Sometimes There Is a Void (63 page)

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Authors: Zakes Mda

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Zenzi stayed with Adele in Bloemfontein and I stayed with Zukile in Johannesburg. I took Zukile with me on some of my travels abroad. We went to Barcelona, Spain, to visit Teresa Devant and her husband, Albio Gonzalez. Teresa had directed and produced a number of my plays in Barcelona. She had recently directed
La Romántica Historia D'Una Monja
, the Catalan version of my play
The Nun's Romantic Story
, translated by a revered Catalan translator and writer, Carme Serrallonga and presented at the Sala Muntaner during the Grec 98 Festival by Associació d'Investigació I Experimentació Teatral.
On this occasion I was there to give a lecture on Bertolt Brecht at the University of Barcelona and just to spend time hanging out with the family. Teresa's two kids, Adrian and Sara, immediately fell in love with Zukile. I, on the other hand, became much captivated by an older woman, Julie Wark, who lived in the same building as our hosts. She was originally from Australia but had lived in Barcelona for years where she worked as a translator. I liked hanging out with her because she had wonderful stories to tell about her former lovers, one of whom was a great African poet and scholar who I knew very well but who shall remain nameless because the intention of my memoirs is not to gossip about others but about myself and those who were unwise enough to get involved with me. Some of Julie's stories were about her association with guerrillas in East Timor and Papua New Guinea. She made those places come to life for me and I decided that one day I would go there to write a book. She really made revolution sound very romantic.
At a restaurant in Barcelona people at neighbouring tables stared
at Zukile as he struggled with a knife and fork and even with a spoon. He was sitting next to Albio and I was sitting at the opposite end of the table. He was four and a half years old yet his hands could not grasp anything. Back in Johannesburg I had been trying to correct that with the help of physical therapists. I was the cause of the problem. When I was bringing him up on my own, having never brought up a child by myself before, I became too protective of him. During meals I fed him instead of letting him eat by himself; I pushed him in a stroller at all times instead of letting him walk. I did everything for him instead of teaching him independence. Now Barcelonans were staring and giggling as he struggled to eat with his soft hands. I hated them for gawking so shamelessly. But I could do nothing to help him.
At night we slept in one of the kids' bedrooms under an original painting by Thami Myele, the South African artist who was murdered by the South African Defence Force in Botswana during the bad days of apartheid. The whole house, every wall, had paintings by various South African artists, including some of mine, which Albio had collected over the years. Zukile spent what seemed like hours gazing at Thami Myele's painting. Even in the morning when we woke up his eyes were on the painting. He told me that it was an X-spray.
‘Do you know what an X-spray is, Daddy?' he asked.
‘No, I don't,' I said.
‘It's a man or woman who dies and becomes an alien.'
I thought it was an interesting interpretation of Thami Myele's painting.
Zukile grew up surrounded by paintings. Not only mine, but those of my friends who were artists or art collectors. One artist I got to know during this period was Theo Gerber. He was the most awe-inspiring artist I had seen, whose paintings combined aspects of Surrealism and Lyrical Abstractionism. His work was breathtakingly sated with allusions and eroticism. He came originally from Basel in Switzerland, but lived in the south of France. He and his wife Susi came to South Africa quite often because they had been in solidarity with South African artists during apartheid. They worked with many of our artists, such as Nhlanhla Xaba and Matsemela Manaka, both in South Africa and in the south of France.
On one occasion I was on a literary visit to Aix-en-Provence in France with a number of South African writers like Njabulo Ndebele, Mandla Langa, André Brink, J M Coetzee, Antjie Krog, Gcina Mhlophe, Sindiwe Magona and Ivan Vladislavi
. I decided to take my family with me, so I was there with Adele, Zukile and Zenzi. Zenzi used to have tantrums in those days – you wouldn't believe it if you saw her now because she's the sweetest girl you'll ever meet – and she made a lot of noise both in the plane and at the hotel where we were staying. I started to regret having taken her along.
After my reading sessions at the Cité du Livre I decided to take my family to visit Theo Gerber. I had heard from Susi that he was not well, but I wanted to introduce him to my wife and kids because on the occasions that he had visited me in South Africa only Zukile was there. Theo lived in a castle in a small village in the south of France. Susi came to pick us up in her car from our hotel in Aix-en-Provence. That ancient castle, which at one time was a monastery and then a convent, had seen many of our artists work there. Some of the great works of Matsemela Manaka and of Pitika Ntuli were created in that castle. But it had also seen some wonderful theatre performances by such doyennes of the South African stage as Sibongile Khumalo.
‘He'll be happy to see you,' said Susi. ‘These are his final moments.'
He lay on his bed surrounded by his giant paintings and a rooster. And by me and my wife and my children and Susi. The mistral was blowing outside, ruffling the feathers of his pet emu. And Theo Gerber was dying in his castle. I held his hand as his breath slowly slipped away. He looked at me and smiled.
When I returned to South Africa I wrote about that experience in the
Sunday Independent
.
Theo haunted me for a long time. Many months later I was at a beachfront restaurant in Durban sharing paella with Yvonne Vera. We were participating in a literary festival called Time of the Writer with, among others, Wole Soyinka, Abdourahman Ali Waberi and Breyten Breytenbach. Though I had long known and loved her work, I met Yvonne for the first time at that festival and we hit it off immediately. We went swimming in the sea at dawn. I introduced her to paella which had been introduced to me by my friends in Barcelona. She couldn't
have enough of it, although for me it was inferior to the paella that Teresa had cooked in Barcelona.
So, we were sitting there, stuffing ourselves and looking at the sea when I pointed at the waves.
‘You see those waves with the surf,' I said. ‘They look like a Theo Gerber painting. Look, look, they actually form an image of a human head. It looks like Theo Gerber. And it is smiling.'
She didn't understand what I was talking about. Her full-time job was managing an art gallery in Bulawayo, so she was keen to know more about Theo Gerber.
‘You see him over there,' I said. ‘Right there!'
But other waves came and swept the image away. I hope Yvonne didn't think I was crazy. I was just being haunted by Theo Gerber.
As I was preparing to write this chapter my eyes popped out of my head when I discovered that Theo Gerber was alive and living in South Africa. Could I have dreamt his death? No. That was just a coincidence. The two were not related in any way. The South African Theo Gerber I saw on the Internet was a much younger man who painted ordinary still life.
 
