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PAVING THE ROAD Ten Years of Truthspeak 1996-2006 G21 AFRICA MPHUTHUMI NTABENI, South Africa G21 AFRICA BONIFAS ODUOR-OWINGA, United States G21 FICTION MPHUTHUMI NTABENI, South Africa G21 FICTION CYNTHIA JELE, United Kingdom JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. GLOBAL*BEAT CATRIONA STUART, United States SMOKE & MIRRORS ROD AMIS, G21 World HQ 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 - TRESPASSING - PART 2 is the second and concluding part serialization of a new short story by South Africa writer MPHUTHUMI NTABENI.
CONTINUES FROM PREVIOUS EDITION II
Mphuthumi Ntabeni We decided to go out for dinner to an Indian restaurant I knew the minute we were done with the formalities of checking in. Outside, the low rolling hills of the Zambian horizon were flooded with the silvery light of the moon. But close to us shadows refused to be diffused by the orange light of neon street lamps. The jalopy drivers competed for our attention, offering to take us there and there. It felt unsportsman-like not to give them business, but we were walking distance from where we were going.
The Livingstone Museum looked profoundly quiet, quiet as a grave, and gave the area an eerie feeling. Near the Post Office the town had an edgy feeling about it with vendors and constermongers still hanging around and arguing their business, hoping to catch the last earnings of the day.
"Wow!" Itzchat almost fell, slipping on the pavement. "The curb is glitchidik from the evening dew," said he, laughing it off. All roads for the town denizens were leading to the corybantic music halls. Somebody asked us if we wanted to make a phone call; we declined.
People in Zambia carry personal cell phones offering them to the public to make a call for a price because public telephones are hopeless.
At the Indian restaurant we were treated with the cautious indifference reserved for foreigners and difficult customers. I slightly resented the way his white skin made us conspicuous, overdramitising our presence.
"Have a beer, Moshi; you'll love it; but if you want something brewed in the Deutsche tradition, you can order the Windhoek," I advised. "I'll have a Moshi, and a couple of Rotis for starters, and an Indian beer to accompany the sauce."He ordered a Windhoek. I loved the dolce far niente of the moment before he talked my ear off about Africaa! with a genuine admiration tinted with Rousseau-like ideas of noble savages. I was relieved when he switched to the story of his life. Apparently he is a son of second generation Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, something to do with Belarus, who settled in NYC, and was proud of some Negroid blood coursing through his veins on his mother's side, "that's why, unlike most white men, I've rhythm.
"I guess I'm a Shlemiel in sense that," he pulled a mock scowl, "I represent the hapless Jew whose aspirations are constantly thwarted by one thing or the other. My family is Ashkenazic, European Jews but I was born NYC, in the area of Deutsche Yehudim, German Jews. We lived in the mixed Jewish-Germanic-Slavic-Anglo neighborhood."
He gave me an enquiring look, faking boredom to test if I was interested in the topic. I nodded him to continue. On top of his public education he had to attend the Talmud Torah school before being sent for Talmudic studies in Europe by his father, which is how he ended up in the Rhineland, "which is almost completely different to the rest of Germany."
But by that time it was already too late. "I was too intoxicated by the vigour of cosmopolitan life to be of any use in religious studies." He gave an impression of having shocking morals, which he hoped didn't give me "uneasiness."
I rued my lapses because I missed most of the part about his pride for his Negroid blood on his mother's side. In any case, after a couple of stories, came his loss of belief in God because "I see the worth of religion only in decent routine management of the emotions." He studied IT without his father's consent, something that made him a Spinonza-like outcast in his father's eyes, "... which is okay since the only people I respected at home, my mother, left when I finished my high school, and my sister lives with her rich husband as far away from my father's reach as possible in Maine and Florida.
"My father is liberal in some sense, I guess, but the kind of liberal that is very illiberal about things that are not liberal. His father was a Rabbi, so he always felt he let him down by becoming a banker. I was supposed to pay my father's debt by at least studying Halakha if not Talmud, be fluent in Yiddish and perhaps become a Rabbi someday.
"Es grizhet mir, it gripes me just thinking about it. My father always accused me of having goyisher kop, so I guess in the end his accusations became true. He measures intelligence by how much you agree with him, whether you enjoy the Economist and the Wall Street Journal or not. If not, you're an incorrigible fool and a traitor to your country. You'll be at the mercies of his xenophobic deprecation. He's proud, ignorant, bigoted and quarrelsome about everything else." He added fervour to that sentence. "Fortunately for me I have this inclination to rove, an insatiable appetite for the exotic, I guess you'd say.
