The Eternal Audience of One

by Rémy Ngamije

  “Sera – ”

  VII

  “And then,” Séraphin says, “while Jasmyn’s riding me like the horse she came in on – see what I did there? – my mother walks in. Into my bedroom.”

  This is a scene from another country, another time, a different year.

  Séraphin is much changed from the young boy who found everything funny so that he could lose his virginity during a study break while his mother was at the shops. He is older, for one thing, a student at university, and he has a solid group of friends – Bianca, Richard, Godwin, James, Adewale, Andrew and Yasseen.

  Séraphin is conducting the comedic movement of the conversation around him like a maestro. Left hand for rhythm and timing, right hand for the entrances and exit.

  Cue shock.

  Bianca says, “Oh my god!”

  Then James says, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” His sip of beer catches in his throat. To ensure he is alive for what comes next, he takes the wise course of action and coughs a stream of beer onto the table.

  Bianca again. “You’re fucking joking!” She is short of breath, the fire of laughter burning in her belly swallows oxygen in hungry chunks. An invisible corset of humour which turns her face red.

  After Bianca’s expletive disbelief comes Andrew’s more controlled, “No ways! I can’t believe this! There’s no way.” Next to him, Adewale, the devout and deviant Christian, alternates between laughing, crying and crossing himself.

  Richard and Godwin lean on each other for support, thumping their fists on the table and sending a ripple of upset glasses and cutlery tinkling. “Oan, you’re fucking lying,” Godwin splutters.

  Next to the two towers of Pisa is Yasseen. His thin, bony frame remains composed, but he’s not unamused. He picks up his beer and shakes his head before taking a sip.

  At the centre of this bubble of deliriousness sits Séraphin. He looks ruefully at his glass of orange juice and shakes his head as his friends laugh at his affected pain. He takes a long drink and puts the glass back on the table.

  “What happened next?” asks Bianca. She is the first to catch her breath and asks what everyone wants to know.

  “Well,” Séraphin says, “one moment we was fuckin’ and then”—he pauses, signalling to the percussion to get the cymbals ready—“we wasn’t fuckin’ no more!”

  Cue laughter and chaos.

  If a snapshot were to be taken of the moment and presented to a grandmother still mourning the absence of a son or daughter whose bones lay, anonymous but not forgotten, in some unmarked grave in the wilderness of unconfessed and legislatively forgiven history, a strong case could be made to support the compromises, contractual clemency, and the constitutional amnesia. Look at this picture, grandmother. This is what your husband fought for, this is why he was beaten. This is why your son was taken. Look. Look at all these smiling faces, all these complexions together, all these nationalities. This moment is your Rainbow Nation. Be still, grandmother. Be still.

  The grandmother might not have envisioned a pub in one of Cape Town’s leafier suburbs, but this is where the carouse of twinkling and smiling faces is in session. The surface of the large wooden table is populated by beer mugs being drained of their cool, froth-topped amber fluid; wine and cocktail glasses bleeding sanguine red, meditative cerulean, and luminescent lime-green liquids down an assortment of slender, slight, and muscular necks. On two wooden benches, in varying states of fermented merriment, is a congregation of youth. Their religion is the perennial here and now. They have the wisdom of a thousand hermit sages at their fingertips and their heads are swollen with solutions to the galaxy’s ailments and the world’s aches and scrapes. They are heedlessly promiscuous with their ambitions and chaste in their fears of potential disappointment for they are the offspring of opportunity. They sit along the wooden benches, drinking, nibbling thin chips, stealing slices of pizza from anyone not possessing the good sense to order a meal which cannot be shared. They complain about everything, including their sex lives.

  “My drought needs to end, guys. If it goes on any longer I’ll be a virgin all over again,” Bianca says.

  “How long’s it been?” Séraphin asks.

  “Long enough to start shopping for rechargeable batteries,” Bianca replies. “Anytime between when I want it and when I can get it is too long.” She wraps her hand around a cocktail of violent colours and daintily raises it to her lips before saying, “I came to university for A-grade D.”

  “You’re lesbian, Bee,” Séraphin says.

  “I know. But it sounded cool.”

