Читать книгу Like a Lily on a Mountain, Love Grows on Rocky Terrains - Thokozani S.B. Maseko - Страница 6

Chapter 3

Themba waited on the portico with the baby when they returned from the river. He gaped oddly at Hannah’s outfit but said nothing about it.

“She’s shoddier,” he told Mandla.

Hannah slipped from the horse, and Thabani caught and steadied her as though she were a lump of luggage he was unloading. Mandla gave her the wet bag of laundry and showed her the clothesline around the side of the house. She wished to take the baby with her, but between the soggy laundry bag and the blanket which concealed her nudity, her hands were fully occupied.

The last time she recalled hanging wet laundry on a line was the week before she left Pigg’s Peak, Bulembu, and her family, forever. She’d hung napkins then, too. Her mother was unendingly pregnant. My duty – her mother would say. God’s will – was what her father called it. Children, Hannah thought, what did God have to do with all that?

The laundry hung, Hannah passed Topsy and went into the house. She went straight to Thandi’s room to ask her if she could lend her another skirt and blouse, just until the other set dried. When she entered, the three men had knelt by the bed, their hands clasped in prayer. The sight shocked her. Somehow, she had convinced herself the previous night that Thandi Dlamini wasn’t as sick as she seemed or that somehow, one of them had taken her to a doctor before now.

Mandla glanced at her as she stood in the doorway. She cupped her mouth with her palms, and Mandla shook his head and stood up. His steps were stern as he walked out of the room and gestured for her to follow.

“Is she …?” Hannah started.

He shook his head. “She’s asleep, again. Does that more often than I care to count; that and care for the baby. It’s been twelve months, now. She never really recuperated from having Mashwa.”

“What an appalling name for a child,” Hannah mused. It was an insignificant thought to have in such an awful time, but she couldn’t ignore it.

“Named after Thandi’s father. Hers and Themba’s.”

“Themba is her brother,” Hannah inferred.

“Themba, Thabani, me. We’re all her brothers. Only Thabani and me, we had a different father. But we’re from the same mother. She passed away after giving birth to Themba, sick right through, just like Thandi.”

“Was Thandi ill when she was pregnant?” Hannah asked trying to follow the conversation.

Mandla nodded.

“And she lived here with you? Her man was already dead?”

Mandla nodded again. “That might have been a mistake,” he said. “More I think of it.”

“A mistake?”

“Mandla,” Themba yelled. “Come quick! She’s breathing funny, Mandla hurry!”

Mandla scrambled up from the couch where he and Hannah sat; shivering from the cold, Hannah wrapped the blanket tighter around her, and shuffled behind him at a distance.

She stopped again in the doorway. Thandi’s eyes were wide open, and she looked frantic.

“Hannah! Get Hannah! Where is she? Is she dead, too?”

“I’m here,” Hannah said quietly, stepping forward. “I’m right here. Take it easy, now.” She turned to Mandla, aware that he was the one in charge. “You have to get her to hospital, or she’s going to die. She’s dehydrated, and they can infuse her with some fluids.”

“She can’t swallow anything anymore,” Themba said, showing how the water had just trickled down her chin when he raised the glass to her lips.

“They’ll use an intravenous line,” Hannah said.

“A what?”

She remembered the bloody rags in the bundle of wash.

“Has she been bleeding ever since the baby’s birth?” No one responded. She assumed that to be a yes. “Post-partum haemorrhage and sepsis. Why haven’t you done something before this?” she begged them. “How could you let her get so sick?”

“You heard her yourself,” Mandla said as he took his sister’s hand in his own. “God’s punishing her for the life she led. It’s his will. It’s too bad, though, for the baby.”

Hannah could hear her own father’s voice reciting those very same words. It was the zealot’s explanation for suffering and death, and a way for them to escape the responsibility of doing anything to help.

“Mama!” Thandi yelled, obviously delirious now. “Mama!”

The men backed away from their sister’s bed, and Hannah came forward, sitting at the edge of the mattress and taking her into her arms.

“I’m here,” she crooned. “I’m here. Everything is going to be all right.”

“He’s dead!” Thandi said. “They killed him! I didn’t think they’d kill him. Now what will I do? God will never forgive me for what I’ve done, now that he’s dead.”

“No, no, Thandi. He’s all right. Everything is all right.”

Thandi pulled away from Hannah’s arms to look into her face. Her eyes were clear and bright, and they connected with Hannah’s. She seemed completely lucid again.

“Do you swear?”

Hannah didn’t hesitate. “I swear,” she said.

“I believe you,” Thandi said, and Hannah felt her body go slack against her.

“Thandi?” she whispered.

There was no response. Tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her arms grew rigid, and Thabani eased Thandi out of them and down onto the bed. Hannah’s blanket had slipped and went unnoticed, exposing her legs, her wet shirt split on her flat stomach.

A shuddering breath rocked Thandi’s chest, startling them all, and Mandla leaned down and lifted the edge of the blanket and covered Hannah’s lap with it.

“I thought she was gone,” Themba said in the quiet of the room.

Hannah nodded. “She just … she just …” and then she started to cry, big wracking sobs that shook her body and nearly knocked her off the bed.

Mandla steadied her, and she grabbed him, pressing her cheek against his thigh and letting him stroke her hair.

He smelled of horses and worse, but he was alive and real, and she clung to him shamelessly until she felt a light tug on her arm. She turned to find Thandi’s eyes open, her tongue wetting her dry lips.

“The baby’s crying,” she said, with great effort. Even though she was dying, her first thoughts were of her baby.

Just like a mother, Hannah thought, and she let the rest of the saying go as she heard the baby’s wail.

Mandla motioned to Themba, who left and came back with the baby, handing him to Hannah. He quieted immediately.

“He’s a beautiful baby,” Hannah said to Thandi, patting the baby’s head. “I think he favours his uncles with his light complexion.”

She shook her head very slightly. “Looks just like his pa. I’m glad to have been a part of this. His pa was a handsome son of a bitch.”

Hannah couldn’t help being a little shocked. She kept thinking that Thandi was some fairy princess, lying in state, with her thin hair flowing around her; and then reality would intrude.

“The man could charm the habit off a nun. ’Course I wasn’t a nun. Still aren’t right to kill a man over a roll or two in the hay, no sir, specially not a man who loved you.”

The baby wriggled in Hannah’s arms, reaching for his mama, who put out her hand and let the baby wrap his fist around one of her fingers.

“You’re as doomed as your mama,” she said to the boy. “God help you if you turnout like your mama’s kin. The devil will take you if you turn out like your pa.”

She struggled to sit up a little, just enough to reach the boy’s hand with her lips. She kissed the hand gently and fell back onto the pillow. “I think I’d like to sleep a little now,” she said, and closed her eyes.

Mandla took the baby, balanced him over his shoulder while he opened a drawer, and pulled out some clothing for Hannah. He handed her a small pile and motioned for her to leave the room.

On her way out she heard him whisper to Thandi.

“He got nothing worse than he deserved. Nobody does.”

Hannah hugged the clothes to her body, and she hurried to the room where they had her sleep in the night before.

***

Welcome had made his way down the side of the mountain; the surefooted horse he had purchased from an English man on a farm near the Big Bend cane plantations was accustomed to going down winding trails on the sides of mountains and river valleys. He had considered his options carefully, and he decided that he wouldn’t so much as spit until he knew which way the wind blew.

Maybe Thandi had already found herself someone else. She’d be one less problem to think about if she wasn’t looking to hog-tie him with the bands of marriage. The other woman wasn’t worth his worry, being too feeble to smell a fire if she was locked in a furnace. No, what he needed to know was how many men were there: three, or the fourth belonging to Thandi; where were they keeping the baby; and the lay of the land.

He had found himself a fine hiding spot, maybe a couple of hundred metres or so from their house, and had settled himself in for the day, savouring the feeling of being the hunter and not the prey. Maybe he’d get lucky and that fluffy-headed stick of a woman would come out and strut her stuff again. She sure did have a problem keeping her clothes on.

But it was Thabani, and not the woman, who came out of the house as he watched. The big man with the dark beard and the two gold teeth went straight for the shed and emerged with a shovel, a brown dog on his heels. When he returned to the porch, Mandla was just coming out. The dog’s tail began wagging at the site of him, but Mandla didn’t appear to be in the mood for playing. He was wearing his church clothes, and Welcome felt a twitch up his arm. It looked to him like maybe there was one less son of a bitch he’d have to worry about as Thabani nodded, took the shovel, and climbed up the ridge. At the summit he plunged the shovel into the earth over and over again until the purpose became unmistakable.

