by Rémy Ngamije
The truth was this: he was in love with Dineo but he lacked the courage and the determination to fight for the relationship. The fiction which helped him to disengage from Dineo was this: he wrote her hurtful letters, chronicling how little he had felt for her during the subsistence of their relationship. The ease with which the lies sprang to the tip of his pen surprised him. Dineo took her leave of the relationship. David floated, lonely, jaded, to his final year.
At his graduation he decided he would find meaning in a classroom. There was a whole world of Njeris who needed to be taught how to read and write. He would find them, even if he could not find her. He worked his way through South African, Lesotho, and Swaziland high schools. His arrivals were announced by his difference: the only white teacher at all-black schools. He was Mr Mlungu or Teacher Shilumbu wherever he went. His arrivals were defined by energetic, theatrical classes; his departures were marked by a trail of forlorn children sitting at scratched classroom desks while their new English teachers bored them.
After years of amorous exile he fell in earnest love with another black woman. Her name was Selma. His teaching journey had taken him to Namibia. His parents, still living in Nairobi, had hoped he would tire of teaching and return home. The house was old, they were old, they needed him around the place. David told them he did not plan to return to Kenya. His posting in Windhoek was in Katutura, the place where nobody wanted to live and, it seemed to him, where nobody wanted to teach either. There were untold numbers of Njeris waiting for him. The government school, with its faded green and blue paint, its windows trapped in perpetual winks because of broken panes, and its sun-beaten playground were where he decided to conduct the magnum opus of his teaching career. Here, he believed, he would make a difference.
The inexplicable love of the land also made him elevate his girlfriend to fiancée and, with great disapproval from his mother and more silence from his father, to wife. When they flew to Nairobi to meet his parents his mother looked at Selma as they sat in the lounge and said, “Another one.” She swept herself off to her bedroom. She excused herself from his wedding, but his father attended and gave David his blessing. The Namibian wedding was a colourful affair with joyous ululations. The start of the marriage was happy, the middle and the ending were not.
What David deemed to be true, when he could finally reflect on his marriage without feeling hurt, was this: what attracted people to each other was quite different from what kept them together. The hard part lay in finding the fiction to keep the attraction and the trust going. When he and Selma had met she was attracted to his zeal for teaching. She liked how he talked about his lesson plans, strewn with references to current music, television, and schoolyard slang he picked up so he could speak to his students as one of them. She admired his dedication. The profession, though, did not return his ardour. Too many students, too many assignments to grade—to carry on his labour he stole time from their marriage. There came a stage when Selma had not received a love letter in months but David’s students were the recipients of weekly page-long correspondence. Sure, not romantic, but all of it was considered and scripted with focused and particular intentions. In addition to this, David’s job did not pay well. Neither did Selma’s nursing job. Passion for his work made up for the absence of zeroes in David’s payslip, something Selma could not comprehend. Why was a white man content with so little? They were living in Dorado Park then, and while it flattered their neighbours to know a white person could live among them, Selma was not content to settle. She wanted more, as everyone is entitled to. She acted on it, as few people have a right to.
There was a string of infidelities and their predictable fabrication of forgivenesses. The sincerity of her apologies was lessened by their frequency. David’s pardons grew shallower each time. The marriage subsisted with the air of a miserable and neglected thing heavy upon it.
If it hadn’t been for Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” David was certain they would have remained chained to each other, rolling the boulder of their dead love uphill, only to see it roll back down. The night the Sisyphean rock rolled downhill for the last time David was marking in their lounge and Selma was typing on her phone, pressing buttons repeatedly so that a desired letter would appear on the screen. The song’s dying words brought their marriage to a final stop.
The marking and typing stopped. David remembered that all lives have been lived before, all sadnesses experienced, and all joys looked upon as though they were the only ones in the world. He was not special. Selma was not special. They were not special. There was some comfort in that. They looked at each other as the melody died away, both agreeing to tear asunder what God had put together. There was a storm of words and blame-laying which ensured neither left the marriage feeling as though they had failed. When the divorce came it was the kindest thing they had done for each other in a long time.
David’s mother was secretly pleased.
Perhaps her son would return home in the wake of the divorce. She wrote to him, her first email, a technological marvel which shrank time too rudely, delivering words before she could recall them. She asked if he would return to Nairobi for a while. David said he would not. Her second email came soon after.
David,
Our family has dirty laundry, but dirty laundry is best washed at home. Please come home.
He stared at the message for a while before responding.
Mother,
I don’t know whether we have a machine big enough.
Remember, we have to separate the laundry, the whites from the blacks.
His mother did not write again.
Spurred by spite at his ex-wife’s admonitions about his lack of ambition he had applied for a vacant post at St. Luke’s and was immediately appointed. The pay was substantially better. The classes were smaller. He was heartened, however, to find that laziness remained the biggest impediment even at such an elite school.
An evening came when he had a fresh sheaf of papers to grade. It was derailed by the deliberate discovery of a bottle of red wine and John Coltrane. The truth, David thought as he slouched in his chair, was this: Njeri was gone. His Nairobi life was gone. Selma was gone. It was all just goneness in his life. An empty feeling hollowed out his chest.
