Ways of Dying

by Zakes Mda

  ‘Up to this day I do not want to see Danisa. Not because I blame her, you understand? But because she reminds me so much of my child. And the poor girl is going to have to live with this for the rest of her life. At first ’Malehlohonolo was afraid to face me. But I assured her that she should not blame herself. If anyone is to blame, it is myself. Both children were under my care when it happened.’

  ‘You are not to blame either, Noria.’

  They fall into their by now customary moments of silence, when each one is lost in his or her thoughts. Tears roll down Toloki’s cheeks. He is ashamed to be seen crying like this. After all he is a man, is he not? Noria smiles reassuringly at him, and wipes his tears with the back of her hand. She suggests that they both take a bath, as this will make them feel better. Although he does not understand how a bath will make them feel better, he agrees. He is willing to learn new ways of living. After all, Noria herself was quite willing to learn how to walk in the garden with him, to the extent that she is now a garden enthusiast in her own right.

  She lights the primus stove and warms some water in a big tin. She pours the water into a washing basin, and mixes it with the juice of aloes. She asks Toloki to take his clothes off. Toloki is taken aback. He thought that each one of them was going to bathe outside the shack in turn, as they had done in the morning. She meanwhile takes off all her clothes, unveiling her womanhood to him. She stands there completely naked, as if lost in a reverie. Toloki follows like a sheep to slaughter. He also takes off his clothes and unveils his maleness. They both kneel over the basin, and with their washing rags, bathe each other with the aloed water. They dazedly rub each other’s backs, and slowly move down to other parts of their bodies. It is as though they are responding to rhythms that are silent for the rest of the world, and can only be heard or felt by them. They take turns to stand in the basin, and splash water on each other’s bodies. All this they do in absolute silence, and their movements are slow and deliberate. They are in a dream-like state, their thoughts concentrated only on what they are doing to each other. Nothing else matters. Nothing else exists.

  After drying each other with their cloths, Noria opens the door and throws the remaining water outside. Most of it has spattered on the floor. Toloki takes his perfume from his trolley, and gives it to her. She splashes some of it on his body. He does likewise to her body.

  Without saying a word to each other, they spread their blankets on the floor, and doss down – in their separate kingdoms.

  10

  Tuesday morning. New Year’s Eve. Noria is still fast asleep, and snoring loudly, when Toloki wakes up. He is no longer afraid to feast his eyes on the contours of her body that delicately map the donkey blanket. It is no longer rape, since last night she allowed him to look, and to touch. Last night was like a vision that confirmed that Noria is indeed a goddess. And he was so proud of himself. His body had not betrayed him by having its blood run amok to parts that were prone to getting throbbingly stiff. Nothing got wet, except from the water that Noria had kept on splashing all over his body. Throughout the night he had slept peacefully, and had not been bothered by crude dreams.

  For the first time since leaving the village, he had slept naked. Noria had slept naked too, which was a dangerous thing for both of them to do. Smart settlement people never sleep naked, since they don’t know when the next invasion will be. When a massacre takes place one should be able to run away fully clothed. If one has to die, one should at least die with one’s clothes on, so that when they come the next day to gawp at the corpses, and to photograph them for posterity, the body parts deserving of respect and privacy are not displayed to the world.

  He dresses in his khaki home clothes, and prepares to leave. But before he opens the door, he remembers that Noria insists that he wash himself every day. He gets his washing rag, which is slightly wet from last night, and cleans his face, and his armpits. He sniffs the cloth, and decides that it does not smell. After all, he reasons, he is still clean from last night’s bath.

  He takes a last look at Noria, who sleeps peacefully in the traditional foetal position. He blows her a kiss, and walks away. He really does not know where he is going. And why he is going. He needs to think. He walks slowly towards the taxi rank. It is teeming with excited people, who are already filled with the New Year spirit. Taxi boys are touting passengers. Some even go to the extent of pulling confused old ladies onto their taxis, without even asking where they are going. He gets into one of the taxis, which quickly fills up and drives away. Passengers are packed like sardines in this old vehicle. He therefore cannot see outside, and does not know where the taxi is going. He does not care.

