The Eternal Audience of One

by Rémy Ngamije

  Tara was taking a year from her third attempt at completing a year in university. She had dropped anthropology because it was not for her. Then she had dabbled in fashion design. She left that –It was just too competitive. Everything was so rushed, people prepared to climb over each other. It was so sad – to try her hand at being a pastry chef.

  “What’s wrong with competition?” Bianca asked.

  “What the heck’s the point of it all? For awards? I don’t really believe in awards. Like the prize-giving ceremonies at school. Those were horrible.”

  “If you hated competition then you wouldn’t have made it at my primary school,” said Séraphin.

  And then he told them about Mrs Mutumanu and Gina Patel.

  “That’s so sad,” said Tara.”

  “What is?” asked Séraphin.

  “How she made all of the other children sit on the floor. It can’t be healthy to have that kind of competitive attitude at such a young age.”

  “I think it’s good. Gets you acquainted with the rules of the real world.”

  “There’s no point in lying to children,” said Godwin. “You’re doing them a disservice if you don’t tell them how the world works. That’s one thing my parents did right. They told me shit straight.”

  “It’s better that way,” said Bianca. “Then you aren’t too shocked when you grow older and shit is fucked up.”

  “It’s still sad,” said Tara.

  “There aren’t enough chairs, like Séraphin said,” said Bianca. “There just aren’t. You know this, I know this, everyone knows it. Something is sad when it happens once. If it happens more than once then it’s just fact and you need to deal with it.”

  “You’re saying there’s a point when something like poverty should just be accepted as a fact of life?” asked Bjorn. Or Byron.

  “When you aren’t doing anything about it, then, yes,” Bianca replied. “You can’t sit on this balcony and tell me you feel sad about children sitting on the floor in the same way you felt sad when Mufasa or Bambi’s mother died. Please. You feel sad the first time, then after that it isn’t so bad. Then after a while you don’t feel anything. Same thing with poor people. First you feel sad, and then they just become normal.”

  “That’s fucked up.” It had to be Byron. He was the one who said his favourite commercials were the socially responsive kind.

  “That’s life,” said Séraphin. “You can’t feel sad forever. That takes too much time. I have shit to do with my day.”

  “Our lives,” Bianca said, looking intently at Tara and her friends, “yours and ours, just aren’t the same. And I think it’s better if people don’t act like they are. That’ll just perpetuate the lie. Or, worse, make people think everyone’s on the same level so that they can say dumb shit. Especially at things like First Thursdays. Or at work.”

  “Especially at work,” Adewale said. “If only black South Africans knew how low white South Africans think of them. My supervisor, Afrikaans guy, came into the lab the other day and he spent fifteen minutes talking to me about the incompetence of the black guys he works with. Lazy, useless, idiots, imbeciles. Then he turned to me and said, ‘But you’re fine. That’s why I like you foreigners. You work harder and complain less.’ I was so stunned.”

  “You know why they like us, right?” said Séraphin. “Because they don’t owe us an apology. But black South Africans, they owe them everything.”

  “Everything,” said Godwin. “It’s easy to live and work with someone when you don’t owe them an apology. You get shit done. It’s like a relationship before the blame kicks in, when everything’s going right, before people mess up and then have to ask themselves why they messed up and how they can change. But when you apologise for the fucked up shit you did then you need to carry the guilt and the shame.” The whole balcony fell silent. “Isn’t that what apologies are? Acknowledgements of guilt and shame. And the other person takes your wrongdoing and agrees to carry it and let you be human again. That’s why I don’t believe weak people can forgive. What’re you going to do when a weak person forgives you? They can’t harm you, they can’t take anything from you. Forgiveness from the weak is just words. Empty words. But when you mother or girlfriend forgives you, oh, then you know you need to change some shit in you life. Forgiveness, real forgiveness, requires the other person to remember, not to forget. When people forget the reason they forgave the forgiven forget to earn their forgiveness. That’s why white people in South Africa get to treat black people the way they do. They don’t have anything to lose.”

  Andrew sighed. “These conversations always end up in the same place.”

