by Rémy Ngamije
Richard nodded. “Especially with white girls,” he added.
“You can’t be serious?” Yasseen looked at Richard with big eyes.
“All you have to do is make sure they’re on the pill, and then you just go for it,” Richard replied. Godwin agreed. The rest of the table seemed incredulous, most of them falsely so.
“What if you get a girl pregnant, man?”
“My guy, white girls aren’t trying to get pregnant from a black guy,” Godwin said. “So you best believe their contraception is on god-mode levels. You can nut right on their Fallopians without worrying about fatherhood.”
“You’ll still sweat for days the day the AIDS test comes around though,” Richard said sagely. “Yoh! The foolishness.”
The foolishness indeed, thought Séraphin now, tossing the packet of condoms into his trolley and wheeling it to the tillpoint. The cashier scanned the milk, sugar, tea, pasta, bread, the canned goods, and refused to touch the condoms, shuffling them across the barcode scanner using the shower gel bottle.
“They don’t bite,” Séraphin said. The cashier ignored him and rang up the total. Séraphin handed her his card. At the last minute he realised he had not asked for a plastic bag.
Going back and forth between Windhoek and Cape Town always dulled some reflexes. In Cape Town you had to pay for a plastic bag; in Windhoek the cashiers started packing automatically. In Cape Town he had to remember the only black thing white people felt comfortable talking about was the rhinoceros and its protection while in Windhoek he would have to travel far outside of the city before he found someone willing to spend even a minute talking about the endangered species. Organic produce was a thing in Cape Town. People worried whether food came from the ground and made its way to their tables without science molesting it. Namibians had no such qualms. Even if it came from a manufacturing plant on Mars the only thing that would come out of a Namibian’s mouth would be, “Do you have kapana spice? Or Aromat?” Going between the two places required Séraphin to adjust his sensitivities and expectations. He kissed customer service goodbye as soon as the bus crossed into Namibia, and remembered that the weather was topic of genuine interest in South Africa, especially in Cape Town, where people went as far as knowing which direction the wind was blowing from. It usually took about a week for the familiar routines to return.
Séraphin asked for a plastic bag and drew a disgusted look from the cashier. Now she had to ring up thirty cents. Séraphin reached into his pockets and handed her a fifty cent coin. He packed his own groceries—it was much too early in the year to become irked about trivial things. The Mother City would present numerous opportunities in the coming days.
In Cape Town he could change his mould to suit any situation – black and fiery when race was attacked in law school, calm and reconciliatory when panties needed assurance that he was not one of them. He loved this city of camouflage.
As he walked back to his residence he pulled his cellphone from his pocket and wrote a message.
Sans_Seraph—HiLos_Of_E: Back in town.
GodForTheWin: Welcome back, comrade.
JustSayYaz: Aweh!
RichDick: Back from an exile in the wild.
Sans_Seraph: Are we getting ourselves into some sort of mischief tonight?
GodForTheWin: Are we the High Lords or not? Of course. Everyone’s in town. Let’s do something.
BeeEffGee: Count me in for mischief.
KimJohnUn: Glad you’re back, Séra. I’m in.
AddyWale: Count me in too.
KentTouchThis: I’m in. Can I bring a friend?
RichDick: You have friends?
KentTouchThis: No. Just acquaintances who can’t take a hint.
Sans_Seraph: Your friend got a name? And are they real?
KentTouchThis: Very real. Her name is Silmary.
BeeEffGee: Please tell me this one is of consenting age.
KentTouchThis: Fuck you guys! Bianca, you won’t be able to keep your hands off her.
BeeEffGee: The issue is whether she will be able to keep her hands off me. Remember what happened with the last girl, Drew.
Sans_Seraph: You ran covert missions on her, Bee. Bitch move.
BeeEffGee: How’s it my fault Andrew liked a girl who liked girls? He should’ve done advanced recon before.
Sans_Seraph: Still, you could’ve told Andrew early on so he could’ve aborted the mission.
