The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo

by Peter Orner

  Bloat of eyeballs. I have returned to a liquid state. I am a broiled pig melted down to sap. No cold water anywhere on the farm. We’d sent a boy around to beg for some, but neither the priest nor the principal would answer their doors. Water from the tap was at least eighty degrees. We had no choice but to remain in the sweaty, greasy shade of our rooms until the principal headed for Karibib and one of us could hitch a ride and bring back some Fanta. I lie on my bed and pant. I try to read Turgenev. Until his dying day, Chertopkhanov remained convinced that the blame for Masha’s treachery lay with a certain neighbor, a retired captain of Lancers by the name of Yaff, who, in Pantelei’s words, got his way just by perpetually twisting his whiskers, thickly oiling his hair and sniffing significantly… I toss Yaff on the floor and lust the walls, try to put together the pieces from the remains of my German calendar girls. Mother of God, to have them back intact. Unhelpful body parts bob across my salt fat eyes: How do you letch an elbow? I can’t sleep, won’t sleep, will never sleep. Too hot even for self-delight, the only exercise any of us ever got during siesta. And then in the swamp of this lost time, a faraway click. A sound like a door opening. I try to sit up and I think I see a blurry vision of Mavala moving toward my bed. She stands and looks down at me. Her eyes are still, but her lips are moving without words. Through the sog, I think I hear her breathing, but it too sounds as if it’s so far away. She kneels and rests her head on my stomach, where it rises and falls with my panting. That’s all. She says nothing.

  At three-thirty, I woke up alone to Pohamba gargling.

  62

  OBADIAH

  We of course don’t have anything approximating your autumn here, but I have often imagined it. Beautiful, but also violent, no? Those leaves, not yet deadened, ripped off the only mother they’ve ever known, their hold on a branch. Here the sun beats and beats, and the plants, perhaps, come to expect it. Every day the homicidal sun. Your autumn, I’ve read about it, seems much like a sudden, wrenching death. Or do I misunderstand it from the leaf’s point of view?

  63

  MORNING MEETING

  Murmur not among yourselves.

  JOHN 6:43

  This morning the principal is lustful by way of Isaiah. Thus: so are we. Yea, we are greedy dogs who can never have enough. Thou shalt not. Thou shalt not what? Thou shalt not everything, because, yes, sinners, it’s everywhere. Lust grows out from under the rock like wattle bush. Lust needs no water for a thousand days.

  And Mavala, next to Vilho, who’s next to me, reaches her foot over and nips the back of my shin with the tip of her heel. Then she says something into her coffee that I can’t make out. This is how we sometimes communicated, all of us, during the moral tale—through our slurps. And the principal is so loud we can sometimes talk under him. I drink and keep my nose deep in there, lean closer to Vilho, who pretends not to notice. I point my cup her way.

  “What?”

  “Bored.”

  And myself, still early-early-morning dopish, gurgle back: “What?”

  “Bored. I’m very bored.”

  “Hast thou enough meatflesh, you insatiable whoremongers?” the principal booms.

  And the fog begins to lift, and in a greedy yes covetous yes carnal whisper I nearly shriek into my coffee: Okay, so . . .

  She waits a moment. The principal is working himself up into a hyperventilating frenzy, dramatically flipping pages. “Siesta,” she breathes.

  “He goeth after her straightaway as an ox goeth to the slaugh —”

  “Where?”

  Mavala aims the bottom of her cup at me, her eyes giant over the rim, steady, blinkless. “The graves,” she says. “The Voortrekkers.”

  “Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks!”