But that was not all of the truth, he thought to himself, sitting up straight again. There was his teaching. He performed for a sold-out crowd every day. A conscripted one, sure, but a good actor played for whoever showed up. His mind drifted to his classroom, seeing himself prepare for a lesson. His students walked in from stage left. He watched himself teach, animated as he acted out a death scene. There was some applause. And then grumbling when he gave out the homework. His students exited stage right. The cycle repeated.
David sighed, deeply, and put his papers aside, reaching for the essay Séraphin had written for the Remms Undergraduate Scholarship programme. It would need some work, but it had the blueprint of a good admission essay. Lord knows, David thought, he had gotten into Remms with less. He read it again. Maybe, he thought, this was the fiction of his life: that his efforts would become immortal through his inspiration. He smiled at the thought. That was not so bad.
All The World’s A Stage – by Séraphin Turihamwe
Beginnings are tricky because there are no countdowns to the start of a start. There is nobody to point out that this – this moment right here – is where “it” all begins. On your marks, get set, go – there is none of that. Life starts in the middle and leaves people trying to piece everything together as they go along. It is better that way. If everyone knew where the beginning was, nothing would ever get done because everyone would stand around waiting for things to begin. What my mother says about starts is this:“Everything that is not the end, must be the start of something else.”
But how do you know an ending from The End? Who tells you? And would you believe them if they said so?
Would you even want to know?
Maybe it is just something my mother believes to moti
vate herself through her days. After all, she might think, if a flopped cake is not The End then maybe it is the start of many jokes after supper when she serves it. Or maybe the idea is what allowed her to survive leaving Rwanda in 1994 and settle in Namibia and raise me and my brothers. If it is the latter, then I owe her an apology for doubting her. If not, I am skipping dessert.
I guess when you look at things the way my mother does it makes sense that you have to curb your disappointment when you enter the cinema and realise that the trailers have already played, that the title sequence has faded from the screen, and you have missed the first five minutes of the film. You just have to make sense of the bullets and flying cars as best as you can. Everyone else is also doing the same.
But if nobody ever makes it to the start of a story, and if everyone is in the same boat just bailing and steering as best as they can, then I guess the whole point of life is to make some sort of start and then work towards some kind of ending, whenever and wherever it might be. Part plagiarism will permit me to agree with Shakespeare:
“All the world’s a stage...” upon which we perform for the eternal audience of one.
Only the person who makes it to the end knows what everything was all about. He who survives the thunder, gets to tell the tale. Life will only makes sense right at the end, when the person who has been living it can look back and realise that the tragic nature of life is actually a comedy.
I guess, then, that the whole point of life is to dive in, hold on, and hope that a flopped cake is worth the laugh at the very end.
XX
“What is the sauce?” asked Silmary. There was a joke afoot and she was not in on it. She looked around for answers.
“You aren’t saying it right,” said Adewale. “This isn’t cranberry or tomato sauce. This is The Sauce.”
“You have to say it with feeling,” Bianca said. “Which only comes from experience.”
January had faded into February. It was March and the air was warm. The long table they had commandeered at the Old Biscuit Mill was littered with craft beers, plastic cups with fresh juices, and paper plates of thin crust pizza scantily clad with toppings. The woman selling the pizza was most enthusiastic about the qualities of thin crust pizza. She was also pretty, which was why Richard, Adewale, James, Godwin, and Andrew had handed over their money to her. Séraphin, Silmary, Yasseen, and Bianca, unimpressed by the minimalist approach to pizza, hunted down the Turkish family who operated the only stall which valued quantity and quality. They returned with pita bread stuffed with peppers, onions, red cabbage, humus, and three kinds of dead animal dripping with tatziki. Seating was scarce. The scene was a sea of Wayfarer sunglasses, summer dresses, and sleeveless shirts. Séraphin spied a space at the end of a table and benches which looked like it could accommodate them all and he steered the group towards it. Before they could sit down an arm tanned a light shade of brown dropped out of the air like a railway boom and announced the space was reserved for friends who were coming later. Séraphin smiled at the arm’s owner and said they would move when the friends arrived. He sat down without waiting for a reply.
As soon as the High Lords sat down it became clear they had no intention of moving. They made themselves comfortable with conversation. Séraphin, Bianca, James, and Godwin sat on one side, Andrew, Silmary, Richard, and Adewale on the other.
“I can’t believe you guys bought that shit pizza,” Bianca said. “If you hadn’t been so sauced by that woman you’d have spent your money better.” Séraphin, Bianca, and Yasseen refused to share their food. Silmary let Andrew have a bite of her stuffed pita bread. “You chose The Sauce. Now you must swim in it.”
Silmary asked for an explanation.
“If you don’t know what The Sauce is, you’re definitely going to fall in it,” said Richard.
“Which is how everyone usually finds out about it,” added Godwin.
“So what is it?” Silmary asked.
