Ways of Dying

by Zakes Mda

  The couple begged and pleaded. They explained that the woman had just given birth, and the baby was only a few hours old. But the gangsters showed no mercy. They insisted that the woman come with them. And she did. Not a single one of the other passengers lifted a finger to help. The next day, she was found dead in the veld. The gangsters had taken turns raping her, and had then slit her throat. Toloki knew her story because he had mourned at her funeral.

  Toloki and Noria walk quietly until they reach the taxi rank. Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears.

  ‘Mothers lose their babies, Toloki, and babies lose their mothers.’

  ‘Death lives with us everyday. Indeed our ways of dying are our ways of living. Or should I say our ways of living are our ways of dying?’

  ‘It works both ways. Good-bye, Toloki.’

  ‘Good-bye, Noria.’

  ‘Just one more thing: please take a bath. Just because your profession involves death, it doesn’t mean that you need to smell like a dead rat.’

  Toloki laughs good-naturedly, and promises that before he visits her again, he will take a shower at the beach. He boards the taxi with happy thoughts, and waves to Noria as it drives away.

  5

  Toloki wakes up early in the morning, and goes to the beach. He hopes that the gawpers will not have arrived yet, since beaches normally get crowded in the afternoons on Saturdays. He is whistling to himself, and from time to time he breaks into a jig of exhilaration. A gust of wind blows his topper away. He runs after it, performing a nifty cart-wheel that is actualised only in his imagination. He laughs aloud, until tears stream down his cheeks.

  The dockworkers, the sailors and their prostitutes think that he has finally snapped. They have never seen him in this effervescent mood before. The Toloki they have known over the years has always been an incarnation of gloom and dignity.

  At the beach he goes straight to the change-room, takes his clothes off, and remains in green briefs that have holes on them. Then he goes to the open showers, and scrubs his body with a stone, while the cool water slides down his back. Soon a crowd gathers around him, and they foolishly snicker and chortle. He had forgotten that during the holiday season, especially between Christmas and New Year, the beaches are always infested with rich tourists from the inland provinces. Even though he came especially early in order to avoid spectators while performing his ablutions, you really can’t beat these inland spoilers. They seem to practically live on the beach.

  A policeman, one of the idlers known as the beach patrol, comes and rudely tells him to clear off the beach.

  ‘Why? What wrong have I done?’

  ‘You are indecently dressed.’

  ‘What about all these other people?’

  ‘They are wearing bathing costumes, not underpants.’

  ‘Well, mine is a bathing costume too. Who decides what is a bathing costume and what is not? Where is it written that this is not a bathing costume?’

  ‘I don’t care. When I come back, I don’t want to find you here.’

  He strolls away. Toloki takes his time to wash himself. He never worries about these pompous officials who like to impress the inland riff-raff by staging confrontations with him. When he finishes, he sprawls his pudgy body on the sand, and lets the morning sun dry it. Then he splashes his whole body with perfume. He is going to a funeral today. When he got home last night, there was a note on his trolley asking him to mourn at a mass funeral of five people who had died in an orgy of violence. The funeral service is due to start at about eleven. He decides to go and see Noria first, before proceeding to the cemetery.

  Back in the city, he goes to furniture stores and gets as many catalogues as he can carry. He tells the salespeople that there are some customers from his village who would like to buy furniture. They would like to see the pictures first before they come to the stores to buy furniture. Of course, the salespeople don’t believe him. But they don’t see any harm in giving him the catalogues, which are free in any case. Then he goes to a newspaper stall, and negotiates with the owner to buy ten back issues of Home and Garden magazine. He buys them at only ten percent of the cover price.

  He walks towards the taxi rank, and furtively picks some of the flowers that grow along the sidewalks. Then he proceeds to the pastry shop across from the taxi rank. There he buys a variety of cakes, including his favourite Swiss roll. He will buy green onions from the women who sell vegetables at a street corner just outside the pastry shop.

  He gets into a taxi that will take him to the squatter camp – no, to the informal settlement. And no one turns their back on him, nor do they cover their noses. He is very pleased that he was able to get roses this time. Their scent fills the whole taxi. Noria will love these. Indeed flowers become her.

  He learnt a lot about Noria yesterday. He had not really been aware of the trials she had experienced. All he knew was what had been said about her in the village – that she was just a stuck-up bitch who was spoilt. For him, she had acquired the looming stature of a wicked woman who had destroyed his father.

  It is true that Noria was responsible for Jwara’s downfall, and his ultimate demise. As she grew older, she developed other interests, and on many occasions failed to honour her appointments with him. Sometimes she would tell her parents that she was going to sing for Jwara. Instead, Toloki now knows, she went to charm taxi boys. Jwara’s obsession could not be quenched, so he sunk deeper and deeper into depression. He could not create without Noria. Yet his dreams did not give him any respite. The strange creatures continued to visit him in his sleep, and to demand that they be recreated the next day in the form of figurines.

  Often he sat in his workshop, waiting for Noria. Noria would not come. We believed that she had become too proud. Jwara sent her messages, promising her the world. The world, however, meant sweets and chocolates. Taxi boys had much more imaginative offerings.