  64

  ANTOINETTE

  She keeps them in an empty tin next to the Rooibos tea in the kitchen sideboard. Her vice. Her weakness. Her raisins. What is it about them that makes her crave their shriveled little bodies with such abandon? What makes her lust so overpowering there are times when she slinks into her own house in the smack middle of a working day to stuff a pluck of them in her mouth? Ugly emaciated things, like the shriveled tops of fingers left too long in the wash water. She hardly chews one before it’s gone and all she’s left with is an insatiable need for another. Savage gluttony. The original fruit comes wrapped in a package from the Pick ’n Pay. The devil is crafty. There is a psychologist in the office block next to the Mobil station, and there was even a time when she almost knocked on the door. I have only a small question, Doctor, concerning a small fruit. Otherwise I am healthy in the head. All I want is to control the passion. To bring it to heel. To leave a boiling cauldron of mealies, my post, my responsibility, to feed my face? Like an old hoer stealing across the sand to a tin in the sideboard. Hand pushing the door. The glant of sun on the sideboard. Fingers seize the tin. Leave your nose among them. How at first they don’t smell and then they do. A snort of sugared earth up the nostrils. Oh, filth. Ravish them. A vision of herself scurrying across the sand, the midday sun. Soon the boys will be lining up at the dining-hall door for lunch, spoons in hands. Temptation, fulfillment, emptiness. How can it be that the only cure for sin is more sin?

  65

  GRAVES

  Instead of walking up the road by the principal’s, I took the long way around, out past the cattle gate, and doubled back behind Dikeledi and Festus’s. The Boers were buried near the banks of the dry Toanib River, where it looped out toward Krieger’s farm. It was a kind of ghost river. Not only was it dry like the other rivers, but there were days it was gone, when you couldn’t distinguish it from the rest of the veld.

  She was already out there, sitting on one of the black granite graves. The graves were three narrow slabs, with a tall headstone at the front of each. The only shiny things at Goas; I wondered how they could still look like this after so many years. Mavala was sitting on Grieta Dupreez, the unmarried daughter. Around Grieta was a moat of white gravel. Below her name: Rus in Vrede. Rest in peace. Beyond the graves, in a small rutlike gully, a place where Theofilus sometimes burned garbage; the ground was strewn with ash.

  She was making piles out of the gravel, making piles and then slashing them. She didn’t look up at me. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

  “I had to make Pohamba a sandwich.”

  She made a roof with her hand and squinted, looked me over. “Are you the houseboy now?”

  “We switch off.”

  “What kind of sandwich?”

  “Turkey with chutney.”

  “Chutney?”

  “What’s wrong with chutney?”

  She drank from a water bottle she’d been holding between her knees. The water spilled out from the edges of her mouth and ran down her neck, soaking her shirt.

  “Is it all right?” she said.

  “Is what all right?”

  “To come here.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t want to sleep?”

  “No.”

  “You look tired.”

  “I guess I’ve gotten used to siesta.”

  “So go back to bed.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I don’t need sleep.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “I never need sleep.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I only wanted to talk—without all of them—always —”

  “I know.”

  “They’re always —”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you tell them?”

  “No.”

  “Not Pohamba?”

  “No.”

  “He has a mouth. They all have mouths.” She looked at me, looked away, looked at me. “I only wanted to talk without them,” she said. “Why is that so difficult?”

  “Where’s the kid?” I asked.

  “Behind us. Asleep in his car seat. I hope asleep. I bribed him with Twix.”

  “His car seat?”

  “Now I need a
car. Sit?”

  “Here?”

  “Why not? These dead Boers are comfortable chairs.”

  66

  APOSTLE JOHN

  Apostle John at the Mobil station in Karibib will always God bless you even if you don’t give him any money. There’s John in his wheelchair without tires, his slow rumble across the oily pavement, one hand out, the other doing his best to steer. His shoes are tied to his knees to remind you he’ll never need them again. Some days Apostle John is blind. Other days he isn’t. He says he got blown to Christ up north in the struggle. You try not to look at him. Apostle John rolling toward you, palm up—and still it doesn’t matter, even if you don’t give him a single rand. Still, it’s God bless you. Apostle John’s not a miser with the Almighty’s love. You ignorer. You of the undeserving horde. Yes, you. You. I’m speaking to you. God bless you.

