Ways of Dying (14 page)

Toloki joined some boys who were sitting behind the church, drinking the brandy that they had stolen from the house of the minister, while he was busy saving people from fire and brimstone in the church. Toloki had a few sips, and soon his head was spinning around. He was not used to drinking, and the ‘fire water', as the boys called the brandy, sparked in him some unnatural elation. He staggered into the church, and vigorously joined in song and dance. When the hymns stopped, and members of the congregation went to the pulpit to testify how the wondrous work of the Lord had saved them from certain damnation, Toloki's voice was heard above all other voices, shouting, ‘Amen! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!'

The hymn began again, and Toloki's dance steps gravitated towards the pulpit. He reached the pulpit, and shouted,
‘Hallelujah!' We stopped the hymn and responded, ‘Amen!' Then he began to preach about Christ on the cross. He invented most of the details as he went along, since the little that he knew about the Bible came from the morning readings that were done at school. His was not a family of church-goers. We couldn't care less that his story of crucifixion did not tally exactly with the version featured so prominently in the book of books. All that impressed us was that Jwara's son, whose father had never cared for the church, had finally been seized by the spirit. How could we have known that the spirit that had seized him was brandy?

He shouted, ‘Ndinxaniwe! Ek is dors! Ke nyoriloe! So said the Lord Christ, hanging on the cross! I am thirsty! I am thirsty!' Then he fell down in a drunken stupor.

When he opened his eyes, it was morning, and everybody had left. His head was pounding, and he remembered only vaguely the events of the previous night. He was ashamed of himself. He went home, and drank a lot of water, which seemed to make him feel much better. Then he slept.

In the late afternoon Jwara was storming around the house, kicking everything in front of him. He was seething with rage. Toloki knew immediately that he had had an appointment with Noria, and that she had stood him up.

‘What is this that I hear about you and the church?'

Toloki stutteringly tried to explain that he had merely testified as others were doing. But even before he completed a sentence, Jwara kicked him in the stomach. He fell down, vomiting blood. Jwara kicked him again and again. Toloki's mother came running, and threw herself between the two men in her life.

‘What are you doing, Father of Toloki, trying to kill my child?'

‘Did you not hear, Mother of Toloki? This ugly boy preached in church.'

‘What if he did? What is wrong with that?'

‘I don't know. People say it was a disgrace.'

‘It's that stuck-up bitch Noria again, is it not? She didn't come, and you want to take it out on my child.'

That night Toloki made up his mind that he was leaving home for good. He would go to the city and find work. He told his mother, who gave him the little money that she had. In the morning, without even saying good-bye to Jwara, Toloki left his home, and his village, in search of what he later expressed to those he met on the road as love and fortune.

Throughout his long journey of many months he harboured a deep bitterness against his father. And a hatred for Noria. It was all her fault. The quarrel was not because he had disgraced his family. Jwara didn't even know what it was exactly that his son had done in church. He couldn't care less for the church. The source of all the trouble was Noria.

After all, this was not the first time that Toloki had had an altercation with the church. His first skirmish was with the Archbishop of the Apostolic Blessed Church of Holly Zion on the Mountain Top. Toloki was actually cursed by this holy prophet.

The Archbishop earned his living during the week by selling tripe and other innards of animals in a trunk fastened to the carrier of his bicycle. He rode from one homestead to another through the village, shouting, ‘Mala mogodu! Amathumbo!' in his godly baritone. This simply meant that he was touting his offal, encouraging the people to buy. Some children, whose mothers had not taught them any manners, sometimes shouted at the holy man, ‘Thutha mabhakethe! Tshotsha mapakethe!' What they were saying was that the Archbishop was a carrier of buckets. This emanated from the days when the holy man used to work as a nightsoil remover in town, before the Holy Spirit caught up with him, and called him to serve the Lord as the Archbishop of the Apostolic Blessed
Church of Holly Zion on the Mountain Top, which he subsequently founded. The Holy Spirit had great timing, for the Archbishop was about to lose his job in any case, since the town was phasing out the bucket system. The municipality was going to introduce the water cistern for the well-to-do families, and pit-latrines for the poorer ones.

On Sundays, the Archbishop conducted services in his church, which was built of old corrugated iron sheets. Outside there was a lopsided sign which shouted in roughly daubed letters: ‘Oh come all ye faithfull to The Apostolic Blessed Church of Holly Zion on the Mountain Top and heal yourself and your soul and get blessed water cheap', and then the name of the Archbishop. Toloki always wondered whenever he passed by why ‘holly' was spelt with two l's. And what the letters ‘B.A., M.Div., D.Theol. (U.S.A.), Prophet Extraordinaire' after the holy man's name meant.

In his church the Archbishop prayed for the sick, and dispensed bottles of holy water that he himself had blessed. Since he claimed that he could cure all sorts of illnesses, he was in direct competition with That Mountain Woman. But there was enough sickness to go around, and neither rival complained. However, the Archbishop acquired the reputation of having greater expertise in extracting demons than That Mountain Woman.

Even Noria herself, when things were not going well in her marriage to Napu, had secretly gone to the Archbishop for his prayers. The Archbishop asked her to confess her sins in public, and testify to the Lord. She spoke, but did not reveal everything about her life. The Archbishop said she was marked by the devil. That Mountain Woman heard that Noria had gone to consult her rival, and she called her daughter a traitor. But she forgave Noria when she promised that she would never go back again. When That Mountain Woman died, we couldn't help noticing that there was a glint of satisfaction in the holy
man's eyes, in spite of his professed sorrow at the death of such an important member of the community.

