rustle leaves strewn across the David Webster Hall parking area. I blinked, thirsty and delirious and, like that, Clinton K was gone.

  Frank & Maria

  I often found myself thinking a lot about my father. A Pretoria University Philosophy and Political Science dropout (second year), he always hoped to return to his studies, little knowing that bursaries could be temperamental – that they could dry up without forewarning. He could also not have planned that he would meet Maria, my bubbly mother, and that such a meeting would result in my conception three years later, a third attempt after two miscarriages. Studies in world political systems, Socrates and Kierkegaard stalled following my healthy and miraculous birth on 4 July, eyes open, via Caesarean methods, at a decisive weight of 3.8 kilograms.

  I am reliably told, by both Frank and Maria, my parents, that no amount of bum smacking and considered pinching elicited the birth yelp from me, that I looked puzzled and a touch impatient. Mother objected to Frank naming me after Nietzsche, saying that that was too showy and un-African. I agree with Mother that, though somewhat catchy, with an intellectual ring of sorts, Nietzsche would have been an awkward name then and now. I, according to Mother, did not have a confirmed name for 96 days of my life, using Frank Junior, my father’s name, as a placeholder name while debates and counter-proposals raged between Frank Senior and his Maria, proposals that included anything from famous mountain peaks in Africa to Egyptian pharaohs, narrowly missing famous inventors of the telephone and the bicycle in particular, skirting names of Christ’s disciples by a hundred miles, touching on American Civil Rights leaders, before, on Day 96, Frank and his Maria agreed to go beyond the clouds, to an angel in heaven, thus naming me Michael.

  Frank could have been a great banker, one of the greatest, if he hadn’t been born at the wrong time and with the wrong
skin colour. His acumen with money, his softest of hearts, did not earn him a cushioned life in the South Africa of then and of now. There was a measured pride about him, though, a discreet pride in how he chose to love a world that showered him with doubt and disdain. For as long as I can remember, my father worked as a delivery man for Almond & Spencer Pharmaceuticals, criss-crossing Johannesburg’s avenues, responding to ailments of suburbia and, for extra income, weekend shifts transporting ‘Urgent Medical Samples’ for hospitals.

  It was from this – what he called life’s tragic pranks – that he managed to put me through school, that chinks appeared in his quiet pride, fissures that made his thoughts drift, prompting that heavy sigh and yearning: ‘I would have loved to fly aeroplanes, Michael.’ He later joined Harmony Gas & Fuels as a man who fought to be master of his life, but who instead helplessly watched as life and history drained all that was supposed to make life pleasurable, a drop at a time.

  His was a life not lived, but leaked away, soundless, in the single-roomed tin shack we called home. There were very few certainties in my life, or any life for that matter, but there was never greater resolve than the fact that I deeply loved my father: his limp handshakes, his rare and brief laughter, his wise eyes, his long verandah reflections (newspaper in hand), how he would later, in silence, sit at our dinner table holding hands with ‘the loveliest and most gifted seamstress in the universe’ – my mother, a flame of a woman because of whom even priests momentarily had lapses of speech (My God, Maria, you married too quickly!) or action: how a visiting pastor from a neighbouring parish held on too long to Mother in what was supposed to be a cordial hug – a hug that ended with Pastor Immanuel’s palms resting motionless on mother’s hips. I wished Father would reprimand such men, men with errant palms, but no, that seemed to add to his inner glow, his peculiar confidence.

  As far as love goes – untainted, ocean-current love – none comes close to the one I witnessed in our one-room shack in Alexandra. It was not the kind depicted in lifestyle magazines: of walks along sunny boulevards, boat cruises on blue oceans, nose rubbing in restaurants. It was not, though it had a poetic glow, love spoken about by forlorn poets, not one of horse riding and romantic bicycle excursions into the countryside, not burdened by visits to the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal. It was a love that had learnt to ridicule lack, a brazen kind of feeling, resolute, daring even, so ahead of earthly imperfections that it seemed otherworldly: that silent hand-holding of theirs, that drinking from one coffee mug when sugar was in short supply, the wrist rubbing and ear lobe nibbling (a fraction of a second this) on selected evenings, how Father never fixed his own cufflinks, never learnt to master a tie, how Mother fixed those faultless tie knots, adjusting knot size and position, dealing with the odd, errant shirt collar, that open palm with which she ironed the tie onto father’s chest, ending all her husband grooming with a kiss to the forehead.

  Frank hurled an eighteen-wheeler truck across South Africa three weeks in the month, followed by four days of rest, most of which he spent either reading encyclopaedias and aviation literature on the verandah or looking into his Maria’s eyes. There was nothing harmonious about Harmony Gas & Fuels: drivers died fiery deaths in collisions, the risk of arsonists’ bullets aimed at puncturing petrol tankers in the hope of Hollywood-style explosions, the odd hijacking by petty fuel mafias.

  It was timid work, reasonably tolerable, but far from harmonious. There were times when he transported only gas cylinders, which, when thought of scientifically, meant he was in the company of bombs by the truckload, a daunting and inescapable thought, entirely at the mercy of fate. Burning tankers made some of the news bulletins, black billowing smoke and sky-high flames: the sombre images of fire engines and ambulances. It was, on second thought, deadly work, lonely, almost suicidal, staring at the tarmac day and night, between Cape Town coastal refineries and Johannesburg inland garages, eyelids heavy as lead, fighting sleep.