KentTouchThis: Thank you!
Sans_Seraph: Anyway, let’s move on. Let’s do something? And nobody’s to make any moves, either covert or explicit, on Andrew’s friend. Are we agreed, m’lords? And lady?
AddyWale: Agreed.
KimJohnUn: Agreed.
Addywale: Copacetic.
Sans_Seraph: Nigerians and their big words, though…
GodForTheWin: We’ll let Andrew prosper for once.
JustSayYaz: Hahaha.
Sans_Seraph: Bianca?
BeeEffGee: Meh.
AddyWale: That cannot be sufficiently interpreted as a yes.
BeeEffGee: Fine. Agreed. Still meh.
Sans_Seraph: Then we’re in concurrence. Meeting at the usual place?
GodForTheWin: Stupid question.
Sans_Seraph: Later, HiLos.
XIV
Remms University in Cape Town is named after Estienne Lazarre Remms, a French Huguenot farmer, later turned industrialist and politician, who donated stolen land for its creation from his own estate just beneath Table Mountain. Imbued with the paranoia of men who fear the erosion of memory as times change, he decided that his name, a proud Huguenot legacy, needed to make a leap towards immortality. The Huguenot names were already being eroded by contact, the frail French failing in the heat, the Dutch tongue proving to be hardier and pernicious. Durand became Du Randt, La Buscagne morphed into Labuschagne, and Le Clercq hardened into De Klerk. Just that year alone Remms had retired to his holiday house in Franschhoek and found nobody to converse with in French. Even the name of the picturesque town had irked him like never before. Franschhoek, the Dutch naming the French. Mon Dieu! The situation was grave and it needed quick addressing. Back to Cape Town Remms went.
The dreams, ambitions, and fears of the man were helped along by the realities of the day: Remms had acquired much through the country’s laws of exclusion and eviction and blackness flowed endlessly around Southern Africa, seemingly of its own accord and voluntariness. The migration of blackness from here and there and near and far allowed Remms’ university to be built in half the time that it took to dream it. From feverish fantasy to burning desire, Remms University, the youngest of the axis of elitism which annexed the Western Cape, came into being.
In summer the campus wore a lush green mantle. The lawns were as pristine as a fresh haircut, the arbors were viridescent and vigorous. When the winter chill crept up on Cape Town the campus changed to its warm winter couture of ochre, amber, and magenta. While the rest of the city looked as drab as a dripping nose, Remms University remained robust and scenic. Remms was an amalgam of impressive colonnades, imposing and inviting faculty buildings, and private enclaves.
Upon his death, which came a few years after the inception of the university, a mausoleum ringed with splendid columns and topped by a domed roof was erected on the slopes behind the university. The sentiment which motivated its construction was to allow Remms’ spirit to look over the university he had helped to bring into issue, and to gaze at the ocean which had brought his ancestors fleeing persecution from France to the Cape Colony. Later, a statue of the man, caught in an energetic mid-step, as though it were about to step off its plinth and stride down to the campus below, was added to the memorial. Carved into the plinth were the words of a poem, which was attributed to him. It had been found in one of his journals, written in a neat script:
In the cool of night and heat of day,
With toil and trouble, and God’s favour too,
In this land I made and dreamed of empire.
Remms Memorial was, at firs
t, deemed sacrosanct. A wrought-iron fence was placed around the perimeter to keep the rest of the hoi polloi out. The memorial’s vantage proved too alluring to the university’s student population to leave alone. It became common sport to sneak up there in the middle of the night and become uproariously drunk. After an intoxicated student nearly impaled himself to death on the spikes of the fence it was decided that access would put an end to stupidity and the iron ring was removed, allowing the commanding views to become common property. The smoking of cannabis at Remms Memorial was also quite popular among the student body. It was rumoured that Remms’s ghost could not decline a finely rolled blunt. He would step off his granite block and share a few puffs, offering a wise word to a wayward student, or providing a revelation to Master’s or doctoral candidates. It became especially common for literature professors to scribble “Go and see the ghost” or “Remms might have a word for you” on the submissions of uninspired students.
