by Rémy Ngamije
He moves to the bar, using his frame to shoulder people aside. At the bar he orders water. Disentangling himself from the jostling bar crowd he steps aside to sip his water, looking at the dancing crowd.
Champagne bottles with sparklers float above the dancers’ heads, balanced precariously on swaying trays as they travel from one side of the club to another, bound for the VIP tables where they stand, sparkling, drawing in their desired prey like fish in the deep to an angler. Every once in a while a beautiful woman will ascend to the VIP tables. Séraphin’s eyes seek out his friends on the dance floor. Bianca is in the middle, hands in the air, care-free, snaking her waist to the left and to the right. Godwin and Adewale are the only ones brave enough to dance with her. James and Yasseen shuffle by themselves and Richard and Andrew’s heads press close together as they shout something at each other. Séraphin sees someone approaching him out of the corner of his eye.
“Can you get me a bottle of water too?” Silmary asks. She has to speak at volume to be heard. She reaches in her purse to pull out some money but Séraphin waves her away.
“Still or sparkling?”
“Sparkling.” Séraphin pushes back to the counter and returns with her bottle of water.
“Thanks,” she shouts.
“No worries.”
“What happened back there?”
“Where?”
Séraphin finds it hard to hear Silmary above the club’s frenzy when the DJ slides the next song – a scorpion-stinging track from Eve and Drag-On – so she has to sidle a bit a closer to Séraphin, who bends down just a little to hear her.
“At the door. How come you weren’t let in?”
“That’s just Cape Town being itself. We weren’t appropriately dressed. Which is short for: we’re black. All of these clubs that are trying to be high class think black people are a devaluing factor. Can’t be exclusive when all the black people are getting in, can you?”
“Is it like that all of the time?”
“Depends where you go. Some places are cool, some aren’t. This place used to be cool until they decided to become upper.”
“So why’d you still come here?”
“Honestly,” says Séraphin, looking at the dancing crowd, “I don’t know. I guess it’s part of the tradition.”
The DJ splices the chorus line of the upcoming song into the one that is currently playing and the crowd shrieks in excitement. When Silmary speaks again she is inaudible. She pulls in closer to Séraphin and puts her hand around his waist to steady herself against the rush of people making their way from the bar to the dance floor. “What tradition?” she asks.
The hand on his waist is lightly placed and it is not there for long, but when it pulls away it is missed like the familiar comfort of a back rub. “High Lord tradition,” he says.
“You should explain this whole High Lord business sometime.”
“Sure. Sometime.” Séraphin takes a drink from his bottle. “Master’s in English. That’s going to make you the most underpaid punctuationalist in the world.”
Silmary’s laugh is lost in the chorus of a new song. Sean Paul brooks no disturbances while he works at loosening torsos and placing jiggling buttocks.
“Probably,” she says when she can be heard again. “It’s in comparative literature.”
“Well, that won’t put food on the table for our children,” the first Séraphin says, aloud, quickly, before Séraphin wrests control of the conversation back.
“That’s why you’ve got to become a serious lawyer. Keep a roof over our head, food on the table, paper underneath my pen,” says Silmary.
“Sounds like a tough ask,” says Séraphin, glaring at the first, who shrugs his shoulders, “considering that I might not actually practise law.”
“What’re you going to do, then? Dual-income households are better than one, you know.”
“I don’t know, maybe use the law degree to fight the drug racketeering charges for selling drugs to parents when I become an English teacher,” said the first Séraphin, elbowing in again. Silmary laughed a little. The first made an I-got-this face at Séraphin. “Yeah, parents, there’s definitely a market there. Only way I can see parents coping with their children.”
“A drug-dealing, literature-peddling, comma-pushing English teacher,” Silmary said. “Has a ring to it – definitely a story there.”
“Fifty for a metaphor-tamine, hundred for a high-perbole – plus all the marking. We’d never see each other.”