On special days such as Easter, the Archbishop and his flock went down to the stream where he baptised new converts through immersion. The worshippers, all wearing green and white or blue and white dresses and caftans, sang to the rhythm of the drums, and danced around in circles.

On such occasions, Toloki would often be spotted on top of the hillock facing down towards the stream, mischievously throwing rocks and clods of mud at the worshippers. He would pelt them, and then hide himself. But the Archbishop would usually catch sight of him, and would curse him with everlasting misfortune in life, and everlasting fire after death.

The war between the Archbishop and Toloki was one of long standing. It had started when Toloki laughed at the holy man's flock as they were vomiting. It was part of the Easter ritual of the church to give the members of the congregation quantities of water mixed with holy herbs to induce vomiting. After the water and an enema, the worshippers would dot the hillside in a colourful display of blue, green and white, as they squatted there and threw up and emptied their bowels. This was the sacred cleansing of body and soul. Toloki and his friends enjoyed the bright spectacle, and it was the highlight of their Easter to laugh at row after row of fat buttocks decorating the hillside.

The Archbishop reported Toloki to his father, who in the presence of the holy man, talked with him strongly. The holy man himself added his heavy words, and said that it was indeed unfortunate that Toloki was fulfilling an adage that our forebears created: that glowing embers give birth to ashes. His father was an important man in the village, yet his son was as useless as cold ash. As his father spoke in serious tones, Toloki vowed in his heart that he was going to make life even more uncomfortable for the Archbishop and his flock in the village. Hence the stone-throwing incidents.

After the Archbishop had left, Toloki overheard his father telling Xesibe and a few other customers about the feud between Toloki and the church. They were all laughing and joking about it. ‘They deserve what they get from these youngsters! Can you imagine grown people displaying their buttocks and doing all these strange things in front of children!' So, his father had only been pretending to be angry with him in the presence of the Archbishop! The whole fuss was just a big joke to him. This was precisely why Toloki was taken aback by Jwara's violent reaction to his Methodist Church adventure. It really had nothing to do with the church at all, and everything to do with Noria.

Toloki arrives at the settlement, carrying his bulky load of presents. He walks to the shack. This time, he is not followed by dogs and children. Perhaps they are getting used to his presence. He arrives at the shack, but Noria is not there. He sits outside and waits for her. After some time she arrives, and says that she had been at Madimbhaza's place when a child came to inform her that there was a visitor waiting for her outside her shack.

‘I hope you have not been waiting for a long time.'

‘No. It was not that long. Anyway, I did not tell you that I would be coming this morning.'

‘It does not matter, Toloki. You are always welcome here.'

‘This Madimbhaza is a friend of yours?'

‘In a way, yes. It is where I do some work for the community. I will take you there one day. What are all these heavy things you are carrying?'

‘I brought them for you, Noria. I brought you roses, because flowers become you like . . . like a second skin. Here I have magazines and catalogues with which you can decorate your walls. And here I have cakes, and green onions for myself.'

Noria thanks him, and says that he should not have gone to all that trouble on her behalf. Toloki tells her that he will help her plaster the pictures from the magazines and catalogues onto the walls in the afternoon. As for now, he has to go to a funeral, where he has been invited to mourn.

‘Please let me come with you, Toloki. I want to see how you mourn.'

‘You are welcome to come with me, Noria. Let us go right away. I do not want to be late.'

‘I am ready. Let me just put my roses in a bottle of water first.'

At the cemetery Toloki sits on one of the five mounds, and groans, and wails, and produces other new sounds that he has recently invented especially for mass funerals with political overtones. These sounds are loosely based on chants that youths utter during political rallies. But Toloki has modified them, and added to them whines and moans that are meant to invoke sorrow and pain. He sways from side to side, particularly when the Nurse tells us the story of the death of these our brothers and sisters. He knows that Noria is watching keenly from the audience, so he gives a virtuoso performance.

‘These our brothers and sisters died in a squabble over a tin of beef,' the Nurse laments. He explains that the death of these five people happened in a township that had been free from political violence for months. Then one day a man sent his wife to buy a tin of beef at a spaza shop owned by a member of the tribal chief's party. The spaza shop had run out of canned beef, so the woman bought chicken pieces instead.

When he got home her husband said he was too hungry to wait for chicken pieces. The couple returned them to the spaza shop, and asked for a refund. The shop owner refused, and an argument ensued. Blows were exchanged. The shop owner eventually took the chicken pieces back, but refused to refund the money.

The man reported the matter to his street committee, which then tried to resolve the dispute peacefully. But the shop owner was defiant, and threatened to invite the tribal chief's followers from the hostels to protect him from the street committee. The residents of the township then decided to boycott his spaza shop, and patronised other shops in the area. With his livelihood threatened, the shop owner called on the hostel dwellers to wipe out his perceived enemies in the neighbourhood. Tension mounted, and this culminated in the hostel dwellers and other supporters of the tribal chief rampaging through the township, killing student leaders, and burning down several houses belonging to community leaders.

‘Since Tuesday last week five people have been killed,' said the Nurse. ‘These five brothers and sisters we are laying to rest today. Many others are in hospital with serious injuries.' In the meantime, the shop owner had disappeared, and his spaza shop was now a gutted shell.

After the funeral, people come and thank Toloki, and give him some coins. One old woman says, ‘I particularly invited you because I saw you at another funeral. You added an aura of sorrow and dignity that we last saw in the olden days when people knew how to mourn their dead.' Then she gives him some bank notes. Toloki puts them in his pocket without counting them. He never counts what he receives from individual funerals. However, he is still bent though on devising a fixed rate of fees for different levels of mourning, once people are used to the concept of Professional Mourner.