kagablog

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

“Please be so good as to join me.” Henry indicated the vacated seat and after a slight hesitation the man sat down and considered with disdainful interest the bedraggled countenance, as if he were examining the contents of his handkerchief after coughing up phlegm. “Yes, well actually I must say I find myself in unusual circumstances. This time two nights ago I was preparing for bed in my nasty little chamber in Kalk Bay with the sound of the winter elements raging upon mountain and sea. And now, forty-eight hours later, after two days of unprecedented excitement and adventure I discover myself in this stale hotel dining room. The last besieged outpost in the African night, talking to a wild Nubian cook who has advised the bwanas to resort to the heinous custom of sating the pangs of hunger by scatophagous means should they find the meagre repast placed before them not to their liking. And to add an exotic spiciness to an already piquant melange it is brought to my attention that the Nubian cook answers not to the name of Sambo, or Dingaan, or Themba, or Kummojo, or Chagwe, or Vuzi, or Ziko, or Hambalapakhaya, or… No, none of your common or garden variety of cookboy appellation but the noble Caledonian eponym Angus. Och, Angus! Here in the heart of darkness my thoughts fly to the banks and braes o’ bonny doon, my heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer, my love’s beside me, like a red red rose, my wee tumescent caber is tossing aboot beneath ma swirling kilt and as Tammie glowers, amazed and curious, the mirth and fun grow fast and furious. Aye, Angus, my heart’s in the Highlands but as the wan moon sets behind the white wave I am back to reality where I sit, broken-hearted. Spent a penny and… Angus, I’m sure there’s an interesting story behind your remarkable name.”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I’m interested.”

“Just because you’re interested you expect me to…”

“Let me put it another way. As a member of the white tribe…”

“It’s an adopted name. But why should I share my history with a dronklap like you?” He asked it as if he wanted to know and expected an answer that stood a chance of acceptance.

“Because I’m interested. Because you’re the first educated Black I’ve met, and because you have shown me the light of hope by telling me to go eat my own shit.”

“Alright, maybe you’re not such rubbish as you look. My mother was the maid to a Scottish engineer by the name of John Robison. She became the mother of his children. Like many other white men he partook of black meat, but unlike many other white men he accepted the consequences. He not only supported my mother and their children but also me and my sister from another father. He treated me like a son and gave me a Western education. But he never tried to cut me off from my African roots. In fact he encouraged me to learn the ways of my people and keep contact with my father and other blood relatives. So, to cut the story short, I am an African with a degree in political science from Edinburgh University and I work as a cookboy in a one star hotel. My name is Angus Robison and Zumangwe Ramadela.”

“Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. A perfect candidate for schizophrenia. Is your self torn asunder, are you tormented by doubt and indecision, are you threatened by shadows and whispers, do you see strange patterns and numbers on the wall, does the anguish in you gnaw at your entrails, do you pace your cage, back and forth, back and forth, jaw clenched, muscles jerking? Are you a psychiatric wreck?”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, and no. But then one of the essential ingredients is missing. Guilt. I feel very little guilt. Angus and Zumangwe are good friends. They are brothers and they don’t fight, they help each other.”

“And frustration and boredom. How do you handle working in a jerkwater dump like this? This is almost as mindless an existence as my own.”

“Speak for yourself. You don’t seriously think I am here for the love of cooking? This hotel is a headquarters, the kitchen is the operations room. This hotel was carefully selected for its strategic position, for its usefulness to the Struggle.”

“And the owners? The Van Schalkwyks?” Henry was incredulous. “Surely they aren’t part of the Struggle?”

“And why not? But no, they are too troubled in their own personal lives to know or care. He is sick with hatred and guilt and alcoholism. It’s the combination of two tragedies - the German and the Afrikaans. He has all the worst characteristics of both nations and few of their better traits. The beast that he is is rarely sober enough to know the day of the week.”

“And his wife? Birkin describes her as a ‘tasty’ looking piece.” Angus was silent. A cloud had passed across his face.

“Yes, a tasty piece.” Sadness, or some such pain-inflicting emotion was in his voice and then he shrugged. “I use her. For the Struggle and for my own satisfaction and on that count I stand guilty. I am human.”

“Homo sum.”

“Exactly. You like it too? Humani nil a me alienum puto. We seem to have more in common than at first met the eye.” It obviously amused him to have discovered anything worthwhile beneath Henry’s rough exterior.

“So this woman is your weakness?”

“If I were a hypocrite I would claim to be helping her with psychosexual therapy, helping her to cope with her fear and her loneliness. But enough of Sannie. Maybe I will show you later. You are an admirer of Robbie Burns?”

