Hunger Eats a Man (11 page)

Bongani watches as Sgonyela assembles his medicines and puts them in a plastic bag. For a moment he thinks about what the bald-
headed man has said and again reminds himself that it is not Sgonyela who cuts off men's testicles and makes others eat them. Besides, he has to think about his children.

Sgonyela then gives him the rules to keep while using his medicines: “Rule number one! Do not eat pork when you use my medicines because it will spoil them.” Sgonyela looks at Bongani to see the impact of his words.

Bongani smiles before answering, “That will not be a problem because I do not eat pork at all.” Bongani feels pleased as he speaks. His self-esteem is greatly enhanced. “I stopped eating pork when I saw that it burns like a lamp in the dark. It surely is cursed meat.”

“Good! You also must not cross the hearth when you are still using my medicines.”

“Fortunately, I don't have a hearth in my house. We use electricity,” Bongani says triumphantly and Sgonyela laughs.

“I don't mean that. I mean that you must not visit your wife when you are using my medicines.”

“I don't understand,” Bongani says, and his voice shows that he is disappointed.

“You cannot sleep with your wife when you are still using my medicines.”

This surprises Bongani so much that he demands without thinking, “May I ask why?”

“Certainly,” Sgonyela says suddenly, as if he anticipated or hoped for this question. “What is the point of charging a battery if you are using it at the same time? Besides, in your case, we want the battery to be extra full.”

As unusual as this sounds, Bongani thinks he understands Sgonyela. “I will do as you would like me to do,” he says in a voice that lacks the confidence he has shown earlier.

Sgonyela pretends to be in deep thought for about three minutes and Bongani decides it would be unwise to disturb him. When he has come to, Sgonyela introduces the topic of payment.

“I have just been talking to my ancestors about their cow. They want half of it or more right now because yours is a tricky business.”

“How much is it going to be?” Bongani does not sound at all concerned, and Sgonyela notices that and relishes it.

“The charms and herbs I am giving you are expensive and hard to find. Most of what I have mixed here come from Kenya and Mozambique, and some from very secret and dangerous sources.” Sgonyela looks for a frown on Bongani's face and finds none. “All in all, my payment is five thousand.”

“What?” Bongani almost jumps. This is far more than he'd expected. “No, Father Sgonyela, you are killing me,” he says in disbelief.

“Why do you complain? What is R5 000 for having many cute young boys and girls who look like their mother?”

Bongani is only able to pay two thousand at the moment. He says he will bring the rest in a few days. Sgonyela agrees and tells him that, if possible, he should bring all the remaining money so that his kings will be pleased with him and they will give him children sooner. Bongani says he will try, and then begins to thank Sgonyela for his willingness to help him.

Sgonyela almost screams, “No! Don't say that! Don't thank my herbs and don't thank me! Just leave and never say goodbye.”

Bongani stands up to leave. Never say goodbye?

Coming from work, Priest notices a commotion in the Phanekeni section of Hunger-Eats-a-Man where he lives. He sees people running and thinks that maybe the Grinding Stone is attacking another man. It is only when he is at the gate of his homestead that he hears what is going on. Sagilasomthakathi (Witchdoctor's-knobkierrie) has sent a tractor full of potatoes to give to the community.

Sagila is a kind white man who is loved and respected by the people. He obtains his employees from Ndlalidlindoda and transports them in his van every day. In addition to their wages, he offers them potatoes, beans and maize meal every month-end. Sagila is a devout Christian and he tries by every means to impart his belief to his workers and the people of Gxumani, especially those of Ndlalidlindoda, because they are his nearest neighbours, although they cannot hear him if he screams. He has hired a priest and, every day before work commences, they start with prayer. Sagila knows many blacks still believe in the ancestors and do not know that theirs is a false belief. The only correct religion in his view is that of the Saviour God and God's only Son.

Sagila does not want to preach and not practise. Didn't Jesus say that a man needs to love his neighbour as much as he loves himself? So, Sagilasomthakathi now and then sends a tractor full of half-rotten potatoes to give to the starving community of Hunger-Eats-a-Man for free. His workers dump the potatoes wherever they please and the people scramble for them. Sometimes the scramble ends in fights.

Priest watches people running after the tractor, carrying empty sacks and buckets in which to put their potatoes. It looks to Priest as though the whole populace has gone mad. The noise! The excitement! Only for rotten potatoes? God, something is wrong. There are women running with children as if they themselves have become young again. “
Hhayi bo
!” one woman calls to him. “Where is MaDuma? Where is MaMbona? Tell them let's go to collect the potatoes.”