  Passengers are talking about the New Year parties they will be attending. For many, this is the most exciting holiday of the year. Even more exciting than Christmas. The revelling starts on New Year’s Eve, with people singing and dancing and getting generally drunk and rowdy. No one sleeps on New Year’s Eve, at least not until the bells toll midnight, and a new year is born with its new problems. On the first day of the new year, the young children dress in their new clothes. In many cases, these are the clothes they wore on Christmas Day. Those whose parents can afford it, buy two sets of new clothes, one for Christmas and the second for New Year. But it is rare for parents to be able to afford this. Most children would rather not wear their new clothes on Christmas Day, so that they can save them for New Year’s Day.

  Those who are teenagers do not wear any new clothes at all on New Year’s Day. Instead, they cross-dress. Boys wear dresses, and stuff pillows into their pants and rags into their shirts to make exaggerated buttocks and breasts. They paint their faces with plenty of blusher, and smear thick layers of lip-stick on their lips, and darken their eyelashes with mascara. Girls wear old trousers, shirts, jackets and ties borrowed from their fathers. They smear their faces with black shoe polish. After this elaborate, make-up, the teens go from house to house shouting ‘Happe-eee!’, the same way that younger children do on Christmas Day when they enter each house asking for a ‘Christmas box.’ When the cross-dressed teens enter each house, they ask for a ‘Happy New Year.’ This means that they are asking for delicacies such as cakes, ginger beer, and sweets, which very few families do not provide on days like these.

  A lot of the passengers are going to do last minute-shopping in the city, especially for wine and brandy. Some are just going to watch the parades, and while away time until the evening revels begin back in the settlements or in the townships. A few others are going to ply their pickpocketing trade, and to carry out the various con tricks from which they earn their living.

  The taxi stops in the central business district. He alights and walks in the familiar streets. They are decorated with lights of different colours, and with banners and bunting – all in preparation for the parades that will take place in the afternoon to celebrate the New Year. Over the years, Toloki has watched many of these parades of colourful dancers with painted faces, dressed in silk suits. Their clownish antics and their funny songs always make the spectators on the pavements laugh. There are always marching bands and drum majorettes. He has marched with the bands every year – they on the cleared streets, he on the sidewalks. The traffic police are already clearing the streets for the carnival. This day is one of the highlights of the year, when we are all carefree and forget about the problems that live with us the whole year round.

  He wanders aimlessly, until he finds himself at the waterfront among the tourists. Since he is not wearing his professional costume, they don’t pay any particular attention to him, except of course to make sure that their wallets and handbags are safe. But then that is what they do every time they see someone who does not look quite like them.

  At his quayside haunts, he sees some familiar faces. They do not seem to recognise him. He is piqued to discover that although he has been away for only two days, they have already forgotten him. But then a watchman recognises him, and slyly smiles.

  ‘Hey, Toloki, you are b
ack! What happened to you, maan?’

  ‘I live in the settlements now.’

  ‘Ja maan, some vagrant told us that one night you dreamt of a woman, and took your trolley and left. Is she one of the women you met at your funerals?’

  ‘It is a woman from my village. And it is a lie that I dreamt of her and left. I left because I needed a change from the pollution that your vagrant friend was causing – breaking wind and filling the whole place with the smell of rotten cabbage.’

  ‘I agree with you, maan. Me too, I would rather inhale rotten cabbage from a woman’s bowels anytime, than from a drunken hobo’s.’