  Bianca would have said something but Séraphin shook his head at her almost imperceptibly.

  “How’d we wind up here anyway?” James asked.

  “Chairs.”

  “Never enough of them,” said Séraphin.

  “What happened to Gina Patel?” asked Silmary.

  “Which, really, is what everyone should be concerned about. I whipped her ass for the rest of the year. I left Nairobi in standard two so I’m sure she reclaimed the throne I left behind. I like to think her and Hasham married and had second and third-place children. Little rotters with a collection of silver and bronze medals.”

  “Wow, Séraphin.”

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I was Chair Number One. That was all that mattered.” Séraphin rose from his chair and stretched. “Been on top ever since.”

  “See what I mean by competition?” Tara asked.

  “I wouldn’t say I’m competitive,” Séraphin said. “I’m okay with not winning. I’m always willing to settle for first place.”

  “Sheesh.”

  “Only facts here, Tara,” said Séraphin. “Let me know when I should clean up house if you ever have a games night.”

  The conversation slowly pulled away from race. Séraphin went to the kitchen to find some juice. When he was putting the box back in the fridge Silmary came in.

  “So that was an interesting conversation on the balcony,” she said. “I think Godwin managed to convince Tara she shouldn’t invite strangers to her house.”

  Séraphin leaned against the counter and sipped his juice. “I’d apologise for my friends, but I’m one of them.”

  “I like them. They’re honest and always full of funny stories.”

  “Which reminds me, I’m owed a story. I’m Shylock about shit like that.”

  “Mine aren’t as good as yours, though,” she said.

  “Then,” Séraphin said, “you can tell me some until the exchange rate is even.”

  “We might be here a while.”

  “Fine with me,” he said. “There’s no one on the balcony I’m particularly missing right now.” He had to work hard at keeping eye contact after he said it.

  “Me neither,” she said.

  Bianca walked in on her way from the bathroom. “We’re about to head on out,” she said to Séraphin.

  “Cool,” he said. He tried to make it sound casual, as though he had not just secretly called upon all the gods in creation to smite Bianca for her intrusion. As he walked back to the balcony Bianca poked him in the side.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing, Bee, we were just talking.”

  “Right,” Bianca said. “That’s how it all starts.”

  XXV

  Every couple of years in the shanty towns around South Africa, where zinc roofs glisten like scales in the sunshine, firewood and coal supplies, the precious fuels needed to boil water and light cooking fires, run desperately low. That is fine because nothing burns – for a shrieking instant – like a foreigner. In Cape Town, this means the Zimbabweans and Congolese who stand by busy intersections in the suburbs closer to Table Mountain selling black coils of cellphone chargers and rolls of dustbin bags, plumes of feather dusters, beaded jewellery, and wire cars with Coca-Cola and Fanta can wheels. It is they who are given Michelin and Continental necklaces, the gift of OPEC, and set alight.<
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  The regularity of the attacks and the long wait for his refugee status permit to be processed by a largely indifferent immigration bureaucracy had one effect on Maxime: he refused to support any South African sports teams. He grouped all of the country’s sports teams into one entity he called Home Affairs in which he invested his hate. He prayed for Springbok dismemberment, for cruel petal-plucking for the Proteas, and for Bafana Bafana to be manhandled by bigger teams. When the FIFA World Cup rolled into town his muti man told him to put his money on France; they failed to make it out of the group stages and quadruple his investment. His other team, Ghana, seemed as though it would deliver on the witchdoctor’s predictions. He placed a hefty wager on the Black Stars of Ghana defeating the United States and walked home with his pockets fat and his spirits high, like many across the continent that night. But when Asamoah Gyan missed his penalty against Uruguay, dashing hopes of an African team progressing to the semifinals of the competition, Maxime lost all he had previously won. At least, he thought as he made his way home, Bafana Bafana had been sent packing on home soil. A sliver of spite gladdened his soul.

