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Established on the WWW 1996 Issue #455: AN ACCOUNTING G21 FICTION MPHUTHUMI NTABENI, South Africa JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. HOUSE OF CARDS YOU, The World RADIO*ACTIVE RADIO RAHEEM, United States SMOKE & MIRRORS ROD AMIS, G21 World HQ TABLOID HART THOMAS HART, United States VOX POPULI YOU, The World THE PREVIOUS EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE.
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G21 FICTION - ASHES OF OUR DEAD HOPES (Conclusion): The completion of the latest short story from MPHUTHUMI NTABENI.CONTINUED from the previous edition.
Mphuthumi Ntabeni "Who the fuck are you real ly?" he asked, getting visibly irritated.
That caught me by surprise. I didn't think, of all things, he'd be irritated with finding out I was his sister, half-sister if you like.
"Tando," I tried making my voice firm and dead serious. "The man whose photograph hangs in your lounge was my father too." I did not know what to say after that. Silence blew a chilling wind between us. He was the one who eventually broke it.
"What brings you here? Who the fuck are you? You come to our house pretending... " His voice sounded a mixture of anger and disappointment, almost tear-choked.
I wondered if it was stunned resentment or just the shock of surprise. "No." I interrupted him. "I've just found out myself when I saw his photograph on your wall. Of course I came to Tanzania to try and find out about his life. He never told us he had a son here; then again they lost contact with my mother when I was only six years old."
I felt trapped, crouching in the airless centre of Phaks' dead life. I could feel his rubble pressing down on me. More silence ensued.
Tando went inside the house, seemingly angry. He came back after a short while holding a photo and handed it to me. "Is that you?" he asked, still visibly angry.
I recognised the little girl in a pink floral dress and icing sugar around her mouth.
"Yes, that's me on my fifth birthday."
A thawing silence followed.
"What now? Fuck! I can't stand this shit." He was speaking more to himself than to me. There was an exhausted frown on his face. He picked at a pimple on his chin and, as a second thought of wanting to show he was macho, took out a cigarette and lit it. He wrinkled his forehead as the blue smoke of the cigarette passed his eyes, turning to look away from me.
We were rescued by Sandi's calling voice.
It was my turn to feel kind of glum, a little guilty for not being excited at discovering he was my brother, as I walked towards the house.
Sandi looked at me with a question mark when I entered the house. She was poised, with one hand on her waist and another on her brow to shade the blinding last rays of the day. Her blazing stare annihilated my gloom.
"Are you okay? You look like you've just seen a ghost. Has Tando been giving you a hard time about South Africa's neglect of its responsibilities in our continent? Don't mind him. That man cannot put out the political anger in his mind for a moment, not even to enjoy a party."
I gave her a non-committal smile. Her beautiful ebony face flexed with relief. I shrug my shoulders to try and convince her of my well-being. She reflected a while, then enquired as we entered the house: "So tell me your real story."
"How do you mean?"
I liked the warmth of the iron stove in the kitchen; it reminded me of my home. There were logs and logs of wood next to it. The area around Dakwa is forested, so the government allows the denizens to fell old trees and use them for fuel, but outsiders are prohibited.
"I mean a young beautiful woman, a doctor at that, who stands a chance of making real money in her own country, decides to come to this disease stricken den. Really what's your story? Fleeing from a heart ache or something?"
The candle on the table was burning low with stalactite designs on the fringes of its leeward side. I moved my hand to the bowl of avocadoes on the table to test their ripeness.
"I bought them cheap at the market yesterday," Sandi said, having anticipated my question.
That's another thing I love about Tanzania. You can get just about everything on the market at reasonable prices, especially at the capital, Dar.
"No story." I tried to dismiss her question as I made to sit on the table. The aluminium kettle on the paraffin stove started to whistle. Sandi took two blue metal cups out of the kitchen unit. I tried to help but she dismissed me with a wave of her hand.