  Sometimes she went, and sang for Jwara. Then he happily created his figurines. He would come to life, be happy with the rest of his family, and treat them with love and respect. Even after Noria had gone home, and he had closed the workshop for the night, he would be lighthearted and make jokes with Toloki and with his mother. Since this was a very unnatural condition, Toloki would laugh nervously, and his mother would only scowl. Jwara would also buy delicacies such as canned corned beef and biscuits, and give these to his family. Toloki’s mother would sneer mockingly, ‘Ha! I can see that that stuck-up bitch Noria has given you pleasure today!’

  When Noria did not come, however, Jwara became morose, and moody, and irritable. He would lose his temper for no reason at all, and slap Toloki or his mother. Toloki wished that Noria could come every day so that there would be peace and happiness in the home. He hated her when she did not come, as this inflicted pain on his family.

  The last straw that broke Toloki’s back came about at Easter. At this time, the Methodist Church held all-night services that were popular with us all. Even those of us who were not Christians, or who belonged to other churches, went there because their services were so lively. Their hymns, their hand-clapping, their dances, filled us all with excitement, and the stone church building, that also served as the school, would overflow with enthusiastic worshippers. It was at these services that lovers met, and unmarried teenagers made babies.

  Toloki joined some boys who were sitting behind the church, drinking the brandy that they had stolen from the house of the minister, while he was busy saving people from fire and brimstone in the church. Toloki had a few sips, and soon his head was spinning around. He was not used to drinking, and the ‘fire water’, as the boys called the brandy, sparked in him some unnatural elation. He staggered into the church, and vigorously joined in song and dance. When the hymns stopped, and members of the congregation went to the pulpit to testify how the wondrous work of the Lord had saved them from certain damnation, Toloki’s voice was heard above all other voices, shouting, ‘Amen! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!’

  The hymn began
again, and Toloki’s dance steps gravitated towards the pulpit. He reached the pulpit, and shouted, ‘Hallelujah!’ We stopped the hymn and responded, ‘Amen!’ Then he began to preach about Christ on the cross. He invented most of the details as he went along, since the little that he knew about the Bible came from the morning readings that were done at school. His was not a family of church-goers. We couldn’t care less that his story of crucifixion did not tally exactly with the version featured so prominently in the book of books. All that impressed us was that Jwara’s son, whose father had never cared for the church, had finally been seized by the spirit. How could we have known that the spirit that had seized him was brandy?

  He shouted, ‘Ndinxaniwe! Ek is dors! Ke nyoriloe! So said the Lord Christ, hanging on the cross! I am thirsty! I am thirsty!’ Then he fell down in a drunken stupor.

  When he opened his eyes, it was morning, and everybody had left. His head was pounding, and he remembered only vaguely the events of the previous night. He was ashamed of himself. He went home, and drank a lot of water, which seemed to make him feel much better. Then he slept.

  In the late afternoon Jwara was storming around the house, kicking everything in front of him. He was seething with rage. Toloki knew immediately that he had had an appointment with Noria, and that she had stood him up.

  ‘What is this that I hear about you and the church?’

  Toloki stutteringly tried to explain that he had merely testified as others were doing. But even before he completed a sentence, Jwara kicked him in the stomach. He fell down, vomiting blood. Jwara kicked him again and again. Toloki’s mother came running, and threw herself between the two men in her life.

  ‘What are you doing, Father of Toloki, trying to kill my child?’

  ‘Did you not hear, Mother of Toloki? This ugly boy preached in church.’

  ‘What if he did? What is wrong with that?’

  ‘I don’t know. People say it was a disgrace.’

  ‘It’s that stuck-up bitch Noria again, is it not? She didn’t come, and you want to take it out on my child.’

  That night Toloki made up his mind that he was leaving home for good. He would go to the city and find work. He told his mother, who gave him the little money that she had. In the morning, without even saying good-bye to Jwara, Toloki left his home, and his village, in search of what he later expressed to those he met on the road as love and fortune.

  Throughout his long journey of many months he harboured a deep bitterness against his father. And a hatred for Noria. It was all her fault. The quarrel was not because he had disgraced his family. Jwara didn’t even know what it was exactly that his son had done in church. He couldn’t care less for the church. The source of all the trouble was Noria.

  After all, this was not the first time that Toloki had had an altercation with the church. His first skirmish was with the Archbishop of the Apostolic Blessed Church of Holly Zion on the Mountain Top. Toloki was actually cursed by this holy prophet.

  The Archbishop earned his living during the week by selling tripe and other innards of animals in a trunk fastened to the carrier of his bicycle. He rode from one homestead to another through the village, shouting, ‘Mala mogodu! Amathumbo!’ in his godly baritone. This simply meant that he was touting his offal, encouraging the people to buy. Some children, whose mothers had not taught them any manners, sometimes shouted at the holy man, ‘Thutha mabhakethe! Tshotsha mapakethe!’ What they were saying was that the Archbishop was a carrier of buckets. This emanated from the days when the holy man used to work as a nightsoil remover in town, before the Holy Spirit caught up with him, and called him to serve the Lord as the Archbishop of the Apostolic Blessed Church of Holly Zion on the Mountain Top, which he subsequently founded. The Holy Spirit had great timing, for the Archbishop was about to lose his job in any case, since the town was phasing out the bucket system. The municipality was going to introduce the water cistern for the well-to-do families, and pit-latrines for the poorer ones.