“She must have already gone,” Priest hears himself respond to the fat woman who is shouting. It is as if she is blowing a war horn. Priest looks at her and sees that she might weigh more than one hundred and twenty kilograms. Yet she manages to run. As she carries her body past Priest's home, he marvels at how some people grow so big out of eating pap toasted in fat.

The woman is known as Thithi, because, despite her age, she is not married. She says to Priest, “Tell Nozipho's mother there to come faster. They will finish the potatoes before we arrive.”

“But she's got a young baby and nobody to look after the child for her,” Priest complains. Just then he sees his young, short neighbour coming with an empty sack. She goes through Priest's homestead and runs in the direction of the tractor, without recognising or even seeing Priest, who is still looking around in amazement.

“Run, MakaNozipho!” Thithi says. “Look at those people! I nearly left you because you have a young child.” Her breasts are moving up and down as she runs down to the big gum tree near to which the potatoes are about to be dumped.

“Ohho! I just threw him on the bed and left,” MakaNozipho responds, running after Thithi. “Potatoes are like meat these days.”

When all the people who have run to the tractor are gone, Priest stands alone in front of his house. He feels a sudden sadness when he again thinks about what he has seen. These people are really suffering and this has made them behave like animals. But what really worries him is his involvement in all the madness around him. He too felt a tinge of happiness when he found out there are potatoes to be fetched
and his wife has gone to fetch them. Feeling happy about the potatoes hurts Priest very much, but he also cannot help his disappointment when he sees many people returning from their journey empty-handed.

“Why are you coming back?” a voice asks loudly. Priest listens attentively for the answer because that is his question as well.

“Those silly farm boys did not dump the potatoes near Cleopas like they said they would do,” Thithi responds. She is angry and disappointed, but she still manages to laugh as she speaks. “They went all the way to Mswane. Even if we followed, we would get nothing as many people from Mswane and Eqeleni are running to meet the tractor as well.”

One woman, whom Priest recognises as the sangoma, comes laughing all the way. She keeps laughing at herself for the way she has run and pestered her children to run faster, lest they lose the tractor. She lives in Manhlanzini, which is quite a distance from here. She has run for two kilometres after the tractor, and now she comes back laughing, with an empty sack in her hands.

“I told my children to run faster,” she repeats for the third time when she is near the gate of Priest's home. Only now does it occur to Priest that the woman is not talking to anyone in particular. “My children said we have lost it.” Another laugh interrupts her. “I said, ‘Go on. Turn to your right and go all the way to Shiburi.'” She keeps walking and Priest hears her still laughing when he can no longer see her.

MaDuma cannot hide her anger as she finally arrives home. Priest sees, when she is close enough, that she has been crying. But MaDuma is not really crying for failing to get the potatoes. Priest knows his wife very well. She is crying because she has made a fool of herself.

This is bad indeed. Priest feels sorry for his wife, but there is nothing he can do. He stands outside for another hour, afraid to go inside and face her. As he stands there thinking about how things have changed for the worse when everybody thought they would change for the
better, he sees two young boys of about eleven or twelve carrying around two kilograms of potatoes each. They must have followed the tractor to Mswane. Now they are not running; instead they are striding fast. Priest, like everybody who sees the boys, need not be told that the boys are happy.

“Who knows,” Priest thinks, “maybe they did not have food this whole day. Or they ate pap without anything to help it down their throats.” Priest thinks of the woman who passed here laughing and hopes that the children are hers. “That might stop her from laughing.”

He smiles and goes inside.

After fourteen months the workers finish planting the number of trees Johnson wants. Priest, and many others, soon resume the title of being unemployed. All the months they have toiled at the farm comprised extreme suffering and torture to their bones and muscles. It became a little better when they started the actual planting, although the money was reduced. But now all is gone.

Things soon return to what they were. Although there was not a great difference while he was working at the farm, the family has been able to buy enough maize to see them through the month. Priest's children have known hunger for a long time now, yet they cannot get used to it. It is like death. Every time it hits is as bad as the first. But at least they are used to eating bad food.

“Mother sent me to ask for maize meal,” a young girl says as Priest and his wife are seated in their living room, not talking to each other. As things have changed from bad to worse, the two parents find it hard to engage in a conversation without it ending in a fight.

As the young girl speaks, MaDuma looks askance at Priest, who, having heard the question, utters a big, “NO.”

“Tell your mother we are sorry, we have no maize meal,” MaDuma says sternly. “Father is not working at the farm any more, in case she has forgotten. We have nothing.”

MaDuma is losing her temper speedily. How can anybody ask
from them in times like this when everybody has to hold on to the little they have?

