Read the first phase of this story
Read the second phase of this story

Phase 3:

Who shoved Humpty Dumpty?

The advocate cleared the horribly reputed frills in his throat, and unhurriedly chased them down with a glass of water. As he caressed his historically responsible bloated belly that narrated all his eventful nights of inebriation, his mind kept on betting on chances of ever winning the case. ‘When will they ever put a human on the bench?’ enquired so pointlessly his heart. The closest that the powers that be ever came to satisfying mankind was with the promise to put on the bench an egg judge with a human face. ‘An egg with a human face? An egg with a human face? There’s no such.’ fumed and fretted the advocate’s thoughts. For the lady that is justice to be earnestly blind, they had asked for the bench to truly mirror mankind. A full-blown human being had to be appointed to the bench. ‘That’s not much,’ thought the advocate.

The eggs had ruled for so long, for too long. The brutal fact though, was that although mankind had blown to pieces the thraldom of the Egg Regime, the yolk of unease insisted on plastering itself all over their blood-won Mankind Regime. Although mankind had overthrown the Egg Regime, the eggs somehow remained in power. As a result, the advocate was shocked that he hadn’t lost his second nature habit of forking out an egg from a human. That is a vice he had picked up and honed as a human statistic eking out his breath, sanity and dignity as a subject in the Republic of the Eggs . Every now and again, he felt beside himself with shame that his mind was given to pilfering such thoughts as are fully capable of bludgeoning one’s dignity to shrapnels. That was the same dignity he could only dive for in his fantasies as a subject of the Eggs. ‘How disgusting! How shameful!’ ran his thoughts remorsefully. He had vowed by his eldest sister to drop the attitude once mankind fried the eggs. He had vowed not to be so concerned about ‘this’ species and the ‘other’ species. ‘Aren’t we all species?’ he lullabied his rage with a pinch of political correctness. He had sworn to abandon the horrible attitude of speciesm. But then, nothing to write home about had changed. The same faces were seated together on the same spots. The judge was an egg. Lining the walls were paintings of judges that had warmed the same bench years back, in their meticulously placed line of succession. They were all eggs. The bailiff was an egg. All the authoritative law books were written by eggs. The eggs were seated in their rows, and the humans on their own, save for some liberal and bohemian sprinkling of eggs and humans who found that they acquired no virus in mixing up together.

The advocate fingered down what little hair was left on his head as he shuffled the papers on his desk. He gave a glance at the audience. Mrs. Dumpty sat in front with the rest of the Dumpty dynasty, ceaselessly wiping her tears. He looked down at the table as he shuffled his papers, and finally picked one up. He cleared his throat.
     “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.”
     He took off his glasses as he opened his closing statement. With an eye glazed with pity, yet smothered with the passion of longing for the truth, he gazed at the defendants. ‘How pitiful’ thought the advocate, as he looked at them. ‘How could revolutionaries be deemed murderers?’ he thought. ‘Well, I suppose that’s egg justice for you.’ The defendants, all three of them, Mr. Msindo, Mr. Pillay and Mr. Bosman, looked away as they waited for their fates.

“Your Honour, hereinbefore us, the defendants, Mr. Msindo, Mr. Pillay and Mr. Bosman, have been charged with murder in the first degree. They have been accused of pushing the victim, Humpty Dumpty, off the wall. That resulted to his breaking and, subsequently, his death. The bloody egg...,” yelled the advocate.
     “Counsel! Counsel! I’ll throw you out for contempt of court. Now, please proceed,” warned the eggy judge. The advocate had lost count of the number of times he had been kicked out for contempt of court. Once he had tried to count, but only came up to umpteen.
     “Your Honour, the victim, the deceased Humpty Dumpty, the swine...,” an inevitable slip of a tongue.
     “Counsel! Counsel! For the last time...,” banged the judge.
     “Go on, be biased. Aren’t you an egg as well. An egg for another fellow egg,” cried the advocate.
      “Counsel!” fumed the judge.
     “I saw you, Your Honour,” broke out the advocate. “You were at the scene of the incident as well, frantically trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again. The funny thing, though, is you, Your Honour, after failing to put Humpty Dumpty together again, you did not stop the king’s men and all the king’s horses from having scrambled eggs for two weeks,” protested the advocate.

“Counsel! Try me again, and you will make your way to the exit,” quietened down the judge.
     As he shuffled his papers, the advocate hummed a toyi-toyi song in a whisper.