“It’ll all be worth it. You’ll get dedications and acknowledgements, maybe a chapter or two.”
“Chapter? I’m worth a book at least,” says the second Séraphin.
“Maybe,” says Silmary. “But I can’t write it without source material.”
“You got a plan for acquiring this material?” asks the first.
“I might have some,” she says. Just as she looks like she is about to continue with her explanation Andrew materialises out of the crowd.
“You guys not dancing?” he asks. “Séra, you’re usually grinding, like, three girls by now.”
“Not feeling it tonight, Drew,” says Séraphin. He feels irritation flare when Andrew comes and stands next to Silmary, placing his arm around her, drawing her closer.
“Let’s go and dance,” he says.
Silmary smiles at Séraphin as she and Andrew move away, leaving him alone near the bar. His phone vibrates.
BeeEffGee—Sans_Seraph: Stop hitting on that girl and come and dance with me!
Sans_Seraph: I wasn’t hitting on her.
BeeEffGee: Stop lying to yourself.
Eventually, he joins everyone else on the dance floor, liking and hating the moments when he finds himself dancing near Silmary, whose subtly rhythmic body seems to send out some call that his tries hard not to echo. He channels his attention towards Bianca instead.
The night’s music offering is the standard fare. The pop creates the build-ups and everyone sings along to the choruses; the hip hop’s vulgarity is politely accepted as a via medium for all the things people wish they could say to each other so its misogyny is looked and danced over. By the time the electro house begins to take over Séraphin and his friends are tired of dancing. They have started to look at their phones more often and when shouts of, “Go, white boy!” begin to encourage awkward jerking in the middle of a spectating circle Séraphin says, “When people stand and watch other people dance, that’s usually when it’s time to go home.”
Outside Avec, Romeo continues to wield his devastating power over the waiting line, which does not seem to have shortened.
“Remember when we could do this until four in the morning?” says Godwin.
“We’re getting old, man,” says Richard.
“Not old,” Bianca says, “bored.”
“Same difference,” says Richard.
Adewale calls Idriss but he is too far away to come and fetch them so they have to flag down another taxi. “Remms,” Adewale says. He turns to Silmary to ask where she stays but Andrew says he will take her home. “Okay, just Remms.”
“Yes, boss,” says the driver. “Let’s go.”
Andrew exchanges handshakes with everyone while Silmary hugs them. When she embraces Séraphin he says, “Don’t forget that chapter.”
“Chapter? I thought it was a book,” she replies with a laugh. “Where the heck would I even start?”
“Truth first, friction later.” The second Séraphin winked behind her.
“What?”
“Fiction. I meant fiction, “Séraphin says quickly. “It’s something my English teacher used to say about writing. I haven’t penned anything in years now but I’m sure it’s still sound advice.”
“You used to write?”
“When I had more time, now not so much. I save all of my Pulitzer Prize-winning compositions for chat messages these days.”
“I’ll be sure to text you when I get started on that book then.”
“What book?” asks A
ndrew. “What are you two talking about?”
“Nothing,” says Séraphin as he gets in the taxi. “Check you tomorrow, Drew. See you around, Sil.”
Bianca waits until the taxi has rounded the corner and Andrew and Silmary are out sight before she says, “Well, I’m going to have some seriously age-restricted dreams about that girl.”
“Where did Andrew find her?” asks Godwin.
“And why him?” asks Séraphin with his head in his hands.
“Remember the agreement, guys,” Richard says. “No moves.”
Everyone turns to look at Bianca and Séraphin on the back seat. “What?” they say together.
“No moves,” repeats Godwin firmly.
“Agreed. None,” says Bianca. Séraphin nods.
As the taxi ride winds its way out of the city centre and towards Remms, Bianca and Séraphin text each.
BeeEffGee—Sans_Seraph: You were hitting on her!
Sans_Seraph: Just talking to her.
