Under African Skies (36 page)

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Authors: Charles Larson

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To Mina, all my love
 
I would have been as high, standing, as the knees of a full-grown pygmy sitting, when I first met a European, to wit an Englishman, the Administrator of the Ogaden, with whom my father worked as an interpreter. I wasn't quite three when, responding to an urgent summons, my father took me with him, well aware that I didn't want to meet up with the colonial officer. My mother's undisguised aversion to the white man was no secret, but this in and of itself could not explain why I declined the Englishman's offers of boiled sweets and other presents.
Being my mother's favorite child, I suspect I harbored resentments not only toward the Englishman but toward my father, too—what with my dad's unpredictable furies, his hopeless rages which I would encounter later in life, and his sudden loss of temper when he was not having his way with you. My father was kindness itself to non-family, temperamental with his dependents. But he cut the figure of a most obliging vassal to the Englishman. You might have thought he was the white man's general factotum, doing his bidding and never speaking an unkind word about him.
It was a feat of great magnitude to convince myself not to stuff the boiled sweet the Englishman had sent along with my father, because in those days mine was a mouth-centered universe. Not admitting to being tempted, I now had my right thumb shoved into my mouth and my left tight around the uneaten sweet, while I remained in contact with my father, who held on to my wrist, pulling me as though I were a sandbag. I had a great urge
to eat the sweet but didn't, in deference to my mother's unspoken wish. Later I would realize that a history of loyalties was being made then.
I remember my parents raising their voices over the matter earlier, my mother disapproving of my father's wretched acceptance of his lowly status in the hierarchy of colonial dispensation. When, years later, in a heated argument, my mother accused my father of “political pimping,” my memory revisited this incident.
Anyway, I would have stayed with my mother if I could, my mother who had lately been incontinent of sorrow, something I was too young to understand. I left the house wrapped in sadness. Often I had little difficulty getting my words out when in the company of my mother, whereas with others I had the habit of choking on my speech. Today it felt as though I had swallowed my tongue. I loved my mother, whom I thought of as my sanctuary, her silences generous as openings embracing my stammers.
I regret I do not have my mother to corroborate my versions of these happenings. As fate would have it, I was not able to exchange my memories with her before she died.
 
Above all, I remember hands: hands pulling me, hands pushing me. I see the Englishman reaching, striving to take hold of me. My father's open palm pushes me from behind, urging me forward toward the white man's looming face. Or are we dealing with memory as a rogue, memory willfully vandalizing the integrity of a remembrance and reshaping the past so as to confirm the present? Perhaps not. Because I am not the only one who associates my father with hands—hands not giving but reaching out to hit. One of my older brothers whom my father often struck for being mischievous reiterates that one did not know if our father's hands were about to make a monkey of one or, in a bid to encourage one, pat one on the head.
If I went with my father to be with the Englishman, it was because I was given little choice. I had to make do with the makeshift of emotions which I had built around myself, emotions meant to protect me from psychological harm. For I had wised up to this before my third year and knew, as though by instinct, that my father might punish me for my lack of deference toward the Englishman. Too clever by half, I took a step forward if only to humor him and made sure not a truant tear would betray my genuine feelings. By Jove, it was difficult not to submit to the desire to weep or to cringe with embarrassment as the Englishman embraced me.
It was such a relief to see that my father appeared pleased!
 
 
There was a pattern to the relationship between my father and the Englishman, my father speaking only when spoken to or after he had been given the go-ahead. It struck me as if my old man stood in relation of a student repeating what a teacher had said. What I could not have known was that in his capacity as a vassal to the British Empire, my father translated into Somali whatever the Englishman had uttered in Swahili.
No sooner had the Englishman sat me on his lap than I sensed a change in my surroundings. For we were joined by the stifled murmurs of a dozen or so men, preceded by the noise of
jaamuus-sandaled
feet being dragged heavily across the floor. And I was suddenly heir to the sad expressions on the newly arrived men's faces, the sorrow of the eunuched. I might have thought that my sense of powerlessness was no different from theirs had I known then, as I know now, that the clan elders were gathered in the Englishman's spacious office to sport with the tangles of history, putting their thumbs to a treaty Ethiopia and Britain had prepared with the connivance of the Americans. I'm not certain of the future date in the same calendar year 1948 when the fate of the Ogaden was decided and put in the hands of expansionist Ethiopia.
What was my role in this ignoble affair? I lay in the embrace of the Englishman; I felt the tremors of words dressed in the garb of authority coming into contact with my heartbeat before they were translated into Somali by my father; and I did nothing. If I had resisted being the Englishman's booty, which he received without firing a bullet, would matters have been different? If I had fussed so as to prevent my father from translating the ignominious words of the Englishman into Somali, would the Ogaden have been dealt a fairer hand?
I remember the elders of the clan entering into a cantankerous argument with my father, who in all likelihood was discouraging them from standing up to the Englishman. Left out of the debate altogether, the Englishman rose up to ride the high horse of rage the powerful so often mount: and there was silence. It was then that I entered the fray, letting out a shriek of outrage wrung out of the primeval beginnings of all my years. Apologizing to me, the Englishman adjourned the meeting till another day.
At a subsequent meeting, the clan elders placed their thumbs over the alloted space in the treaty they signed. Had I been present, or had my mother been consulted, maybe this would not have occurred.
 