  On Sundays, the Archbishop conducted services in his church, which was built of old corrugated iron sheets. Outside there was a lopsided sign which shouted in roughly daubed letters: ‘Oh come all ye faithfull to The Apostolic Blessed Church of Holly Zion on the Mountain Top and heal yourself and your soul and get blessed water cheap’, and then the name of the Archbishop. Toloki always wondered whenever he passed by why ‘holly’ was spelt with two l’s. And what the letters ‘B.A., M.Div., D.Theol. (U.S.A.), Prophet Extraordinaire’ after the holy man’s name meant.

  In his church the Archbishop prayed for the sick, and dispensed bottles of holy water that he himself had blessed. Since he claimed that he could cure all sorts of illnesses, he was in direct competition with That Mountain Woman. But there was enough sickness to go around, and neither rival complained. However, the Archbishop acquired the reputation of having greater expertise in extracting demons than That Mountain Woman.

  Even Noria herself, when things were not going well in her marriage to Napu, had secretly gone to the Archbishop for his prayers. The Archbishop asked her to confess her sins in public, and testify to the Lord. She spoke, but did not reveal everything about her life. The Archbishop said she was marked by the devil. That Mountain Woman heard that Noria had gone to consult her rival, and she called her daughter a traitor. But she forgave Noria when she promised that she would never go back again. When That Mountain Woman died, we couldn’t help noticing that there was a glint of satisfaction in the holy man’s eyes, in spite of his professed sorrow at the death of such an important member of the community.

  On special days such as Easter, the Archbishop and his flock went down to the stream where he baptised new converts through immersion. The worshippers, all wearing green and white or blue and white dresses and caftans, sang to the rhythm of the drums, and danced around in circles.

  On such occasions, Toloki would often be spotted on top of the hillock facing down towards the stream, mischievously throwing rocks and clods of mud at the worshippers. He would pelt them, and then hide himself. But the Archbishop would usually catch sight of him, and would curse him with everlasting misfortune in life, and everlasting fire after death.

  The war between the Archbishop and Toloki was one of long standing. It had started when Toloki laughed at the holy man’s flock as they were vomiting. It was part of the Easter ritual of the church to give the members of the congregation quantities of water mixed with holy herbs to induce vomiting. After the water and an enema, the worshippers would dot the hillside in a colourful display of blue, green and white, as they squatted there and threw up and emptied their bowels. This was the sacred cleansing of body and soul. Toloki and his friends enjoyed the bright spectacle, and it was the highlight of their Easter to laugh at row after row of fat buttocks decorating the hillside.

  The Archbishop reported Toloki to his father, who in the presence of the holy man, talked with him strongly. The holy man himself added his heavy words, and said that it was indeed unfortunate that Toloki was fulfilling an adage that our forebears created: that glowing embers give birth to ashes. His father was an important man in the village, yet his son was as useless as cold ash. As his father spoke in serious tones, Toloki vowed in his heart that he was going to make life even more uncomfortable for the Archbishop and his flock in the village. Hence the stone-throwing incidents.

  After the Archbishop had left, Toloki overheard his father telling Xesibe and a few other customers about the feud between Toloki and the church. They were all laughing and joking about it. ‘They deserve what they get from these youngsters! Can you imagine grown people displaying their buttocks and doing all these strange things in front of children!’ So, his father had only been pretending to be angry with him in the presence of the Archbishop! The whole fuss was just a big joke to him. This was precisely why Toloki was taken aback by Jwara’s violent reaction to his Methodist Church adventure. It really had nothing to do with the church at all, and everything to do with Noria.

  Toloki arriv
es at the settlement, carrying his bulky load of presents. He walks to the shack. This time, he is not followed by dogs and children. Perhaps they are getting used to his presence. He arrives at the shack, but Noria is not there. He sits outside and waits for her. After some time she arrives, and says that she had been at Madimbhaza’s place when a child came to inform her that there was a visitor waiting for her outside her shack.

  ‘I hope you have not been waiting for a long time.’

  ‘No. It was not that long. Anyway, I did not tell you that I would be coming this morning.’

  ‘It does not matter, Toloki. You are always welcome here.’

  ‘This Madimbhaza is a friend of yours?’

  ‘In a way, yes. It is where I do some work for the community. I will take you there one day. What are all these heavy things you are carrying?’

  ‘I brought them for you, Noria. I brought you roses, because flowers become you like . . . like a second skin. Here I have magazines and catalogues with which you can decorate your walls. And here I have cakes, and green onions for myself.’

  Noria thanks him, and says that he should not have gone to all that trouble on her behalf. Toloki tells her that he will help her plaster the pictures from the magazines and catalogues onto the walls in the afternoon. As for now, he has to go to a funeral, where he has been invited to mourn.