  For years he commanded the trucks, packed with gas cylinders and explosive liquids: through mountain passes, across vast grasslands, in crawling city traffic. It was unimaginative work, with nothing but the drone of the diesel engine for company, living on fatty takeaways, sleeping in desolate roadside motels. To my knowledge, Frank never harboured an interest in another plague that wiped out Harmony Gas & Fuels’ workforce over the years: roadside prostitutes. Even without him having said so, I from instinct knew that his love for his Maria far exceeded fondling against truck wheels, timed fucking in cheap hotels, on truck sleeper beds. There was, however, despite the potential of a fiery demise or driving into a bridge, perhaps great benefit in the routine and solitude of trucking – for I, without him saying so, wondered what open spaces could do to a mind.

  What ponderous character did mile after mile of driving engender? What precision of thought comes with years of harrowing experiences: faulty brakes, tyre blowouts, gas leaks, engine failures, fever bouts and revolting bowels? He probably thought about these things when rocking on that chair, encyclopaedia in hand, momentarily raising his eyes to ask: ‘Did you know, Michael … Ahmed Baba was a great African scholar. Timbuktu. Astrology. Astronomy. Philosophy. He authored over one thousand manuscripts.’ There were countless Did-You-Know questions, on subjects that struck him as worthy of knowledge. He always said, calmly and reflectively, that he would one day cease to drive trucks, noisy and unyielding things, and fly aeroplanes instead. This sentiment was oft repeated, without a deadline or concrete plan, the only measure of which was the thrifty way in which Frank lived, how he spent hours reading, anything and everything on aviation. The more I scrutinised Frank, the more I wondered if he was emotionally stable, if he could, as his dream job required, make countless split-second decisions.

  According to wisdom posted on Google, air traffic controllers are required to have excellent situational awareness. Brilliant short-term memory. That would be a burden on Frank, who also had to be quick and assertive in his decision-making abilities, including performance under duress. Everything about managing airport goings-on demanded excellence of many kinds: numeric computations, focus on exact language (words) spoken from fifteen thousand feet above the ground, in aircraft cruising at mind-boggling speeds, exact words devoid of the potential for misunderstanding. Just how good would this truck driver be? And why was I so obsessed with putting him on the scale, brooding over so many things he left unsaid? If I asked him, as I have for many years, the answers remained the same: ‘You worry too much, Michael.’ Or, ‘I will think about it,’ or that perplexing answer, accompanied by a series of small nods: ‘I see you are curious, that’s very good.’ And still no answers.

  No one, except Mother, seemed to believe he would one day leave Harmony Gas & Fuels, accept their fake gold watch, make a five-minute speech over muffins and bad coffee, shake hands with a representative of the representative of Harmony Gas & Fuels Inc. Group Managing Director: Southern Africa, pose for pictures taken with a picnic-like camera, possibly finally openly flirt with the fleet manager or receptionist, feign deep gratitude at receiving atrocious gifts from colleagues (cheap pine picture frames whose glue melted before his very eyes, a wall clock with all the hallmarks of pawnshop embarrassments, a pictorial book recording the cockroach species of the Amazon Basin), listen to selected people he knew hated him speak passionately and eloquently about what a loss his departure was to Harmony Gas & Fuels, more handshakes with fellow truckers suddenly realising the full weight of their paralysis, their enslavement, their limited options, pats on the back by yet more truckers who didn’t know what they did not know, wishes for a bright future by gossiping mechanics and morbid inventory clerks, matter-of-fact memories of truckers who perished in explosive infernos.

  An accountant with stained teeth would remind him of R4.26c still owed on a R17 000 loan from 1985, the mumbled ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ sung tragically off key, the equally bland ‘hip-hip hoorays’ dripping with anxiety and petty jealousies. There was a sobering truth: even if the
Group Managing Director did not delegate Mr Conrad Buthelezi who, owing to a Disneyland trip with family, further delegated a Mr Chamberlain, who came himself to thank my father, the ceremony would still have had false importance because for every Frank downing tools, there were millions others doing the same: truckers on icy Canadian routes, midwives throwing in the towel in Mongolia, army men being blown to shreds by bullets and mortar fire in Mosul.

  Like all sorts of souls finally abandoning their yokes, their enslavement by the likes of Harmony Gas & Fuels, Father was not what you would call ‘Important’. He remained invisible between the cracks of modern South Africa, as employee No. 908/F of the Harmony Gas & Fuels Energy Division, driver of Truck 804, his importance obliterated by the middle class. Frank’s invisibility was because of the middle class, Misters Buthelezi and Chamberlain who frequented Disneyland, the middle class who populated the Johannesburg cityscape: crawled around its malls, its picnic spots, sped along its motorways in cherry-red Porsche 911s, dozed behind desks in office parks, infested sporting arenas; professionals with heads stewing with profit-and-loss statements, divorce arguments and counter-arguments, political conspiracies, their sleep patterns ravaged by forensic investigations, joints swollen and creaky from gout and arthritis, visits to former lovers curtailed by restraining orders, creatures recovering from boardroom skirmishes; gloomy funeral directors and jumpy polishers of diamonds, stalker telemarketers and insurance salespeople, obese chefs, part-time writer dentists, temperamental producers of television shows, investigative journalists with their whisky-drenched entourages, Class-A whores at the service of bankers and errant university professors, engineers hawk-eyed at construction sites, beauticians debating skin types, auditors suddenly discovering arithmetical errors that would sink corporations, professional fraudsters under house arrest, disgraced socialites bickering on aeroplanes. It was because of them that my father remained, largely, invisible.