         Old McDonald had a farm,
     Eeya! Eeya! Hoo!
     And on his farm he broke some eggs,
     Eeya! Eeya! Hoo!
     With an egg shell here,
     And an egg shell there.
     Here an egg,
     There an egg.
     Everywhere an egg shell.
     Old McDonald had a farm,
     Eeya! Eeya! Hoo!

     “Come again, counsel. Would you mind sharing that with the rest of us?” asked the judge.
     “That was nothing, Your Honour. It was just my clan’s traditional good luck chant,” slyly answered the advocate.
     “Please, do proceed then counsel.”

He shoved one hand in his trousers and cleared his throat again.
     “Who shoved Humpty Dumpty? Your Honour, who shoved Humpty Dumpty? Mr. Msindo, Mr. Pillay and Mr. Bosman pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall. They killed him. Indeed, they broke and murdered the egg, and they have pleaded guilty for that.” He took his white handkerchief and wiped off the ever-present shine on his forehead.
      “But I bet you, Your Honour, that is not the question. Your Honour knows as well as I know that we should not strain our nerves with obvious questions and answers. No one should get away by stating the obvious.” He poured himself another glass of water, and nonchalantly gulped it down his throat. He then paused for a minute as he visually caressed the egg and human contents of the courtroom.

The advocate’s eyes endeavoured to pierce the judge. “Why did they shove Humpty Dumpty off the wall? Whose wall was he seated on in the first place? On whose land was the wall built? Who built the wall? Who was justifiably supposed to sit on the wall? Who paid for the construction of the wall? Why have we never seen anyone besides Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall? Why did all the king’s horses and all the king’s men try to put Humpty Dumpty together again? How did they benefit from Humpty Dumpty? Was Humpty Dumpty such an important egg? Why didn’t the justice system intervene when all the king’s men and all the king’s horses had scrambled eggs for two weeks after Sir Humpty Dumpty’s death? Why did they shove Humpty Dumpty off the wall? Why?” He looked at the judge as egg hell in the audience was breaking loose.

Mr. Msindo broke out into a huge smile. ‘He beat me on my mouth. The advocate beat me on my mouth!’ his thoughts broke out in a human language directly translated to the egg language. It was a proverb that all humans understood very well. ‘Indeed, he said what I would have said. He beat me on my mouth,’ he eyed the floor, as if giving thanks to his ancestors. ‘If only I had some beer brewed by my eldest sister to pour on the floor and give thanks to my ancestors,’ Mr. Msindo’s heart yelled in excitement. No one ever dared to see his side of the story. Glaringly beastly. His side of the story.

Mr. Msindo’s life was blissful, fat, pure and beautiful. His finger seemed not long enough in outlining his land to his sons. He had given up on using his knobkerrie for stroking his sons’ pride for the land they would in yonder times call their own. He beat his chest and waned his hand at the grazing area of his livestock. That was how far his pride went in pointing out his wealth and himself to his sons. Everyone knew him in his village. Msindo’s name spelt prosperity. He showed it in every manner and hue possible. His rotund belly displayed the contented man Msindo was. In the vigil dances, his arms were the only ones pulled away from each other the most amongst common men. Pulled far away from each other in the shape of horns, because his herd of livestock was the largest in his village.
     Then the Eggs came. They marched on into his life and finished him off. Mr. Msindo’s life was blissful and fat and pure and beautiful. Until the man with an oval face and fragile body, filled with yellow and white stuff, squandered his life away. Now, all that, the bliss, the fatness, the purity and the beauty, disappeared into nothingness with Humpty Dumpty’s advent of ‘Operation Wall.’ The minute Sir Humpty Dumpty landed on Msindo’s land, all the king’s men and all their horses were prodding all over the place as if they had been there for centuries. Yelling and poking and hoofing all over Msindo’s nerves and land, they bulldozed him around. Soon, they started demanding all sorts of taxes, for even good old Rex, Msindo’s favourite dog. Then, all sorts of laws landed. Before Msindo could know it, he was left with only a barren and useless strip of land, and the rest of his ancestors’ land had given way to the building of Sir Humpty Dumpty’s long and high wall.
     
