Читать книгу Counting the Coffins - Diale Tlholwe - Страница 12

Glenvista is a few kilometres to the east of the city and is like almost any other South African suburb – derivative house styles hovering uneasily between a remembered Europe and an imagined America, beautiful in their own misplaced way. The high security walls are their most disfiguring feature, lessening the passer-by’s awareness that large arsenals are kept within most of these finely built walls.

But at night all you see is the profusion of fairy lights. Lights set into high walls, over locked gates, from upper windows. There are also silent, dark, brooding houses, but these are fewer, and far between.

A dog barked as we looked for the street and house we were bound for. And suddenly it was before us. Tolo grunted in vindication; I had been voicing concern about her lack of navigational skills coupled with her total refusal to ask anybody for directions. “Whose house and party is it anyway?” I had enquired in frustration at one point, after proposing that we stop and ask a bright-looking young man at a traffic light.

“Richard Mabena,” she had said. The name had associations and echoes but in my impatience they eluded me.

The house itself was the brightest lit in the whole street and the only one with the gates hanging wide open. Two shadows, however, stood guard just inside them. One of them leaned into my lowered window and looked at me with bored eyes.

“Heita! Are you here for the party?” he asked.

“Yes. We were invited by Jacky Mofokeng,” Tolo informed him. “You know him, don’t you?”

“I don’t know the names of everyone in this city, but I have seen you before. But no mkatakata, nè, my sister. What about you, my bra?”

“Sharp, no mkatakata,” I said.

He straightened up and whistled. A sharp, piercing, lilting stab in the dark that lingered in the ear. No answering whistle came. Nothing but the silence, yet the man appeared satisfied. He retreated to his former position and shared a joke with his mate; they guffawed darkly.

“Sies, old style,” Tolo said softly.

I did not comment, but I wondered.

It was not such a big house after all. Just an average double-storeyed suburban home with a small garden and a small, silent fountain on the right, a narrow veranda and steps leading up to the open door, from which music could be heard. I liked the low music. This was not going to be one of those banging, screeching affairs, it seemed. But the night was still young and the juice still low . . .

I parked at the end of a surprisingly varied collection of cars. From dilapidated Mazda vans to Mercedes-Benzes. So my own Volvo fitted right into the family like a belated relative at an unexpected wake. But this was a party and after a few drinks most people recognised only their own cars. Many times because the cars were missing.

“But why is your friend hanging out with these people?” I asked the question I should have asked long before.

“One of them happens to be an old schoolmate,” she said, as if that explained everything. “They support the same football team,” she added.

The last sounded to me like the weakest reason of all. But we were here and that was it. We got out and headed for the open door. The music got louder as we approached. It was being played somewhere deep inside the house – the old, haunting song by the Commodores, lamenting Marvin Gaye’s lostness. I liked it and was prepared to like whoever had chosen it. That was what a party should be at the start: remembering and regretting those who will now be forever absent.

No one was there to invite us in, so we went straight ahead into a small hall. Two or three doors led out of it, but we could hear a babble of voices raised in hilarity and argument to the left and we turned in there.

The place was not overflowing, but crowded enough for one to melt into the background with a degree of anonymity. A group of middle-aged men stood with glasses in their hands in a loose group in the middle of the room, probably because there were no chairs. Or maybe this was the domestic dance hall. The only thing in there except the rich-pile scarlet carpet was a dresser placed against one wall, with bottles of every variety lined up on its top, and a huge, expensive Sony entertainment system.

A smaller, tighter group of ridiculously young girls was pressed into the far corner and looked at us appraisingly when we entered; exact replicas of all the other girls who try to look like Beyoncé, but without the talent.

The men looked like old frogs that were too tired even to croak when they saw us. The focus of the group appeared to be an overweight, bald man dressed seemingly only in a red silk bathrobe and white slippers. He raised his bleary eyes at us, and his glass in a half-concluded salute.

The whole scene was strangely depressing. I had seen a lot of the same but tonight was . . . just too soon for me after what had happened.

The man in the red bathrobe screwed up his eyes, knitted his brow and seemed to recognise Tolo. He raised his glass again and pointed to a connecting door on the right. Obviously we had crashed the wrong section of the party. Tolo grabbed my arm and dragged me through the indicated door. She closed it behind us with a loud exhalation of air.

We were now in a different world. Five or six well-dressed men and women were seated sedately on sofas arranged around a low coffee table, more bottles on top of it. These people, too, showed signs of being well past the borderline between sobriety and drunkenness. Their stiff postures were those of people trying hard to hold on to their dignity in the face of intruders. The lament for the missing Marvin Gaye was reaching its close but these people were not hearing it.

We had apparently interrupted one of those deep, meandering philosophical debates that are much loved by misunderstood geniuses such as these, already halfway to the moon with a bottle for their spaceship. However, a youngish man broke the disgruntled trance of his companions and jumped up with a wild whoop. He was a perfectly groomed, buffed, precious specimen. He stepped forward daintily and almost collapsed into Tolo’s arms.

“Tolo, dear! So you really came? The party is about to begin.”

Begin? Is that so? I looked in disbelief at the already ruined people in the room. It seemed to me the party was winding down. It should be winding down, according to everything that is peaceful and merciful. I looked questioningly at Tolo over the man’s shoulder. She only smiled sweetly at me.

“Okay, fine, I’m glad we are not too late,” she said soothingly to the young man.

“Who’s your friend?” he then asked, without looking at me.

“This is Gang.”

Gang? Where did that come from? Gangster? What kind of name was that anyway? I looked blankly at her.

“Short for Lebogang,” Tolo explained easily. “Gang, this is Jacky, short for Jacob.”

Jacky turned to me and produced a watery smile.

“Heit, Jack,” I said.

“Jacky, not Jack, Jacky,” he put me straight. “Never Jack.”

The others were watching us as if they were hanging judges in a capital case and were determined to maintain stern but neutral expressions.

Oh hell, what a waste of time, I decided, and went over to them to introduce myself.

“Evening, ladies and gents of the majority, as we used to say a million dark years ago just before looting and burning down your houses. I’m . . . I’m Lebogang.” For some reason my mind was back at the blazing season of my school days when we would terrify ineffectual people like these whom we suspected were fence-sitters in the liberation struggle.

They craned their necks, looking uneasily at me towering over them, and shrank back into their soft seats. Tolo was now standing next to me, having abandoned Jacky-Jack.

“No mkatakata, Thabang. No trouble here, please,” she said through tight smiling lips. “He’s with me,” she then shouted unnecessarily.

The please went straight to my heart. But we were at a party, weren’t we? Where was the old song and dance, the loosening up of stiff joints and old vocal cords? But her voice had revived them and given them confidence. They gave me scornful half-smiles.

I began with a small, portly gentleman on the far left. “Sir, it’s a pleasure to be here and to meet you, sir. And sir is?” I took his small hand, crushed it and held on. He gave a gasp and pointed resentful eyes at me. But before he could properly present himself, or protest, Tolo intervened.

“He is Uncle Muzi; we all call him Uncle Muzi,” she said, slapping my arm. I released Uncle Muzi. The rest had got the point that a barbarian was in their midst. They hid their hands demurely in their laps or tightened their grips around their glasses. But they were now readily and politely forthcoming with their names. I caught some, missed others but I was sure that by the end of the party we would be bosom friends, brothers and sisters, even if we had never seen one another before and would most likely never do so again.

I looked around for a place to sit amongst these thoughtful people.