David doesn’t respond. Peter speaks for him: ‘That’s right. Only the married ones. Isn’t that so, brother?’
David looks at Peter for a moment and then looks away.
‘Ha!’ says George. ‘You sleep with them and then you can move off! So what is there to mope about? Punch the head! The head!’
David looks up again. The sadness in his eyes is like a pane of shattered glass.
‘Nothing. Nothing to mope about.’
He gets up and pushes past Peter. Then he opens the fridge, takes out a beer and sits down next to George.
The next few days with David are awful. Without Jeremiah, he seems to have lost his appetite for life.
‘I found this book for you. It is poetry… David? You must eat. You haven’t touched your kapenta. Eat and then we will go to a museum.’
‘Leave me alone, Chipo. Please. Just go away.’
Then one night he went out with Peter. He didn’t want to. All he wanted to do, he said, was sleep.
‘You can’t sleep day and night like some sick woman. Get up!’ Peter threw David’s jacket at him.
David went out without even brushing his teeth or combing his hair. When they came back several hours later, past three o’clock, they were not alone.
I heard the giggling as they opened the front door.
‘This, girls, is where we live.’
I fumbled for my glasses as Peter flipped on the light. ‘Who is she?’ one of the women asked, pointing a long pink fingernail at me sitting up in bed in my nightdress.
‘Hmm, oh, that is just our friend’s little sister. Ignore her.’
‘Come, let’s dance!’ Peter turned on the radio and the two women began to dance with him. They looked bored as they moved, slowly and mechanically. One of the women was wearing a tight red dress that only just covered her modesty. It kept on rising up her thighs as she moved, but she did not seem to notice or care.
‘David? David! Get our lovely guests something to drink.’
David stood in the doorway. He was the last in. He could barely walk, he was so drunk. In his hand was a Bacardi Breezer. He staggered into the room and sat down on his mattress with his head between his legs.
Peter and the two women were still dancing. One of the women took out her cellphone and started to take pictures of Peter and the other woman, who made ridiculous poses. The women were not Zimbabwean, that was for sure. Not with dresses like that and all that gold jewellery. They looked like the sort of women who spent their time in the Long Street bars waiting for tourists to buy them a drink.
I pulled the blanket up to cover myself and tried to get David’s attention.
‘David, are you all right?’
His head swung up and he looked at me uncomprehendingly. Then he closed his eyes and nodded. Raising his bottle, he saluted me and took another gulp before letting the empty bottle drop.
‘Dave-ed,’ crooned the woman taking the photos, ‘come and dance with us.’
She tottered over in her high heels and helped him to his feet. David went with her, but, rather than dancing, he stood swaying in one spot, his eyes closed, his mouth open, as the woman, her arms now around his neck, giggled like a teenager.
I couldn’t look.
Suddenly there was a shriek of outrage and disgust. The women were angry. They had stopped dancing and were swearing in a language I couldn’t understand. David had been sick on one of the women’s shoes. Secretly I felt pleased. A woman like her had no right to a man like David, even if he was an ngochani.
The women went to the door, shouting their disgust at the two brothers. The one whose shoes had been soiled took a dishcloth from the table and wiped her shoes down before throwing the cloth at David.
‘Wait!’ cried Peter after them. ‘Look what you have done now!’ he said to David as he followed the women down the corridor. ‘Leaticia, Alice – wait!’
I got out of bed and closed the front door. David was on his hands and knees in front of the pool of vomit. I picked up the dishcloth that the woman had used to clean her shoes. Going into the bathroom, I rinsed it under the tap and filled a bucket with some Jik and hot water. When I got back to the room, David hadn’t moved. I went down on my knees, too, and began to clean the vomit off the carpet.
‘Don’t worry, David. Everything will be all right.’
‘Please, Chipo,’ David said, his head bowed low, ‘please leave me alone.’
My cellphone beeps. I look at it. Another message. The third today. I move away from Jean-Paul so he can’t see what it says.