BeeEffGee: Come on. Wordplay is foreplay. You know that!
Sans_Seraph: Haha. Don’t use my own words against me, woman! Anyway, nothing’s going to happen, man. Promise.
BeeEffGee: Ha! We shall see.
XIX
David Evans Caffrey believed that in writing, as in life, the truth came first and the fiction trotted afterwards willingly. The truth could be announced by a fanfare of fantastic fortune or arrive as a carousel of calamity. No matter its manifestation, without fail the fiction would follow. David did not come to this wisdom benignly.
When growing up in his sprawling Nairobi home there was the help’s daughter, a wispy girl called Njeri who was, according to the euphemisms of the time, his playmate for a while. It was commonplace for the domestic needs of rich British families to be taken care of by a black family. Mr and Mrs Caffrey were hesitant about taking on Njeri’s family because they arrived clutching her tiny hand in theirs. Mrs Caffrey did not want another child on the property, least of all a girl. She had recently said goodbye to a stillborn bundle of incomplete life that made her feel a deep ache in her womb. The grief of the loss was total. It made Mrs Caffrey believe the overabundance of children in the city had in some way deprived her daughter of her share of life. Njeri’s mother assured the Caffreys the skinny girl with the tough hair would not be a nuisance. “She dust quick-quick and also peel and slice too,” her mother said. “She no trouble at all, madam.”
Mr Caffrey managed to bring his wife around to the idea of having Njeri’s family around. They moved into the two-roomed house tucked beyond the back garden, a drab construction of brick and mortar daubed with white clay, furnished with the gardening and cleaning tools needed to maintain the property. The house was not much but Njeri’s family considered it palatial.
They kept the property regal. Her father’s skill with the rose bushes had them burgeoning with blooms. His rough hands could fix anything. He also knew how to work the electricity, which was temperamental in the old colonial house. His wife cooked and baked and cooked, although everything she did somehow always fell short of Mrs Caffrey’s standards. The windows were never clear enough, the bookshelves were packed incorrectly, there was too much dust in the lounge. If the Caffreys were entertaining his colleagues from the British embassy or her wives’ club, Njeri’s mother would labour long in the house. The Caffreys and their demands dominated her days. Her husband would complain about her coming to bed late.
Njeri helped her mother in the kitchen to prepare meals and dusted the Caffrey family portraits, which were magnetic to dust. Her favourite part of the day was when David came home from school, bursting with all he had learned. She worshipped him like a minor deity when he showed her his book of letters.
“A is for Andy Apple, B is for bat … H for Hairy Hat Man, and Y for Yo-Yo Man,” David would read aloud.
The letters meant nothing to Njeri. She could neither read nor write but from the way David spoke his letters they seemed terribly important and she felt ashamed for not being able to share in his knowledge. She liked looking at his nature study book, filled with illustrations of cows that looked like crocodiles.
From an early age David knew an artistic career was not for him. What he excelled at was telling stories. He would regale Njeri with tales of the Three Little Pigs and Hansel and Gretel and she would listen attentively, her breath coming fast when the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed or when the old crone tried to place the lost siblings in her oven. Even when she had heard the stories many times she would still tense up. David enjoyed the power that came from withholding climaxes and giving conclusions.
David and Njeri became easy friends in the way that children do when left to their own devices. There was no tree they did not climb together in the compound; they knew exactly where the other would seek concealment when they played hide and seek. Once, even, when Njeri’s mother was not watching and when Mrs Caffrey was away, they had sat at the same lunch table and partaken of the same meal. Usually, Njeri ate in the kitchen or in her house. This breaking of bread and sopping of soup felt delightfully deviant.
The two families lived side by side for many years, with David progressing through his primary school years, helping Njeri to pick up her letters.
