Читать книгу Counting the Coffins - Diale Tlholwe - Страница 13

Some time later, the door we had come through burst open and a half-naked girl came leaping in, pursued by the bald man in the red bathrobe, which was billowing behind him – a bald, flabby superhero in a comic-book cape and a tantrum of cheated lust.

We all gaped at the pair. The girl skittered and swerved behind Tolo, who raised her right palm like a traffic officer. The man stopped as if he had been suddenly seized by paralysis. I admired Tolo’s authority.

The girl peeked out from behind her, reigniting the man, and the spell was broken. He opened his mouth wide, releasing a lashing red tongue that struggled to form words as he howled such a stream of obscenities as have never been heard this side of hell.

How could all this have happened so quickly? I almost laughed, most inappropriately, of course. But there was that girl with her blonde wig all askew like a demented circus clown. Her friends were in a high fever as they crowded at the door.

“Uncle Rich, ke eng – what’s this?”

I think it was Tolo who asked, but everyone was now talking and shouting, and one much older woman was moaning in a far corner near the open and undraped window.

Uncle Rich spluttered to a halt, looked around at the shocked faces watching him and then made the whole thing worse by beginning to cry. It was a soundless, hopeless weeping, with thick blobs of tears running down his fat cheeks. It silenced the whole room, including the excited faces at the door.

The girl emerged from behind Tolo and went over to the bald man, embraced him and led him out through a different door. “I’ll take him upstairs,” she said sweetly in a cooing schoolgirl voice. He went sheepishly, with one hand clutching his collapsed superhero’s cape. In an indefinable way we were all humiliated.

Jacky-Jack took the reins and was determined to whip us out of our momentary gloom. He did a sensible thing by herding all the young girls and their partners out of the crying room and back into the room without chairs, where he put on some loud, lively tune to silence the joyless doubters and their wandering thoughts. He shut the door on us.

I took a seat next to Uncle Muzi and Tolo sat on the other side of him. This was Tolo’s arrangement, which I did not approve of: I mean, this Uncle Muzi was the glummest party guest I had ever met. And the unlikeliest person I would have chosen as an ally.

We got ourselves glasses and I took a deep gulp of the imported whisky. Tolo stayed with mineral water. Uncle Muzi was drinking a suspect concoction made up from different bottles and also from a silver flask he kept in his inside left jacket pocket.

“What was that?” I asked no one in particular.

The woman who had been moaning in the corner answered. She was a thin sixty-something woman with a craggy face that had defied all attempts to keep it young. She should have kept all that cosmetic rubbish off her face and she would have been just fine, but what do I know about trendy older citizens? She had a sharp, determined chin and bright eyes, though. In fact, everything about her suggested sharpness and determination: from her steady legs planted firmly on the floor through her gaudy clothes to her prominent forehead. It made one wonder what her moaning had been all about. Probably a false shocked-maiden-aunt performance – but for whose benefit? She apparently had a lot of tricks in her bag besides the cosmetics.

“He is a sad, troubled man!” she exclaimed in a high voice, shaking her head.

Aren’t you all?

“We are all sad, troubled men,” Uncle Muzi confirmed my thoughts in a decided tone. “We are all walking in the dark. There is a verse in the Bible about it.”

“He’s worse than that – and him too,” the woman objected and pointed at Uncle Muzi.

Tolo came in at this point. “It’s because he lost a lot of money in some investment and now his creditors, the banks and the lawyers are all crowding him.”

“He should have been more careful,” I said heartlessly and took a long pull from my glass. I tapped my foot to the banging music coming from the next room through the closed door.

“Careful?” the bedaubed woman screeched, coming out of the corner in a flurry of vivid, clashing colours. “Careful! Who are you to talk about careful? The whole fraud was planned right from the very beginning.”

“What thing is this?” I asked in all innocence.

“It’s a verse in the Bible,” Uncle Muzi informed me as he put a trembling hand inside his jacket. We all stared at him, but on receiving nothing further on this intriguing point we abandoned him to roam alone in the biblical thickets.

“It’s about that mall between Katlehong and Thokoza,” the woman, who had appointed herself spokeswoman, declared. I had not given her my credentials but I was a fresh audience to listen to her overflowing grievances, and that was enough for her. No one tried to dissuade her, and I was interested in hearing all about it; I might need angry allies later on.

“A verse in the Bible,” Uncle Muzi said softly as he carefully poured the contents of the flask into his glass. “My mfundisi liked preaching about it. I did not understand him then.”

“What did it say?” Tolo asked him, probably with the intention of getting this Bible story out of the way.

“Wait . . . wait . . . It said . . . ” he drifted off into a puzzled fog.

“Leave him alone,” a tallish, powerfully built man with sharp, angry eyes, who had previously not spoken a word, barked from where he sat stiffly upright on the corner of the sofa.

“We are small township business people and now with these big shopping malls moving in and driving us out life has been tough,” the woman said evenly.

“Right then, I see it, all of it,” I said brightly. It was about time I showed slight signs of interest and intelligence. “You consulted lawyers to protect your rights. They charged a large fee to fight a case they knew they could not win and now they want you to pay up. You have had to borrow –”

“No!” a bald, thin man sitting next to the tall, angry man interrupted me. “Tell him what happened, Lulu.”

Lulu, the thin lady, told me . . .