Phone 0823563442
It is Doctor Ongani’s number. I delete this message as I had deleted the previous ones. A half-hour later, another. Jean-Paul raises his eyebrows.
‘Everything OK, Chipo?’
‘Yes. It’s just George.’
Chipo, I would STILL like to speak with you. Dr Ongani.
Eventually he will tire of contacting me. That is what I tell myself. I turn off the cellphone and put it in my bra. I do not want to see him again. I do not want David to fall in love with me. Not like this. I begin to iron again. To press the hot nose of the iron down. Only work can distract me. I fear being left with my guilty thoughts. I know what I have done. I have betrayed David. Ngochani or not, I have betrayed him. I can feel Mama’s spirit looking down. She is ashamed.
He will go away, Chipo. David will get better and no one will ever know. You are safe.
Two days later. A knocking at the door. I open it. Doctor Ongani has found me. But how?
‘You are a very difficult young woman to get hold of. You haven’t been replying to my SMSes. Or taking my phone calls. Not very nice, after all I have done to help you. I suppose your cellphone is out of order?’ The Doctor tuts like I am a naughty child.
He takes off his black hat and hands it to me, together with his cane with its carved top. The carved top is of a face covering its eyes with its hands. Doctor Ongani has told me that he carved it himself. I do not know why, but even when I saw that walking stick in his office, I had not liked looking at it. Reluctantly, I take it and the hat as the Doctor walks past me into the flat.
‘Chipo, Chipo. You are not a woman of your word. Have you forgotten that you still owe me a sum of money?’ He looks around him, surveying the room and the furniture, but his expression does not reveal what he thinks of our home.
I am too terrified to do anything but shake my head. At least everyone else is out.
‘Sit down. I have a proposition.’
Without speaking a word, I sit.
When George gets home, he finds Doctor Ongani and me still sitting at the kitchen table. I feel sick to my stomach when I see George. I know he will be angry that he has come home to find a stranger in our flat. I want to disappear. Please, God, let me disappear. I close my eyes and open them again. But I am still in the room. And Doctor Ongani is still there too. There is no escape.
‘Who the hell is this, Chipo?’
‘Ah, you must be George. Doctor Ongani. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Your sister and I have been waiting for you.’
George shakes Doctor Ongani’s hand reluctantly and looks at me as if to say, What shit have you got us into now, Tortoise? Then he turns his attention to the Doctor.
‘You are not Zimbabwean?’
Doctor Ongani shakes his head.
‘And not South African. So where are you from? I cannot place your accent.’
‘From here, from there. What does it matter? Please, sit. Your sister and I have a business proposition.’
As Doctor Ongani is on his way out, David arrives home. I have no idea where he has been. None of us does. He stinks of cigarette smoke. He looks at Doctor Ongani, puzzled.
George introduces them. ‘This is one of our roommates – David.’
‘Ah, David.’ Doctor Ongani greets him with a firm handshake, but all along he has his eyes on me. He had already told me what he would do if I didn’t cooperate: ‘I think David would be most upset if he f
ound out that you were the reason for his friend’s disappearance. Who knows what he might do? A betrayal like that…’ He whistled slowly through his teeth.
Letting go of David’s hand, Doctor Ongani scrunches up his face. ‘You look… somehow familiar. Have we met?’
David shakes his head. ‘Not to my knowledge, baba.’
He looks awful these days. His shirt is dirty but he doesn’t seem to care or notice. If I offer to wash it, he brushes me off.
Doctor Ongani keeps his gaze on me. I close my eyes. In my mind I see his carved cane top. No hope, Chipo. No hope.
When I open my eyes again, Doctor Ongani is smiling. ‘You are certain? It must be my mistake, David. Sincere apologies.’
That evening, we discussed Doctor Ongani’s proposition. Here was an opportunity, George said, to make serious rand before the World Cup deadline. Here was the chance we had been praying for to really prosper and be in a position to do something if the rumours proved true.