“Now there was a man bursting with compassion! Take ‘To a Mouse’ as an example.”

“Yes yes.” Angus’s eyes were alight with enthusiasm. “I’m truly sorry man’s dominion has broken nature’s social union and justifies that ill opinion. You know my father taught me to recite the whole of it as well as Tam O’Shanter. For several years we celebrated Burns night on the farm. Can you imagine it, a house full of people, only one white face present and everybody spouting Robbie Burns and eating warm reekin’ Haggis?” He laughed at the bizarre memory and then sobered. “It is such a pity. A stupid, stupid pity.” A note of angry bitterness had crept into his voice. “The stupidity of racism. This could be such a great country if only people were left alone to make their own choices. This system must be smashed and the white man must embrace Africa, he must start to learn and understand what is African and forget about the old version, the parody based on bigotry and ignorance and greed. What does the European know about his fellow African? What do you know about me?”

“Well, I can see that you’ve had a western education and that you are very un-African. Apart from your colour and the negroid aspects of your facial structure, that is.”

“Yes, yes.” He was impatient, giving Henry a look of contempt. “You see, you only look at the surface. Your mind is closed.” Shit, Henry thought to himself, here we go again. Somebody else going to open my mind for me. Aloud he said,

“Okay, convert me. Open my mind. Meanwhile how about another drink?” The cookboy spoke rapidly in Xhosa and the waiter left the room. “Please go ahead. For the sake of auld lang syne.”

“You are a drunkard but maybe there is hope for you. Alright. If a Black man wishes to study, get some understanding of the White man, he must learn to read English. Then for five, even ten years, he must consume a whole library. He must read history, philosophy, religion, the classics - Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, Plato. He must sample the great literature - Shakespeare, Hardy, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Mann. He must read everything - Enid Blyton, Voltaire, Peter Cheyney, Captain Johns, Dr Johnson, Melville, Solszhenitsyn, Superman, Conan Doyle, William Burroughs, Tintin and Asterix, Billy Bunter, Rousseau, Tolstoy, Phllip Roth… The list is unending. Poetry. Lots of poetry. The magazines, the newspapers, the comics, Mills and Boon. Then the biographies of Henry Ford, Hitler, Hemingway, Caruso, Freud and Jung and Frazer. Read about the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution. The Great American Dream. And follow sport and the drive to win. Exploration, travel, humour. And music and theatre and film. Ten years is too short. After ten years the Black man must have started to understand the White man.” The waiter came with Henry’s drink and a Coke for the chef.

“And there are many who have gone to these lengths to understand the White man’s culture. But they don’t make the laws. The people who make the laws do not want to learn about Africa and its people and the African ethos. There is no understanding or empathy from their side, no similar effort made, no synergy is permitted to develop and we are all poorer for it.” He drank from his glass and Henry noted the long sensitive fingers of the big hands.

“Hey, you know something?” Henry was chuckling at himself. “You know all the kak people talk about other races? Well, one of the things I grew up half believing was that Blacks didn’t possess lunules. It was one of those characteristics which was supposed to prove that Kaffirs weren’t quite human.” Angus snorted.

“Yes. Like nonsense about thickness of skull and even viscosity of blood. Anything to deny a man’s humanity and justify treating him as a lesser being undeserving of compassion.”

“Yah. Well, I see your half moons are more distinct than mine, if that signifies anything.”

“Hah. It doesn’t.” He glanced at Henry’s grimy hands and looked away embarrassed by the dirt under the nails. “Have you ever heard of Ubuntu?”

“Umm, yes, I think I have. Yes, that’s a Chinese dish, isn’t it? The African version of course. Sweet-and-sour. Instead of cubes of pork you chaps use White settler meat, don’t you?”

“Ha, ha. You whoreson fool, that’s Uhuru. It means human-heartedness or compassion. It is sympathy for your fellow man, it is brotherhood and caring. Robbie Burns had ubuntu. John Robison had ubuntu.”

“Talking of John Robison. Your father wasn’t by any chance descended from the great Scottish inventor was he?”

“Hoots, mon! You amaze me. You’ve heard of his inventions? He was my father’s great grandfather and my father was named after him.”

“Yes I’m particularly interested in the siren.”

“Ah but that wasn’t his most important creation. He was obsessed with time and spent most of his life devising a clock that measured the quality of time. In fact I have a copy of the blue prints.”

“You mean…” Just then there was a scream and a shout and in rushed Birkin, wild-eyed and hysterical, penis protruding from open fly.