  Later on, perhaps because of his glee at the country’s national disappointment, Maxime’s application for a refugee permit was denied. He had failed to sufficiently prove his life would be in danger were he to return to the Democratic Republic of Congo. He had two weeks to leave the country. This state of affairs soured him even more. He refused to leave South Africa and chose, instead, to become an illegal resident. In his current state any professional qualifications he possessed were meaningless. Only a handful of vocations were open to him: to clean, or hawk, maybe drive, or cut hair. Maxime was too proud to clean. He would also not sell curios by the roadside to sunburned tourists. Driving required a driver’s licence, which required the presentation of too much paperwork. So he chose to cut hair.

  With a pair of clippers and a crown in front of him he could become a kingmaker. There was no need to show paperwork and with everything handled on a cash basis there was no need for him to present anything else to the shop’s owner besides his own combs, clippers, hairsprays, and oils. The shop’s foot and head traffic was constant, the money was good, and the conversations he could have with his clients and the other barbers – also illegals, from Cameroon, and Central African Republic, and Congo – were always loud and amusing. Maxime joined the brotherhood of barbers whose skills were in constant demand and steadily supplied by the pitfalls of South Africa’s immigration policies.

  “So I walk into the restaurant and ask the waiter to change the channel to the Chelsea match. I tell her, my sister, if you change the channel I will sit down and eat. She says okay she will change it. So what do I do? I sit down and order. Didier Drogba is killing everyone. It is hot match. He is dribbling like this and like that. Suddenly the channel changes to rugby. Home Affairs is playing the All Blacks. I call the waiter over and I tell her, my sister, when I came in I said I would eat here if you let me watch the game. Now I even ordered from page three where the prices are not small-small. I am not spending small-small money. I tell her, my sister, I should be saving this money for my family back home. But now I am spending it in your restaurant. And now you are telling me I must watch Home Affairs play rugby.” Maxime paused his cutting and looked around the barbershop. “I look at her and then I tell her get the fock ourra here!”

  Le Bel Homme Barbershop, just off the Main Road in Mowbray, nearly had its doors blown off its rusty hinges from the explosion of laughter which rocked it. Some of it escaped beneath the door and spilled onto the pavement strewn with cigarette butts and flyers announcing gold would be bought for cash. Some of the pieces of paper promised arcane services which could bring back lost lovers, good fortune, and ward off hexes. Back in the shop the other barbers stopped shaving their clients to prevent accidental erasures of hair while they laughed. When they were more composed they resumed. The buzzing clippers were industrious for a moment while everyone waited for Maxime to complete his story.

  Two things were promised at Le Bel Homme: a haircut and a story. Everyone who came in for a trim or a cut joined the queue on the couches unless they were elevated to Big Boss status, a jump facilitated by the size of the tip given to Maxime for a haircut. Big Boss status came with certain perks. As soon as he saw a Big Boss walk in from the street Maxime would come over and pull him into a bear hug. He would walk back to his current customer, make his clippers dance and whirr, and when he was finished he would usher the Big Boss to his seat ahead of everyone else. Big Bosses got their haircuts first. Maxime would wrap a protective sheet over a Big Boss and ask, “What style you want? Something new? Or you want the usual?” Then Maxime brought all of his hair cutting expertise to bear on their heads. Maxime’s haircuts were an institution, a rite of passage from boy to man, from ordinary mortal to head-turning ladykiller. When he was finished Maxime would pull off the cover with a flourish, like a matador taunting a bull, and make the same joke. “I’ve done what I can do. From hair on you are on your own.”

  Séraphin, James, Adewale, Godwin, and Richard were Big Bosses. They crossed Maxime’s palms with the necessary silver and ascended to the highest heights of barbershop privilege. It was love at first cut since they walked into Maxime’s and, like many men, their loyalty to his craft was only eclipsed by their loyalty to their chosen football teams. They came to his shop every three weeks or so to have their hairlines lined up, their sides faded, and their tops trimmed to just the right height. Richard was bit of a novelty. It was not every day a white boy walked into a black barbershop for a haircut. Still, there was no hair Maxime could not cut. The five could waltz into Maxime’s whenever they wanted and be assured to be clipped into style within fifteen minutes, a privilege they would turn down because sitting on the waiting couch listening to Maxime’s capers around Cape Town was only second to him giving you a haircut. Today was no exception.

