|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Let x equal xKobus MoolmanIt was all there. The beginning. Just a moment ago in the bathroom. And now ... Stupidly, he thought he’d just quickly check the message left on his cellphone: Your airtime is low. Please load airtime. And all the time it’d only been a stall-holder, a lady called Pinkey, looking for his girlfriend, who was still fast asleep. The community centre was locked and they needed a place to leave all their shit for the day. Or something like that. Not a matter of life or death, at least. Seven-thirty on a Saturday morning. And him barefoot in the cold study, having rushed from unfinished business in the bathroom to get the bladdy phone ... which, of course, he didn’t. Instead, all he’d managed to do was lose the absolutely brilliant beginning of his story that had come to him — in an inspired flash — on the loo. Weird the twists of imagination, he thought. Driven from sleep by a bursting bladder, struck with a blinding revelation in front of the white porcelain bowl, his bright yellow piss streaming from him. Only to lose the whole bladdy thing because of inquisitiveness! Anyway, no use crying over spilt milk, as the politician said to the prostitute. (Or was it the bishop to the actress? He never could remember jokes.) The point is he’d have to start all over again. Back to the beginning. let x equal x, lori anderson sang … But that’s of no relevance to the story. It just came into his head. let x equal x In the meantime his feet were turning into blocks of ice. He went to make tea. Arrrrgghhh! There were not many things in his life that sent him over the edge. But a dripping tap ... That was the Ultimate! He snatched the sodden sponge from where it lay in the sink and placed it back underneath the line of the drip. If he positioned it carefully enough, the water falling from the mixer tap could be channelled down into the sink instead of landing on the top, splashing everywhere, and dripping eventually down the back against the wall. Of course, if he’d remembered to put the plug in, all the water could’ve been saved for washing the dishes. Too late. Again. He had a serious thing about wasting water. It freaked him out totally. If he thought about it carefully, it’d probably all started years ago. Fresh out of varsity he’d got a job teaching English and Afrikaans at a small farm school in the Natal Midlands. It’d been a helluva time. He was a shit teacher. Terrified of the kids, crowded sixty at a time into a small swelteringly hot classroom. Because he couldn’t understand their language he always thought they were talking about him, plotting right under his nose how they were going to slit his throat in his small hut on the edge of one of the local homesteads close to the school. Every evening two young girls would drag a large old bath into his room and prop it up on bricks. Then they’d bring him a bucket of water which had been heated over a fire and pour it in. After half an hour or so they’d return and drag the heavy bath out again, and empty his dirty water over their mother’s wild spinach. There was no running water in the area. He knew how far the girls had to go to fetch water for their families. Right to the bottom of the valley, and then back up again, pushing their old wheelbarrow with two plastic drums filled to the slopping brim. But no matter how many times he’d changed the washer on this fucking tap it would not stop dripping! From the day he and his girlfriend had moved in, the bladdy thing had leaked. And that was almost five months ago. It was no use contacting the landlord either, and trying to get him to do something about it. He was as tight-fisted as could be. So all he could do was try and save the dripping water and reuse it. The toilet flushed. Baby’s up, he thought. Rise and shine, it’s another stinking day in Paradise! “Is this for me?” Baby said, taking the cup of tea out of his hand as she pressed her body, still warm from bed, up against him. She was wearing only an orange T-shirt and a pair of black panties. He could feel the gooseflesh all along the back of her legs. “Some woman called Pinkey phoned. Left a message. Something about wanting to get into the Old Church.” “Ah, shit! Does she want me to come in?” “I dunno. Listen for yourself.” He handed her the phone. “Look. I’m going back to the plumbers this morning. I’ll try another size. That last fucking washer they sold me was too small.” Baby looked at him. Sitting on the counter-top in his grubby tracksuit pants and vest he looked like one of the many hobos that often stopped them in the street, greeting him enthusiastically by name. He had a scowl on his face the colour of a Highveld thunder cloud. She laughed. “The weirdest things set you off, you know that.” Town was strangely quiet for a Saturday morning. And the end of the month on top of it. His fingers drummed an imaginary tune on the dashboard of Tracy, his old ’81 Jetta. She’d been named after the singer Tracy Chapman by the young boys from the Anglican College he’d taught at — his second attempt at teaching after the farm school. This stint had been a bit more successful, he mused. Hey, the kids had even threatened to burn the headmaster’s car when they heard he was leaving because of disagreements with the old fart. He sang to himself. doo do do A scrap of masonite covered the hole where his car radio had been — stolen from the car park of the same school. Outside the Voortrekker Museum a group of young street kids had spread their dirty blankets out in the sun. Some of the kids were still asleep. Or drugged. One, older than the rest, with an amputated leg, swayed drunkenly