  Toloki walks away in disgust. He was only trying to be friendly in responding to the watchman’s conversation. But that does not give him licence to make crude remarks about Noria, whom he does not even know. He drifts towards the waiting room, and sits on his bench. He fondly watches his ships sail away. He has sat there for many a day, and sailed in those ships. They took him to faraway lands, where he communed with holy men from strange orders that he had never heard of, and took part in their strange rituals, and partook of their strange fare. When he got tired of sailing away in the ships that left the harbour, he came back in those that sailed into the harbour, and was welcomed by throngs of votaries. He sailed mostly during those senseless holidays when people did not bury their dead. When he got tired of sailing, he would just sit and while away time by using his thumbnails to kill the lice that played hide-and-seek in the hems and seams of his costume or home clothes, depending on what he was wearing at the time.

  He contemplates his life. Now, his is a world that is far removed from those lonely voyages, and from the merciless slaughter of nits.

  Toloki finds himself back in the central business district. He is passing by a stationer’s shop when he notices that some art materials are on sale. He enters, and whimsically buys a box of wax crayons and some drawing paper. He has no idea what he wants to do with them. He buys them only because they are there.

  He goes to his pastry shop and buys pies and his famous Swiss roll. Outside the store, he buys green onions and dried tarragon leaves. He is going to celebrate New Year’s Eve with a royal banquet. Noria can eat the pies and pastries if she does not like his special austere combination. Or she can eat the Swiss roll plain, without relishing them with green onions. After this shopping spree, he thinks of getting some flowers for Noria. He walks towards the part of the city which has roses growing in well-tended sidewalk gardens. But there are too many people walking about. He will not have the opportunity to pick any flowers today. Not even zinnias. All the streets are crowded with New Year’s Eve revellers, and the police are on the alert all the time.

  He dallies for a while, just watching people. Then in the afternoon, he decides to go back home. He smiles as he realises that he actually thinks of Noria’s place as home. It is as though he has lived there all his life.

  Back at the settlement, he finds all the children from Madimbhaza’s dumping ground playing outside Noria’s shack. They have been joined by other settlement children, and there is a lot of screaming, and shouting, and running around the shack, and throwing mud at one another. He greets the children, and Noria walks out of the shack when she hears his voice.

  ‘Oh, Toloki, where did you go?’

  ‘I went to the city, Noria.’

  ‘You should have said so, Toloki, before you left. I was so worried about you. Times are dangerous out there. You never know what might happen to you.’

  ‘I didn’t want to wake you up, Noria. You do sleep like a log, you know that.’

  The children, Noria tells Toloki, have come to play at her house to give Madimbhaza a break. Children get excited on New Year’s Eve, and do not want to sleep until they have seen in the new year at midnight. This means that they will be bothering the old lady until the early hours of the morning. Normally Noria would have gone to look after them at the dumping ground. But as she was worried about the whereabouts of Toloki, she preferred to be at her own shack so that she could wait for him or for news of him.

  Toloki laughs.

  ‘What did you think had happened to me?’

  ‘At first I thought you had left me. But when I saw that your trolley with all your property was still here, I had hope that you would come back.’

  ‘I will never leave you, Noria. I am even more convinced of that now that I have been to the city and have visited the places of my old life.’

  They sit outside and watch children play. Noria points to a skinny little girl and says that that is Danisa. When she saw all the other children playing at Noria’s, she came to play as well. At first, Noria was reminded painfully of her son, for the two children had played together most of the time. But she has forced herself to accept that Danisa will be there, and will be everywhere she wants to be, without her son.

  Toloki remembers the crayons and paper that he brought from the city. He takes them out and starts drawing pictures. He draws flowers, and is surprised to see that his hand has not lost its touch. He draws roses that look like those he brought Noria, the roses that are still very much alive in the bottle that is filled with water inside the shack. He also draws the zinnias that he brought her the other day.

  ‘I was not able to bring you any flowers today, Noria. But you can have these that I have drawn with crayons.’

  ‘I love these even better, Toloki, for they are your own creation.’

  As the afternoon progresses, Toloki draws pictures of horses, as he used to do back in the village. Noria says that they are the best pictures that she has seen in all her life. She asks him to draw pictures of children as well. Toloki tries, but he is unable to.

