Little Suns (20 page)

Mhlontlo pronounced the sentence in his invented nasal language.

Malangana interpreted: ‘I sentence you to two years in prison without fine.’

All the soldiers in the House of Trials rose and with chants and laughter and screams of ‘Death to the Book of Causes! Death to the rule of Dilikintaba!’ they stabbed the book with their spears right there on the bench in front of the king.

The audience that had by now filled the courtroom and was crowding at the back cheered and ululated. Malangana could see Mthwakazi in her red floral dress, eyes agog in the crowd. He felt proud that she was witnessing him playing such a crucial role in the ritual of mocking Hope’s judicial power and rendering it impotent and ineffectual once and for all, and thus consigning it to the ashes of history.

‘Silence in the court,’ said Malangana, as the soldiers went back to take their positions. A new accused was ushered into the witness stand.

‘I am Mzazela, son of Hamza,’ said the accused.

Mhlontlo pronounced the sentence and Malangana interpreted, ‘I find you guilty of stealing your neighbour’s chicken. I sentence you to six months in jail.’

Once more the soldiers attacked the Great Book of Causes with their spears and stabbed it repeatedly. Mhlontlo helped them too by adding a few stabs of his own. So did Malangana before he returned to his interpreter’s seat and called the court back to order.

Mhlontlo tried to turn the pages of the Great Book of Causes but by now it was too tattered. He lifted it up and uttered some pained words. Malangana translated: ‘Oh, now that the Great Book of Causes has decided to leave us, how will I know what crimes you have committed?’

This was greeted with much laughter and cheering.

‘Silence in the court!’ shouted Malangana. ‘You will not get away with your crimes. I will still know them in my head. Even without the Great Book of Causes I can see just by looking into your eyes that you are criminals. The trials will continue.’

And indeed the trials continued in similar vein. Even some of the villagers, those who were not shy to volunteer to be the accused and be found guilty of witchcraft or allowing cattle to graze in other people’s fields, got the opportunity to stand in the witness box and be laughed at by the rest of the audience. This went on until the king became tired of the game, though Malangana was still possessed by the spirit of performance.

Night had fallen when the crowds left the House of Trials in song and unabated euphoria. The soldiers set the building on fire with the tattered Great Book of Causes on the magistrate’s bench. The fire caught quickly and in no time turned into a blaze. Tongues of flames were the crowning glory of their victory.

The brown shadows of the horsemen looked tall and thin as they trotted away from the black, brown, red and yellow flames. After a while the silhouettes of Malangana and Mthwakazi walked away against the flames and the brown smoke. He had to look for her first among the singing and dancing and sneezing crowds.

The walk had begun. It was eighteen miles to Sulenkama. They would walk it slowly, savouring each other’s company. The dress was a hindrance. It was a European dress nonetheless, made of rich smooth material, and it looked splendid on her especially with the red ochre that covered her body.

At Sulenkama she would go to her wards, the king’s diviners, and get her sacred drum and anything else that she needed, and go to the confluence where Sulenkama River joined Gqukunqa River. She would wait for him there. He would go to his house and do whatever he had to do. He would quickly confide in Gxumisa so that at least one person would know that he had gone to marry his Mthwakazi and then he would go and meet her by the river.

They would walk to the top of the mountain.

Mthwakazi’s people invented the sun. These white women can bask in it and enjoy it as if they own it, but they owe it all to Mthwakazi’s people. It is quite early in the morning yet they are already sitting on garden benches on the sprawling lawn of what used to be The Residency. They are all wearing white dresses, white stockings, white shoes and white hats. Malangana could have sworn they were nuns, like those he saw at Holy Cross in Lesotho. Perhaps The Residency has become a convent. It’s been rebuilt into a beautiful whitewashed building with big windows. But the women’s hats are different from the nun’s veils. They are like the panama hats that Sunduza liked to wear when he was smartly dressed. Malangana had thought such hats were worn only by men.

He stands at the knee-high fence and watches one woman roll a big black ball on the grass with two other women standing next to her. There are many other big black balls on the grass. The women on the garden bench are talking animatedly and looking quite amused. They notice him and shoo him away. He smiles at them and waves.

‘He thinks we’re waving at him,’ says one of the women and giggles.

They all break into giggles and shoo him away even more vigorously, uttering such words as: ‘
Hamba
, go away,
voetsek
!’ This last one amuses them no end because it is the language of the crude Trek-Boers and doesn’t quite roll off their polished English tongues. So they keep on repeating it and laughing at their attempts: ‘
Foot-sack! Foot-sack!
’

He waves back and smiles even more broadly, playing the monkey.

A younger woman stands up, takes a biscuit from a saucer and walks to Malangana. The other women give a collective gasp and squeal, one even hiding her face in her hands. Another one says, ‘Oh, Margaret, always the bleeding heart.’

‘You want a biscuit?’ says Margaret to Malangana.

Malangana shakes his head shyly.

‘Come on,’ says Margaret. ‘It won’t bite you. It tastes good.’

‘I used to work here,’ says Malangana, as he reaches for the biscuit.

‘You speak English?’ This seems to be an exciting discovery for Margaret. She turns to the other women and announces: ‘He speaks English.’

‘This used to be the magistrate’s residence and it was called The Residency. I looked after his garden. I was what you would call a houseboy,’ he says. He does not find it necessary to tell her he was a prisoner.

She is impressed.

‘Then what happened?’ She seems concerned. She looks him over from head to toe.

‘Actually, I came here looking for an old friend. Do you know a man called Sunduza? That’s who I am looking for.’

Then he suddenly remembers that a white woman would not know Sunduza. She would know Davis instead. ‘I mean Mr Davis,’ he corrects himself.