 
 
DEBE MORRIS IS A
gorgeous film director from Toronto. Brown, tall and slender with a hint of a Caribbean accent. She came to my house in Weltevredenpark to negotiate for the rights of
And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses
for performance by the AfriCan Theatre Ensemble in Canada. Now I am on the N1 South freeway in my metallic grey car driving her to Lesotho to visit the Royal Family. She has been corresponding with the Queen Mother, 'Mamohato, for some time since the death of the Queen's daughter, Princess 'Maseeiso, who had been a close friend of Debe's when the princess lived in Canada.
We hit it off with Debe immediately and I offer to take her to Lesotho. I'll leave her there and proceed to the Bee Place in the Eastern Cape. Then I'll pick her up a day or two later and drive her back to Johannesburg.
On the road I pick up some hitch-hikers – my dangerous habit that
you already know about. It is a white couple and they are on their way to Cape Town. They have been on the road for days, they say, and hope with the kindness of strangers like me they will ultimately reach their destination. They look scruffy, which can be expected of anyone who has had no access to a shower and clean clothes for an extended period.
‘We are hoping in Cape Town life will be better for us,' says the man.
‘What is your line of work?' I ask.
‘I fix things. I can do anything. I am a handyman.'
‘Jobs are scarce, are they?'
‘It's this affirmative action of the new South Africa. It has no place for us poor whites.'
I let that go. I could have told him it has no place for me either, black as I am. These folks had sheltered employment during apartheid by virtue of being white and, most importantly, Afrikaner. I turn to Debe and we talk about her experiences with Princess 'Maseeiso. They used to have wonderfully wild times together. From the high jinks Debe tells me about, which are none of your business, she must have been a fun person to be with.
In Ventersburg I stop for gas and I buy everyone burgers from Steers. The hitch-hikers opt for dagwoods with everything on them: bacon, eggs, steak, sausage patties, tomatoes, lettuce, the works. Debe orders a tiny tomato and cheese sandwich. We share a table and the hitch-hikers wolf their food like people who haven't had anything to eat for days. The man keeps looking at us uncomfortably. He seems to make Debe a bit nervous. I am sorry that I have to subject her to this. The woman has her eyes fixed on one spot on the floor as if she is ashamed that they have been reduced to depend on the charity of strangers. Worse still, black strangers.
Back on N1 we drive quietly for about two hours until we get to the Verkeerdevlei junction. We drop our hitch-hikers there because Debe and I are branching off on the R703 to the small town of Excelsior. We drive among vast farms of deep yellow sunflowers in full bloom. When we get into the town I first take Debe to the street where the Dutch Reformed Church is located and I point it out to her from some distance away.
‘That's the church where my Afrikaners worship,' I say.
She knows that I am talking about the Afrikaners in my yet unpublished novel,
The Madonna of Excelsior
. She has read the manuscript and has given me wonderful feedback on it.
She is quite excited to see small-town South Africa and is clicking away with her digital camera. It is quite different from Johannesburg or Cape Town where she has spent some time. I take her to the town hall where the town council meetings of both my fictional characters and of the real-life town councillors of Excelsior are held. She photographs the walls, the ceiling, the curtains and everything else that I describe in my fiction. She says my descriptions make her feel as though she has been here before. I then take her to Mahlatswetsa Location to the home of Senkey Mokhethi who is one of my important sources for the history of Excelsior. He lives in a solid four-roomed concrete block township house. He is one of the town councillors of Excelsior and part of my novel is based on his life story and that of members of his family. After a brief visit with him I take Debe to see Senkey's mother. She lives in a corrugated iron shack and is lying on her bed. She is on this bed most times I visit her because she says her health is no longer what it used to be. We also meet her daughter, Tiisetso. She is called a Coloured in South Africa because she is of mixed race. Her father was an Afrikaner policeman for whom Senkey's mother worked. I am surprised to find Tiisetso here because she is supposed to be at school in Bloemfontein. I pay for her tuition at a private college where she is studying office management. Senkey tells me that she is under the influence of her boyfriend who keeps taking her out of school. I threaten to stop paying her fees if she is not serious.
Debe tells me that the whole scenario reminds her very much of her native Caribbean island. ‘She looks like some grandmothers I know,' she says of Senkey's mother.
It was really a chance meeting that brought me to this family when I first came to this colourful little town in search of a story.
 

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