  Bianca’s casual broaching of the current deficiency in her sex life paves the way for a welcome descent to this most persistent of preoccupations. What, after all, would such young and beautiful creatures do with their excess time in a city bristling with sex appeal in every restaurant, café, club, bookshop, beach, street corner, and suburb? When they are not being productive they are being reproductive, profligate with their libidos, laughing at condoms that slipped off in the past – always in the past because that is where things are funniest – giggling and chortling their way through fears of lateness, abated by the delayed and welcome arrival of a menstrual cycle when a mishap stops just shy of being an accident.

  They smirk at the treachery of erections and bemoan the evasiveness of the female orgasm.

  “Never put your faith in anything that requires twenty-two minutes to decide what it wants to do in life.”

  “Honestly, if I hook up with another girl who doesn’t know where I can find her orgasm, or at least give me road signs for how to get her there, I’m going to stop, turn on my Playstation, and play some first-person shooters. Now, those buttons I know how to press.”

  Boasts are debunked and booed down:

  “Seven times in one night, Rich? Really?”

  “So, what, friction just stopped working that night? Have you heard of the word ‘chafe’? Please stop lying to us, we’re all friends here!”

  There are confessions which elicit chuckles at self-deprecating performances:

  “Bro, the mistake I made was opening my eyes because then I could see the booty and that cut my stroke number in half. I came so quickly I just had to roll off her and apologise.”

  “Don’t sweat it, man. I’ve had performances shorter than a Mike Tyson fight.”

  The subject matter of lost virginities crops up and everyone contributes their share of plucked petals.

  Bianca, the first to tell, says she felt pricked by her boyfriend’s long, thin member. “I felt like I was visiting the gynae. And it was so brief I felt like a virgin three days after.” Seeing eyebrows rise around the table she quickly adds that she only did it to fit in with the other girls. “Sjoe, guys, if you don’t want to be exiled to the Lost Land of Lesbians you lose your virginity to a boy fast!”

  The male half of the party is rotten with stories of spectacularly reviewed first-time performances. Their thin veneers are easily pierced, though. All of them admit to the embarrassing awkwardness of their sexual genesis. James failed to maintain his uprightness and panicked himself further away from complying blood flow, eventually having to postpone by a few days his patient partner’s exit from the realm of virginity. Andrew farted during his first orgasm. Yasseen had his virginity clinically excised from him by a pretty and determined high school friend who never brought the matter up again, insisting they remain friends for the rest of their school days. Richard panicked at the sight of blood and ran out of the room, texting his then girlfriend two days later to apologise for abandoning her mid-coitus. Their relationship never survived his unceremonious defection. Godwin was drunk throughout his, waking up to find his escort into manhood to be a not-so-distant cousin. Adewale said he was so scared of divine retribution he clenched his eyes shut and quoted Bible verses throughout his first ordeal.

  The laughter which follows each story grows in volume until the other patrons of the pub start throwing annoyed glances at the table. They withhold their anger beca
use of the assembled dissimilitude of faces and voices. A confrontation with such diverse youth would be met with allegations of pigment discrimination, something the pub and its pink-faced management are determined to avoid at all costs. The assembled group are allowed to laugh clamorously through each story. Séraphin’s story is the last.

  “I didn’t know shit from shit,” he began. “If Jasmyn hadn’t taken charge of the situation, we’d still be sitting on that bed today. I knew nothing about what needed to be put where. Or, rather, I did but only in my head. You know, you meet, you kiss, your clothes evaporate from your body, and then sex just happens automatically, your bodies just do the one thing and a bit of the other. But it’s never like that in real life. It’s awkward. It could’ve been worse if it wasn’t for Jasmyn. She came prepared to snatch me from the clutches of chastity, brothers and sisters.” Séraphin elevates and drops his voice like a spiritually inflamed preacher with the collection tray in sight. “She came to do the Lord’s work and rescue this unwashed, unworthy, uninitiated urchin from the prisons of purity and deliver him upon the threshold of his future life, educated, schooled, and learned – poisoned, like that couple of yore, with the Knowledge Irrefutable. I was olive oil in that situation: extra virgin. I can’t remember how she did it but she managed to get the rubber on and then she climbed on top of me. Thank God she did that. If I had to figure out the mechanics and hit the bullseye the first time I would probably have rubbed myself raw on her thigh or something. Why’re you laughing? First time is the smallest target and I am no Deadshot, fam. I could barely shoot to kill so you best believe I couldn’t shoot to thrill. I was just lucky to be present in the proceedings. I don’t think you guys understand how hot Jasmyn was. I think I was breaking every law in the universe being in the same room as her, let alone naked and about to be sexed by her. I just let her do whatever she needed to do because I didn’t know anything.”