—1995
(BORN 1950) SOUTH AFRICA
Mandla Langa was born in Durban in 1950. In 1972, he earned a B.A. in English and Philosophy from the University of Fort Hare. Two years later, he became director of the South African Students Organization (SASO), a position he held until 1976. Like so many writers who grew up under apartheid, Langa literally had to run for his life. On his resume he states that in 1976—because of his political activities—he was arrested and served “seven months of a three-year sentence for sedition—a charge based on the cursory reading of a poem” he had written. After the months in detention, he was released “on stringent bail conditions pending an appeal,” whereupon he went underground and fled South Africa.
His years of exile included time spent in Botswana, Lesotho, Zambia, and finally the United Kingdom. During the early years of his exile, he worked as an editor, speechwriter, and journalist. Increasingly, however, his political activities aligned him with the anti-apartheid forces outside South Africa. In the early 1990s, he was Deputy Representative of the African National Congress (ANC) Mission to the United Kingdom and Ireland. During all these years, he continued with his own writing and his education. In 1989, he earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Periodical Journalism from the London College of Printing; in 1993, he earned an M.A. in Modern English Literature from the University of London (Birkbeck College).
Langa's short stories and novels have been widely praised and honored with numerous literary awards, especially his three novels,
Tenderness of Blood
(1985),
Rainbow on a Paper Sky
(1989), and
The Cult of Innocence
(1994).
Rainbow on a Paper Sky
tells the moving story of two brothers, Mbongeni, a musician, and Thokozani, a preacher-idealist, in the Northern Natal in the 1970s, during the time of increasing guerrilla activity. Although much of the setting is Durban, Langa's strength is also in depicting the everyday activities of village life. The rhetoric of the novel is muted, generally limited to terse statements such as: “The aim of the powerful of the land was to let everything look like internecine tribal fighting of black against black.”
As in the past, Mandla Langa has always moved with the times. In his current position in Johannesburg, he is responsible for “lobbying on local and government levels.” As much as anything, “A Gathering of Bald Men” provides a glimpse into post-apartheid South Africa, where things are (still) not always as they may appear to be.
Caleb Zungu was forty-three years old, married to Nothando for thirteen years, with two girl children, Busi and Khwezi, aged eight and fourteen, respectively. He owned a house in Norwood, a car, and two dogs of dubious pedigree. He was an insurance salesman for Allied Life, where he had worked for five years. He was overdrawn at the bank and hoped for an act of God, perhaps the death of a long-lost uncle who would leave him a handsome inheritance. Nothando had graduated from Kelly Girl to full-time employment in the Human Resources Department of TransStar, a transport company. The girls were on school holidays, it being April, and the dogs, which he addressed in imperatives such as “Voetsek!” or “Come here, boys,” depending on his mood, were content with life.
On this late-April Monday, Caleb woke up, took a shower, brushed his teeth, and dressed. He cut a dashing if formidable picture in his navy-blue pin-striped suit, a white shirt, a red tie, and black shoes. He drank his coffee quickly and went back to the bathroom. Nothando almost dropped her coffee mug when she heard a shriek coming from the bathroom. Thinking that her husband might be suffering a stroke (it had killed two male members of Caleb's family), she spilled her coffee in her rush to see what was the matter.
She found Caleb, his head bent, gingerly feeling a bald spot the size of an old one-rand coin which had, it seemed, developed overnight on the crown of his head. Standing behind him as he lamented his loss of hair before the unflattering mirror, Nothando felt a pang of tenderness mixed with
disappointment. Why were men such babies? She managed to coax him out of his dark mood, telling him that baldness was an attestation of virility, and that he looked very handsome and distinguished. Nothando resisted the temptation to kiss him on his pate, but firmly steered him to his car—a secondhand shocking-pink Renault he had never got round to repainting—with encouraging words. Standing on the doorway and giving him the obligatory goodbye wave, which he didn't reciprocate, she knew that Caleb was deeply troubled; he hadn't even taken along his mobile phone.
While she was preparing herself for work, her helper arrived and took over the necessary task of putting the kids within the straight and narrow. This might have seemed like heavyhandedness to the girls, especially Khwezi, who was spending too much time yakkity-yakking on the phone. This was a little worrying, especially since her daughter had taken to scribbling
I
JM
