Awesome Blossoms: Horn OK Please (5 page)

I have found this interesting little red book which contains many beautiful quotes, I am sure you would love it, so I’m keeping it for you for that day when we meet again. It is in German so I shall translate for you. In the mean
- time here is one I read last night from it:

‘I will tell you words which don’t need tongue nor lips
I will speak among everyone, but none will hear my words. Except you’

(I
t is by Rumi)

With much love, Thabo.”

The silence that followed screamed in her ears. Could this be real, was such a coincidence even possible? Slowly the sounds of her surroundings returned to her and she could hear Arif and Tim sharing the knowledge they had on the so called “terrorist training camps” in Germany during South Africa’s apartheid years. Her silence later drew their attention and got Harriet to turn to her and inquire, “You look pale, are you ok, Thuli?”

She wanted to scream: Thuli, Thuli, yes it is a common name in South Africa, but it is my name and the name of the unborn child in the letter!

Many months of research after that could not prove beyond doubt that the freedom fighter called Thabo who died on Christmas Day of 1977 in a training camp in Germany was her father. Yet for Thuli that was not important. What was important was that he could have been. The possibility existed and that was good enough for her. It gave her the validation and confidence she needed to go ahead and become the successful writer she is today. It all became possible there in a little, second hand bookshop. Time changed things. Social media made the world smaller and books were being published electronically, but similar bonds and friendships were still formed every day via the Internet. Because the thread that held such bonds together was spun of words, a mutual respect for words.

***

CHAPTER FOUR

By Raquel López de Sebastián

***

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

- Steve Jobs

Early Morning Park

T
he street sweeper was really angry: ‘that person’, man or woman, was a moron.

‘That person’, as everybody called him, was an artist, and one of the best in that field. The street sweeper had heard ‘that pe
rson’s’ name once on a TV show. Because it was a foreign name, he had misspelt it for sure. The name was as absurd and as crazy as  the work that the moron had left behind. When one addresses a person as an artist, gender doesn’t matter. To the sweeper, they were a bunch of crazy and silly people, incapable of doing things in a straight way; incapable of designing a normal, simple park, like the kind you see everywhere in the world: neat gravel paths, cute wooden benches, smooth and even concrete surfaces, the kind of pavement that he, the sweeper, could easily sweep comfortably just as he did in the nearby sidewalk. After years of working hard in one of the filthiest places, refused by other sweepers in the locality, he had finally earned his stripes. The places included the dingy public toilets, the grim bus station in the corner, which was floored with spits and chocolate wrappers. “Yes”, thought the sweeper, years and years of dragging heavy dustbins in the backyard of the garbage depot had finally ended in this: the annoying caretaking of Early Morning Park.

There was a new Lo
cal Regulation: the artist, that moron, had not only gotten satisfaction in getting permission from the local authorities to leave that absurd creation of a park for the use and (supposed) benefit of that gullible, defenseless city; not contented with that, the artist had also left strict instructions on how to take care of the marvelous creation, and how to keep it clean daily. For example, the artist had specified that taking care of the Early Morning Park was not any Town employee’s cup of tea! It had to be a permanent team of six street sweepers, carefully chosen by the competent authority, and commanded by a cleaning employee who could prove that he or she had been serving unfailingly for the Cleaning Unit of the Local Government for at least seven years.
“Damn, are we going to clean a city place or we are planning to capture an enemy hill for our motherland?” the sweeper spurted out embers of anger. Another specification was that the six members of the Early Morning Park Cleaning Team should be at their working positions right at the sunrise hour, every day; each of them, conveniently armed with their work material: a huge broom, several impeccable cleaning cloths and a select assortment of cleansing products that the artist, in person, had taken the effort of choosing. The street sweeper found it rather funny. “Early Morning Park, of course, deserves early morning workers, oh yeah, and that silly specification means that I will be happily cocooning until late hours during the winter, but that I will be quite unable to party up late at night in the summer” he reflected.

In spite of all that, the new job offered an acceptable pay. And so, there he was, at that silly Park, at his right work position, at the right hour. He was now designated the Commander of the Early Morning Cleaning Battalion, and also the Cleaning Officer in charge of the First Path of the Park.

The Early Morning Park had three Paths, plus one big round space known as the Roundabout, plus one more empty space called the Rotunda and one undefined place that the six workers called the Passage. 