"I suppose I inherited that from my mother. Still, I don't suppose it is very hard to leave a domineering and overbearing character like my father with all its recidivist brutality. My mother had an intractable character to her own, though she suppressed it with customary coyness - most of the time - for the sake of us children - mortgaging her independence without cowering to his lifted hand."One day we woke with my mother gone. She took the trouble, though four weeks later, of sending us a parcel with a book by some Leila Hadley called Give Me The World. She had highlighted a certain passage on the book, which goes like:
I wanted to be a stranger in the world where everything I saw, heard, touched and tasted would be fresh and new because wonder and awareness seemed to have disappeared in my life, leaving excessive familiarity with an existence of routine."Itzchat continued, having captured my attention completely, "For some reason, I've always thought she might be in Africa somewhere."
"Why Africa?" I asked with more interest in knocking of the teapot.
"I don't know; because it's suppose to be dark? I have this notion of her living as a khalutz with the sweat of her brow and the toil of her hand. Talk about a divorce run from a wedding walk hee!"
Silence fell between us momentarily then he asked, "Do you know what my father said after she left?"
I looked at him with an expression of expectation to give him a go ahead to continue.
"That she'll be an agunah, a chained woman wherever she goes, unable to marry under Jewish law. The bastard! Like Israel, his proximity to God has bleached him. Talking to my sister once I asked who was better or worse between our parents. 'How do you compare warts to corns' was her final answer. So you can see that there was no shalom bayit , peace within the household."
Our orders arrived. I had curried lamb stew and rice with strange vegetables I was brave enough to try and was rewarded by their wholesomeness. He had a vegetarian dish that didn't taste half as bad when he fed me its bits across the table. We ate in quiet to the sounds of the Zimbabwean soul singer Oliver Mtukudzi on the background.
We went out of the restaurant with a vague wish that the night would linger longer. I waited in an open lounge for him to bring what he called a surprise from his room. He came back with a bottle of Wild Turkey American whisky. We drank it listening to the deep silence of the inky sky that had just a patch of milky stain.
"I'm bored," he said as he threw his head on my lap . There were swallowing sounds from the chlorined water of the pool. His breath warmed my thighs.
"Would you rather you were raving in some nightclub somewhere?"
"Something like that. The drinks have been a fillip to my mind for that sort of thing."
Boredom poses fundamental questions about our own identities and the connections we make or don't with the world around us. It comes in a spectrum of feelings, but it is essentially a failure of the senses to appreciate reality, to comprehend the situation with our spirit or imagination. When we fail to comprehend we tend to shut ourselves. That's when boredom settles in. And - according to Paul Tillich, the late Swiss psychiatric theologian - "Boredom is rage spread thin."
IIIHe was not handsome in a conventional manner, in fact he was rather more on the scalded side with a premature receding hairline. When I had the first birds heralding the dawn, which was already leaking through the violet sky, I woke him up. We were both arrested by the promise of the coming dawn.
"When you were sleeping on my lap something crossed my mind."
"Oye! What was that?" He voice was a little forced, trying to rouse from sleep.
"You looked so vulnerable in my lap. I've never known any white person who'd render themselves so vulnerable on the lap of black people. In fact I think that's just the point with the racial relations in our country. White people don't want to be vulnerable on the laps of black people, that's why there are these constant tensions, misunderstandings and lack of reconciliation."
"Glad to be of some usefulness." He stressed the syllables as in mocking gentility.
"I'm serious."
"So am I." I could still sense some mocking tinge in his tone.
"The South African rainbow nation dream is maintained at the expense of black people. They are the ones who must forgive, strive for compromise and reconciliation, return white paternalism with innocent gratitude and forever cower to the status of fiefdom. When they want to assert themselves they're bad kaffirs. Whites respect them only when they assume Western pretensions and values."
"What would you rather white people do?"
"It's not what they must do more than the attitude they must change. They must get off their high horses and dare to make themselves vulnerable to the situation and stop being suspicious all the time. I'm not even asking for their withheld apologies for apartheid crimes, most of which they avoid by saying they didn't know."
"Bunkum! Everybody knew what was going on."
"Exactly. The townships are live volcanoes in our country waiting to erupt. I laugh when I notice how the South African media is doing everything in their power to break the enormous support of the ANC. Meantime the ANC is the only thing that is holding everything in moderation. The break up of the ANC will spell the creation of radical political parties that'll not be so generous and moderate as the ANC."
"You mean there's a chance of the Zimbabwe style of doing things?"
"And more."
"What'll they gain from that?"
"You don't ask a person who has nothing to loose what will they gain. They've nothing to loose. The stock exchange and value of a Rand means nothing to them because they don't even have enough to buy a loaf of bread."
"I sometimes sensed something like that when I was in the townships."