  ‘You remember, Noria, even back in the village I could never draw pictures of human figures.’

  Noria jokingly says that maybe she should sing for him, as she used to do for Jwara. After all, Jwara was only able to create through Noria’s song. Noria sings her meaningless song of old. All of a sudden, Toloki finds himself drawing pictures of the children playing. Children stop their games and gather around him. They watch him draw colourful pictures of children’s faces, and of children playing merry go-round in the clouds. The children from the dumping ground and from the settlement are able to identify some of the faces. These are faces they know, faces of their friends, their own faces. They laugh and make fun of the strange expressions that Toloki has sketched on their purple and yellow and red and blue faces.

  The drawing becomes frenzied, as Noria’s voice rises. Passers-by stop to watch, and are overcome by warm feelings. It is as though Toloki is possessed by this new ability to create human figures. He breathes heavily with excitement, and his palms are clammy. His whole body tingles, as he furiously gives shape to the lines on the paper. His breathing reaches a crescendo that is broken by an orgasmic scream. This leaves him utterly exhausted. At the same moment, Noria’s song stops. The spell breaks, and the passers-by go on their way. Others come and look at Toloki’s work, and say it is the work of a genius. In the same way that they read meaning in the shack he and Noria built, they say that the work has profound meaning. As usual, they cannot say what the meaning is. It is not even necessary to say, or even to know, what the meaning is. It is enough only to know that there is a meaning, and it is a profound one.

  They had not noticed that Shadrack was one of the spectators. He is pushed in a wheelchair by one of his employees. For the first time, he looks directly at Toloki, and smiles. Toloki detects some condescension, but he does not mind.

  ‘I saw you work. It was a moving experience.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d leave the hospital so soon, Bhut’Shaddy. I was planning to go and see you again on New Year’s Day.’

  ‘I left against the advice of my doctors. I’ll go back after New Year. I had to come back and attend to my business. You know that New Year is a very busy time for business.’

  He says that he was on his way to buy more stock for his spaza
shop when he saw the crowd gathering. He asked his driver to stop the van, and to wheel him to the shack so that he could see with his own eyes what was happening. He had heard from Noria’s homeboys and homegirls of the power she used to have back in the village, and he had never believed the stories. But what he has seen with his own eyes this afternoon has left him dumbfounded. He has never had so much good feeling swelling in his chest before.

  ‘I cannot spoil things between you two. Yours is a creative partnership.’

  Shadrack is wheeled back to his van, parked in the street a few yards away. As the van drives away, Noria smiles at Toloki.

  ‘He is right, you know, Toloki.’

  Toloki does not respond. He does not understand. But of course if Noria says that Shadrack is right, he must be right. Then she whispers in his ear.

  ‘And Toloki, don’t be ashamed to have dreams about me. It is not dirty to have dreams. It is beautiful. It shows that you are human. We are both human.’

  Toloki is embarrassed. How did she know about the dreams? How is she able to read his mind like this? He tries to apologise, and to explain that at least last night he did not have any dreams. But Noria puts her finger on his lips, and tells him that there is no need to say anything.

  While these embarrassing exchanges are going on, the children are busy with Toloki’s crayons. They are trying to copy the images he has created, and are competing as to whose are better. To escape any further discussion on the merits of dreams, Toloki turns to the children and shows them various techniques of drawing better images.

  Late in the afternoon, almost towards dusk, a very long car followed by a truck stops outside Noria’s shack. There are many boxes on the truck. A man wearing a black uniform like that of a security guard, or of men whose work is to stand by the entrances of big hotels in the city and open doors for people, alights from the front seat of the limousine and opens the back door. A fat man in a white suit steps out, and pompously waddles towards the shack. Soon all the children are standing around the long white car, admiring it. Other people from the neighbourhood come as well. They have never before seen a car that is as long as a bus.