"Come on, tell me, tell. I'm eager to gossip. And don't tell me a cock and bull about trying to compensate for some deep-seated need. What's the real story? " Sandi insisted with her usual tactless curiosity that sometimes irritated me. She put the metal mugs on the table with sugar next to them and measured two full spoons of ground coffee, poured them in a small aluminium teapot and added boiling water before putting it on the paraffin flame-stove.
I followed her as she made for the only bedroom in the house. She lit a candle, apologising for not being able to light the glass paraffin lamp because "There's a shortage of paraffin in the shops around."
I had mistakenly thought the house had electricity because of all the mechanical equipment around, apparently they used gas tanks and car cell batteries. The candle immediately flamed up, a trembling reflection of a Pentecostal tongue, on the dressing table mirror. I felt a strange acute pleasure at the whole scenario that transported me to my growing up days.
"I guess I was hoping to run up to something new." I said with an air of resignation, knowing very well my answer would not satisfy her. I closed the curtain, catching a glimpse of Tando's silhouette coming from a distance with hands fastened behind his butt. Our mother said Phaks had 'a farmer's pose surveying his terrain,' meaning that walk with hands locked behind. I was surprised at my irritation at seeing these postures of my father's personality in Tando.
"Running away to meet something new? Were you hoping to meet men? Whoever you were expecting to meet is not here, I can I assure you of that. This is the backside of the world. Even the devil is not interested in this place. I'm sorry to say there's no pot of gold at the rainbow's end," Sandi said, surprising me with a firm spirited voice as she moved back to the kitchen.
I followed her, a little confused. I had thought she was content with her place in Morogoro. This resentment about the place was a novel side of her to me. She made me feel like a whimsical Don Quixote chasing dreams and tilting at windmills. "I wouldn't put it that way. The question of men lapsed a long time ago for me."
"No, don't tell me. Are you a lesbian? I've always wanted to meet a lesbian." Sandi's excited eyes turned to focus on my face as she asked.
"No. What I mean is that I'm more interested in addressing the bigger questions of life than finding men, at this stage of my life." I tried stifling my irritation. Few things irritate me more than having to justify myself.
She looked at me with disappointed eyes. I realised she had not understood me. "What I grew up on no longer exists, so I no longer know how to live properly. I'm trying to find another way," I explained.
"Well, Sister, you're running after dead hares if you're foolish enough to think there are miracles out here. The life worth living is the one you have." Her visage turned pitiful as she said that. She poured coffee into the two tin mugs with a strainer.
We drank the coffee in silence until Tando came to offer me a lift to the hospital where I stayed.
We traveled in strained silence, not knowing what to say to each other. Ocherous shadows behind the mountains hovered in the darkening sky. Tando kept concealing a yawn with his hand. He dropped me at the hospital gate with a vague promise that he'd visit me soon.
The watchman at the gate offered to accompany me to my room, as "it is already dark." We talked about the weather until he switched to religion. He asked me if I was a Christian. When I conceded, he felt pity for me, told me, in deep commiseration, that "Christianity is a white man's religion, it does not understand African things. Why would a man not marry as many wives as he likes if he has means to support them? You must change to Islam. If you were a Moslem woman you'd be respectable with a good husband by now."
I gathered, in amused silence, that my being s ingle was not a respectable thing for a young woman. He turned back the moment we reached the entrance of the staff quarters. I bade him goodnight and entered the building.
The stairs smelled of a household disinfectant. I climbed them two at a time. The door to my room gave me difficulty in opening as usual. I had to pull and lift it before turning the key, a trick I learnt after breaking two keys. When it gave in, it opened like a tombstone, with a prolonged moan.
The room was musty and stuffy. We were not allowed to open windows as they let in mischievous monkeys that vandalised the premises. I turned on the TV set to offset the ropy rasping sounds of the mice in the wardrobe. The US was advancing attacks on Iraq. The terrible events, watched on TV, had a touch of unreality; the free-floating patriotism of the Americans; the delusion of Iraqi generals; the death of young American soldiers in strange lands; the suicide bombers; the cold nerve of fired-up greed; the courage out of fear of ordinary Iraqis; and all that malfeasance in the name of freedom and God.