Séraphin, who was occupied with his food, looked up to find everyone looking at him. “Why me? I don’t like my pain being paraded as a joke, guys,” said Séraphin. “I know we’re supposed to learn from other people’s mistakes, but you abuse me.” The injured look on his face would have been better executed if it did not have tatziki smeared across his lips.
“You have to hear this story,” Richard told Silmary. “It’s too funny.”
“And so sad at the same time,” Yasseen said.
“Guys,” said Séraphin as he bit into his pita bread and chewed, “I’m not your plaything.” He ruffled himself in the way his mother did when she was withholding a story when he had still been young enough to be entertained by her. She would wait for Séraphin and his brothers to work themselves into frustration at supper, enticing them with tidbits about the inappropriateness of the story, asking their father if they were old enough to hear it, and then, at long last, resign herself to their begging and flattery and leave them giddy with laughter. “Please,” Séraphin said, “respect my privacy.”
“What privacy?” Bianca asked. “Everyone knows this story.”
“Not everyone,” said Silmary. “I’m waiting to hear it. It’d better be good.”
“It’s good,” Bianca replied. “Trust me on that one.”
“Then let’s hear it,” said Silmary. Séraphin still held out on the tale. “Tell you what,” Silmary added, “if this story is as good as you’re all making it out to be, I promise to share one of my own. Even though I don’t know what this sauce business is about.” She turned to Séraphin. “A story for a story.”
“Done deal,” said Séraphin. He wiped his mouth and took a pull from a cup of red berry juice. He stretched, a movement which made him rub against the tanned hand’s owner. He apologised and she smiled to signal its acceptance. He turned back to his friends. “Are you listening closely? Because if you aren’t listening to this tale of woe and heartbreak you’re going to find yourself swimming in Sauce, nay, drowning!” He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, just as his mother would have done: “The Sauce is a force as old as time. It was there when the primeval atom exploded to create matter as we know it. If you’re not into that line of thinking then The Sauce was there before God summoned the light into creation. The Sauce was, The Sauce is, and The Sauce will forever be.”
The High Lords laughed and cried out a hearty, “Amen.”
“What’s this thing we call The Sauce? It’s the ‘Hey, stranger’ just as your life gets back on track, when the memories of past hurts are about to scab and scar and then, bam, ‘I miss you.’ It’s the exes.”
The tanned hand’s owner giggled.
“We’re all bound to it. One Sauce to rule them all,” said Séraphin sagely. “How do I know this?” He drained his cup and clanked it down on the table. “I’ve been baptised and reforged in The Sauce. It can’t touch me.” He paused. “At least, not in the way it did in the past, it has to switch up its game. The Sauce’ll do that. Evolve, come at you in two-point-oh mode while you’re still in beta.”
“I see where this is going,” Silmary said.
“Is that so? If you know where this is going,” said Séraphin, “then you must know about a bitch named Angie.”
It is Séraphin’s first year, and on a crowded dance floor at Marvel, Akon and Snoop Dogg are crooning obscenities into the air humidified by perspiration. Bodies pull apart. Then they pull into each other as the song dictates. The tiny dance floor is packed, forcing an economy of movement which bestows contact upon any and every person whether they want it or not. Conversation is unnecessary, the music is saying all that needs to be said. The cover charge isn’t steep which means the club is packed with all walks and crawls of life. The DJ is having a magic night on the decks. No rap horns, no impromptu mixing. He is going for gold. It is nothing but dance hall and reggaeton all night. Chaka Demus and Pliers, Lady Saw, Low and Michie One, Snow, Shabba Ranks, Elephant Man, Buju Banton, and Beanie Man blare from the speakers.
Dancers pair
up. First they dance across each other, face to face, and then face to sweaty neck. In the morning more than one person will wake up to find one of their trouser legs faded lighter than the other. That is how fierce the grinds are at Marvel on this night.
Zoom in.
In this quagmire of desire are familiar faces. Tall Richard is bent nearly double to accommodate the girl with her arms wrapped around his neck. Godwin has his dancer pressed up against the wall. She is caught between a rock and a very hard place. Adewale is his own personal Jesus. More than once he turned glasses of water into something stronger. It seems fitting that one of his disciples is speaking tongues into his mouth. Yasseen, the shyest of the lot, stands apart from the others, avoiding the direct gazes of the woman who moves her hips suggestively whenever he looks at her. She pushes through the crowd to him and envelops his coyness in her curvaceous frame.
And then there is Séraphin. This is the just-arrived-in-Cape-Town version of him, half-virgin, the pent-up storm cloud of the Great Sulk. He does not know what to do with the Coloured girl whose anatomy creases against him and there are points of embarrassment in his pants he works hard at moving away from her buttocks. For the second time in his life he will be indebted – and then indentured – to a girl who knows what to do with boys who do not know what to do with their hands when they are confronted by the thing which usually occupies their minds. She places his hands on her waist as she dances. “Mo fayaah! Mo fayaah!” the DJ bellows into the microphone.
There are two notable absences here. James has chosen to remain in his room watching reruns of The Wire. Andrew is still a ways off from meeting his future friends. Bianca, who currently has a boyfriend and all of the doubts that will become certainties later on in her life remains a distant point of connection too.
