* * *
—
Marmer’s Electricians favour environmentally friendly technologies for generating power: talk hot air, think bright sparks, beat children with sugar cane on the soles of their feet.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Footballers wear Israeli bomber jackets from military surplus stores, and woolly caps and mittens in patriotic colours knitted by concerned senior citizens for Operation Hunger.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Glaziers install double glazing, because things look better through a vacuum; get for thanks tumblers of shatterproof crystal, because things look better through a heeltap.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Hootchi-kootchi-men gleam in the sun, peel kidskin from fingers like plantains, slick back their dubbined hairdos, pluck calculators from their waistbands, tot up the expenses.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Illuminists install in her bedroom lampshades like big boiled sweets (humbugs, lollipops) and sconces for kraal-scented tapers: thatch, cow-pat, burnt pap to take her back.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Jugheads return from their fact-finding missions brimming with duty-free rosy, reeking of Havana fumes, and answering only to “Toby” (for a happy hour or two).
* * *
—
Marmer’s Kitchenboys admit to tenderizing a trigger-finger or two with the mallet, in the course of duty, but prefer dicing, chopping, grating, slicing, mincing and grinding.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Lawyers put on dog Latin to intimidate the plaintiff, object, bandy about malfeasance and misdemeanour, ipsissima verba, adjourn, stand the defendant to a liquid lunch.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Market Gardeners mobilize for her convenience living catalogues of their wares: berries in barrels, root vegetables in tubs, watermelons in trailers filled with potting soil.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Nutritionists calculate the recommended daily allowances of minerals and vitamins, add them, multiply by the first number that comes into their heads, submit the invoice.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Organ-donors lay at her feet, among other things, dogsbody viscera, taste-bud ikebana, pot-belly tripe, white meat, puppy-fat, cauliflower ears, the green apples of their eyes.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Partypoopers turn up the lights, turn down the volume, invalidate the wishbones, unpimento the olives, spit in the dip, spike the punch, open the presents.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Quartermasters accept payment in kind: bags of nails, self-basting fowls, sheepskin seat covers, lashings of cream, tubs of whitewash, guns, answering machines, medallions of lamb.
* * *
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Marmer’s Restaurateurs support revolutionary causes, including lamb on the spit, wheels of cheddar, whisking two egg-whites, rolling in breadcrumbs, cycling in the park in chef’s hats.
* * *
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Marmer’s Silversmiths fashion serviette rings, little handles for corn on the cob, sosatie skewers, trowels for brie, spoons for scooping the flesh of granadillas, toothpicks, tips.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Tasters are televised taking their lives in their hands, warming it in their palms, swirling, sniffing, tossing it back like destiny, pronouncing it unbearably sweet.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Undertakers permit no eating or drinking in the presence of the dead, in deference to their insatiable hunger for movement, their unslakeable thirst for breath.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Ventriloquists throw their voices downstairs: then utensils applaud her, the kettle sings her praises, the coalscuttle declares itself willing and able to burst into love.
* * *
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Marmer’s Waterbabies understand the well-rounded language of Jacuzzi bubbles, know how to seed clouds and breathe through reeds, use cocktail umbrellas to dowse for bathtub gin.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Xerographers reproduce her dinner menu in strict proportion: fifty-two thousand for subscribers, twenty-six for the press, and thirteen for handing out free at soup kitchens.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Yebomen practise endlessly the doffing of caps in unison and the bending of knees in counterpoint, never say no, always say roger, okey-dokey, affirmative, absolutely.
* * *
—
Marmer’s Zuluboy comes for the weekend under the joint custody agreement, tags along behind on her coat-tails, ensconced on a little beaded pouffe, chewing a candy-cane.
III
The Signature Tunes of the Barber of the Piece
(Examples only.)
Arranger: Down the Orinoco, on a breeze as sweet as cocoa, Barber go.
Babysitter: Tooler too tooler Barber tooler twarner, tooler too tooler Barber tooler twarner.
Cheerleader: Parper’s Little Man shouldn’t blow his own horn, but: Parp! Parp! Parp!
All together now:
Courage
“My Mother’s Love” ground to a halt at the picnic-spot just before the bridge over the Inyongo and set down a white man with a walking stick and a silver suitcase. It was the first time a suitcase as shiny as the foil from a cigarette box had been seen in our part of the world. Banoo the bus driver alighted as well. Able-bodied passengers were usually expected to bring their own sacks and boxes down from the roof-rack of the bus while Banoo revved the engine, but on this occasion he scaled the ladder himself and fetched a leather bag from under the tarpaulin. Years later, when I went to school in Piet Retief, I saw that the postmen carried their letters in bags like that.
These were the first days of our freedom and it was not really necessary to be nice to the whites any more. But Banoo brought the bag down carefully and placed it in the white man’s arms. Then he hopped up on the whitewashed parapet before the bridge and pointed down into the valley. He gave directions, his hands bowing and scraping so earnestly in the air we could almost hear them. The white man smiled and nodded, and beat a tattoo on the toecaps of his boots with the end of his stick.