"Rise let's go to sleep and stop talking politics this early." The 'rosy fingers of dawn' were already visible on the mountain caps.
I woke up at eleven with a throbbing headache and the sun shooting hosts. I went to the dinning room after taking a long shower and a change of clothes. Itzchak was already seated at the table swatting flies with his copy of the economics reports.
"Good morning." He said drinking from his cup of coffee.
"I feel nothing good about it; my head is excruciating."
"Nothing a dose of strong coffee won't cure. We drank a storm yesterday. This is my third cup. What's the word that South Africans use for a hangover, babalaza? I like that word, it's onomatopoeic."
"What's for breakfast, or rather brunch?"
"I wish it were a slice of lox with a layer topping of butter lathered with cream cheese, all enclosed in on a toasted bagel. But since wishes aren't horses, I'll settle for a continental breakfast. What are you having?"
"English and a quick cup of coffee."
"Have some Broht and garlic butter meantime to hold your horses."
"Garlic would make me puke, in this condition."
The television in the rooom was tuned to a BBC channel. News about the Iranian nuclear issue. Itzchak listened for a while and turned back to our conversation.
"What scared globs, all of them. What are we doing today?"
"Relaxing, if it's up to me. I've to continue with my journey tomorrow. I've only three more days left before I start work."
"I've been thinking about this. Would it be too much burden if I were to come with you? I'd like to see what you do."
I felt burdened by his doglike attachment but agreed anyway.
We spent most of the day at the bar drinking, went out to a posh hotel close by for dinner. Stayed after dinner to watch a live band and had more drinks. I wanted an early night, but at ten to three we were still walking the streets of Zambia hand in hand; I don't remember how it got to that.
We went back to my room where we lay on bed next to each other talking about everything under the sun until the winds of fortune broke and shattered the walls of my bliss.
"It be better if we went to sleep now. I want to go to Mass at nine before we leave tomorrow."
"Wow! A convent girl? Who would have thought?" That mocking tone again.
"Ja!"
"Okay. I know when I'm not wanted." He stood to leave, beating his fist in the palm of his hand. I made to follow him so I could close the door behind. That's when we kissed. We kissed more and more until I gently pushed him to go out.
Instead of moving, he fiddled with my breast. I stopped himand held his hand. With the other he tried to hike my skirt. I admonished him to cut it out. He violently shook his hands out of my grip, seized the sleeves of my blouse and threw me on the bed.
At first I thought it was just some kind of a joke until I saw his eyes flashing.
He threw himself by force on top of me, hiked my skirt up while keeping his other hand on my chest.
I struggled to get out of his grip but the torso of his body fell on me.
He fondled me, ripped my panties, splayed my legs with his knee and plunged inside of me with a forceful gush.
I was dumfounded with disbelief. It never occurred to me scream for help.
I swallowed back my tears at the sounds with every shameless thrust of his moans. The moans grew into groans and matured into shrieks until he came into his excitement. O the shame of it!
He fell supine on my side. Tears streamed from eyes in warm running. I laid still, afraid to move an inch, not being sure of his next move.
His boldness had died with the normalisation of his breath. He turned to his side, still in bed. I noticed that his cheeks were now a colour of shame.
He suddenly jumped out of bed, which startled me.
I slowly lifted my back to lean on the head of the bed.
He kneeled before me, begging my forgiveness, saying many things. In his pleading face I could again recognised the nice man I had met the day before, as though he were recovering from an epileptic seizure or something.
His eyes fluttered away from my glances like a hunted fox. He kept making explanations about what he called his dybbuk.
There was rawness in between my legs. My major concern was to clean myself. I left him on his knees and went to the bathroom for a shower. I wanted to get his odour off me.
I showered until the shower ran out of hot water. It didn't surprise me to find he was no longer there when I came back. I figured he had absconded, fearing the worst. I felt cold, so I went inside the blankets. Many things crossed my mind.
I didn't feel raped, just violated, if you can understand the difference.
He took by force what I was willing to give him in chastity; that is in fullness of desire and at a right moment. His force cancelled my love for him and made his name a curse in my heart.
When I stood to get dressed for Mass I saw he had left a book on the table. The book was called, Blinding Light, by Paul Theroux. On it he had used twenty US dollars notes, amounting to about two thousand, I think, as a bookmark where he had highlighted the first sentence of the book.
Wishing to go where you don't belong is the condition of most people in the world.I didn't know whether to take that as an apology or an insult. The money he had left planted a seed of anger in me. What was the meaning of it, that I was his whore, khas vesholem" I felt it lobbing insult to an injury. I remembered him saying something about how easy it was to trespass when you had money.
I packed my stuff and left the book and the money there.
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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