Читать книгу A Good Man - Sibusiswe Dhuwe - Страница 5

Chapter 2

2

Sipho drove them a few minutes from her apartment to Bedford Village where they sat under an umbrella at a trendy café. Shoppers milled around them, sometimes walking past their table to get from one end of the shopping mall to the other.

The café was busy and in the short time that they’d been seated, a queue had formed. Fashionably dressed women sashayed past, handbags aloft, and men walked around with cellphones purposefully attached to their ears. There was a constant hum of activity.

Glancing over at Sipho as he perused his menu, Mbali felt a little jolt of excitement but ruthlessly quelled it. She was becoming used to his presence now, though God knows, it really taxed her self-control.

Eight years ago Mbali had fallen into deep, irrevocable lust when Gcina introduced her to Sipho, but unfortunately, she had never been able to string together a single intelligent sentence with him around. All her witty and flirtatious fabulousness completely disappeared in his company, leaving her either stuttering or mute. No wonder he had ended up dating a very self-contained woman, as Mbali had called her, of his own age.

Try as she might, Mbali had never been able to calm herself down enough to talk to Sipho properly, and worse still, he had always made an effort to come and talk to her. Eventually she had turned her attention to boys she could handle and assigned Sipho to a special and unattainable category of his own.

Mbali sighed. You’re a grown-up now, she chided herself in her mind. Yes, he is breathtaking, but you are a witty and accomplished woman who isn’t bowled over by a handsome face. But it wasn’t merely a handsome face; the whole package was simply superb.

“Earth calling Mbali . . .”

She looked up to see Sipho grinning at her. God help her, she was supposed to be over this stupid crush.

“I was just thinking about the past.”

“What about it?”

Mbali decided to jump right in with both feet. This was a trait known for landing her in deep waters without sight of land, but she was determined to start her new association with Sipho on a different and well-adjusted note. And what better way than to confront the very issue that had caused her the most discomfort?

She looked him straight in the eye. “Well, to start off, I’m sure you’re aware that I had the biggest crush on you that a nineteen-year-old girl can ever have on anybody, and it always made me act like such an imbecile around you.”

Sipho smiled. “If it’s any consolation, I really liked you and I was interested, but every time I tried to talk to you, you gave me the strangest one-word answers. I could never really take the conversation to the place I wanted it to go, and also, I knew Gcina was trying to be a matchmaker, so that clouded things even more . . .”

Mbali eagerly waited for him to continue.

He smiled gently. “In the end we actually never managed to have one decent conversation, and after a while it started to feel like too much work . . . and, uhm . . . It was varsity and we were young and my attention was eventually diverted.”

“Ag well, what to do – I was trying to play it cool. Crossed wires and all that.” Despite her wanting to have it all out, Mbali wasn’t about to confess that his presence had literally rendered her speechless. A girl had to hold on to some secrets.

Thankfully, the waiter came over to take their food order. But when he left, Mbali realised that Sipho wasn’t about to drop the subject.

He leaned over and asked, “So then, does this mean that you’re over me?”

Mbali looked at him steadily, annoyed by his question. Even if she was dying with love for him, she wasn’t about to admit anything of the sort. Maybe years ago she would have giddily declared herself, deeply grateful for the opportunity, but she had learnt that it didn’t pay to just hand over your heart to someone without a measure of caution. She had been clumsy in her youthful efforts to get Sipho to notice her and nothing she had tried had worked, until she had given up and set her sights on a more manageable goal – or so she had thought back then.

“I suppose it does,” she answered at last, promptly lowering her sunglass-shaded eyes to her sweet, ginger-laced cocktail. “But isn’t that a good thing, ’cause now we can be friends properly, you know, get to know each other better.”

“Ja,” he replied, catching her gaze and holding it. “I’d like that. Getting to know you better.”

For a moment, Mbali held her breath. Was that an invitation? Moments like this one had fed her hope years ago – he had always been friendly, always ready with the right thing to say. But she had to be careful now, so she went fishing.

“Isn’t there someone back in East London who might not appreciate your making such a fabulous new best friend?” She hoped she had managed to strike the right tone, with just enough teasing in it to allay any suspicion.

Sipho laughed out loud. “I remember this about you now, you were never very subtle.”

“Eyi! I don’t know what you mean.” Mbali tried to look puzzled but she had to laugh, because she’d been caught out.

“Why couldn’t you have been this way with me all those years ago?” he asked, looking genuinely sorry. “I used to see you laughing and joking with everybody else, but with me you were different. Just when I thought you might be interested in spending time, you seemed to be looking for a way out.”

Mbali could have kicked herself. She had given the man mixed signals, for sure. She tried to make her smile look convincing and said, “Well, we can relax now, knowing our wires are no longer crossed. We’re working on getting to know each other. Deal?”

Certainly she felt more and more relaxed around Sipho. Fleetingly, she realised he hadn’t answered her question about his love life. She really wanted to know, but how to probe more now?