Banoo’s bus was as blue as a swimming pool, and “My Mother’s Love” was painted on both sides and the back in snowcapped letters, but inside it was like an oven. Soon there were impatient mutterings from the passengers. Banoo ignored them. Only when an arm crooked out of a window and a fist banged the “v” in Love did he hasten back to the wheel, scattering handfuls of directions as he went, and drive away.
From our hiding-place behind the concrete picnic table, Fish and I watched the white man. There was no need to hide from him, of course, except the thrill of spying itself. As luck would have it we were dressed for the occasion: we had clumps of grass stuck in our collars like freedom fighters, because we were preparing to sneak up on the girls washing clothes down at the river, but this new arrival was a worthier quarry. He was a youngish man with copper-coloured hair and a pink skin, running to fat and trying to conceal it under baggy floral shorts that hung down to his knees and a shirt dotted with assegais and shields in the colours of the new ruling party. He had shiny yellow boots and thick red socks. As soon as the bus was out of sight he hitched up one leg of his shorts and urinated against the parapet.
“Do you see?” Fish whispered. “His cock is made of rubber.”
“He shouldn’t piss there,” I said.
“It has a valve like a bicycle tube.” Fish had been to Fort Alexander to visit his sister and so he was an expert on whites.
The white man slung his bag over his shoulder, took the silver suitcase in one hand and the stick in the other, and started down the track. This had been the main road once, before Fish and I were born. It curved down to a drift over the Inyongo and then climbed all the way back up again to Lufafa, our village. Since the bridge had been built over the gorge the track was seldom used and the bush had almost reclaimed it. The descent offered memorable views of the sea and the spray against the rocks at the mouth of the river, but the white man did not have eyes for any of it. He was too busy trying to keep his balance. He kept losing his footing, despite the ferocious treads of his boots, and sliding down in clatters of shale. He made such a racket that stalking him was no challenge.
About halfway down he tripped over a root and skinned his knees. I wanted to go and help him then, I’ve always been a softie, but Fish wouldn’t hear of it. There must be no collaboration with the enemy. “What does he want down by the river? Perhaps he intends to attack the women?”
But there was no need to worry. The girls saw the suitcase coming and fled to the other side of the river. The white man flung himself down among the clothes spread on the rocks to dry and thrust his head under the soapy water. He looked like a pile of dirty laundry, lying there in a heap. After a while he picked himself up and scooped water in his hands to clean his knees. Then he made a study of the stepping-stones across the drift, plotting his course with the end of his stick. The girls gathered on the opposite bank, pointing and waving. Although we were too far away to hear what they were saying, we could tell he was negotiating his passage with them.
Teetering from stone to stone, flailing with suitcase and stick, rocking perilously after every step, the white man crossed the Inyongo. He made such heavy going of it I began to hold thumbs for him. But the anticipation of dry land made him bold. He tried to take three stones on the trot, overbalanced on the last and plunged one of his wonderful boots right up to the strap in the muddy bank. He gave the girls the end of his stick and they pulled him out.
He took off the muddied boot and washed it in a pool. He rinsed the sock and wrung it out. Then he put the sock and the boot on again.
His behaviour thus far had been merely silly, but now it became annoying: he took a packet from his leather bag and dished out sweets all round. He checked the clasps on his suitcase and gave it to my cousin Pinky. He buckled the leather bag and gave it to Thabiso. While he was doing this the girls were rushing to bundle laundry and fill buckets. Surrounded by his bearers, and swinging the walking stick which he had decided to carry himself, the white man took the track up to Lufafa.
There was not much point in keeping our distance any more and so we hurried to catch up. As everyone knows, it is always easier going up than down, especially when the path is broad and clear. The white man was striding along quite cheerfully now, in a cloud of sweet-scented giggling from the mouths of the girls and sour antiperspirant from his own armpits, swinging his stick and humming a tune. From close up he looked fatter and pinker. His knees were like bruised peaches. His boots creaked, especially the dry one. He reminded me of a picture-book pony.
Halfway up he ordered a halt, poked the end of his stick into the ground, unfolded a leather seat from the other end and perched on it. It was the first time a shooting-stick had been seen in our village too and it caused such a hullabaloo of laughing and jostling that one of the girls choked on her sweet. The white man took it all in good spirits, joining in the laughter and wobbling from buttock to buttock. When someone pointed out the damp spot around his boot he obliged us by stamping it so that water bubbled out of the stitching, and laughed louder than ever.
These were the first days of our freedom, as I’ve said, and there was no need to be especially mean to the whites. But there was a mean streak in Banoo, and I became aware of it as we reached the end of the track and emerged once more onto the main road. The white man’s long march had brought him to the far side of the bridge over the Inyongo, a stroll away from where the bus had dropped him off. Banoo had sent him to the river and back, just to see how far it was. But he did not see the joke. Neither did anyone else and I decided to keep it to myself. He looked so pinkly pleased with himself for having found his way through foreign territory.