on her trainers and listening to Seal's crooning with a rapt expression on her face. Nothando wondered who the hell JM was—probally one of those acne-ridden, foulmouthed louts in oversized jackets, baggy pants, and looselaced, high-top trainers who slouched on street corners, wolf-whistling at women. Although Nothando had ascended to suburban respectability, she still maintained contact with a few of the heavy brothers on the streets. If JM messed around with her daughter, she did not rule out calling in a friendly neighborhood enforcer. It wouldn't do to let Caleb know of her anxiety; the way he felt, what with his loss of hair, they would have a homicide on their hands.
Nothando's lift came. Having negotiated the nerve-racking Johannesburg morning traffic, she and Marcia, who drove a new Toyota Conquest, made it to the office on time. The Marketing Manager, Mr. Peter Marshall, was forever bitching about punctuality, “The RDP will go down the tubes,” he was fond of repeating, like a preacher invoking Holy Writ, “if you people keep this up.”
You people!
Nothando would think bitterly, these bastards never change, even if they pretend to be Jay Naidoo's lieutenants.
Nothando mulled over her husband's difficulty, knowing that some men had committed suicide at the loss of their hair. A man who does that wasn't fit to live anyway, she thought unkindly. Suicide, she believed, is the highest form of self-criticism. Caleb had told her of many people who had posthumously tried to gyp insurance companies by making their deaths look like murder or accidents. There was no bonus in killing oneself; in the credo of the Catholic Church, you were even barred from entering that great festival in the sky. Nothando suddenly realized that she really didn't know whether
Caleb was a suicidal type. The morning's outburst in the bathroom had shown another side to him. She'd be supremely pissed off if he took this way out.
She wouldn't know, however, that exactly at that moment Caleb was in a boardroom where the Harvard-trained MD, Arnold Spicer, was reading everyone the Riot Act. The returns were low, much lower than had been forecast by the salesmen. When Sanders, a bright spark who specialized in retirement annuities, pointed out that there was a slump in the economy, Spicer retorted that he didn't give a rat's ass about the slump. “The population is increasing daily,” he went on, “and more and more people are growing older; they worry about death, so they need insurance. And you all sit here warming your backsides, telling me about the slump.” Well, thought Caleb, who was envious of the fact that the MD had a full head of hair on his shoulders, it's good of him to say that; he doesn't have to pound pavements looking for clients. Caleb felt especially vulnerable since his brief was to attract the black market. There was no percentage in this, for the simple reason that the black business he solicited seemed interested only in supporting the
black
market. Had he had it in him, Caleb would have informed Spicer that most black people also didn't give a rat's ass about insurance; some of those who did were slack in paying their premiums. When he called on policyholders on weekends, he was certain that they briefed their sons to tell him that no, Daddy's not home, he's gone to Thohoyandou. Caleb would know that he was being given a runaround, with the bastard who couldn't be bothered probably sleeping off a hangover. Personally, Caleb had no time to cultivate a hangover, he was too busy. In one weekend alone, two dozen defaulters had gone to Thohoyandou, maybe there was an anti-insurance convention there. He had to devise another strategy to flush them out.
Caleb imagined himself a tolerant man. His job called for this. But one thing which was guaranteed to get his goat was people laughing at him. It wasn't so much that people didn't have money as being lazy to reach into their jackets for the checkbook and sign on the dotted line. He remembered one office worker he had approached with the intention of selling him insurance. After the usual spiel, to which the man listened attentively, Caleb had switched to the politically correct tack of how insurance helps the RDP. The man had laughed so much Caleb had feared he would rupture himself. “You know what they call your RDP in the township?” he asked. “Real Dummies Pay.” What was one going to make of these people? Small wonder
he was losing his hair. For the first time after long months of abstinence, he felt like a drink.
As he drove along Empire Road, he cast around in his mind for famous men who were bald. There was Winston Churchill:
It will be long, it will be hard, and there will be no withdrawal
. That was a classic piece, and Churchill was regarded as a sex symbol. Gandhi? Well, Gandhi was famous for other things, his glasses and the
dhoti
, he couldn't go that far; nor could he imagine South Africans following a leader who wore nappies. Bruce Willis? He was an actor, there was no guarantee that his scalp wasn't also acting bald. Was Hitler bald, or did he wear a hairpiece? What about Rajbansi, whose wig had canted to the side when the
boers
manhandled him? Boy, that was sad—and on camera, too. If President Mandela were bald, maybe that would even the equation, lots of men like Caleb would walk with their heads held high. That De Klerk was no longer the top dog merely made matters worse. It made his baldness seem like a weakness.