When Njeri’s mother spotted a maternal bump in her kitenge her father was proud. Njeri would surely have a brother, he said. Mrs Caffrey feigned happiness for Njeri’s mother; Mr Caffrey maintained indifference. With her stomach enlarging, Njeri’s mother continued to attend to the housework despite her swelling ankles, the shortness of breath, or the kicking that grew stronger. Njeri’s father was ecstatic from the violence of the kicks. He said only boys could kick so hard.
Njeri’s mother continued her domestic duties until her water broke. David could remember the day. It was in the early evening, his father had just arrived home and his mother had some friends over in the lounge. Njeri’s mother waddled to the veranda, calling to her husband, telling him that it was time. Mr Caffrey came running from the lounge and revved up his olive green Mercedes Benz, shouting at Njeri’s father to open the gate. Mrs Caffrey came out of the lounge to find her husband packing Njeri’s mother into the back seat of the car and telling her father to climb in the front. He would drive them to the hospital and return later, he said. If Njeri’s mother was going to inconvenience them at such a time, when there were guests to entertain, Mrs Caffrey said, then the daughter would have to take her place. The silver trays of biscuits and drinks would not carry themselves. Mrs Caffrey’s party went on late. So did the birthing. Mr Caffrey returned home to find his son and Njeri sleeping next to each other on the sofa in the lounge, David’s arm draped protectively over the girl. He teared up as he carefully lifted David and carried him to his bedroom before going back down to the lounge to shake Njeri awake and send her off to her own house. Then he went to give his wife the news.
The day after Njeri’s mother gave birth, David woke up to find his breakfast unprepared. Puzzled, he sought Njeri in their house and found her father packing their scant belongings into two suitcases. His arms bulged with veins as he carried them out of the compound, calling to Njeri to follow him. David did not know why his friend was leaving. Nobody would tell him. All his father would say was that it was hard to explain. His mother spent the day in tears.
The truth was this: David had a half-sister, somewhere, a half-Caffrey, half-Kenyan hybrid he would never know. Everything else that came after Njeri and her family left was the fiction which made his reality carry on. His mother distanced herself from his father. The pound of flesh which came out of Njeri’s mother was used to purchase Mr Caffrey’s unending compliance. There would be no scandal, there would be no pursuing Njeri’s family whatsoever. There would be David, total, alone. Njeri and her family were never seen again. Where poor people go when they carry the shame of the rich remains a mystery.
Even the truth that he had a sibling came to David by accident. He was approaching his teenage-hood. He assumed Njeri’s family had been d
ismissed for theft. It was left to the next houseboy, a loquacious teenage boy called Odinga, who always had the early edition of gossip, to help David put two and two together. The news stunned him. His parents refused to entertain the subject whenever he broached it and tried to enquire about his unknown sister who was out there, somewhere.
The house seemed to take revenge. The roses died. The cracks in the property multiplied. Odinga left without warning six months later, leaving the Caffreys without reliable help for weeks. And in that special way that signs become symbols when they are viewed through the right emotional lens, the old house’s electric wiring would, every so often, plunge the property into a blackness which could not be dismissed by telling it to pack and leave.
The half-sister was, at first, a curiosity. Then she became a longing. Unsatisfied, she became a hurt, burning itself into bile and bitterness when David, growing up in a city overflowing with blackness, found his friendships curtailed by his mother. His friends were black, his Swahili crackled with idioms, Kuti was his cult, and black girls were the nirvana. His mother was not impressed. His father remained monkish.
When it was time to attend university, David’s requirements were simple: far, far away from his family. His parents hoped for Cambridge or Oxford or Edinburgh. David chose Remms.
At Remms, David was confronted by the myth of the Rainbow Nation. It allowed him to date a pretty South African girl, Dineo. She was studying politics and history; he pursued English and the classics. David found himself spending a lot of time explaining to his friends that Dineo was a person just like him. She did not kiss differently. She did not make love using any mystical devilry. Little by little, and stare by stare, he learned which places he could frequent with her until, eventually, he grew tired of loving under scrutiny.