The girl waits a little while, hoping to hear one of them remember that just this morning MaDuma bought 12.5 kilograms of maize meal. But, contrary to what the girl hopes, Priest earnestly confirms what his wife has said. “Tell your mother we are sorry that we cannot help her. Life is hard these days.”

As the girl opens the door to leave, Priest decides to offer her some soothing words instead of the maize meal. “Tell your mother not to forget that God loves us, and He sees us.”

The girl is annoyed by what Priest tells her after having just lied to her. “No Father, that is not true. There is no God.”

The girl's words move Priest. Before he can find the words to refurnish the girl with her lost faith, she closes the door and leaves.

As soon as the girl is gone, Priest and MaDuma go to the kitchen where their maize is. They do not tell each other where they are going, so they only realise they are heading for the same place once they have arrived. The woman arrives first, and is very relieved to see their maize safe and sound. She opens the bag and says, “They are playing. They will not get you.” MaDuma closes the paper bag and leaves, allowing Priest to utter his reassuring words to the maize meal.

But Priest does not go to the bag of maize meal with reassuring words in mind. He goes there with something different. He knows that no matter how much they save, their maize will sooner or later be finished. The bag of maize meal was opened this morning when MaDuma prepared the family something in between breakfast and lunch. This means it has been used once, but what Priest sees disturbs him so much that he forgets his rank in society.

“Dogs!” he curses. “The lazy dogs have no understanding of fullness. They are cheating us.” Priest closes the bag angrily and leaves. He cannot believe this! These people are reducing the content in the bags while they increase prices.

When he arrives in the living room, he sees a figure distinct with
anger standing next to the door. The figure is a woman's and she happens to be MakaNozipho, the mother of the girl who has just come to ask for maize meal. Priest is stupefied.

“I sent my daughter to ask for maize meal but she came back empty-handed,” the figure speaks, trying in vain to look at both MaDuma and Priest at the same time. Failing this, she resorts to looking at them alternately. Priest and MaDuma do not know what to say, so they decide to keep quiet, allowing MakaNozipho a chance to continue. “I came to ask why that happened.”

“We told her we have no maize meal,” MaDuma says, as if having no maize meal is something to be proud of. She looks for confirmation from her husband, who gives it without hesitation.

MakaNozipho's face becomes darker when she hears another pair of lies directed at her ears. Priest only now notices that MakaNozipho has a large nose. It is moving up and down as if it has a life of its own. “You are lying!” she bursts out in anger. “You do have maize meal. You,” she points a finger at MaDuma, “I saw you coming with it from Yizo-Yizo. You have it.”

Priest and MaDuma look at each other in disbelief. MaDuma tried to avoid being seen in the morning, but she has certainly failed. She decides to say something quickly, lest her husband make a mistake. “Yes, it is true. You did see me come from Yizo-Yizo with maize meal. But it came when we owed so many people their maize that it got finished when we paid them back.”

MaDuma looks at Priest, who feels obliged to nod approval and sends another surreptitious glance at MakaNozipho.

“You are lying!” MakaNozipho accuses again.

“I think it's time for you to leave our house,” MaDuma shouts. “You have no right to come here and accuse us of lying. What we are telling you is true. So go!”

MakaNozipho does not move. MaDuma looks around for any object she may use if she needs force in order to get rid of this woman.

Instead of leaving, MakaNozipho speaks again. “You say you paid
other people their maize meal. What about my own you borrowed when Priest had not even started working at the farm?”

Priest and his wife are very shocked when they hear this. Two years? They look at each other and then face MakaNozipho with the same question. MakaNozipho repeats herself in the same words but louder.

MaDuma gets angrier now. “This woman has come to rob us of our maize meal and I will not let that happen.” She starts to sweat and breathe heavily. “From now on there will be no helping each other with maize meal, or anything for that matter. In times like this, the teachings of the Bible only count in the church, not outside.”

She stops to regain her strength while Priest and MakaNozipho look at her, shocked.

“Jesus did not know that it would come to this, otherwise he wouldn't have said one should love one's neighbour as much as one loves oneself.” Now MaDuma might cry at any minute. She is angry, confused and sorry. All in one. “No one can afford to love her neighbour these days. Not even half as much as she loves herself.”

Priest looks at his wife and sees somebody he does not know. She never was a very kind person, but she has also never been like this. What has hunger done to his wife? Priest looks at MakaNozipho and sees that she, too, is shocked. All this time all the neighbouring families have shared in their suffering and want. Now everyone is on their own.

“Okay then,” MakaNozipho starts in a calm voice, “you eat your maize meal forever. There will be no helping each other from now on.” She bangs the door and leaves.