“Deal.” Sipho stopped in the act of raising his glass to seal their agreement. “Hold on a second, I should probably return your unsubtle query of earlier. I don’t see a ring on your finger, but that doesn’t mean there’s no Romeo calling your name from beneath your balcony. I seem to recall you being in a pretty serious relationship.”

This was treacherous territory, and Mbali had absolutely no desire to go there. There really was no need to start bringing up the past while she was on a nice date – and anyway, there really was nothing to tell. No need to bore the man with details, so she just smiled and chose the simplest answer.

“Ja, but you know, all good things come to an end. We parted ways.”

For a moment it looked as if Sipho might probe further, but then he completed the interrupted act of raising his glass.

“All right, then. Now it’s a deal.”

The waiter arrived with their food and they settled down to eating. Mbali told Sipho about the recent successful showing of her paintings in an exclusive Cape Town gallery and the interest a curator based in New York showed in her work.

“I called it ‘Downtown-scapes at Dawn’. I wanted to do something really gritty and expose the heart of places I’ve been to here in Mzansi, but mostly Jozi. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done; it took me almost seven years to get the material together.”

Sipho gave her a questioning look and she nodded. “Ja, even back then I was thinking about it; taking photos, sketching, going for lessons, all the time just thinking about it.”

“I noticed all the sketches around your flat, but I didn’t see any paintings,” Sipho commented, recalling the various sketches on the walls, some framed and hung strategically, others just stuck up with Prestik or fridge magnets, some in vivid colour and others in black and brown charcoal – portraits, landscapes, observations, full compositions and abstract renderings.

She nodded. “You might have noticed that I don’t have many photographs either. All those sketches are interpretations of my strongest memories. I know it sounds a little weird and crazy, but they challenge me. I do my real work in the space above my parents’ garage. That’s my studio, and all my paintings are there. It works out perfectly; I keep an eye on the place while they’re overseas and it forces me to get up and go to work every day, which keeps me sane.”

When Sipho nodded as if he completely understood where she was coming from, she added, “I’m not one of those artists who forget to eat and bath and all that. I’m so compartmentalised that I sometimes feel like a fraud.”

“Nonsense,” he assured her without hesitation, giving her hand a squeeze. “There’s no requisite behaviour for creative people. If it works for you, then that’s the way it should be.”

Oh, how perfect can this day be? Mbali asked herself, feeling very smug indeed.

Sipho was very interested in her work; he asked pertinent questions and seemed knowledgeable about the world of art, telling her that he’d recently purchased three pieces by a rising star who, Mbali informed him, had been featured in a couple of high-profile glossies and was showing in some very prestigious international galleries.

He asked her to tell him more about her career, and she modestly continued. “I’m starting to get noticed now, but it hasn’t been an easy road. This New York thing – if I get it – is a really big deal. It’s an exhibition of promising young visual artists from around the world, plus there’s a chance of quite a big prize and a three-month residency at a very prestigious art institution.”

Sipho was quick to assure Mbali that he had complete faith in her, and she felt flattered.

“Oh God, I’m praying it happens. I mean, I sometimes question my process. My passion is canvas and oils, but I find myself doing a lot of commercial work in order to pay bills. I feel that maybe I’m starving my true calling and keeping it in check by worrying about bread and butter. Maybe if I just cared about the art and wasn’t concerned with other things, I’d have made more progress by now. I think my sense of discipline is holding back my true potential.”

Sipho took this in quietly for a moment before nodding thoughtfully.

“I always found it interesting that you studied economics and did so well, considering your interests clearly lay elsewhere.”

“Ja well, you know how it is. I chose economics to appease my parents, but behind the scenes I was serious about art. First chance I got, I segued into fine art. How’s that for mixing things up?”

Mbali smiled, but it had been quite a battle, and even now her parents still tried to talk “sense” into her. Thank goodness the diplomatic service had seen fit to station them in Australia. She loved her parents and was grateful for the life they had provided – although somewhat nomadic – but their ambitions for her and her sister were a product of their own desires and actually had nothing to do with who the two of them were as people.

Khuli had at least managed to keep them happy by getting married and presenting them with grandchildren, but just to ensure her peace, she and her family had ensconced themselves deep in the wilds of the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park, where Khuli’s husband was a wildlife ranger and veterinarian.

This had thoroughly stumped their parents, who were desperate for every opportunity they were granted to see their grandchildren, and unfortunately it had cast the spotlight on Mbali and her “hobby”, as her father called it.

“Ja, that’s parents for you,” Sipho mused. “Lucky for me, I’m just a boring old financial consultant, a career that’s acceptable to parents everywhere, including my own. But you know, it takes a special kind of person to choose the path less travelled and stick to it, so you should be proud of yourself.”

Mbali’s smile came right from the bottom of her feet. He didn’t know it yet, but Sipho had just sealed the deal. This was university all over again, and this time she had gathered her wits.

East London, watch out! Mbali’s on her way.