     Mr. Msindo was no stranger to the spectacle of cash. He was no stranger at all to the forms of disgusting dances that cash, in the guise of all sorts of taxes, had forced his family, once at gun point, to strut around. Disgusting dance moves that stripped his family of its self-dignity. Lord Farmer Brown and his contingent of Eggs had introduced cash decades ago when he was only a dusty and unkempt rural urchin. Nowadays, Msindo was not only acquainted with such enforced cash, it had now walked right into the centre of his kraal. Sir Humpty Dumpty’s taxes and laws introduced new vibrations into the disgusting dance moves that his family were forced to gyrate: retardation, insanity and death.

Mr. Msindo’s ageing seemed to be watered with some fertilisers when he witnessed what such disgusting dances reduced his wife to. Left with a barren strip of land and the heavy breathing of cash on his neck, MaMsindo had to resort not only to illegal cash accumulating activities, but to those of ill-repute as well. The brewing of strong and chemically infested alcohol threw his children and MaMsindo, especially, into irredeemable disgrace in the eyes of his community. More especially, in the eyes of all the Msindos in the Land of the Hereafter. The spectacle of seeing drunkards drinking, spitting, laughing and singing drunkenly, vomiting and urinating against the walls of his house, reduced Msindo to nothingness. At least he could stomach that, but not the scene of the motherly aura of MaMsindo being forced into the back of a police-egg van not less than twice a month for brewing the cash the Eggs wanted.

The cash was not enough, and his only teenage daughter took to her own cash accumulating devices, way below any disgrace that a family could stomach. He didn’t really know what she was up to, but only saw food and cash on the table. He came close to understanding what his daughter was up to when one drunkard in his house pointed out that his daughter ‘was bathing worn-out bodies of busy men travelling long distances.’ The drunkard who came to imbibe alcohol in his house told him so. He felt it heavily now that alcohol, in turn, was imbibing his family. The brewing of cash for the Eggs was imbibing his family, to the extent that the vomit spewed out was retardation, insanity and death.

He was woken up one morning by six police-eggs, to inform him that his daughter had passed away. Msindo found out correctly, from the sober drunkard that his daughter died on MaMsindo’s hands. The police-eggs had caught Miss Msindo red-handed, ‘bathing worn-out bodies of busy men travelling long distances.’ On hearing about that, MaMsindo rushed to her rescue. After a long-drawn out altercation with the police-eggs, the lashings rained out on the Msindo women. Rains of lashes, lasting for nearly an hour, that eventually left a corpse out of Miss Msindo. MaMsindo, shielding her daughter’s body from the rains of lashes, emerged out of the rains with a malfunctioning left hand, a twisted and dragging right leg, and a repeatedly drooling mouth. As for him, the drunkard informed him that the community thought that his ancestors were chastising him, that they ‘had banished him from his own mind.’ That explained his queer behaviour lately. Msindo could only reply, ‘Is it?’

‘Where did all my strength and people go?’ enquired Mr. Bosman to himself. ‘Alas! They all had to go to putting up Humpty Dumpty’s wall. Dammit! That egg! He sure deserved his long-awaited great fall’, broke Mr. Bosman’s thoughts amid the hell that was soaking the courtroom. His neighbourhood that bore all his people’s past and pride had to contend with being bulldozed down, just for the sake of putting up Sir Humpty Dumpty’s long and high wall. Such a long wall that stretched from Msindo’s land, past Bosman’s neighbourhood, conquering all the space that harboured the shopping complex proudly owned by Pillay and his family.

Yes, Humpty Dumpty invaded Bosman’s neighbourhood, the so-called ‘Land of the Point Fives.’ Their land and all the ‘Point Fives’ had to submit to ‘Operation Wall.’ Mr. Bosman had always grown incredibly disgusted at defending himself and his people for being called ‘Point Fives.’ Though he didn’t object to the fact that his body harbours some egg blood, he refuted vehemently that his blood was evenly divided between human and egg blood. Worsening his and his people’s stand was that the other humans seemed to drive home the point that they were not treated like damned stepchildren, like the majority of the humans. ‘Definitely not this lot, not Humpty Dumpty’s lot’, furious thoughts crossed Mr. Bosman’s mind. Lord Farmer Brown’s Eggs had a great deal of sympathy for Bosman and his people. Then came Humpty Dumpty, the king’s men and all the king’s horses. This was definitely a bunch of eggs situated on the far opposite end of Lord Farmer Brown’s Eggs. The Dumpty contingent was always extremely uneasy with Lord Farmer Brown’s Eggs. It was them, the Dumpty Eggs, who treated Bosman and his people like stepchildren. During the construction of the wall, the Dumpty dynasty crossed their fingers and vowed on some piece of paper that Mr. Bosman and his family, if they worked very hard in building the wall, would as well get the opportunity to sit alongside Humpty Dumpty. And all that was in vain, as even now they have never had their bottoms seated on it.