But David was adamant. He wanted no part. He was like the old David.
‘Well, I told Doctor Ongani it is either all of us or none of us, so I will have to call him.’
But Doctor Ongani wasn’t about to let his golden goose fly away as easily as that. When a disappointed George phoned and told him we couldn’t proceed because David wouldn’t agree, the Doctor asked George to pass the phone to David. I don’t know what he said to him, but David agreed to meet the Doctor down on Long Street. He was gone for more than two hours.
When David returns to the flat with Doctor Ongani, his expression is completely different. He can’t bring himself to make eye contact with us. He looks like a boy who has been caught cheating on his maths test and is being hauled up before his classmates.
‘Good news, my friends,’ Doctor Ongani announces as he steps through the door. ‘David and I have spoken and he has had a change of heart.’
We all look at David. None of us can believe it. ‘David?’ George asks. ‘Is this true?’
David keeps his eyes on the ground as he speaks.
‘I have listened to Doctor Ongani’s proposition…’ A pause. ‘And I have decided…’ Another pause. David can’t get the words out. Doctor Ongani reaches forward and puts his hand on David’s shoulder.
‘He has decided that it is not such a terrible proposition after all.’
David bites his lip and nods.
‘So all is settled,’ Doctor Ongani says. He sits himself down at the kitchen table. No one has invited him to do so but that doesn’t seem to bother him. He helps himself to a glass of Stoney’s and smacks his lips.
‘And Chipo?’ George asks, turning to me. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I want to do it,’ I tell my brother, hardly above a whisper. ‘I want to. And then I want to go home.’
Home is a deep word. A parched throat. Happy is funny. It tastes like boiled sweets. Sad is grey. Like stale foufou or flat beer. Love? Love is bittersweet. A ripe, bright orange and its sharp zest. Hope. Hope is a big word. It tastes like meat and pap. If you are not careful, it can get caught in your throat and you will choke.
Later on, when the scheme is just starting to take shape, I ask Doctor Ongani what he said to David to change his mind.
The Doctor and I are alone in the flat. All the others are out at the post office photocopying flyers for our new business.
At first he does not answer. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I can be very persuasive.’
He picks up the mug that he has just drained of its tea and indicates with a nod that I am to fill it for him again.
I do as he asks and watch him sip it slowly. Then he sets it down and strokes his beard. ‘You see, Chipo, secrets are really very nasty things. They can get us into all sorts of trouble, especially if we want our secrets to stay secret. Some people will do almost anything.’
Suddenly I feel a cold shudder of fear.
‘You didn’t tell David about me and you? You didn’t tell him about the letter? You promised…’
‘Oh, no no, Chipo. You and I have an agreement.’ Doctor Ongani smiles and brushes my concerns aside. ‘Naturally, he wanted to know how I knew about his preferences… I explained that that is my job. To know what nobody else does. But not to worry, I told him, I can be discreet. But of course discretion comes at a price, and that price was his cooperation.’
‘Was he angry?’
‘At first. But he is not stupid, your David. A bright young man. Just think, I told him, with all the money you make you will be able to go and look for your Jeremiah. Together you will be able to go and study, get good jobs, live as you please. Life is so much easier when you are part of the successful middle classes, so much more… liberal.’
Suddenly the Doctor puts up his hand for me to be silent and still. I freeze. Has someone overheard us? As swift as a cobra, his hand shoots out and grabs a mouse that I haven’t even noticed had been nibbling at some breadcrumbs at our feet. Doctor Ongani drops the mouse into my empty glass and puts his hand over the top so that it can’t jump out. He holds it up to the light. Together we silently examine the mouse scrambling and trying to climb the sides of the glass.
‘You see,’ Doctor Ongani says, standing up and walking to the open window, ‘this will be a situation that profits everyone. Think, with the money you could get some nice mousetraps, Chipo. Terrible creatures, mice and rats. Spreaders of disease.’ With this, he tips the glass and lets the mouse fall the seven storeys.