  The whole table was beside itself at the frankness of the disclosure. The new Séraphin was far removed from his fumbling past and this origins story was not what they expected to hear from him.

  “Anyway,” Séraphin continued, “so it’s in and she’s on top. I don’t know what to do with my hands. Should I touch her boobs? Should I hold her waist? I don’t know. So I clench my hands to my chest, praying mantis-style. Stop laughing, this shit is real. So she’s going. In my head I’m like, ‘Well, this is nice.’ So for a while I’m just enjoying it. Then I get that warm feeling in my toes; the one that says time’s nearly up. I know what it is because, hey, puberty is time for practice – the left stroke is the death stroke – don’t ask me what that means. Find out. Anyway, I can feel my toes warming and I know the show’s nearly over. Jissis! Now I’m even participating. Or I think I am. Stop laughing. I’m putting hands to whatever part of Jasmyn I can get to. Fam, I’m fumbling but I’m trying my best to actually be an active member in this whole process. Poor form all around. Jasmyn is the one keeping it together for the two of us. Finally, I feel like I’m about to explode but I don’t want it to end. I’m thinking of dead babies and spiders, guys, anything that will postpone the inevitable. Dead babies and spiders! Dead babies and spiders! But it’s not working! It’s about to be the that time, man. And then – and then – ” Séraphin paused, his audience waiting for the obvious conclusion. Rapture. Elevation to a higher plane. Instead, after taking a drawn out sip of juice, he calmly delivered the unfortunate conclusion which sent everyone into shocked, disbelieving laughter, setting forth the chain reaction of exclamations and swear words that opened this scene.

  “Then,” Séraphin said, after they had stopped laughing somewhat, “I panicked.”

  “This is going to be bad,” Richard says.

  “Yes,” says Séraphin. “It is. I threw Jasmyn off me, so quickly she hit the wall next to my bed.”

  Once more the table is gripped by the ticklish pitifulness of Séraphin’s first sexual experience. They laugh long and they laugh hard. Séraphin waits for everyone to calm down a bit before continuing. “My mom just stood there quietly for a few seconds and then she walked out and closed the door behind her. Jasmyn and I got dressed so fast. You haven’t lived until you’re trying to get dressed at speed with an erection, by the way. It keeps getting in the way. When we were finally dressed we realised we were fucked because we had to get out of the house, and to get out we needed to go through the lounge, which was where my mom would probably be waiting for us. We argued for a few minutes about what to do but I eventually convinced Jasmyn that she needed to leave and that I would deal with whatever fallout came after that. We walked out of my room and down the corridor and into the lounge and, bam, there’s my mother, sitting in the lounge.”

  “Jirre fok!” says Yasseen.

  “This is so bad. So, so bad,” says James. “So she just sat there?”

  “Yep,” says Séraphin. “She just sat there. Jasmyn tried to be polite – I don’t know why – but she said, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Turihamwe.’ It made the whole situation worse because my mom hates it when we’re addressed by each other’s names so she looked at Jasmyn and said, ‘That is not my name, child, but you would know that if the two of you had bothered to do things the correct way.’ Now I know my mother is seriously pissed off. As soon as Jasmyn leaves I know I’m a goner. I walk Jasmyn out of the house and to the gate and we stand there awkward as fuck, not sure what to say. Then she says, ‘I’m going to go home now’ and walks away. Now I have to go back in the house and face my mom. Long story short: she called all the fires of damnation upon me. I was cussed out in English, French, and Kinyarwanda. I didn’t even know my mother knew such swear words. She shat on me, man. For a good hour she just shat on me. Eventually she ran out of steam because I wasn’t putting up any resistance. Then she told me she was so disappointed in me. Like, thoroughly. Like only a mother can express disappointment. I think if she could’ve pressed the undo button on my life she would have. Yoh! I’ve never heard my mother so wounded.”

  “She would be, though,” says Yasseen. “You were supposed to be studying for a biology exam but instead you were doing home-based practicals. Did you pass the exam?”

  “A-plus, my man. I don’t fuck around. I just fuck.”

  “Did she tell your dad?”

  “No, she didn’t. I struck a Faustian deal with her.”

  “What was the deal?”

  “That’s between me and my mom, fam,” says Séraphin, taking a swig of juice.