on a pair of wooden crutches that were way too big for him. He caught the boy’s eye as he waited at the traffic lights. For a moment each of them struggled with a vague recognition buried deep somewhere in their mutual pasts, then the lights changed and he looked away. And the boy disappeared behind him. let x equal x. The whole town seemed to be at Moosa’s Hardware store. An old tannie and a small girl in a gymslip were selling pancakes under a striped gazebo. “R5 mince / R4 plane” their small handwritten sign read. At the electronic glass gates an Indian man tried to sell him samoosas. “I know you always buy from me,” the man repeated. The interior of the store was bright and cavernous, like a hangar for jumbo jets. He searched the signs hanging above the different aisles. “Sanitary-ware”. Sounds like something for chicks only, he thought. “Cheers, boet,” a voice spoke behind him. He turned around. A man in running shorts was walking away with a large drum of paint on his shoulders. Was he talking to me? he thought. “Can I help you, sir?” He wheeled around. There were too many voices. He was beginning to feel disorientated. There was no one. “What the hell is going on?” A shop assistant in the next aisle was demonstrating the wonders of an enormous black plumbing wrench to an old man who seemed to have difficulty hearing him. The shop assistant looked up and saw him watching them. A strange look came over the shop assistant’s face. He raised his one hand and, making as if he had a gun with his thumb and index finger, silently pulled the trigger. Back outside, he fell back against Tracy, his heart galloping like a racehorse. For a moment he was lost in the loud music coming from a car parked nearby. “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” Bono was singing, “still haven’t found ...” He looked down at the small packet of orange fibre washers in his hand. This better be it, he thought. The guy in the shop must think I’m a real doos. Coming back every bladdy weekend. It was then he remembered where he’d known that kid on the crutches from. Sibusiso! Of course! From that Anglican College where he’d taught English — and been boarder master. S’bu had been a bright twelve-year-old who always carried a pocket chess set around with him wherever he went. He would hold crazy matches with himself that went on for days. He didn’t have many friends, seeming to prefer his own company rather than the rough-and-tumble of his schoolmates. Something had gone wrong, though — he’d never worked out exactly what — and S’bu had been expelled. The ostensible argument from the headmaster, that the boy “didn’t fit in with the others”, had made no sense to him at all. It had always seemed more likely that the head, a weak and scruffy man, had probably expelled S’bu as an act of intimidation against the other pupils — even the staff. He remembered on one occasion how the head (a supposed Anglican priest) had humiliated the Zulu teacher in front of the whole school. This poor old bloke used to drink himself into a stupor every night and then bawl his eyes out over his wife who’d run off with a taxi owner. On this particular occasion he’d forgotten to zip up his trousers (perhaps because he was so babalas), and when the old chap stumbled into assembly that morning the head made some stupid comment that immediately set the entire school roaring with laughter. (Except S’bu, he remembered.) The old teacher’s eyes just filled with tears and he sat down. He didn’t even bother to do up his zip. Back outside the Voortrekker Museum there was only one boy left. He sat propped up against the old building staring at the passing cars and pedestrians with drowning, unseeing eyes. “Where’s Sibusiso? Where did Sibusiso go?” The boy didn’t even register that someone was talking to him. He slid slowly down the wall and curled up on the pavement to sleep. The boys were not at the Freedom Square taxi rank either. Nor were they hassling customers outside Mr Video. Even the small lane that ran behind the Indian vegetable market, where he’d often seen them huddling around a fire, was deserted. He drove up to the railway station. The sidewalk at the top end of Church Street was crammed with fruit vendors, second-hand clothing sellers and hawkers of traditional medicine. Taxis hooted, their young conductors hanging out of the doors yelling their destinations; haggard chickens in a wire cage squawked, while a thin, stray dog snuffled in the gutters barking at anyone who came too close. He thought a one-legged boy on oversized crutches would be easy to spot. But wherever he went that morning — searching, scrutinising pedestrians crossing the road, oblivious to the traffic, the crowds outside shops, people sleeping in the parks — he was met with the same stony indifference. Nobody had seen Sibusiso. And Sibusiso was nowhere to be seen. There was a smell of smoke in the air as he drove home, and a warm wind that made him think of summer. It wasn’t conscious, but he couldn’t find a single tune to hum. let x ... Baby was frantic with worry. Even angry. His cellphone was the only telephone they possessed, and he had left it with her. “I thought you were only gonna be a few minutes!” “So did I, baby.” He decided to change the topic. He didn’t want to think about Sibusiso any more. “How’s the work then?” She was registered for a PhD at the local university. Something about rural development and craft. He didn’t always fully understand such things. He might have a teacher’s degree, but that didn’t make him an intellectual or anything like that. Baby was the brains in their operation. “Don’t try and change the conversation now. What happened to you?” Should he lie to her? Say he’d bumped into some old roker buddy of his? Except she could tell he wasn’t stoned. “Look, I saw someone today. On the side of the road. Then they vanished. Okay. A kid … well, he’s not a kid any more. But he was when I taught him. Years ago. Now he’s on the streets. He was a bladdy smart kid once. Brilliant, maybe. