* * *
—
When Kumbuza was a young man he had gone to Johannesburg to work on the mines. He was one of my mother’s suitors, and she remembered well how he looked in those days – the shape of his hands, the details of his smile, the green of the shirt he wore on the day he left, just like a particular leaf in the kitchen linoleum. And she remembered that while the other men clustered around the recruiting agent, falling over their own feet, Kumbuza lagged behind, walking backwards down the river track – the agent had left his truck on the other side of the drift – and ticking off on his long fingers the goods he would bring with him when he returned. As it happened he came back with nothing but a tin chest full of pots and pans and bottles of brandy. He left behind in Johannesburg the three longest fingers of his beautiful right hand. In later years, when the war of freedom lapped at the edges of the district, his absent trigger-finger became a joke in our village.
Kumbuza acquired a wife who was less choosy than my mother and became a farmer. He got drunk as often as he could. In his second season he slipped under the plough and mangled his left foot. Unfortunately our medical students were not in residence at the time. The foot was poulticed and bound, but it did not heal. The young doctors duly appeared and sent Kumbuza back to Fort Alexander with their driver. When he returned three months later his foot was missing and so was his wife.
In time people came to feel unsafe in his company, and so they left him to pursue his reckless course on the outskirts of their lives. He became a fisherman. He kept lobster traps for liquor money and he fished for his own dinner from the shore. The thumb and little finger of his right hand had evolved into a marvellously dextrous tool. He could open a bottle or bait a hook as deftly as any man. His crutch was as good as a leg, we said, although it sometimes failed him, as a leg will. Once he slipped and fell on the rocks, not far from where My Old Becker made his drawing, and lacerated his left leg from ankle to thigh. He fell off a stile and knocked out his front teeth. On another occasion he tore off the lobe of his right ear with a carelessly cast fish-hook. Then he went rushing up and down on the stoep of the clinic, cursing the absent doctors and pouring more blood than I had thought was contained in the human body.
This was the man My Old Becker had chosen for his statue of courage.
The choice aroused unexpectedly strong feelings among the men and women of Lufafa. They were outraged. They were filled with shame. In the few days that remained of My Old Becker’s sojourn among us Chief Phosa refused to speak another word to him. The people, especially those who felt that they themselves deserved the honour, did the same. My mother was incensed. That night we sat down to samp with a relish so hot it brought the sweat out on My Old Becker’s brow, and before the bowls were empty she demanded an explanation.
Was it not the case, she said, that My Old Becker had rejected the best-looking men we had to offer, because of the tiniest imperfections, only to settle on this wreck of a human being.
“It is not the business of the artist,” he said pompously, flourishing his red face, “to give a man what he has never had. But when a man has lost a part of himself, it might well be the business of the artist to return it to him.”
To pick up the pieces, to make broken things whole, to restore the lost unity. It was a laughable claim and I could easily take issue with it now. But then I was delighted. It was obvious to me, as perhaps it would have been to other children of Lufafa, that the right choice had been made. Kumbuza’s missing bits and pieces might have filled our parents with horror, might have given them aches and pains in the corresponding digits and limbs, but to us they were marvels. I still remember running my finger over the scars on his leg as if they made a map of the future. I remember the drunken smell of his laughter and how deliciously he tickled with the pincer of his right hand. I remember, in my bones, stirring a loose milk-tooth with the tip of my tongue while Kumbuza reeled through the door of the shop with a bloody rag pressed to his mouth.
* * *
—
“I’ll be glad to see the back of him,” my mother said. “He’s eating us out of house and home.”
Had My Old Becker’s choice of model not already redeemed him in my eyes, my mother’s growing hostility would have done the trick. When he invited me to assist with the photographing and measuring, I forgave him everything.
The photographing of Kumbuza took place in our backyard on Sunday morning at the crack of dawn. It had something to do with the light. My Old Becker demanded total privacy, but there was really no need. Kumbuza behaved admirably. He let himself be photographed standing up, sitting down, crouching, kneeling, rising, falling, lying. He wielded the crutch and then the shooting-stick like a rifle, a flag, a hoe. He twisted his face into a wide range of expressions. My Old Becker wallowed around him with the camera, smiling and sweating and getting thorns in his bare feet.