It all made me think of something the Dutch theologian Soren Kierkegaard said to the effect that when we think we are nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil. Perversity is always looking to consort with the best motives in human nature (Norman Mailer).
Bush II was making a speech, something someone must have written for him because he had trouble fitting himself into the words. I listened for a while and caught the part about equating the war on terror to World War II; he said both began with a surprise attack on America.
My God, I thought to myself, is there no stopping the self-delusions of the present American administration? To say that the Second World War started with the bombing of Pearl Harbour means it started on Dec. 7, 1941. That'll come as a surprise to Europeans, especially Poles, who have an idea that it began on Sept. 1, 1939 when the Wehrmacht invaded their country. Somebody has been learning his history from Hollywood, I thought to myself as I turned off the TV.
I plugged in my Ipod to listen to music; put it on shuffle to avoid deliberation. Leonard Cohen's 'Story of Isaac' came sober, weary and calm: ... When it all comes down to dust, I'll kill you if I must, I'll help you if I can (x2). Have mercy on uniforms, men of peace or a man of war, the peacock spreads its fan ...
IIIIn bed I kept wondering about Sandi's need to insert herself into every situation and my need for taciturnity. She wanted to ensnare me with her brusque honesty that verges on rudeness. I could have told her that, yes, I came to Tanzania to forget; no, not to forget, to clarify. And, yes, I'm running away from something, the difficulty is in identifying it. It'd be too simplistic to call it Lusapho or Mbali, my current-ex-boy friend.
Mbali is ten years older than me. I met him when I went to his surgery for a constant issue of blood. I do that whenever I have my periods. He went beyond the call of his professional duty in helping me with the problem. He took to visiting me after office hours and we became lovers. It had been two years since my matriculation. I had just weaned my baby, and was getting excruciatingly lonely, thinking about studying medicine also, but had no real material means.
Mbali offered to pay for my varsity fees. I took him up on his offer and was off to Johannesburg to study MBBCH at Wits University the following year. I'm eternally grateful to Mbali for that but things got to be complicated when I grew out of his realm of influence.
I found him superficial, shallow as a mud puddle. But that's not the point. He never presented himself as anything but. The problem came with my maturity. I realised we were operating on different levels. Where he had aims - a new car, a big house - I had ideals. Mbali had a huge appetite for worldly success and not enough for the other kind. I could not rake him out of his mental habits, could not interest him in the things that mattered more to me, like books. Books were not part of his language, except occasional medical journals. I guess I can say intellectual sloth is what disappointed me most in him but that too would be too simplistic.
Mbali's stature as a young medical doctor impressed me during my insecure youth. I was taken up with the idea of going out with a doctor. On top of that he was incredibly kind, which made me overlook his smug over-blown self esteem. Things got complicated as the years went by. When it came to a stage where I had to concentrate on my fantasies whenever he was with me, I knew the plot had been given away. Our love-making felt staged, even forced, sometimes. Perhaps I should have waited until he was not inside me to tell him I didn't love him anymore. I just couldn't stand it anymore; his thrusting movements, bestial sweat dripping on me, and all.
I've often noticed in me an inner compulsion that drives me to a position of isolation, a deeper nervous exhaustion that causes the collapse of my sense of courtesy. Poets call it 'the harsh queerness that comes into things.' Mbali called it 'emotional anaemia.' Whatever it is, it's poignant and sharply separates me from others when it awakens.
I remember that day clearly. We were lying in bed. I turned myself away from his suffocating anaconda hug. The deep indigo sky was glowing in the silver luminescence of the waxing moon. A florescent streetlight flooded the room. My heart felt heavy from peering into shadows.
