a week.
He was called to the dean’s office once and, like always, he was drunk. The dean gave him a tongue-lashing and D’nice took it calmly, and when the dean was tired, he looked at him calmly. The dean knew that D’nice was always in the A-plus category on every exam and assignment and, to make it even worse, he came from a rural public school.
D’nice said, “Sir, I have a very different mind, which I don’t really understand myself. I get very bored and it wanders, then I have to keep it forever in a state of intoxication to control it.”
He said that to the dean and that became D’nice’s passport for part-time studying and permanent intoxication – a definite, sure way to be survived by the great institution.
D’nice was not your average genius with spectacles. He looked more like a conservative man with short hair and because of that you would miss the fact that he was a genius. He would read a paragraph in the paper and then he would know it, and you could do that too, but you can’t rewrite it in the same way it was written, can you? He could do that and he wouldn’t even miss a comma. He read everything once, and if he reread it, it was giving him some kind of philosophical problem.
Long ago, when he was still doing his matric, the mathematics teacher wrote a problem on the board and said, “Who can tell me the answer to this sum?”
D’nice wasn’t interested, he didn’t even hear the question because he was busy at the back of the class with some other thing that interested his mind.
The teacher let a few minutes pass, thinking that perhaps the pupils were still working it out.
“Somebody give me the answer?”
Nobody came with the answer. The pupils weren’t working out the answer, they were just waiting for someone to give an answer, any answer. Then the teacher started to shout in anger, and that was when D’nice took notice and told him the answer, but the teacher replied, “I am not interested in the answer but how to get it.”
D’nice kicked his chair back and walked to the board. He looked at the others, then wrote the whole sum back to front, starting with the answer first. After he’d finished he put the chalk back in the teacher’s hand and sat down again.
Then the puzzled teacher suddenly became aware of what he’d done and was thankful that he hadn’t asked D’nice to explain what he’d written on the board, because it would have been embarrassing on his part.
Jeans were never his thing. He always wore smart trousers, black, khaki or brown, very well-ironed, and a T-shirt. His feet were always imprisoned in a pair of shining black formal shoes. He had a pair of sandals, but those were only for walking about in the haven. He also had a pair of sports shoes for when he and Matome would jog to Sandton and back.
You could talk politics, sport, cars, fashion and even your professional work with him, and he’d always have something to say or ask you some puzzling question.
Why?
Because he spent too much of his time in the library, not choosing what to read like you, but reading.
D’nice was poor, had a scholarship, but he was deadly at poking the opposite sex.
His speciality: the rich, spoiled white girls.
He dated Michelle in his final year. Michelle was a final-year music student. It was after he had poked with this member of God’s chosen few, and the beauty was resting, that his life changed. He was bored, life bored this man, and his thinking wandered. His eyes were running around, up and down, wishing that the god of Isando would appear and provide that which he provides best. Then his eyes landed on a keyboard. He switched it on and played it like he was born playing it, played it so well that the beauty woke up.
She just looked at him playing and maybe the world stopped and listened. We all stopped and listened. It was the first time that he had played a keyboard and from that day on his need to play grew in him, grew in him so that eventually she saw fit to give him the expensive keyboard.
Michelle put a stop to his drinking during this time; if it hadn’t been for that good Jewish girl, he wouldn’t have written his final examinations.
Michelle loved D’nice. She loved the darkie brother. It went on and on, despite the fact that they both knew that the relationship was a cul-de-sac from the beginning – she was from a very powerful family and the music was just a way of killing time between now and when she found Mr Right, got married and had children.
Michelle was a celebrity in her own right. For those of you that have satellite television, she used to have a show on the Jewish channel as a teenager. Beautiful, thin, thin and tall as the world’s models.
Not many people knew that D’nice was having it with her. They probably would have suspected something, but they were always told that D’nice was her music producer.
She is featured on the shelved kwaito CD by Cäres and, believe me, she was burning the pipe. She did justice to that song, which, at the time, I didn’t believe she could.
I liked Michelle, liked her fearless character, liked the fact that she could just come to Hillbrow at night, park her car in Van der Merwe and walk herself to 207.
Well, we enjoyed her company and it was the first time I ever saw the underwear of a white girl.
D’nice was picked up by this big company before he even graduated. They gave him a very good job. He worked there for two months then handed in his resignation. When they asked why, he just said he wanted to quit, so they increased his pay by hundred per cent and put in a car. He worked for another month then resigned with immediate effect and told them no negotiations. They negotiated anyway, but his mind was made up.
There was music in his head and he wanted to get the music out.
4. Molamo
Molamo
The writer, the director, the actor, the poet, the comedian, the producer, was once a tipper truck driver for a construction company. That was, as he said, a great job. Just driving up and down. He drove that ten-cubic-metre truck like Gugu coming out of that corner, whatever they call it, at Khayalami racetrack with Sarel full in his mirrors (and that’s the right way to spell Khayalami). He pushed the truck so hard that the manager didn’t know whether to let him go or keep him.
The only problem was that after he’d had his last meal of the day, after poking his pokiness, he’d start to feel uneasy and then he’d have to fight to sleep. He thought that maybe the other drivers were jealous of him and that maybe they wanted to kill him.
You know that thinking? It’s another sad black story on its own. So he went to the floor-shift people to check out what was wrong with him.
You see, we are very funny people. A black man can kill you for living your life, for trying to improve and better your life, and still come to your funeral acting very hurt. Believe it happens. Believe me, I know.
Once I had a dear friend. He was very intelligent, matriculated with six As, and won a scholarship. But, when he woke up a few days after the celebrations and joy, he was not the same friend. His mind just wasn’t his. His mind had deserted him. The floor-shift saw this and told me what their bones said. The prophets gave it their shot as well, and told the very same story. But they couldn’t retrieve his mind. His grandmother cried, but