By mid-morning My Old Becker was exhausted. He sent Kumbuza away to rest and retired to the room. While he slept the silver suitcase at last revealed some of its secrets to me.
Kumbuza was supposed to come back at four o’clock to be measured, but it was dark before he staggered through the kitchen door. His account of the morning’s session had been worth more than a drink or two, and he was so drunk he could hardly stand. My Old Becker and I arranged him in a chair.
We had already rehearsed my part in the operation. I sat at the table with a notebook containing lists of body parts and diagrams of heads and bodies in several elevations. There were curly brackets and arrows sticking out of these bodies, and dotted lines where I had to fill in the figures.
My Old Becker sharpened my pencil with a scalpel. Then he produced from the silver suitcase a leather folder, which I had peeped into that afternoon but did not have the nerve to unpack. Inside was an array of silver objects. They looked to me like surgical instruments, although they also reminded me of Mr Namabula’s maths set. There were rulers and clamps, a little hammer, a spatula and a small pair of calipers with a brass screw. There was a second pair of calipers too, but much larger and made of wood. My Old Becker took up the silver calipers and screwed open their jaws.
Kumbuza appeared to have nodded off. But when My Old Becker approached his face with the calipers raised he opened his eyes with a cry of horror. Showing remarkable agility for a man in his condition he scooted under the table, butted a chair out of the way with his head, and hopped up on the other side. He seized his crutch from a corner and shook it at us over the table, cursing and raving. My mother appeared in the doorway to the lounge but My Old Becker calmly shut the door in her face.
It took half an hour to get Kumbuza back in the chair. It was only after My Old Becker had demonstrated the calipers on my own nose and ears that he consented to be measured.
My Old Becker homed in again and gripped Kumbuza’s broken nose gently in the calipers, twiddled the screw, held the calipers against his ruler and called out a figure. Kumbuza squinted down his nose as if he was surprised it was still there. I found the appropriate space on my diagram and wrote the figure down in my best hand.
For as long as My Old Becker worked on his face, Kumbuza sat in terrified immobility, except for his eyes, which squinted and rolled, and the thumb and little finger of his right hand, which echoed every movement of the silver jaws. But when the wooden calipers were applied to his limbs, he proved ticklish and began to squirm and shriek with laughter. I had been on the verge of laughing all evening and now it burst out. My Old Becker began to laugh too. All three of us laughed and measured and laughed again until the room was swimming.
It was this tumult, pouring from our house in precise measures, which lent credence to Fish’s story that he had looked through our window and seen My Old Becker torturing Kumbuza, tearing strips of flesh from his body with a pair of pliers, while I sat by laughing.
* * *
—
The next morning “My Mot
her’s Love” carried My Old Becker out of our lives. He left me his wax crayons and some plastic lens caps. He left Kumbuza the shooting-stick, which I would have preferred. He promised to send us photographs of the statue, he promised to invite us to the unveiling. But we never heard from him again.
* * *
—
Our new-found freedom broke its promises too. It did not bring us the things we expected, like water, electricity, prosperity and peace. It brought new battles and new factions to fight them. Within a few years the war returned and this time we were not spared.
My mother sent me to live with her sister in Piet Retief to complete my schooling. I went on the back of an army truck: the burnt-out wreck of “My Mother’s Love” lay on its side in a gully on the road to St. Joseph’s. The following year I left for England.
I came back to Fort Alexander a month ago, when the cease-fire was signed, as an Education Officer of the British Council. On my first Sunday back home, in a park near my hotel, I found My Old Becker’s statue.
As a statue of courage it is not a great success. There is nothing abstract about it. It is not an idea. It is a soldier. He wears boots and he carries an AK47. He turns Kumbuza’s face towards the enemy, but the expression on it is not courageous. I would call it bemused, almost as if he is trying not to laugh. He has reason to feel pleased with himself, this freedom fighter, for he has all his working parts in their proper places, including his trigger-finger.
I watched the statue from a distance.
“Mister.” A youngster with a large and flashy camera around his neck tugged my sleeve. “You want a picture with the General. Five rands.”