“Oh my Christ, these fuckin’ coons have killed him! The bastards have murdered him. I swear to God! He’s out there, lying outside, dead. Christ and I’ve pissed on his dead body.” He became aware of his indecent exposure and scowled at them and hastily rearranged his clothing.

“What happened?” Henry was partly annoyed at the interruption and partly curious to discover what new and wondrous entertainment fate was dropping at his feet. “Who’s dead? What the fuck you talking about?”

“It’s Van Schalkwyk. The phones didn’t work, the whole fucking place is dark. I couldn’t find the toilet so I went outside and there I am pissing away, half a gallon, and then my foot touches this thing and I skrik. Christ but I skrik! I lights a match and there he is, all covered in fresh piss, lying there dead. You fuckin’ communist savage, you!” He had turned to face Angus who towered over him, a look of sardonic amusement on his face. He spoke to the waiter:

“Torch.”

The waiter soon returned and they moved into the passage and through the dark lobby to the entrance. The door stood open in the light of the torch and Birkin led the way. The night air was cold and smelt of dust. A few paces to the right the torch showed the body, lying in a heap, slightly turned to one side.

“Here he is,” Birkin announced unnecessarily. Angus bent over and pinched an ear lobe between thumb and forefinger, pincer-like. There was a loud groan and an arm flailed out. He straightened up.

“Dead? Dead drunk, yes. Alright, help me to get him in.” He picked up the legs like the handles of a wheelbarrow and Henry and Birkin took an arm each. The man was large and the drunks struggled with the dead weight, tripping and falling against each other. The head trailed back and when they tried to negotiate the single step it struck with a dull thud against the concrete riser. Birkin lost his grip and they both fell to their knees, half on top of the hotel owner. Then, struggling and cursing, they helped to manhandle the body down a corridor. Henry became aware of the rhythmic thumping that he had previously thought to be radio music. It was much louder and seemed to emanate from the darkness ahead of them.

They stopped and let go of arms and legs. The waiter shone the torch on a door and Angus turned the handle and they dragged their cumbersome load into the room. Then with great effort they hoisted up the two-hundred-and-forty-pound carcass and dumped it onto the bed. The four of them stood looking down like relatives grouped about a sickbed. The waiter directed the beam onto the ghastly visage. The great football head, massive and menacing even in stupor, close set eyes, close cropped hair, flabby jowls about a thin mouth, now slack and gaping, a trickle of blood forming a jagged scar down to behind an ear.

“Yissus!” murmured Henry. “A nasty piece of work. There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in this face.”

“Shakespeare?”

“Macbeth. Not my favourite. Did you ever try Troilus and Cressida? Now there’s a certain…”

“Hey, what’s this poefte rubbish? I’m not standing here listening to you talking crap to these coons. I’m going man. And as soon’s I get to Keetmanshoop I’m going straight to the cops, struse god. You, mampara, shine the torch for me.” In the corridor Birkin turned left and stalked away towards the entrance.

“What’s that noise?” Henry asked. “Sounds like an African drum.” The waiter trained the torch in the other direction and three doors down a figure was seen seated on a stool. Between his knees was a wooden drum held at an angle away from him. The hands thumped slowly in a monotonous beat upon the taut hide. “What the hell’s he doing there in the dark?” His voice was pitched high in surprise.

“Sannie. She’s in that room. This brute’s wife. Ah poor Sannie!”

“But why the drums?”

“Well, I told you I am helping her to…” He hesitated then hurried on impatient to complete the explanation. “To come to terms with her fears. To live them out. When it grew dark I dragged her in there and cut off her clothes and tied her to the bed with her husband’s old rugby socks. For three, four hours she has lain there in the dark, listening to the drum and waiting. When I am ready I will go to the door and slowly open it. She will sense my presence. I will…” Just then there were several loud bangs from the front of the hotel. As they ran to the entrance Birkin’s car roared into life and then backfired again.

“Hey, the poes has got my valuable luggage in his boot. Hey! Hey!” As the car started with its cacophony of bangs there was a huge and brilliant flash of light out in the darkness accompanied by a deafening explosion. Flames were leaping high into the night and Birkin screamed. “The station, the station! For fucks sake they’ve blown up the station!”

Henry jumped in as the car began to jerk backwards in reverse, popping and spluttering and banging. In the headlamps and the light of the fire there was no sigh of the cook or the waiter. Then Birkin had crunched into first and they were leaping forward in a skidding sweep of dust away from the hotel.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.