As usual, he started by gently pulling my panties down. Stabs of guilt disallowed me from stopping him though I didn't feel like making love to him. He climbed on top of me, sucking my tongue half out of my mouth in pornographic ardor. I couldn't stand it.
His member forced its way inside my dry-as-a-desert-rock vagina. When the friction became too much, I closed my eyes, trying to redirect the pain. When I opened my eyes again, he was breathing and sweating heavily.
That's when I dropped the bomb - or rather coughed it out of my heart. "I think I don't love you anymore."
He ignored me, continuing to th
rust repetitively.
I was certain he heard me.
I felt him stiffen to his maximum between my legs. Then, in few seconds, he came in his usual sporadic spasms. It felt like being spat on.
I felt drained and as hollow as a gnawed-out melon rind.
"What did you say?" he asked after catching his breath. His eyes were usually moist from gratefulness after our lovemaking but not that day. They were dancing in anger and an overflowing bitterness was etched on them.
"I don't love... " I said, unable to finish, turning towards the wall.
He vigorously turned me to face him. I was seeing sparks.
Then I realised he had just slapped me.I didn't even feel pain from the slap. I only saw sparks. Sure my face was a little heated. I looked at him with a tenderness that surprised me, under the circumstances. I guess I felt he was entitled to that. But the slap changed nothing. I still didn't love... I tried to think of something to say. All I could think of were injuring words.
Since I knew I was stronger than him in the word department, I decided to keep as silent as a succubus. The night was velvety dark outside. I don't know where the moon had gone but the darkness comforted me. I felt in partnership with it somehow.
A quiet moment passed between us, a moment when Bob Dylan's song smuggled itself on my mind; Silhouetted anger passing into manufactured peace. The zinc roof in my mother's house was moaning like lutes and oboes when blown by the wind.
"Is it someone else?" He asked this with a defeated voice, after a long silence, and immediately regretted the question. He knew me better than that.
"Come on," I said as a way of answering.
That seemed to re-enkindle his anger. "After all I've done for you?"
He was right. He h ad done a lot for me. I was on my last year of medical school the following year because of his financial support.
"I need something else." I tried to make him understand.
"What do you need? Is it money?" To him everything is about money.
This question makes me less guilty of my decision. "Nothing is working for me at this juncture of my life."He fixed his knifelike gaze on me as I said that. "What do you mean 'nothing is working'? You're about to become a doctor. Isn't that what you wanted? I told you when you finish your studies next year I'll leave my wife and marry you. I'll do anything you want, you know that." That was a novel side of the proud personality I knew. I never thought he'd go as far as to beg.
"Leaving your wife would solve nothing. It'd even lessen my respect for you."
"I don't want to be respected. I want to be loved." His eyes were wandering like those of a demented person.
"Your wife loves you, otherwise she'd have long ago left you when she first discovered your affairs."
He looked at me with a puzzled face. "Ja, she knows about us."
She once stopped me at the supermarket and said she knew who I was, more in an attitude of sharing a secret than confrontation.
"Your problem is that you don't attach importance to anything. For once, listen to what I'm saying." He tried to change the topic from his wife as he always did.
It hurt to realise we're so far apart that he'd think I attach no importance to anything. I've always viewed my problem as the opposite - the intense sensitivity and attachment of too much importance to things.
The past refused to die in my head as I lay on the single bed of kayo mattress in Mazimbu Hospital. There was a prevailing sense of unreality in the room that made me feel I was jumping while falling at the same time. It made me feel sick, vaguely nauseated. Things like those happen to me sometimes. I once dreamt I was looking at my hometown in four dimensions. Much clarity came from that dream.
That night I dreamt I was dreaming. When a person dreams that she's dreaming which part is a dream? Or is she just beginning to wake? Aah! These brusque deflecting ironies of our lives. The poet philosopher (Bertrand Russell) saw it: our hearts build precious shrines for the ashes of our dead hopes.
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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