I thought he was referring to the statue, but he went on: “That man there is the General himself. He can be in front of his statue with you, two by two.”
The General was lounging on a bench in the shade, but when we looked his way he lurched out into the sunlight. The combat uniform, with its empty trouser-leg pinned back, threw me for a moment, but the face was unmistakable.
I reached for my wallet.
“Five rands is nothing,” the boy assured me. “He is a true hero of the people.”
Isle of Capri
Tempo di Tango
But this is neither here nor there – why do I mention it? – Ask my pen, – it governs me, – I govern not it.
– Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Somewhere far away,
Over Naples Bay,
I thought I heard the Sirens singing as I set foot on the beautiful Isle of Capri and found that I had nothing but antic dinars, doubloons and zlotys in the capacious pockets of my pea-jacket.
There was no one to meet me: it was dinner-time.
I hauled the jolly boat West Wind up among the fishermen’s dories and row-boats for hire. Then I sat down on the stone groyne at the end of the beach to empty the brine out of my gumboots and put on my velskoene. The left boot offered up a Mastercard in a rheumy marinade and I remembered with relief that I had stowed it there at the start of my journey, proof against pirates. The right boot coughed up a pickled krugerrand. Useful too.
I dried the card under my arm and looked at the lights in the windows of the houses, and then at their slick reflections on a sea the colour of Tassenberg vin ordinaire. The sighing of the waves as they leaned their glossy heads against the pebbles and the fishy smell of the seaward breeze reminded me that I was sleepy and hungry.
That’s where my thoughts keep on turning:
sleep and food, as I follow my nose along the cobbled way that slants steeply up from the harbour, lined with double and treble storey houses, white plaster shaled away to ruddy brick, doorways arching Moorish eyebrows over little balconies with wrought-iron balusters shaped like spare parts for lyres. I sniff out the fifth house on the left. Scents of fish, lemon and dill-tips stream from the letter-slot in the door, where a bicycle with balloon tyres and a wicker delivery basket over the front wheel leans against the wall. I knock twice, and then thumb the bicycle bell for good measure. The wicker is sequinned with fish-scales and beribboned with verdigris kelp.
Picture me: Sun-burnt, wind-whipped, salt-encrusted. Over my left shoulder, trussed by my left arm, my duffel bag, which recently did duty as ballast, containing my clothes, a mix-and-match assortment of panama, dinner-jacket (maroon), shirts (open-neck and starched), bow-tie, cummerbund, flannels (white), Bermudas (Paisley), pumps, plimsolls. In my right hand my guidebook, which features concise information on the principal attractions, scenic and historical, and useful phrases in a handy appendix. Dove siamo? ~ Where are we? Come si chiama? ~ What is your name? Questo ventolino è delizioso. ~ This breeze is delicious.
A crack opens and oozes a man.
“Buona sera. ~ Good evening,” I say, tilting my book to the light. Then I have to drop the duffel bag to turn over a new leaf. “Si può avere alloggio per la notte? ~ Can one get lodging for the night? Sarà possibile avere da mangiare? ~ Will it be possible to get something to eat?” And by way of conversation: “Come sono graziose quelle vele. ~ How pretty those sails look. Suppongo che siano paranze da pesca. ~ Fishing-boats I suppose.”
“What has washed up on our doorstep?” the man says in unguent English. “Let’s take a look-see.” He shoves the door wide, and in the light from the passage I feel my face develop features for him like a Polaroid snapshot. While he studies me, inviting me to gaze back with becoming frankness, my eyes are drawn to the doorway at the end of the passage, in the shadow of the stairs, where another man is silhouetted. That man raises his right hand in a clipped gesture of greeting.
“How long will you be staying?”
“A few days. Vorrei vedere le cose notevoli, di maggiore interesse. ~ I want to see noteworthy things, of major interest. Just the Villa Jovis and the Blue Grotto, and then I’ll be on my way.”
“Have you done Naples yet? Oh you must. It isn’t necessary to die afterwards, you know.”
I chuckle in my Italian accent. “Later perhaps. Cosa è piatto del giorno? ~ What is the dish of the day?”
