Little Suns

by Zakes Mda

  NOVELS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Ways of Dying (1995)

  She Plays with the Darkness (1995)

  The Heart of Redness (2000)

  The Madonna of Excelsior (2002)

  The Whale Caller (2005)

  Cion (2007)

  Black Diamond (2009)

  The Sculptors of Mapungubwe (2013)

  Rachel’s Blue (2014)

  Published in 2015 by Umuzi

  an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1953/000441/07

  Estuaries No 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue,

  Century City, 7441, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  umuzi@penguinrandomhouse.co.za

  © 2015 Zakes Mda

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

  by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and

  recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system,

  without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2015

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0904-2 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0905-9 (ePub)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0906-6 (PDF)

  Cover design by Gretchen van der Byl

  Author photograph by Jim Shirey

  Text design by Nazli Jacobs

  Set in Dante

  To my father

  who made the present possible,

  Ashby Peter Solomzi Mda

  Monday December 7, 1903

  There were others before him. But we start with Malangana because that is where our story begins. For him, though, it is really the beginning of the end. He is hobbling on twisted crutches made from branches of umsintsi, known to the Trek-Boers as the kafir-boom – the tree of the nonbelievers – and as the coast coral tree to the colonists. Everything about him is twisted: his face, his lips, his arms, his waist, and his legs. Especially his legs. They are like dry stumps of grey wood with knees forming twisted knobs that knock against each other as the crutches try to find their way down the escarpment among the rocks and shrubs. For generations thousands of feet paved a path from one village to the next where nothing grows and smooth pebbles are embedded in the ground to massage the tired soles of travellers. Yet his feet are beyond massaging. They are granite-hard and have lost all sensation. His erratic gait cannot keep to the path. He staggers and stops to catch his breath and curse the man he has become, and then stumbles on again.

  He has a long way to go. How long, he does not know. He does not care either. His journey will stop only when he fulfils his longing. Or when he dies, an eventuality he is not prepared to entertain. Not yet. He will walk from destination to destination – little destinations that seem never to have any finality. He can see his next one already, across the valley and the stream, and up the hill. He can see the whitewashed buildings of the mission station, and the smoke billowing from the houses of the school people surrounding the station. It is something that started even before he left, this practice of surrounding mission campuses with homesteads of school people as a buffer between the missionaries and the hordes who are apt to cut a white man’s throat without any provocation at all – there is a lot of pacification that still needs to be done. A senior regional magistrate has decreed that only natives who conform to the rules of the mission and do not practise immoral heathenish customs should be granted land around the mission centres. Traders and Government officials have adopted the same laager-style settlements, the wagons this time being the houses and gardens and kraals of amakhumsha, the school people.

  He is confronted by goats. About five of them including a kid. They stand directly in front of him and refuse to give way. ‘Ziyadelela,’ he says to himself. They look down upon me. They are, in fact, looking up directly into his eyes. They do not even blink as he raises his arms to shoo them away. Even the kid is obstinate. Malangana stares at them, and they stare back unflinchingly. He cannot outbrave them so he shoos them away once more. The billy goat in front raises its forelegs as he lifts his hands. It stands on its hindlegs challenging him directly. His crutches drop and he falls flat on the pathway, face down. He lies sprawled on the ground, and the goats give him one last contemptuous look and go their way. He is struggling, trying to rise from the ground, but is unable to.

  A man comes riding a horse.

  ‘Where are the boys who are supposed to look after these goats?’ he asks.

  He dismounts and helps Malangana to his feet.

  ‘I can give you a ride on my horse,’ the man says as he helps him with the crutches. ‘I am going to the mission station.’

  ‘I can manage,’ says Malangana. ‘I have my own two feet to walk with.’

  ‘If it suits you, khehla,’ says the man and mounts his horse.

  ‘Ukhehla ngunyoko!’ Malangana shouts after him as he rides away down the escarpment. Don’t you dare call me an old man; rather give that label to your own mother!

  The man looks back in astonishment, decides a crippled man is not worth his trouble and rides on. He has no way of knowing that Malangana is not just a cantankerous old man who woke up with a grudge against the world. Malangana refuses to see himself as an old man. In his mind nothing has changed. The world is as it was twenty years ago. He has returned to continue exactly where he left off. Except he cannot continue alone. Hence his quest.

  A woman comes riding a pony. She has pulled up her skirt above the knees in the most immodest manner, so that she can ride astride like a man. She controls the pony with the snaffle rein with one hand and pulls a bridled mule with the other. She is, he surmises, one of the amakhumsha judging by the European dress and the lack of decorum. Obviously Malangana is ignorant of the ways of amakhumsha. It is not because she is a school person that she rides astride with thighs on full display like a maiden’s. Amakhumsha do not even allow their women to ride horses at all as it is ungodly for them to enjoy the highly suggestive movements of a horse. And when they have to ride, perhaps because of some emergency, they must sit with both of their legs hanging on the same side and the skirts covering the legs down to the ankles. This is the etiquette that the English have introduced from the land of their Queen Victoria.