This was not going to be like other malls in other townships where big white business had moved in and the local black businesses had not been accommodated, where rental fees were murderous and they just could not compete. This one was going to be different. They were going to get support from some kind overseas investors. The government was also going to help with cash guarantees. All they had to do was set up a common fund and individually put up a certain amount of money. Some of the local, foreign and government money did appear – but the mall was never finished. Now the people in the surrounding area were stripping it piecemeal, stealing everything – bricks, steel, doors, windows. Everything.

“And . . . and . . . the money . . . Now . . . now . . . here we are, bowed down with our heads in our hands.”

That was not all, of course. We had many other jungles to cut through before we got to the end of their troubles.

“But . . . but . . . but . . . and . . . and . . . and . . . now . . . now . . . now . . . ”

I was getting light-headed by the time she got to the end of her tale and I took a large, sobering gulp from my glass.

“A verse in the Bible . . . ” Uncle Muzi’s thin, penetrating voice helped bring me back. “Jonah!” he shouted in triumph.

“Who’s John?” Tolo asked in mild surprise.

“Not John, Jonah, the son of Amittai. He’s in the Bible,” Uncle Muzi said.

“Well, we are here now and not in the times of those holy people,” I said flatly.

“They are back, the holy times of holy men and women of sacrifice,” he said.

I shrugged. What else was there.

“I’ll take him somewhere where he can rest,” Tolo said, standing up and taking Uncle Muzi’s arm. He resisted briefly but weakly and was soon being led out of the door our superhero had taken. I decided to get everyone back to reality before anyone else had to be taken out through that ill-fated door.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I began and they stiffened, probably remembering my earlier introduction. I hastily quashed their timid apprehensions. “I’m with you here. I also have some problems with that mall business, though I only heard about it in the newspapers in the beginning.” I put on my concerned-citizen act for their benefit. “But . . . ” I paused dramatically and raised a rhetorical finger like an orator about to deliver the devastating and indisputable clincher in a debate. “But I’ve got good friends who can look into this.”

“What can they do? The police have done nothing yet,” the tall man said angrily.

“The police have too much on their hands. They can’t do everything or be everywhere,” I said.

“Enough said about the police! He asked what you can do?” the thin woman shrilled.

“Not me. Not me, but my good friends.” I put her down firmly but also with what I hoped was a gentle smile.

The woman opened her mouth, but I was ahead of her with the admonishing oratorical finger. She snapped her twitching lips shut. I nodded at her forgivingly.

“The police have to go through a lot of time-wasting procedures and protocols.” I was holding them with the lofty, legal-sounding words – and the finger, of course. Any hope was better than no hope for these people. “The police want to put someone in front of a judge and in jail. That is where their job ends. But to get there is not easy and they have other cases to take care of. My friends, on the other hand, will try to put your money in front of your eyes and back in your pockets.” I lowered the finger. It was a mistake.

“Lies! Lies, all lies. He’s just another swindler,” the stiff, tall gentleman scoffed.

But Lulu came up to the dividing line, dithered nervously, biting her too-red lips, and finally plunged across. “We’d better listen to what he has to say,” she said.

“How much?” the tall man said with deep scorn.

“Nothing if they can’t deliver, if you’re talking about their fees.”

“Never heard of such a thing,” he said contemptuously.

“Now you’re hearing it, aren’t you? Just think how lucky you are, hearing such a thing for the very first time at your age. Many other people never get the chance. They blunder about and even die without ever hearing it,” I told him.

He jerked to his feet and marched to the window, where he stood looking out into the night. At least he did not go through that fatal door.

Lulu crossed over to my side and took Uncle Muzi’s vacated seat. “Tell me more,” she urged.

I told her about my inquisitive but discreet friends who could help them. I gave a glorious summary of some of the things they had handled before. At the end we all raised our glasses and solemnly toasted one another, all except the tall man, who was still standing at attention near the window.

“I’m tired, Thabang. Let’s leave,” Tolo said behind me, forgetting that I was supposed to be Gang. I had not seen or heard her re-enter the room. She did look tired and somewhat ragged, but I shouted, “What! Leave now, when we haven’t yet spun around the dance floor?”

Someone was already opening the door to the music hall next door, thus introducing a staggering blast of noise that made every doddering man and woman imagine they were sixteen again. They knocked over their glasses, ashtrays and chairs in their rush to get down and howl the night away as Letta Mbulu lifted them out of the doldrums with her joyful, evergreen chorus about a coming music man – playing his guitar, playing his waa-waa. Come on . . . come on, listen to the song of happiness!

“No, let’s leave now,” Tolo insisted, and once again I was at her mercy. We edged past almost unseen by anyone except the tall man, who followed us with his furious eyes.

Outside, the air was fresh and cool; it was good to be out of that house of shattered people, young and old. We went to the car and just as we were getting in, a window crashed open on an upper floor. An indistinct figure leaned out and shouted. “It’s all in the Bible, you heathens!”

It was Uncle Muzi.

I peered up at him as he fell or was pulled back into the room. He was indeed walking in a very dark place. We got in the car and drove off, unsettled in our separate and suddenly lonely minds by that last piece of grotesque farce.

I saw the guards only as limp shadows leaning against the wall on both sides of the open gates. I took a wrong turn at one corner and had to drive around blindly for five minutes before I got my bearings. I was not receiving any directions from Tolo, who appeared to have temporarily gone off air. I had to find my own way out, but my inner global positioning system is not bad.