  67

  ANNUAL LIBRARY LECTURE

  (EXCERPTED)

  Honorable Obadiah Horaseb

  Chief Librarian

  . . . while the Hindus, for instance, say that behind every book is a set of hands. Now in the context of a library, a lending institution (a lovely idea, no?), we may carry this golden idea further. The more a book is borrowed, the more hands have held it, cradled it. Would you have the imprint of a human soul go untouched? And yet what of those books that go years, nay, decades, unread, their words silent, waiting? Contemplate this a moment. Do unread words continue speaking? If so to whom? Is it not the lonely, unheard chattering of the dead? Is a closed book not a tomb? Oh, mourn the unborrowed books. Here’s one. A fine copy of Bleak House published in 1957 by Black International, Hudson, New York. Last borrowed from this library in 1973. 1973! Would it were a crime, citizens. This book, these words, dormant? A book with the boldest first sentence ever composed! “London.” That’s all. “London.” Amazing conjurement. Imagine you hold a book in your hands. Open it. “Goas.” One of you boys might very well be the future crafter of such an evocation. A feeble example from a man of little poetic gifts might go something like this:

  Goas. Second term finally over and His Highness, the majordomo, is sitting on his patch of grass outside his princely office. Unflinching drought. As much sand in the air as if the wind had but newly broomed up the desert itself, and it would not be fantastical to meet a sun-crazed grampus-like woman hulumphing down the road from her fence line . . .

  Thus, I propose a moment of silence, not only for stories unread, but for stories untold. Was it not Cioran who said a book should both cure old wounds and inflict new ones? Thus, an unread book is what? A festering sore? A cancer? What then, I ask, is an unwritten book? I believe a silent prayer is called for. Yes, for dead authors and their fleshless hands, only bones and silence now. But also for ourselves, my boys, for all the stories you have yet to tell.

  Amen.

  Now concerning this copy of Bleak House: I will extend the due date ten days. Standard Sevens have increased privileges, so you may have it for up to two weeks provided you write a book report. Rubrecht? Petrus Matunda? Petrus Goraoab? Skinny Hilunda? Jeremiah? Members of the esteemed faculty? Anybody? Theofilus?

  68

  GRAVES

  He pants at my door.”

  “Who?”

  “Von Swine.”

  “The principal? When?”

  “Call him von Swine.”

  “Okay. When does von Swine pant?”

  “In the middle of the night.”

  “What does he want?”

  “At three in the morning? To give me a new box of chalk.”

  “Is the door locked?”

  “The door has no lock.”

  “Miss Tuyeni?”

  “She sleeps heavy. Since we were girls. One morning my father hit her with a bottle.”

  “So he pants?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why doesn’t he just walk in? It isn’t like he’s shy.”

  “He’s being polite. He’s waiting for an invitation.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Do?”

  “Can’t you call the school inspector? Report him.”

  “The inspector? What would I say? My brother-in-law stands outside my door and breathes heavy?”

  “Why not?”

  “Like a dog out there, aching. I listen to him. I’ll give this to him: The man’s a revulsion, but he has rhythm. I sleep to him—huh, huh, huh.”

  “Huh, huh, huh?”

  “Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh.”

  69

  SPIES

  Pohamba had a sign on the wall opposite his bed. It said: COME AS A FRIEND NOT A SPY. I think of him now at dusk on those rare cooler days when for once the sky was more blue than white. Some weeks we were so berated by the heat that when it did seep away we missed it, because now our laziness had no excuses. A good time to plan our lessons, so we slept. Or tried to sleep. Pohamba lying on his bed rereading that sign, because his eyes are restless and he’s out of magazines. A learner made it for him. In addition to math, Pohamba taught the only two electives offered at Goas, physical training and woodworking/mechanical arts. PT consisted of a few sets of jumping jacks and laps around the soccer field. Woodworking was once a week, on Wednesdays, in the mimeograph-machine shack, which was also the tool shack, which was also the place where boys on severe punishment were taken to be flogged. In math, Pohamba would assign problems, and then the boys would take their copy books up to his desk. If they got it wrong, Pohamba would feel betrayed. I teach you and I teach you and I teach you and this is the thanks? Zero is nothing but a tool for coping with reality. Haven’t I told you this x times? Nullify the value and then divide into negation. There is no end to our negative subparts. But on Wednesdays, in the mimeograph shack, amid his tools and his wood, he talked to the boys, told them even more practical things about life. One of the things he had told them had ended up on that sign. He was proud of it. The day the boy gave it to him, he called me into his room. The sign was painted blue, red, and green, SWAPO colors.