He parked his car on Pretoria Street, in front of the Hillbrow meat market. Tossing a fifty-cent coin at one of those informal parking attendants lining the streets of the built-up areas of Johannesburg, he proceeded to the tavern at the corner. It was 11:30 in the morning; Caleb justified getting a drink this early on the peculiar nature of the day. Inside the bar, loud Zairian music issued from a stereo system. The interior lighting was rigged for a nightclub, strobe lights and weak bulbs dangling from the ceiling. This gave the bar a certain mysteriousness, a mixture of intimacy and menace. Dark men in the gloom drank their dark brews, speaking in low tones. The bar was a favorite haunt for drug dealers, illegal immigrants, people who operated on the periphery of the law. Two women in loud dresses and high heels danced without spirit, their eyes luminous, giving the effect of neon lights with some of the tubing missing. Caleb wondered if this establishment was insured against fire.
He chose a table that was farthest from the bar. The minute he was settled, a waiter ambled over and presented him with a menu. Caleb told him that he just wanted a drink. The waiter sullenly removed the menu and asked him what he wanted. Caleb settled for a beer, knowing that there was no trusting any bottled concoction. He recalled an English visitor who had ordered rum; on being supplied with a drink, the man took one sip and immediately passed out.
Caleb listened to the throbbing bass and the wailing guitars accompanying an aggressive male voice. He was on his third beer, when the dancing women
were beginning to have a certain raw sex appeal, that he considered suicide. He cried into his glass as he thought of Nothando and the girls. What would happen to them? He was overdrawn at the bank; even if his credit status were stable, he reasoned, the funeral parlor would no doubt make a big hole in his bank balance. Nothando would be left destitute, the kids—especially Khwezi, who was already a very combative teenager—would spit on his memory.
But the alternative was as bleak. He knew that losing his hair was a portent of a greater, more devastating loss. With his luck having run out at the same speed as defaulting clients, he could easily conjure up an image of himself, a few months from now, when he would be standing on a street corner carrying a placard with a message detailing his woes. He visualized himself totally bald, in tattered clothes, tapping on car windows, rattling a tin up some driver's nose. Maybe he should start now, learning the tricks of the begging trade. He thought of his children seeing him in that state, denying any knowledge of him in their shame, wishing him dead. Yes, he thought, death was better.
Already feeling relieved, as if a great decision had been made for him, Caleb placed a few rand notes on the table, stood up, collected his briefcase, and buttoned up his jacket. It was then that a man entered and headed straight for Caleb's table. He was a gaunt white man about Caleb's age, with a weather-beaten, sallow face, his head as smooth as a billiard ball. The khaki overcoat, a yellow sweatshirt, ragged grayish trousers, and Converse sneakers from which small brown toes peeped like mischievous children gave him the look of an out-of-practice pickpocket. Rolled up under his arm was a piece of cardboard, greasy as if he had picked it up from the pavement. He gave off an odor of stale liquor, sweat, and inner-city pollution. But there was something about the way he carried himself, his piercing slate-gray eyes, which distinguished him from the regular station crusty.
“Do I pass the inspection?” he challenged, drawing a chair and sitting down, looking up at Caleb. When the latter hesitated, debating whether to respond to the newcomer or just continue on his way as he'd intended, the man waved a proprietary arm over the chair Caleb had just vacated. “Sit down, my friend. Sit down because you're going nowhere.”
Caleb had encountered people of questionable sanity before, and he knew how to make short shrift of them. But this stranger's confidence, the way he seemed to take over, calmed him down. He sat down. “What's up?”
“You were thinking of killing yourself, weren't you?” the man asked,
placing his cardboard scroll on the table. “Been following you all the time. Said to myself:”That bloke's gonna do it.'” He laughed; it was not a pleasant sound.”You don't need to be a genius to know if a guy's gonna pop himself.” Then he turned and shouted at the barman, who was eyeing them with amused contempt.”Pilsner
moja, boreki-sana
. That's Swahili for I want a beer, tot-quick!”
“Fuck off, Ranger,” the barman shouted back. “I'm not giving you a glass of water until I see some money first.”
“O ye of little faith,” the man called Ranger lamented. “Your obduracy will be your downfall yet, ye children of Mammon. Who says I need to produce money? My friend here”—and he tapped a long, bony forefinger against Caleb's shoulder—“is on his way to committing suicide—”

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