Sixteen
From the slow, deliberate way Doctor Ongani takes off his hat and puts it on the table at his next visit, I know his plans have taken a fresh turn.
‘We should run our business from President’s Heights for practical reasons.’
He says he has found a room to rent down the corridor. It gives me goose bumps to think of him living just a few doors down, but I try to console myself. Just do as he asks. It will be over soon. Then you will all have enough money to go home and live well. Soon this will all be behind you. This is what Doctor Ongani has promised.
But with each passing day, Doctor Ongani grows closer, not farther away. He arrives with a suitcase. Inside are three suits, all black, that he tells me to brush.
‘They got dusty with the workmen.’
And I must polish the wooden top of his cane.
Very quickly, he lays down the law. I am not allowed to talk to, or even see, the customers. I must remain an enigma. My job will be to sit with the muti behind the purple curtain. The customers will be able to see my outline so that they can be assured I am there. As far as the customers are concerned, I will be working my magic on the muti. And Jean-Paul? What about my job with him?
‘You will have to give it up. You are my assistant now.’
Within a day of moving next door, he has put up a large sign: ‘Doctor Ongani and Real Live Albino – Special Extra Powerful Muti to Improve Your Luck.’ George, Peter and David are dispatched with new flyers to slip under the doors of all the flats and to hand out in the surrounding streets. Before he takes his share of flyers, David looks at me sadly. Is there no turning back?
No. There is not. Even though business is slow at first. There is plenty of competition. Long Street has many who make grand promises. Tourist offices with pictures of lions, leopards, elephants and giraffes, all waiting, they claim, to be photographed by you. Bars – three for one every happy hour. Best hamburgers in Cape Town. Young women promising to make a man feel like a king for a night for a hundred or two hundred rand. Want to eat alligator and buck meat but drink ice-cold Castle beer and use a toilet that can flush? Well, at Mama Afrika you can! Also psychics. Sangomas or spiritual healers famous for their ability to call upon the power of the ancestors and promising cures for all sorts of maladies.
If you turn off Long Street onto the cobbled Church Street, where the antique dealers sell their pretty trinkets from cloth-covered tables, and proceed on to Greenmarket Square, young women will offer you blue and white flyers that read:
DOCTOR ELIJAH.
FORTUNE TELLER. PALM READER &
TRADITIONAL & SPIRITUAL HEALER. SOLVING:
Financial problems
Re-unite Lovers
Family Matters
Win Court Cases
Business problems
Re Connect to Your Ancestors
Removal of Witch Crafts
Mental Illness
Reveals Lovers Future
Fixing Immoral Spouses
Bare-ness (Lack of children)
Removing Bad Luck
For seeing Evil Spirits
I do not know how we can compete with such promises. But Doctor Ongani is not worried.
‘Hasn’t got an albino,’ is all he says when George shows him our competitor’s advertisement. He drops a chicken bone onto his plate and gestures that it is time for me to clear it.
He is right. Whatever Doctor Elijah’s promises, those hungry for hope do come to our little room in President’s Heights. First one. Then another. Then many.
A woman. I can see her petite outline. I sit behind my curtain among the buckets and jars of dried herbs, bones and animal parts.
‘Sometimes I say to myself, you know what, you are a failure. Thirty years of age and what-what. You are still a maid. No better than your sister back in Malawi. Sure, I know that I am still beautiful, but for how much longer? Look. Already you can see, Doctor, this greyness to my skin that marks all women who are getting older. You can see it, Doctor?’
Doctor Ongani mutters something.
‘What have I to show for my life in this country? I find myself looking at my Ma’am’s daughter. She has just finished university. She has got a proper job with a briefcase and a motor car. She is only twenty-three. And that is why I am here, Doctor Ongani. I want that. Can you give me that? Can she, the biri, give me that?’
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