Remms University grew and flourished slowly, gradually, and, later on, at pace, with its research gaining increased recognition, its burgeoning esteem staking claims on the country’s intellectual terrain. In its early days the student body was bleached bone-white. Everything in South Africa that could be used as a foothold to a better life was. Through the law of the land and, subtly, the law of God and His Son Jesus Christ, the natives were legislated into alienation and dispossession. Remms, like many institutions of its ilk, had blackness on its campus only if they serviced whiteness and stockpiled privilege for the children of the landed. The situation held sway over the country, with protests and riots and vociferous speeches about the injustices of discrimination being put down by force. The elements of protest which could escape were exiled to neighbouring countries. Sometimes they would be pursued by the agents of the righteous state there, too, and anonymous black graves sprang up all over Southern Africa. Throughout this dark period of history when white was right and might and life and everything else was death, Remms University carried on.
But the situation called apartheid could only work as long as three conditions held out. Firstly, the natives had to remain pacified. They were not. The flurry of independence all over the continent could not be ignored. It would, eventually, sweep southwards with great and terrible vengeance.
Secondly, the white minority had to remain united. The dream only worked if everyone dreamed the same dream but, already, there were many calling for the system to change its ways.
Thirdly, the money had to hold out.
While prisoners were carted off to Robben Island en masse, blackness learned how to consolidate its human tragedy into a love song for freedom that wooed peace seekers; the world fell in love with a man who could forgive despite years of imprisonment. The protests grew in intensity at home and abroad, the world paid attention. Whiteness became angry at first and then it became afraid. Then it baulked.
Finally, the money started running out.
As soon as the African National Congress was unbanned, Remms University went on a full-scale baptism of blackness. The Cape governors, administrators, prime ministers, and state presidents whose names littered Remms’ campus were plucked from plaques and replaced with names from the struggle and, later on, from the prestige of the democratic and freshly transformed country. Names like Sisulu, Tambo, Biko, Mbeki, and Sobukwe would make their way onto faculty buildings and campus residences. The university, too, sensibly chose to change its motto from Educandi ad imperium – “Educating for the empire” – to Educationem est imperium – Education is our empire”.
So it came to pass that just as South Africa was ecstatically ingesting yet more collective opium, this time from the delirium of finally overcoming the apartheid myopia, two tiny countries in East Africa plunged into their own fever dreams.
By the time Séraphin arrived at Remms University the institution had completed a Lazarus act of such aplomb that the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch could only look on like angry exes who wished they could tell the world the truth about Remms without sounding bitter. Because Remms was well aware it was built on a shaky past, it was industrious in its efforts to maintain a veneer of diversity and inclusion. Its alumni, trustees, and landed legacy holders, showered it with scholarships and donations. Its rankings, enviable press coverage, and the total absence of controversy seemed to be the work of sorcery rather than careful planning, meticulous talent acquisition, and an impeccable nose for staying ahead of and out of trouble.
Amongst Remms’ most hated qualities was its penchant to lure academics from rival institutions. The nearly bottomless endowment fund allowed it to create research chairs where formerly there were none, well-funded positions with all of the assistants one could possibly need, wide research interests which only required diligence and prestige in publication. Few lecturers or professors could resist Remms’ advances when they were made. One day an email from Remms would appear in a promising junior lecturer’s inbox at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, gentle in its enquiries, its flirtations hidden in flattery. Then the coquetry would be put aside and an offer would be made: future chair of this, director of research in that, fiefdoms in freshly-created research fields in medicine, law, African studies, and contemporary literature. A while later a certain university would find itself placing vacancy advertisements on its website.