“There’s no board here, I’m afraid. We’re nothing but servants in these quarters. But you’re welcome to lodging, for a small fee. My name is Vincenzo.”
“All the better, Vincenzo – grazie infinite ~ very many thanks – I like to see how the locals live,” and I give him my name in return. We negotiate a price: the conversion tables in my book come in useful. Then he turns away and calls out in an oily voice. The man at the end of the passage, freed at last from the thrall of the threshold, walks towards me, his outline softening with every step.
He hefts my bag and I follow him into the house and up the staircase. Fish smells circle in the still air of the stairwell and rub their fatty gills against the banisters. When my porter turns the light on in my room, I see that he is as black as ebony, a perfect curio, with his heavy-lidded eyes and petulant lips.
I introduce myself. He doffs his name: Pietro.
This Pietro pockets the cowries and annas and pieces of eight that I trawl from my pocket without a glance or a word and leaves, shutting the door behind him.
Down by the sea,
Where romance came to me,
like a rosebud carved out of a marbled radish floating in a finger-bowl of lemony water, I dined in style, alone, it being out of season, in my velvet dinner-jacket, in the cavernous depths of the Ristorante la Grotta Azzurra, on a frittura di pesce, consisting mainly of shrimps and fillets of a fish called by the locals red roman, all soused in olive oil from the mainland groves and tasting of the deep. The fry was served on a bed of rice spilled from a cornucopia of red cabbage leaves and nuggeted with knobs of butter, garnished with sprigs of parsley and curly kale. First square meal in weeks and it hit the spot.
Discussed the decor with the waiter, one Gianni, according to the plastic sea shell pinned to the breast of his toga. (The s
oothing effect of the robe was spoilt, I thought, by a bloody conic section of fez with a tassel like a burst aorta.) Reassured to hear from him that the nets billowing from the ceiling had been used in former times to haul the so-called red romans and other delicacies from the Bay of Naples, and that every last Chianti bottle that hung gasping there had been drained at these very tables. La lista di vini, per favore. ~ The wine list, please. I myself chose a Lacrima Christi grown on the slopes of Vesuvius to kindle a fire in my belly, and a cassata to douse.
Halfway through dessert sirens howled, the ship’s lanterns which served as lights blinked off, and neon rods tumesced in the gloom above the nets. Gianni appeared in a swirl of toga, flourishing the bill like a search warrant. In the sudden glare I saw that he was in fact a mulatto.
“What’s the hurry?” I asked. “Where’s the fire? Cosa pensi, Gianni? ~ What do you think, Jack?”
“Zitto!” He waved the haemorrhaging fez. “Goddam yankee! Your time is finish.”
I dropped my Mastercard in his fez and he swept out. I was still rummaging in the guidebook for pointed questions to winkle out the meaning of this unseemly haste, when he returned with the slip, which I had to sign, and in another glaring moment was gone.
For a while I gazed into the open mouths of the bottles overhead and waited for the return of Gianni, but as time went by that seemed increasingly unlikely. The useful phrase I had fuddled from the stream of consciousness – Cosa significa ciò? ~ What is the meaning of this? – gaped and drifted back into the shallows.
I tried to find my way to the reception desk, but could not. I was eager to see again the men’s room, with its cut-glass atomizers of eau-de-Cologne and porcelain jars of green hair-oil, to read again the graffito on the door of the third cubicle from the left: THE PENIS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD, to view the tropical fish in their football jerseys, to rifle the treasure chest full of after-dinner mints, and to milk the espresso machine of firelit copper. Nothing doing. Place was empty. Let myself out through a side door, conveniently marked USCITA, into an alley paved with grimy flagstones. Rubbish bins like broken Corinthian columns ankle-deep in their own solemn rubble lurked in the corners. Had to walk off my dinner on the waterfront, where there were boys sniftering fragrant cigarette smoke in their palms, young men reeking of bravado as acetous as aftershave, and old men with mothballs in the secret pockets of their overcoats to mint the funk of mortality. Pissed into the Bay of Naples from the foot of the dog-leg pier of Marina Grande, and watched the lights dance in the foam.
Flashback Hotel Page 24