The Entrance of the Park was at one extreme of the Round
about. The first object one could find right after entering the park, was the Bowl: for there was no other way to describe it; the object was, in fact, a huge metal bowl, placed at the very center of the Roundabout. The sweeper did not really understand as to what that round thing was intended to be: a sculpture, a pond, or maybe a fountain, though he could not recall having seen any springs, or jets, or running water of any kind in any place. It was simply a flattened bowl, like a soup dish, with round edges that reached up to the waist of an adult. The Bowl was made up of an extremely expensive alloy with an enamel finishing that provided the Bowl a strangely smooth touch, and also with a protective layer that avoided the Bowl from getting too warm when exposed to the sunlight. “Damn”, thought the sweeper, “exactly what our town needs: a crashed UFO with magic properties”. In the inner part of the bowl, right in the middle, there was a smaller bowl of the size and height of an inflatable swimming pool for kids; the specifications were pretty clear: the small bowl had to be permanently full of water. No matter what kind of water: could be rain, or tap water supply. “We could bring the supply ourselves” thought the sweeper “We, the Battalion of the Six, could supply it well, after a good crazy night of beers and gin”.

Beyond the Bowl, lay the Paths. And the First Path, the one that the sweeper had assigned for himself, was a timber walkway that traveled through a dense forest. The sweeper had chosen this Path because it was the most difficult task to clean that Path. And being the Commander of a team composed of three ex-members of one of the most conflictive gangs of the city
plus two unbearably lazy ladies, he had to set an example of productivity and bravery. Those two ladies were there only to bring a good and anti-sexist appearance to the Town Employment Services. Initially, both the ladies complained a lot about their new job. But sooner than later, they understood that holding a broom in a green and friendly environment was a nicer occupation than standing for hours in the crammed unemployed queue. And so the street sweeper was there, at the Early Morning Park, with his work team, every morning, ready to start his work in the First Path, the most intricate of the three. It was a deceitful path: at first, it started smoothly at ground level and in a straight line. But soon its earnestness changed into a reckless behavior. The craziness began when the path started to present a slight ascent. Some steps later, the path would force the unaware pageant into a winding tour amongst the tops of the trees; the highest branches and the thickest leaves would be at hand’s reach and, to sum up, the artist had placed, on both sides of the path, strange metallic sculptures: tubes, spheres, triangles, different figures that hung here and there from the trees, and could be touched by the pageant. The sweeper did not know which figures he disliked the most, were it the long hanging tubes or the tinkling spheres, all of different sizes. Not so beautiful, for sure, thought the sweeper, when one had to struggle one’s way through the steep path pushing a heavy wheel dustbin plus the rest of impedimenta, especially when the broom stick got tangled again and again in the hanging objects. It was his job, anyway, and he took it as calmly as possible. The whirling path ended, thankfully, at ground level again and right into the Rotunda, which was the other open space of the Park, placed right opposite the Roundabout. The Rotunda had, at its center, a huge metal column. At the feet of the column there were three circles, of different colors. According to the sweeper, it was yet another ridiculous sculpture in the Park. The other two Paths also lead to that Rotunda, and the sweeper had left the cleaning of the Second Path to one of the two Lazy Ladies, because it was the easiest to clean. The Second Path was not a winding nightmare, like the First Path, but a walk in a straight line, in a level terrain. Also, it had a smooth concrete pavement. The only strange feature it could show was that all along one side of the Path there was a line of long metal slabs lying on the ground. It was very similar to what a walk in a cemetery usually looks like: the slabs touching the side of the path with one of their short sides. Not so similar to tombs, though, for the metal slabs were thinner than cemetery slabs, and more oblong. “Why the difference in lengths?” wondered the bewildered sweeper, for, apparently, there was no logic in the sequence of the different sized slabs. Anyway, this Path was perfect for the Blonde Lazy Lady, so the task was assigned to her, and the Third Path was assigned to one of the ex-members of the gang, the one who seemed to be the quietest, maybe because he was too busy trying to figure out as to in which part of the Earth the social worker had placed him so as to allow him to overcome many of his addictions. This ex-member, though, still complained a little about his task, which was slightly more difficult than Blonde Lazy Lady´s, for his path was made of different materials: it was composed of a patch of wrinkled cement at the beginning, a cobblestone path in the next section, a thick- grain gravel patch next and, to finish with, a patch that was a shallow mirror of water. “Don´t sweep that one, you idiot”, shouted the chief sweeper, exasperated. However, the sweeper had to shut up immediately, for the two other ex-members grasped violently the sticks of their brooms with a fierce grimace on their faces while staring at him. The sweeper resolved the issue by handing them a packet of cigarettes each, and prevented further revolts with a bottle of whisky that had cost him the salary of two complete hours of struggling through the First Path shrubbery. Anyway, he felt relieved after the tasks for cleaning the Paths had been assigned. He decided to give the task of cleaning the Bowl to the two ex-members of the gang, thinking that such an exhausting job would keep them busy enough to remain serene and silent during the rest of the working day.