  This woman opted for a comfortable riding posture in defiance of the sacred dictates of missionaries.

  Once she has greeted him and asked after his health – which according to his indifferent response has never been better – she offers him a ride on the mule. He turns down the offer because he has his two feet to walk with.

  ‘Four feet,’ says the woman, chuckling.

  He scowls.

  ‘The sun will set even before you cross the river. Soon it will be dark.’

  ‘Am not a child. Am not afraid of the dark.’

  ‘I can’t leave you alone here. God will not forgive me if anything happens to you.’

  She alights from her pony and helps him to mount the mule. He does not resist though he is mumbling his defiance, something to the effect that it would be a wonderful world if people learned to mind their own business. She merely exclaims, ‘Hehake!’ and makes sure he is settled on the bare back of the mule. And then she hands him his crutches and mounts her pony.

  She’ll be much slower this time as the old man seems rather fragile. Also he is not holding the reins because she is using them to lead the mule. He is clutching his crutches instead and bobbing and swaying uncomfortably.

  ‘Where is this road taking you this afternoon, bawo?’ the woman asks.

  He pretends that he did not hear. She decides to mind her own business.

  Darkness is falling when they cross what she referred to as a river which is really a strea
m to a man like Malangana who has crossed real rivers such as Senqu, named the Orange River by the colonists, and Telle.

  They are even slower when they climb the hill. The stars are twinkling by the time they enter the village, and a sliver of a scythe-shaped moon tries to be inconspicuous among them.

  ‘Perhaps now you will tell me where you’re going,’ she says.

  ‘You may leave me right here,’ he says.

  ‘Right here? Who have you come to see?’

  ‘I’ll be fine here.’

  He gestures that she should help him dismount.

  ‘Heyi hayi ke! I can’t just leave you here at this time.’

  That’s how Malangana finds himself piled like dry wood on a stool carved from a garingboom trunk sharing a meal of samp and beans with a family of amakhumsha. Ever the first to grab with both hands the things of the white people, they would be maize-eaters, wouldn’t they? He, of course, would have been more at home eating the corn of his ancestors, sorghum. If he had any inclination to eat at all. Perhaps with cowpeas. And pumpkin. Or with the amasi soured milk. But then as a stranger he can’t be a chooser.

  He is a strange stranger, not just for the reason that he has never been seen in these parts before, but because his hosts find him odd and baffling. People generally open their doors to strangers; hospitality is an obligation of each household. In return a stranger goes through the ritual of introducing himself, his village, his father’s name, his clan, and even his mother’s clan. He elaborates on the purpose of his travels, on the ravages of the weather, on those who are sick and those who are dead, and on any titbits he has gathered in the villages through which he travelled. That is how news travels. Itinerant strangers are the media. But this one is different. He’s been silent from the time he was ushered into the house by the woman. This however does not unduly surprise the woman, and the husband takes his cue from her. A strange-looking man like this cannot be expected to behave like a normal stranger.

  Malangana’s next observation is that although the school people are called amakhumsha, which means ‘those who speak English’, this family’s conversation is not in English. From their dialect he concludes that they must be amaMfengu. He has heard that in his absence the land of amaMpondomise was overrun by amaMfengu, many of whom had been converted to the religion of the white man and fought on the side of the British during the last war. Perhaps amakhumsha speak their own language when they are among themselves, and only communicate in English with Government. And also with those traders and missionaries who have not yet mastered the language of the people. He wonders how much English he has left. He used to speak the language ngempumlo, as his people derisively called the nasal accent of the British. He learned it almost twenty-five years ago when he, as a prisoner of Her Majesty the late Queen Victoria, cleaned Magistrate Hamilton Hope’s quarters and tended his garden. Granted, he may have forgotten a lot of the language since he had no opportunity of using it during his years of exile. But things that you learned as a young person don’t flee en masse from your head. On his way from exile he tested it in Palmietfontein, Sterkspruit and Kingwilliamstown and the white people could understand him very well.

  Malangana decides he does not like these people. Not only for the reason that they are amaMfengu, a people who played a decisive role in Mhlontlo’s defeat at the Battle of Tsita Gorge, but because they are too kind to him. The woman especially. At least the man sits there chewing loudly and ignoring him. The woman is eager to make conversation as she walks in and out of the ixande – the four-walled tin-roofed house that is typical of amakhumsha – tending the three-legged pot on the fire outside and engaging in another exchange with the boys and girls sitting around the fire. She is able to switch automatically from one exchange to the other without missing a beat: immediately as she exits she admonishes the children for some transgression committed during the day, and as soon as she enters her attention is on Malangana and the purpose of his travels.

  ‘I must go now,’ Malangana says, putting his enamel plate on the floor. There is some food left, but no one comments on his lack of appetite.

  ‘K’seb’suku.’ It’s night, she says as she takes the men’s plates and walks out.

  Malangana can hear her outside instructing the girls to wash the dishes. And then she is back inside again telling him he will leave tomorrow.