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve been driving around trying to find him again. That’s all.” “I’m sorry,” Baby said. She came up to him. “I didn’t know.” He just shrugged. “Did you find the right washer?” Drip, drip, drip. Drip, drip, drip. There were some things in life one just had to turn away from. Close one’s eyes to. Pretend it wasn’t happening. And this freaking leaking tap was definitely one. No one could say he hadn’t tried. Shop after shop he’d prowled. One washer after the next he’d tried. And still the fucking tap leaked. “Change the whole tap,” one old plumber had said to him, scowling over his catalogue of toilet seats. “I took out all my mixers. They’re up to no good. Replaced them with single units. It’s the only way to go.” Well, he’d got good at washing dishes in cold water caught in the sink during the night. It wasn’t ideal. But, hey, sometimes one just had to make a deal with the facts of life. And he never thought about Sibusiso again. He distracted himself with his work instead. First he pretended to be interested in reviving the story that had come to him that cold morning on the loo, when his phone had conveniently interrupted him, rescuing his pride from the horror of yet another idea started and ignominiously abandoned through lack of interest and talent. At school he had written a few mildly promising stories that had been published in the town newspaper, earning him R50 each and the enduring delusion that if he only had more time he could become a serious writer. Mercifully, he gave the story up one evening after two hours of frustration in front of his home computer. He buried himself next in his schoolwork. Marking mountains of crap essays. “What I did for my holiday.” “My favourite pet.” “The day I was attacked by a giant hairy caterpillar who turned out to be my big sister.” It got to the point where he couldn’t even laugh at them any more. In his free periods he would sit in the empty staff room, a cold cup of tea and a pile of unmarked papers in front of him, and just stare out of the window. It had been his favourite pastime as a child. Always choosing a desk at the window so he could look out the classroom, at the grounds, the sky, other pupils passing up and down on errands for their teachers or to the bathrooms. Looking, looking, waiting for something to happen, for something to look at. But he looked for nothing now. Not the sky, nor the tops of trees, nor clouds that could change in his mind to Porsches or the long legs of Michelle Pfeiffer. He started to make funny noises with his mouth. Blowing like a horse. Snorting. let x equal x He couldn’t escape the song. It ran through his mind the whole day. Every time one of his kids stood up to answer a question, all he heard was, “let x equal x”. And when he got home in the evening after refereeing yet another dismal soccer match or supervising another detention class of graffiti artists and litter bugs, it was the tap. Drip, drip, drip. Drip, drip, drip. “You’re not well,” Baby said to him. “You should take a rest. You can’t go on like this. You’re beginning to scare me.” let x equal … In the middle of a staff meeting one day he remembered suddenly how Sibusiso would often come to his flat after school and throw himself down on the small lounge floor to do his homework or play chess or just read a book. Sibusiso’s favourite was the school’s set of encyclopaedias with transparent pages of illustrations that peeled back revealing successive layers of the details of volcanoes or animal anatomy. Anything. Sibusiso didn’t speak at all on these occasions. But he sang old Methodist hymns under his breath. All things bright and beautiful “Mr …” It was the head of department. “How do you vote on this issue?” “Let x equal x,” he replied. Baby said they should go away for the weekend. Down the coast somewhere. The sardines were running. It would help to take his mind off everything. Baby drove like a fiend. Off-road was her favourite — she had dreamt of being a rally driver as a little girl. But on the freeways she was Schumacher in his mean green machine. Except in this instance, it was Schumi in little old Tracy. She laughed. And he laughed back at her. The beach was crowded and smelly. But they didn’t mind. Behind the dark, silver line of fish a school of dolphins swam, surfacing like sleek plastic bath toys. That night they made love like hungry people. His mouth took in every part of her body. They were woken in the morning by a woman walking past selling grass brooms. BrrroooOOOms! But he could not make out what she was saying. It seemed to him she was calling, “Sibusiso! Sibusiso! What happened to Sibusiso?!” They left early. He drove while Baby lay on the back seat, crying softly. That afternoon he drove to the bottom end of town. It was Sunday and the streets were empty. Rotten vegetables lay in the gutters and scraps of cardboard blew up against the metal grilles and gates with which owners secured their shop windows. An old security guard sat sleeping on a packing crate outside the entrance of a run-down block of flats. He stopped at the side of the road and switched off his car. He knew it wasn’t safe, but it didn’t matter any more. His hands were trembling. His shirt was drenched in perspiration. What had become of Sibusiso? What