  “Wow, Séra, that’s the most messed up and funniest shit I’ve ever heard,” says Andrew.” Shit should be a film.”

  “Stick around, kid, my life is based on a true story,” says Séraphin.

  “I don’t even want to imagine that happening with either of my parents,” says Bianca.

  “The way I figure it, in life you’re going to be walked in on by your kids, your dog, your friends, or your parents,” says Séraphin. “I can tick one of those things already so the rest ain’t that bad. Y’all need to live in fear. You know what was the worst part? I had to wait a year before I actually experienced an orgasm. A whole year – can you imagine? And for a long time whenever I was about to come I panicked and looked towards the door just to see if my mom was there.” The freshly kindled fires of laughter take a long time to burn themselves low.

  “Fuck. That story takes the cake. I thought I’d heard stories but that’s something else,” says Richard after a while. Everyone is shaking their heads and occasionally someone laughs at a remembered detail which makes everyone else also laugh, starting the avalanche again.

  “Right, I think this calls for some kind of toast,” says Yasseen. Everyone reaches for a glass.

  “To what?” asks Séraphin.

  “Hmm, to first times that will, hopefully, be last times,” says Bianca.

  “Amen to that,” says Adewale.

  “And girls who don’t judge and take control,” says James.

  “For sure,” says Godwin.

  “To remembe
ring to close bedroom doors,” says Richard. “And olive oil.”

  “Fuck you guys,” says Séraphin, smiling. “Cheers.”

  The hubbub of the pub stops as a pause button is pressed somewhere. Whrrrrrr! Greyish lines flicker on the screen as the tape is rewound. The play button is pressed just in time to bring a lounge in Windhoek-West into focus. Its walls are peppered with Kodak fragments of a life in progress. The camera zooms in on the two people sitting on opposite sides of the room. Therése sits regally in an armchair while Séraphin attempts to look blithe on a sofa. A silence which makes the eardrums pulse rhythmically lets any observer know that something loud and aurally violent has just passed through the room. Therése glares disdainfully at her son, Séraphin absorbs her stare and deflects its withering power around the room by looking distractedly at carefully collected artefacts of their life in Namibia. His calm visage belies the cold dread that roosts in his chest.

  “Who was that girl?”

  Séraphin sucks at his saliva glands before he says, “That lovely lady was Jasmyn.”

  Therése’s eyes narrow, top and bottom eyelashes hover just a few millimetres away from each other, and her head rotates a little so that her ears are better tuned to detect Séraphin’s insolence. “Séraphin, you will not speak to me like that.”

  Therése’s tone corrodes the air around her. Séraphin sits still in his seat.

  “Jasmyn,” Therése says to herself after another minute slinks by them with its tail between its legs. She takes a deep breath and then says, “In my house, Séraphin? In my house with a girl who doesn’t even know our names. You will laugh and think ‘Oh, she is being so old-fashioned, what is in a name?’ But this girl doesn’t even know who we are, where we come from, and you have the courage to do what you did with her in my house. If it was outside maybe I would understand. But my house is not a place for this foolishness, Séraphin. Look at me.”

  Séraphin faces his mother.

  “I will say what I have to say and you will listen, Séraphin. For once you will listen. You will not bring your bad manners to this house an more. You will not bring your disrespect here. Not in my house where I have given up my life to raise you and your brothers. You constantly tell me I am old-fashioned. You can say that about an old dress. But you will never say that to me or your father as long as you live in this house. What did you call us the other day? Rwandasauruses. We are dinosaurs to you, eh, Séraphin. We are old and our rules and ways mean nothing to you. That is why you carry on with these sneak-thief activities with this – Jasmyn person – the day before a serious exam. No! I will not allow this. I have been patient with you. I can understand you are growing and changing. But I am telling you that you need to think about how you grow and how you change. If it is not good for the household, leave it outside. Séraphin, look at me. In my house there is only one man. Everyone else here is a boy, a child. The purpose of children is to be raised. If you think you are a man, then you must make your own home and be a man there. But you know you are a child, Séraphin. You know this. So you will be raised. You have a year left in this house before you go to university. In that year you will be raised. I do not want to hear arguments between you and your father. I do not want to see you fighting with Yves or Éric. You can complain in your bed. You can complain outside. But you will not complain where anyone in this house can hear you. You have tried to be a man in my house, Séraphin, and you have failed. So you will be a child. My child. Turihamwe?”