  ‘Where does he want to go at this time?’ the husband asks his wife, not Malangana.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says the wife.

  ‘I thought you would know. You brought this old man here.’

  ‘I am not an old man,’ says Malangana to the woman. ‘I may even be his age.’

  ‘Then what happened to him?’ asks the man.

  ‘The world has beaten him to a pulp,’ says the woman. ‘We can’t let him go at this time.’

  ‘We can’t stop him if he wants to go,’ mumbles the man as he lights his pipe.

  Soon the room is full of smoke and the pungent smell of home-grown tobacco.

  ‘Where are you going exactly?’ the woman asks.

  He gives in. He can’t be stubborn any more. Maybe they will leave him alone if he tells them. Maybe they will stop smothering him to death with their kindness and will let him go in peace.

  ‘To the mission station.’

  ‘The gates are locked at this time,’ the man says. ‘No one will open for him.’

  ‘In any case the priests have stopped their acts of charity. Because of all these wars there are shortages of supplies.’

  Malangana is offended.

  ‘I am not a beggar-man. I haven’t come for charity, yours or the priests’. I have come for my Mthwakazi. The umkhondo places her at this mission station,’ he says, talking of the trail he has been following.

  Husband and wife look at him curiously. They expect him to expound, but he doesn’t. Instead he reaches for his crutches and stands up to leave.

  ‘I will sleep at the gate. I’ll walk in as soon as they open in the morning.’

  ‘Please sit down, bawo,’ says the woman. ‘Perhaps we may help you to find the woman you are looking for. Did they say she is here? What’s her name?’

  Malangana knows only that she was called Mthwakazi, which merely means a ‘woman of the abaThwa’, the people who are called the Bushmen by the English. The Khoikhoi disparagingly call them San, which in their language means ‘scavenging vagabonds’ because they own no cattle and are hunter-gatherers. amaMpondomise call every Bushman woman Mthwakazi, so it will be difficult for anyone to help Malangana find his specific Mthwakazi. Even if he had a way of identifying her, these people never stay at one place, they are always on the move hunting and gathering.

  The woman explains that she works at the mission station washing clothes for the minister and his family, while her husband is a lay preacher and a teacher of the Sub A class.

  ‘Occasionally there are bands of abaThwa women who come by selling ostrich eggs or doing piece jobs for the missionaries. Where did you meet this one and how did she disappear from you?’

  Malangana does not respond.

  ‘How does he think we’ll help him if he is sullen like a pregnant goat?’ the man asks the wife.

  ‘It goes to show that your husband knows nothing about goats,’ says Malangana. ‘A pregnant goat is never sullen.’

  ‘The father of my children is right; there is no way we can help you if you don’t tell us anything.’

  ‘I do not think Mthwakazi is anyone’s problem but my own.’

  Still he opens up; he does need help after all.

  He first saw Mthwakazi at the Great Place of King Mhlontlo of amaMpondomise. He was one of the young men who were sitting by the kraal waiting for the inkundla to start. He does not remember what case they were going to hear, but it must have been one of those petty matters where someone’s cow had grazed in someone else’s sorghum field. Mthwakazi was with two old women well known for their prowess in the field of medicinal herbs, though they were not fully fled
ged amagqirha diviners.

  At first Malangana mistook Mthwakazi for a child as she pranced along the pathway that led to the house of Mhlontlo’s senior wife – the Great House, Indlu Enkulu, as it was called. She was puny. But soon he noticed she was not a child, her breasts pointed perkily towards yonder mountains. The young men told him she was a special nurse to Mhlontlo’s ailing wife, the senior queen who was Sarhili’s daughter, king of the amaGcaleka people, also known as amaXhosa. They gossiped about the stories they had heard about her: her knowledge of herbs and her stubbornness. She was known to argue with the doctors about which roots were effective when boiled with which berries to cure which ailment.

  As Malangana listened to the young men, and as he watched Mthwakazi disappear into the Great House, he remembered that almost two years had passed since his return from the school of the mountain where he was circumcised and initiated into manhood. Thanks to time served in the white man’s prison he was still a bachelor. It was high time he took a wife.

  Even before Malangana can finish his story the woman interrupts him.

  ‘I know who you are talking about,’ she says. ‘I know this Mthwakazi you are looking for.’

  The woman tells Malangana that immediately he mentioned a woman of the abaThwa people who was a nursemaid to Mhlontlo’s wife she remembered a weather-beaten woman who worked as an impelesi, or nanny, to the children of the missionaries. She stands out in her memory because she was different from the other abaThwa who are set in their wild ways. And she wore golden earrings at all times. She never spoke about herself. But when she suggested some remedy for an ailment that was eating one of the preacherman’s children to the bone, and the woman wanted to know how the Bushman woman got to know so much about curative herbs, she confided in her that she was once a nurse to the queen at King Mhlontlo’s Great Place.

  For the first time Malangana’s eyes shift excitedly from the man to the woman and then back to the man.

  ‘Where is she? Take me to her right away!’ he says. ‘I do not care if the gate is locked. I will break it open.’