Undergraduates, too, could gain admission to the university through a combination of academic, artistic, or athletic abilities. But the university’s determination to ensure its student body remained motley-crewed to push up its international rankings was pursued with the clinical and meticulous zeal of a bonsai artist. The student body grew branches in race and culture pools according to some internally determined aesthetic which produced a diversity divorced from reality. At high school level top students were recruited in the same way talented high school athletes are pursued by colleges in the United States; Remms’ wide network of affiliated schools permitted it a bountiful harvest of fresh undergraduates each and every year, and to each it promised a variation of the dream: adventure for the small-town boy; belonging for the directionless teenage beauty queen; popularity for the pimply nerd; self-discovery and acceptance for the sexually repressed. Reinvention and renaissance could be found at Remms University in the bustling city of Cape Town.
In the summer of Séraphin’s first arrival at Remms the campus was in bloom, the riot of flowers along the walkways spilled their colours into the fragrant air. Students walked between buildings or milled around on campus, sitting on the lawns and talking, some hugging each other after enforced absences during the holidays. Remms was beautiful, both in its organic newness, which took advantage of the mild weather and its fresh intake of young minds and in its architectural ageing, which weathered each passing year with a new layer of grace. Séraphin felt the pall of the previous year lift from his shoulders. His attention was drawn to a group of female students walking by. The curves of their bodies were as confusing as the black and white stripes on a herd of zebra. The individual curve of a waist and the silhouette of bust were lost in the swaying prismatic parade. The effect was dizzying and after a few moments of his eyes darting from exposed centimetres of legs, inches of navels, backs, and crevices in plunging necklines his senses were overpowered. Some male students walked past with their bags slung casually over their shoulders, deep in conversation, gesticulating hands punctuating particular points for emphasis. Their eyes burned with knowing which would not permit them back into the Eden of former ignorant lives. Séraphin wanted that knowledge for himself. He wanted to walk down the centre of Remms some day with his friends, dissecting and reassembling complex topics, some future first-year student watching him go by, envying his wisdom. The Cape Town skyline nibbled at the periphery of his vision so that when he was not looking at it directly it was not too far away. It teased, like a lover, inviting, whispering words which intoxicated and inspired: “Who will have me? Who shall rule me?”
Estienne Lazarre Remms and Séraphin Turiham
we, in their own ways, in their own times, had looked down at the land laid out in front of them and said, “Me.”
XV
Robert Sobukwe House stood isolated from all of the other Remms student residences huddled closer to the main campus. It was a long white Dutch-style house with three storeys offering the residents on the top floor a slim but prized view of the sea. While the upper crust of Sobukwe House snacked on the thin slice of the Atlantic Ocean, the other students were afforded views of the gardens. Carefully kept lawns with trimmed hedges coloured the premises; here and there trees offered inviting and poetic shade under which a book could be read. Home to fifty male students, Sobukwe House was one of the smaller Remms residences. In addition it had the unenviable reputation of being classified as a “bookish” residence. When Séraphin alighted from his taxi outside the main door that first year, with Idriss promising him diligent future taxi services before pulling away, he was taken to his room by Tendai, a senior student who also served as the residence’s assistant warden.
Tendai tried to sell him on the appeals of Sobukwe: “It’s quiet, so you can actually study here, unlike the other residences. People complain about the walk to campus in the winter but it isn’t that bad, really. The rooms are larger, too. Originally it only used to house postgrads but now it has undergrads too. The postgrads don’t really like that too much. They want the residence to go back to its roots. But that can be a bit tricky these days.” Tendai chuckled. “It used to be called The White House. And it wasn’t because of the colour of the walls.” The corridor in which they were walking had reddish brown tiles worn smooth and shiny. “Here we are.”
Tendai selected a key from the bunch he was holding and unlocked the door. “Room fifty-one.”
The room was not appealing. A writing desk with knots and scars colonised a corner; some of the shelves of the short bookshelf next to it had sagged from bearing past burdens; and a wash-basin with formerly white enamel stood with the bottom of its discoloured bowl nearest the door. In the middle of the room was a narrow bed which looked so single it could have applied to a dating site. Tendai noticed Séraphin taking in the furniture.