‘And to think of it, ‘ thought Mr. Pillay. ‘Just to think of it! My family had owned these shops ever since my great-great grandfather from Bombay saved his last pennies to build them. And now they are all gone, for the sake of putting up some lousy wall.’ thought Mr. Pillay, as the judge was trying his utter best to quieten down the brouhaha in the courtroom. The Pillay Shopping Complex was everyone’s soul-holder in the neighbourhood. He was always opened seven days a week, sometimes closing at eleven in the evening on Sundays. And all that had gone down. As a result, the wall had to go down. That was Mr. Pillay’s firm decision when the Pillay Shopping Complex was forced to kiss the bulldozers. His sense of dignity and pride just couldn’t afford to face another second subjection again. His great-great grandfather was forcibly removed from Bombay to work over here. After breaking those chains, through working his spine off, Pillay just couldn’t afford facing another subjection. For him, the wall had to go down, just as the shopping complex went down.

“Quiet! Quiet in my courtroom! Quiet!” yelled the judge as he banged his hammer on his high table.
      “There’s one question that does not stop bothering me. Now that Sir Humpty Dumpty is deceased, and the wall remains vacant, why don’t any of you sit on the wall then?” questioned the judge, as his eyes focused on Mr. Msindo for a reply.
     “Your Honour, we cannot sit on the wall, because Bumpty Dumpty is now occupying it. He doesn’t want any of us to sit alongside him, although we all contributed to Humpty Dumpty’s great fall,” said Mr. Msindo, as his eyes piercingly searched for Sir Bumpty Dumpty, seated right at the back of the courtroom.

Suddenly, Bumpty Dumpty’s body shook with nervousness. His huge oval and fat face rippled with shock. He was human enough, but sure was changing to bear an impeccable resemblance to an egg. A resemblance to Humpty Dumpty, to be precise. On his ivory chair, Bumpty Dumpty, then a human, orchestrated “The Revolution of the Great Fall.”

Bumpty Dumpty was once an unparalleled and labelled revolutionary. He had made legend by breaking out of prison, and then, hours later after a horde of police-eggs and soldiers had long gone out searching for him, came back surreptitiously to his cell on his own accord. On his return, he showed the police-eggs and the Egg Minister of Police his break-out plan on an assortment of tattered toilet papers and newspapers. He went on advising them on how to tighten up security and anti-escape devices in the prison. Of course, he nearly died from the beatings and torture that landed on him afterwards. Equally well-deserved was the unparalleled embarrassment the Egg State had to embrace. The revolutionary that later metamorphised to Bumpty Dumpty was just too charismatic, too conniving, and way too intelligent . Nearly a year later on, despite the construction and installation of various anti-escape gadgets fetching about R250 000, the revolutionary managed to escape again so quietly. This time, he didn’t come back, and he went ahead with the orchestration of “The Revolution of the Great Fall.” Now, everything had changed. Not only was this human being beginning to change, bearing a spitting image to an egg, he was also beginning to behave like an egg. All of a sudden, he was talking exactly like an egg, and behaving like an egg. To top it all, rumours had it that he was engaged to some pretty egg as well. Bumpty Dumpty came up with all sorts of laws that intelligently prevented the average human and the well-meaning egg to sit on the prized wall. Apart from Bumpty Dumpty, you can only see other distinguished humans who fought in “The Revolution of the Great Fall,” and some very wealthy eggs.
      Absolute disorder unshackled itself as the mass of humans and a dot of well-meaning eggs stood up, chanting slogans of “The Revolution of the Great Fall.” “Away with Bumpty Dumpty, away! Down with Bumpty Dumpty, down! The wall belongs to us all. Let all the human beings and all the well-meaning eggs sit on the wall,” yelled one human in the middle row of the courtroom, with a clenched fist held aloft.
     “Phantsi ngo Bumpty Dumpty, phantsi.”
     Soon after that, anarchy reached maturity, as all the humans and some sensible and sympathetic eggs broke out in a toyi-toyi, slowly heading for Sir Bumpty Dumpty, who was now hurriedly heading for the door. Bumpty Dumpty’s security guards castled him around, lest the crowd get to him and cause another Great Fall.

to the top

© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf.