M: Wait
w: Good-bye, Mr. Mohammed.
M: Inkululeko.
w: Sorry?
M: Inkululeko.
w: Inkululeko?
M: He exists.
w: I don'?t know what you?re talking about.
M: Then why are you sitting down again?
OCTOBER
2.
A young man stuck his head out of a minibus taxi, wagging a mocking finger and laughing with wide white teeth at Thobela Mpayipheli.
He knew why. Often enough he had seen his reflection in the big shop windows? a great black man, tall and broad, on the tiny Honda Benly the 200 cc ineffectively but bravely putt-putting under his weight. His knees almost touching the handlebars, long arms at sharp angles, the full-face crash helmet incongruously top-heavy.
Something of a spectacle. A caricature.
He was self-conscious those first weeks when to add to it all he had to learn to ride the thing. Going to work or home, every morning and afternoon in the rush-hour traffic of the N2, he was awkward and unsure. But once he learned the skills, learned to dodge the vans and 4x4s and buses, learned to slip between the gaps in the cars, learned to turn the pitiful horsepower to his advantage, the pointing mocking fingers ceased to trouble him.
And later he began to revel in it: while they sat trapped and frustrated in the gridlocked traffic, he and his Benly buzzed between them, down the long valleys that opened up between the rows of cars.
On the road, from Cape Town, east to Guguletu. And Miriam Nzululwazi.
And Pakamile, who would wait for him on the street corner, then run alongside the last thirty meters to the driveway. Silent, seven-year-old solemnity on the wide-eyed face, serious like his mother, patiently waiting till Thobela took off the helmet and the tin work box, swept his big hand over the boy?s head, and said, ?Good afternoon, Pakamile.? The child would overwhelm him with his smile and throw his arms around him, a magic moment in every day, and he would walk in to Miriam, who would be busy already with cooking or washing or cleaning. The tall, lean, strong and beautiful woman would kiss him and ask about his day.
The child would wait patiently for him to finish talking and change his clothes. Then the magic words: ?Let?s go farm.?
He and Pakamile would stroll down the yard to inspect and discuss the growth of the past twenty-four hours. The sweet corn that was making cobs, the runner beans (?Lazy housewife, what are you hinting at?? asked Miriam), the carrots, the squashes and butternuts and watermelons trailing along the beds. They would pull an experimental carrot. ?Too small.? Pakamile would rinse it off later to show his mother and then crunch the raw and glowing orange root. They would check for insects, study the leaves for fungus or disease. He would do the talking and Pakamile would nod seriously and absorb the knowledge with big eyes.
?The child is mad about you,? she had said on more than one occasion.
He knew. And he was mad about the child. About her. About them.
But first he had to navigate the obstacle course of the rush hour, the kamikaze taxis, the pushy 4x4s, the buses belching diesel exhaust, the darting Audis of the yuppies switching lanes without checking their rearview mirrors, the wounded rusty
First to Pick ?n? Pay to buy the fungicide for the butternuts.
Then home.
The director smiled. Janina Mentz had never seen him without a smile.
?What kind of trouble??
?Johnny Kleintjes, Mr. Director, but you need to hear this yourself.? She placed the laptop on the director?s desk.
?Sit, Janina.? Still he smiled his hearty, charming smile, eyes soft as if gazing on a favorite child.
?Johnny Kleintjes,? said the director. ?That old rogue.?
He tapped on the computer keyboard. The sound came tinnily through the small speakers.
Unaccented. Dark voice.