  He was just lying there, his hands folded across his chest, his feet hanging off the bed, admiring it.

  “Nice,” I said. “Who made it?”

  “Eiseb’s brother.”

  We both looked at the sign for a while. Then I went back to my own bed and thought about spies, about seeming to be one person and being another. Or were you both? Neither? At Goas, Pohamba was so completely Pohamba. What he wanted, what we all wanted, at times, was to be not only somewhere else but someone else. A friend, what was the challenge in that?

  I mostly remember him in motion. Even when he was still, much about him was in motion. His eyes, his mouth, his jiggling knees. But the times I need to return to now are the rare moments he’s at peace. Him on that saggy mattress that’s too big for him. His head on his extorted pillows. His wardrobe door is open and his shirts hang neatly in plastic. His walls are bone-colored. Plaster crumbles in spots. On the same wall as the sign there’s a long, jagged crack that runs from the ceiling to the floor. (Sometimes we pour hot water in our cracks to kill the ants.) He’s there, reading his sign. A secret history of Pohamba? What of the horror of not having one, of being the person people think you are?

  70

  PRINSLOO

  Sampie Prinsloo sells us vegetables. A jovial old-time Boer farmer who dresses the part. Veldskoens and no socks, khaki shorts, skinny legs holding up a belly like a small hillock. A cucumber dangling lazy out of his mouth like a cigar. No hat, just an exuberant bush of dusty hair. He’s also the Republic of Namibia’s most vocal local cheerleader. (“I’m a tough old bastard,” he’d say. “If I can survive forty years in this forsaken place, I can live through President Nujoma.”) Prinsloo was the first white in Karibib to line up for a new driver’s license. His bakkie is festooned with patriotic bumper stickers.

  GLORY TO OUR PLAN HEROES.

  TO EVERY BIRTH ITS BLOOD.

  ONE NATION, ONE NAMIBIA, SOUND YOUR HOOTER.

  Once or twice a mon
th, he and his wife pull up to the cattle gate and Prinsloo jams that hooter. Then he gets out and waits. His wife stays in the car. Apparently she doesn’t share his enthusiasm for getting to know the neighbors now that things have changed so much. The boys come running out of the hostel or off the soccer field, springing over to him, and Prinsloo shouts, “Go back and get your money, boys!”

  And the boys say, “We’re poor, meneer, very poor boys. We have nothing, meneer, nothing.”

  “You think this fruit of the earth is free? You think I’m Communistic?”

  And the boys in chorus say: “Not Communistic. Meneer is very generous.”

  Prinsloo sighs and cackles and takes his cucumber out of his mouth and spits and shows his golden teeth and then yanks out a box of small carrots and starts tossing them in the air. The boys leap for the carrots. High in the air for those runt carrots. Not because they’re hungry, but because they’re free and this is a game they still enjoy.

  Dankie my baas! Dankie my baas!

  Eventually, we the teachers walk down the road. We take our time. We are dignified teachers and we will not jump for carrots. No Boer’s monkeys are the teachers. Antoinette carries down her knives. (Prinsloo is also the local knife sharpener.) And we look over the merchandise like discriminating shoppers. Prinsloo watches me put back a pumpkin. What? The United States doesn’t appreciate my vegetables? How about a nice squash for the U S of A? How about green peppers, Brussels sprouts, oranges, corn, spinach, kumquats, lemons, pawpaws, okra, pears, pomegranates, eggplant (aubergine, Obadiah corrects)? Because there is nothing Prinsloo can’t grow. The man grows cotton on the edge of the Namib. We pay our money to his wife, who watches us with small, suspicious eyes behind the dirty windshield. Then we head toward our rooms, our arms now piled high with the bounty of a suddenly miraculously generous earth. It helps that Prinsloo has the only irrigable standing water of any farm along the C-32. Still, he pretends it has less to do with his groundwater levels than his magic hands. Prinsloo’s hands, gnarled, fattish, beet-red.