Thrillingly, he pointed to my mother’s shop with his stick and we all went that way. The silver suitcase, which Pinky was balancing on her head, flashed in the sun, calling me to service. I wrestled it away from her. Fish tried to take the leather bag from Thabiso, but the white man wouldn’t let him, and he slunk off cursing. So it was that I was marching at the head of the expedition, carrying the suitcase in my hand like a gentleman, when Peter Meyerhold Becker, artist, appeared among us.
* * *
—
Although I had carried the suitcase on the triumphal leg of its journey, the white man, whose name and vocation were still a mystery to me, rewarded Pinky with a Coca-Cola.
My mother shooed the other children out of the shop and had a difficult conversation with him over the counter. He took a letter from his bag and spread it out, and she pored over it, looking for all the world as if she could read, exercising the whole repertoire of critical grunts and approving murmurs she had developed to appraise my accounts of the day’s takings. Then she gave him the chair from behind the counter, plucked some stalks of grass from my collar, and sent me to rouse Chief Phosa from his afternoon nap: “Tell him the government of the people has sent us a white man.”
The chief was grumpy to be woken, but he cheered up when he heard my message. He put on his straw hat and his sandals, tucked his shirt into his pants and followed me to the shop. When he laid eyes on what the government had sent, however, his face fell back into wrinkles. He expected a suit and tie, I think. All three of them went into the little office at the back of the shop, leaving me to guard the till. The white man took his baggage with him.
I had to rehearse the story of our visitor several times in the hour that followed. The suitcase, polished more expertly with each retelling, grew so shiny you could see the future in it. There was quite a crowd waiting when the white man finally emerged, and they were as disappointed in the baggage as Chief Phosa had been in its owner.
“This one is my son,” my mother said.
“We’ve met.” The white man stuck out his hand and I was bold enough to shake it. It cleaved to my fingers like dough. He fumbled for my thumb afterwards and laughed when our hands grappled clumsily between us. He had lost some of his pinkness in the cool interior, but his ears and nose were brighter than ever.
“This white’s name is My Old Becker,” my mother said, and fished a key on a curtain-ring from her bosom. His name, bobbing on the surface of our mother tongue, made him smile. “Take him to the room. And show him where the toilet is.”
I took the suitcase and led My Old Becker, as we called him, across the field to the clinic.
Like the track down to the river, the clinic was a vestige of the old days. It was a yellow-brick building with a corrugated-iron roof, three interlinked rooms and a stoep at the front with built-in benches, where the patients could wait in comfort. The university students who had built the clinic during their vacations as a contribution to the development of our rural district put in light sockets and three-pin plugs and taps, but the government of the day never got round to supplying the electricity and the water that would have filled these fixtures with purpose. They never got round to doctors and nurses either. For a while medical students came twice a year from the university in Fort Alexander, until the fighting kept them away.
Our house was next door to the clinic and so my mother was appointed caretaker. In return, she was allowed to grow vegetables on the plot at the back, which the builders had thoughtfully cleared of scrub. Once it became apparent that the students were not coming back, at least for the time being, my mother received Chief Phosa’s blessing to use the building too. The metal tables and cupboards were stacke
d in the end room; once a year thereafter, in the name of caretaking, they were carried out to be washed. The middle room became a storeroom for the shop. The front room, into which boxes and bags sometimes spilled, was used for guests.
I ushered My Old Becker into his quarters.
The place was stifling. The air smelt thickly of carrot-tops, onions, green mealies, curry-powder, detergent, rat droppings, mouldering cardboard. My Old Becker sniffed and sweated, but kept on smiling. A sponge-rubber mattress as grey and crumbly as a stale crust leaned against the wall. I laid it out for him and put his baggage in the corner behind the door. He seemed to have forgotten about me. He patted the fat rump of a mealie-meal bag as if it were a cow and wiped his whitened palm on his shorts. He read the label on a box of tinned peas. When I left him he was turning one of our squashes over in his hands as if he had never seen anything like it. If he needs the toilet, I thought, he can follow his nose.
* * *
—
Cupped in the warm palm of a dune, with the sun setting over my shoulder, I watched My Old Becker on the rocks. He took off his boots, stuffed his red socks into them, placed them side by side on a ledge. His feet were so soft he could hardly walk on the barnacles, but he winced his way out towards the sea and clambered onto an outcrop. Beyond him the rock shelved away and then plunged sheer into the water. The tide was coming in. The waves doused him in explosive spray and seethed around him. High and dry, the boots admonished him for his recklessness, as the waves beat closer. But he stayed there, very still, gazing straight ahead, as if he was hoping to be swept away.
Flashback Hotel Page 22