  Maxime’s tales made up for his height deficiency. He met women, impossibly beautiful women, in improbable circumstances and they loved him beyond race, reason, and rhyme. Or as he enjoyed a glass of Guinness in a bar he found his honour insulted for wearing the wrong football team’s jersey and before he could negotiate a truce he would be embroiled in a fight, always with men larger than life, and always in swarming numbers. After a briefly contested scuffle he vanquished all of them, as though he were Jean Claude Van Damme on his way to the final round of an underground kickboxing tournament. “One by one, I tell you, I beat them!”

  Always, without fail, there would be a customer from last week, or two weeks ago, or this week, or yesterday who insulted him by requesting what he deemed to be ugly haircuts. “This thing of chiskop I don’t understand it. Why you come to me for the chiskop? Your lawnmower can do that for you. Je suis une artiste!”

  Everyone laughed at his stories, not for their truth—which has never been a requirement in the good telling of a story anyway—but because everyone knew Maxime and the other barbers who floated in the immigration paperwork limbo of the dreaded Department of Home Affairs would not engage in any behaviour capable of drawing the attentions of the equally feared and dreaded South African Police Service. They would also not turn down money, regardless of where it came from, chiskop or not.

  “So what happened next?” asked Séraphin.

  “I told the waiter, my sister, you must change the channel. Drogba is better than this Home Affairs shit!” replied Maxime.

  “And she changed it.”

  “Of course. But then the white man who had asked to change the channel came to my table to cause big-big trouble.”

  The barbershop burst into laughter.

  “Big-big trouble” was the flourish and fanfare of Maximic hyperbole. Like the first notes of a wedding march it made everyone’s ears stand up to listen to the train of bullshit about to parade down the aisle. Big-big trouble would start a narration about Maxime being swindled out of some money; or a husband coming back home to find him in bed with a straying wi
fe. Big-big trouble always ended with Maxime threatening to recover his money with Scarfacian violence; with him parlaying with an angry husband who then went into the next room to load his gun leaving Maxime with just enough time to jump out of a window half-clothed.

  “The man comes to my table and he says to me, comrade, the Springboks are playing. Can we watch the rugby match? The football is from England. And I say, I am not your comrade. And I came here first. If I want to watch English or Spanish football I will watch it. Even if I want to watch Zambian Premier League where the highlight of a game is a throw-in then I will watch it. I tell him, please, there are many places where you can watch Home Affairs play. Then I tell him, your home is one of them.”

  “Maxime, you lie,” said Chris the Cameroonian barber.

  “If I lie,” Maxime retorted, “then let the Lord God Most High strike me down now! Eh? You see, nothing. I tell the truth. This white man looks at me and tells me this is his home. And then he says to me but you are not from here from the way you speak. Is big-big trouble now, you see.”

  “Of course,” said Godwin dabbing at his eyes. “Big-big trouble now.”

  “I tell him, look, whether I am in Kinshasa, or Harare, or Accra, it is all my home. From north to south and east to west. And they will always change the channel so I can watch Didier Drogba, Yaya Touré, and Emmanuel Adebayor because everyone knows the English Premier League is actually African Premier League. It is called English Premier League because the Queen has not died yet. We are just waiting for her to go and then we rename everything. But you see, your Home Affairs comes only from Bloemfontein. So, please, I tell him, I am watching Chelsea right now. He was angry-oh! He could not say anything to that, because he knows I am right. But, you see, now is big-big trouble because I am the only black person in the restaurant. I can see everyone is angry at me because we are not watching Home Affairs. But I also cannot be asked to leave, you understand. You know the only thing worse for Cape Town people to be told they are racist is to be given a chance for them to show it is so. It is like when your mother knows your are thieving from her and she give you a clean chance to come clean but you cannot take it because then you will admit you are thieving. So, anyway, I sit, and I watch.”