had happened to his promising life? How did he lose his leg? A boy came up to the window, pushing an old car tyre. The boy startled him and he swore violently at the child. The boy turned away. He gasped. The side of the child’s face was twisted by a thick and ugly scar. From a fire, he thought. And this was how life treated its young. How it had treated Sibusiso. He rolled down his window. “What’s your name?” “Surprise,” the child said. “Where d’you live, Surprise? “Moscow,” he replied. It was the name of a shanty area (informal settlement, Baby would have called it) that had sprung up, seemingly right out of the ground, underneath the busy fly-over a few blocks away. “D’you want to go home?” The boy nodded his head. It was noisy and cold underneath the concrete fly-over. He helped the boy take his tyre out of the back of the boot. A group of children had been playing with a crippled kitten when the car pulled up, but now they had another curiosity to stare at. He gave the boy five rand; he did not know what else to do. “Bye-bye.” The boy did not move. “What’s wrong?” “You mus’ come see my granny,” the boy whispered behind dusty hands. It would be dark soon. Baby was waiting for him. She was hurt and confused by his recent behaviour. He should go home. “You mus’ come see my granny. She’s very sick,” the boy repeated. It would be dark soon. The traffic rumbled overhead. The weekend was over, and there was just this evening before the long week began again. He heard the soft dripping of water onto a wet sponge. The sponge was incorrectly placed on the side of the sink. The water could not run out of it. He must go home quickly before it got too heavy and fell into the sink. He must ... The boy was pulling his hand. The narrow lanes between the cardboard and metal rooms stank of human shit and piss. It was difficult to see where he was going. The moment they entered the twisting alleyways the sun seemed to drop away behind them. “Slow down!” he panted. Everywhere people were standing in dim candle-lit doorways or sitting on upturned boxes or drums outside their makeshift homes. A group of young men in overalls were crouched around a noisy card game. They looked up and one of them spoke quickly to the boy. The boy stopped. “You mus’ take a card for the man. He says you will bring him luck.” The group of men stood up and parted slightly to let the boy and him in. He felt nervous. What if he didn’t pick the right card? What if he brought the man bad luck instead? “Let x equal x,” he thought to himself. He picked up a card from the pack on the floor and handed it face down to the man. The man turned it over slowly. Then his face broke into laughter. The whole group immediately erupted with noise: arguments, congratulations and uproarious laughter. “You win for him,” the boy said. “I’m glad,” he replied. “But I must go now. I’m very late.” “No. First you mus’ celebrate with the man. You bring him lots of luck. Maybe he will get a job now too.” “But what about your grandmother?” “After. After. You give me drink first.” The crowd of men ushered them towards a brightly-lit cargo container from which the sounds of loud kwaito music were coming. A small bar had been built out of an old kitchen cupboard at the far end of the container. Some wooden benches lined the two sides. After the first shot of spirits he forgot that he’d been afraid to enter Moscow. After the third he forgot that he’d come with the little boy with the badly burnt face. And by the time he’d had six he’d completely forgotten about Baby waiting for him at home. He stumbled out of the container to urinate. It was raining softly. He held onto the side of the cold steel box as he moved unsteadily away from the light. It was pitch black in the corner he found, stinking of vomit. He swore as he bumped against a low shape on the ground. Then something got entangled in his feet and he fell into the mud made by the rain and his own urine. He tried to stand up, but his feet kept slipping. A voice in the darkness cursed him in a strange language. He shouted back. Then something heavy hit him on the side of his head. He grabbed at it. It was a wooden crutch. He wrenched it out of the grip of its owner. Once, twice, three times he brought it down onto the low groaning form on the ground. Then his weapon broke. He lay back against the side of the makeshift tavern. People were coming out to see what all the commotion was about. Someone had a torch and they shone it into his face. He held up his hands to stop the light. Blood poured down the side of his face. People grasped his hands and pulled him up. A man began to kick the still shape on the ground. Someone else joined in. Sympathetic hands led him toward the light. A woman held a bowl of water to wash his wound. “Who was that mad guy outside?” he asked, wincing as the woman cleaned the blood from his face. “I don’t know,” someone said. “But we fixed him,” another added. “It was S’bu — piece of kwere-kwere shit!” the woman with the bowl of water said. And everyone laughed. The boy with the burnt face peered over him. In the bright light inside the container the boy’s scar took on the shape of a grotesque mask as he laughed along. Baby was sitting on the counter top in the kitchen with her knees under her chin. Beside her the tap dripped onto the top of the sink. Drip, drip. tannie - an older woman
LitNet: 03 June 2004
Have your say! To comment on this piece write to webvoet@litnet.co.za, and become a part of our interactive opinion page.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© 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. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