A ripple of disappointment went through Welcome. Themba hadn’t been down by the river the previous day, and now it looked as if they were getting ready to bury him. Welcome had his heart set on putting an end to Themba Dlamini with his own hands for a long time now. He had decided that even a bullet was too good for him and he had lain awake at night in the traditional doctor’s house in Ngudzeni, where he planned Themba Dlamini, deaths too horrible to confess aloud.

***

Thabani struggled to dig the grave in the hot sun. He mobbed his brow, took off his shirt, and continued to dig as if nothing else was going on in the world. He looked like a simple country farmer who might be burying his wife out there on the ridge, and not the scum of the world Welcome knew him to be.

The fluffy-headed woman came out of the house, dressed up in a dark printed wrapper that set his teeth on edge. He remembered the wrapper really well. He remembered how proud of it Thandi had been. He remembered her warning him to be careful with it as he unfastened the buttons that ran down the back. He remembered clutching the hem of it after he had fallen to the ground. He remembered her yanking it out of his grip and running, running, and then he couldn’t remember anything. Nothing about how he’d wound up in Ngudzeni from Big Bend, strangers tending to him … smoke and magic words … feathers and potions.

The woman was on the ridge, talking to Thabani. The baby cried inside the house, and the woman raised her head as if to hear better. She said a few more words to Thabani and then she went running to the house, tripping on the hem of the dress and nearly falling. Probably Themba’s woman, and too grief stricken to think about lifting her hem; or just too feeble; he didn’t know which.

Thabani returned to the house and he washed with water from a bucket on the portico. When he was done, he went into the house, and the fluffy-headed woman came out and sat on the portico with the baby in her arms. She held the baby tightly to her chest and kissed the top of his head over and over again. If only Welcome had bought those binoculars in Big Bend. He couldn’t make out a feature of the babybaby’s face. Couldn’t see if he had dimples like his grandma, big hands like his pa and his grandpa before him. Couldn’t see anything from so far away. Damn, and damn again! He’d certainly like to get a better look at the child.

***

“Open the door, Miss,” someone called from inside, and she rose and pushed the door inward into the house.

Mandla came out backwards, struggling with the makeshift coffin, nearly falling down the two steps that elevated the portico from the ground. Thabani held the middle as best as he could, from one side. Around his heels the hunting dog danced, nipped at his heels almost tripping him up, until Thabani delivered a swift kick to the dog’s soft underbelly. At the far end of the coffin, his face clearly visible to Welcome was Themba Dlamini.

Well, at least it wasn’t Themba making the trip to meet his maker. Welcome could still look forward to the pleasure of doing unto others as had been done to him. He waited for Thandi to emerge, one eye on the procession, the other on the door. She didn’t come. Has she run off again, this time abandoning the baby?

The funeral was a quick affair. The woman carrying the baby, who Welcome had noticed didn’t cry even once throughout the whole service, returned to the house with Themba and Mandla. Thabani stayed up on the hill, fashioning a marker of sorts and banging it into the ground.

Welcome waited until nightfall to go up the hill. In the dark he tried to make out the words on the wooden cross stuck at a slight angle by the head of the grave. Finally, he lit a match, blocking the light with his body so that he couldn’t be seen from the house.

IN LOVE AND HONOUR OF

THANDI DLAMINI

DEARLY LOVED DAUGHTER, SISTER,

AND MOTHER

’52 – ’73

There were noises in the distance. The moon appeared from behind a cloud, illuminating the marker as if it was its only purpose for dangling in the sky. From the house he could hear a woman humming softly to a baby, and the voices of men in contention. The back door slammed, and he heard the jangling sound of Themba’s spurs.

“Damn,” Welcome said as he shot one last look at the tomb and rushed up the hill, where his stallion stood quietly waiting.

So Thandi Dlamini was dead, God respite her soul. With a family like hers, she was probably better off. It was hard for Welcome to imagine that boys like the Dlaminis had folks of their own. Folks who might be mourning somewhere for Thandi. It made him wonder about his own relatives.

By now they should have surrendered him up to death.