And for the other Lazy Lady, the dark-haired one, he had r
eserved the Passage. This feature of the Park was the most whimsical of all, under the eyes of the chief sweeper: on a flat, broad plane carpeted with grass, the artist had dug a tunnel in the hill. It was the passage. The roof of the tunnel was higher than the height of a tall adult, but at the same time the tunnel was narrower than a car lane.  It had nothing on the inside but a line of wooden doors placed exactly at the same distance from every entrance. These doors, that had different heights, according to the curve of the ceiling above them, kept the tunnel closed, unavailable to serve as a passage. Absurd, thought the sweeper, as much as the orientation of the tunnel, which did not seem to have been conceived to communicate two remarkable areas of the park.

Many c
razy notions from a crazy artist, but still, there was lots to be done. The sweeper assigned the useless tunnel to the Dark-haired Lazy Lady: her only task was to sweep the smooth concrete pavement from time to time, not allowing dead leaves and other rubbish to accumulate on it. The Dark-haired Lazy Lady accepted her chore without much enthusiasm.

After he had assigned the job tasks to each of his team me
mbers, he was able to inform the Maintenance Officer that he had successfully completed his first part of the job. The sweeper did not exactly like the strange smile that he received from his boss. “Well done, you are very sincere in your tasks, aren´t you?” said the old man. “I think so, sir”, answered the sweeper. The boss stared at him. “Do you like your job?” he asked, to which the sweeper nodded. The boss laughed. “I don´t think you do. That means I will not be able to reward you with the salary increase specified in this text”. The boss pointed to the new regulation, precisely the one that had to do with the Early Morning Park. The sweeper gasped, and the boss added, “Yes, sweeper, that was one of the specifications made by the artist: you will get a remarkable salary increase plus a promotion when you start to love your work; I mean, when you start to desire with all your heart to be there every morning at your work. When you start dreaming every night about all the things that you could do to improve your work, and, with it, your life; that would be the day when you would get the desired salary. Until then, you will get nothing of what is written here. Neither you, nor your companions will get anything for they are also included in that reward. So, my dear hard-working employee, go back to your work and try to discover a way to love it.”

The sweeper left the office rather depressed.
The depression spilled over to the next day. The sweeper arrived at his work position with a bitter face and a gloomy heart. “Love this job” he thought angrily. Those were the specifications. He simply had to discover the way of loving his work.

Yet
another stupid specification. A specification that meant that the stupid artist had never worked hard like the sweeper had; the artist had always had a soft, easy life, had probably passed directly from a rich family house to the fun of student´s life, the kind of life he, the sweeper, had never been able to live. Sweeper could imagine it: the artist painting and designing stupid city parks in a colorful atelier, while he, the sweeper, had to spend his impoverished youth scrubbing filthy floors and filling plastic bags with the stinkiest rubbish.

Love his job… How could someone love a job like the one that he was doing? He thought angrily. It was a dirty job, and it reflec
ted all the unfairness of the world that they both, artist and sweeper, lived in. The artist was rich, so he, or she, was able to change the very surface of the city at his, or her, pleasure. Including the city laws themselves. While he, the sweeper, was poor, and all he could do was to accept the impositions of the rich ones, cope with every artist´s silly wish, even if it included changing his deepest self, start loving what he really hated with all his heart, dancing at the music the artist wanted to play, just to get a little more money, just to become a little less poor than he was, to be considered useful in the eyes of the society.

Artist and sweepers: two irreconcilable castes, he thought. The sweeper was angrier than he had ever been in his life.

So angry that he could have gone mad.

He looked around, and examined the place he was in, amongst the branches and leaves and those hateful hanging sculptures.

He could not bear it anymore.

He took his broom and with all his strength hit the hanging metal tubes. The branches parted. The sunlight rushed into the eyes. The sweeper stood there, on the First Path, listening to the tinkling of the swinging tubes full of amazement…