The woman calls to the others: ‘He is looking for a Mr Davis!’

They relay the message, but don’t seem to know any Davis, until it gets to the woman who is bowling. She says, ‘Oh, that was a long time ago. The Reverend Davis of Shawbury passed on years ago.’

‘I am looking for his brother, Alfred Davis,’ shouts Malangana.

‘He passed on too . . . years ago,’ says the bowler.

‘What about the Reverend Davis’ wife?’ asks Malangana.

‘She sailed back to England soon after her husband’s death,’ responds the bowler, and her hands fly to her chest as she gasps. She has had a conversation in an unguarded moment with a dilapidated native about white people; particularly the whereabouts of a white woman.

She yells, ‘Margaret, come back here right away!’

Margaret stands there, puzzled; she’s not aware that she has done anything wrong.

‘Tell the vagabond to go away, Margaret,’ yells the bowler. ‘You encourage these natives, they start stealing.’

‘He speaks English,’ says Margaret, nevertheless walking back to the garden bench.

Malangana stands there for a while, his body tensing and his nostrils flaring at being called names by the white woman. He and his people had destroyed all this with flames but in twenty years it has risen with a vengeance in greater splendour with even more arrogant people occupying it while he has been reduced to bones.

‘In case you are wondering who I am,’ he shouts. ‘I am the man who killed Hamilton Hope.’

They all turn their heads in unison and look at him wide-eyed.

‘Hamilton Hope?’ he repeats. ‘The magistrate? The one who used to stay here at The Residency before
I
burned it? Don’t you remember?’

They all burst out laughing.

‘Umhlonhlo murdered Hamilton Hope and we know where he is. You are not he,’ says the bowler, and then rolls her black ball.

A heavy sigh and then Malangana hobbles away. He hates thick-skinned white people who refuse to be provoked into anger. They are all the same; in Sterkspruit and in Kingwilliamstown they refused to give him his due respect there as well. He must have the last word. He stops and glares at the white women, now at some distance.

‘I don’t care what you say, my spear tasted his heart even though he was already dead,’ he yells, though feebly.

They ignore him. He decides to leave them with their arrogance. He didn’t come for them here in Qumbu anyway. He came on the advice of the blind man, the father of the nightwatchman at whose house he once slept many months ago; the man who had seen Mthwakazi begging in Tsolo. After Malangana had waited at the compound of Ibandla-likaNtu for two months because every day the aura of Mthwakazi lingered in the air, the blind former diviner came as one of
amaxhoba
who occasionally visit and was surprised to find that he was still there waiting for Mthwakazi. He said to him, ‘How do you know if you are not waiting for
ukuza kuka-Nxele
?’
The coming of Nxele
. Nxele was the nickname of Makhanda, the left-handed Prophet. He was the military adviser of King Ndlambe of the amaXhosa when they were in a civil war with King Ngqika who was in alliance with the British. He was incarcerated on Robben Island where he died in December 1819 trying to swim to freedom. His followers did not believe that he was dead and were still waiting for his return. Malangana, of course, had no way of knowing if he was waiting for something that would not happen.

‘
Umkhondo
tells me I am on the right track,’ Malangana told the blind man.

‘What if
umkhondo
merely tells you she has been here but is not giving you a guarantee she will be back? Yes, we do return to places we’ve been, but not always.’

‘What else can I do?’ asked Malangana. He was helpless.

‘I don’t know. But waiting is not doing anything. As a diviner myself, I would go and see other diviners to smell her out for me. Obviously she is no longer a diviner. At least when I saw her she was not. She was only an acolyte when we worked together. Maybe she never became a diviner at all. You may be lucky and find that some of the diviners who worked with her are still alive and are still diviners. They may still remember her and may still have something that may help them smell her out. This may or may not succeed but it’s worth trying.’

He grabbed the blind man and kissed him all over the face and head. People thought he was mad. So did the blind man. He screamed that Malangana should leave him alone. Malangana immediately grabbed his crutches and left Ibandla-likaNtu.

That is why he is in Qumbu today. Sunduza was his biggest hope. He was the only white man he knew in Government. White people keep names of everybody in their books these days so that they can chase them for taxes. They know who is dead and who is alive. Sunduza would have helped him locate those diviners who nursed the Queen of amaMpondomise when Mthwakazi was an acolyte just before Hope was killed. Sunduza’s books would know those who are still alive and what their names are.

Now he will have to do it the hard way. Walk to Sulenkama, try to find the old inhabitants and ask questions. It will not be easy. He has been there before, the time he found his family fields being hoed by strangers. People have been dispersed, their homes taken over by strangers. People don’t want to talk about the past.

As Malangana hobbles back to Sulenkama he remembers the walk he took on this very path with Mthwakazi more than twenty years before – he, robust and youthful, resplendent in a purple satin gown, and she petite in an overly voluminous red-and-white silk dress, the bulk of which she had to carry over her shoulders in order to manage to walk.

He remembers the laughter. It was the only time they ever spent together. Besides the time they did adult things in the bushes by the river. Which he was embarrassed about. Which she was not. This was the only time, and it lasted for eighteen miles, and it was full of laughter. And of stories.

She told the story of the sun: that the sun was invented by her people, even though his people have named him Malangana, Little Suns, as if there were many suns when in reality there was only one – the one that wouldn’t have been there if it were not for her /Xam branch of people.

Then she told the story in a singsong manner: ‘Two women of the first race; one an old woman without children of her own; one a young woman, the mother of sons; two women of the first race ask boys to creep up on an old man who was hiding the sun under his armpit, hoarding its light all to himself.

‘“Do not laugh while you do it,” the old woman warned them. “Do not laugh.”