he thought about it again, he realised Nobantu had been right in comparing the city to a woman. Every time he arrived in Johannesburg, even from a two-day business trip to Cape Town, he experienced a sense of – there was no other way to put it – homecoming.
In those early days with Nobantu, he had wanted to possess her in the same way that he had wanted to possess the city. In the beginning, he had tried talking himself out of her – it was crazy, she was like the little sister he never had, and there were plenty of sophisticated young women keen to be with a young lawyer in a Brooks Brothers’ suit. It mattered little, though. She was already in his bloodstream. It was Nobantu he wanted, Nobantu he had to have.
In those early months, he found himself smiling fondly while busy researching for his bosses, scowling when she told him about some male university student she sounded like she might admire. He found himself wanting to impress her like he had never wanted to impress any member of the female species. Nobantu was a hunger, a craving, which he could not do without.
In those days before cellphones, Andile would rush to her residence as soon as he finished work to spend time with her. She was always with her beautiful tomboy of a friend, Nontsikelelo. Ntsiki, who he later found out was a lesbian (although in those days it was a secret told only in the strictest of confidences, because being a lesbian was just not done by Africans!), appeared to compete with him for Nobantu’s time. He remembered with a smile how, in his ignorance about all this sexual preference stuff, he had once asked Nobantu whether she too was planning to become a lesbian.
She had answered spiritedly with a rhetorical question that had floored him: “And since you are always with Anant Patel,” she had asked, “are you also planning to become an Indian?”
He had laughed then, but that had been one of his first lessons in living and letting live, a characteristic which he had since noticed came in handy in the business world. Strange that he got it from a country girl and not some streetwise Joburg woman, but then Nobantu had always oozed wisdom beyond her age.
Andile had been unable to believe that he, the son of a contract worker (who had died when he was so young he could not remember him) and a domestic, could possibly have anything to do with this angel, the only daughter of a schoolteacher and a Rharhabe chief (who was also a lawyer). He was therefore happily surprised when, within a short time of her arrival in Joburg, they were dating.
It was her naiveté and some form of irresponsibility on his part – protection had not been a big thing when having sex in those days – that led to her getting pregnant in her first year of university.
“How did it happen?” he had asked stupidly. “Oh, God, Nobantu, I am so sorry. What are your parents going to say?” he had said, slapping his forehead.
She was, after all, royalty and he was still the child of a domestic worker – he could not get that out of his mind.
“And your mother is going to think I am trying to trap you because you have a good job and are making it,” she had said, sobbing.
He remembered how he had kissed the tears from Nobantu’s face, not caring what his mother would say. He loved her, but more importantly, she had the type of demeanour that would make her a great wife for the type of man he knew he wanted to become. He had known then what he would do. He would marry her.
“But I am too young to get married. Can’t we just have the baby and decide later whether we want to be together?” she had asked defiantly, to Andile’s surprise. He had always thought that any woman who got pregnant by a man she was not married to was, in some way, staking her territory.
He shook his head vehemently. “No way. There is absolutely no way any child of mine will be born out of wedlock, what would your parents and the community back home think of me?” he had asked angrily.
Eventually he had managed to convince her, with some help from her mother – who had to be let in on the secret – to marry him. It hadn’t been too difficult to persuade her. Was he not one of the most brilliant young lawyers in South Africa and was her mother not one of the strongest personalities he knew?
Nobantu’s mother – “a typical schoolteacher” as Nobantu often joked – hadn’t wanted her daughter, married or not, to be without a degree. So, after taking time off to give birth and bond with their son, whom they had named Xolani (named in apology to her parents for disappointing them), Nobantu had returned to Johannesburg to continue with her studies, joining him, this time around, in a rented cottage in Auckland Park. The cottage had, in reality, been the renovated servants’ quarters of an old house belonging to one of those liberal professor types.
Andile smiled as he opened the bottle and poured more cognac into his glass. “Ha, I am at home, I can have one more,” he excused himself.
He remembered how it had been when they first got married. When he returned home after a long day’s work, Nobantu would always have dinner ready, take a shower with him and rub his shoulders while listening to stories of how his day had been spent. They had no television then; they had been content with listening to and watching each other. He remembered how sexually passionate she had been, both of them had been, never too tired to make love. He wondered what had happened to them.
Nowadays, they had both started knocking on the door of their en suite bathroom to make sure that the other was decent – she could not even pee in his presence as she used to do in the early days of their marriage. Yes, they still had sex. No, not as often as they had done back then. He was tired, or she was tired, or she wanted to watch Desperate Housewives, or he wanted to watch Arsenal on Supersport. When they did do it, it was robotic, and immediately afterwards, they would each roll to their own side of the bed and she would continue – if what women’s magazines said was true – with what she had been planning to do during sex, while he nodded off, exhausted. Maybe he just wasn’t as young as he used to be.
But it wasn’t just the sex. They no longer discussed general affairs as they used to do in the early days of their marriage either. Their talk now centred on how his day had been (him) and what money was needed for the children or some mundane domestic issue (her). She was no longer spirited. No longer sure of herself. Except when she tried to convince him that she wanted to start her little boutique, a silly idea to be sure since he gave her whatever money she needed and he never wanted to have her family think he could not look after her. Fifteen years after getting married to Nobantu, he still sometimes got the feeling that, in spite of all his success, her father didn’t think him good enough for his daughter. What then if she went to work and this became some sort of proof that he couldn’t look after her?
The last time she had discussed her little boutique idea with him was a few months back when, after he had asked her what people would say, she answered in an almost petulant voice, “I don’t care what people will say. I just know that I don’t want to sit at home any more wondering whether this is all there is to life while other people are making something of themselves.”
Andile had wondered out loud why – if she wanted to be needed so badly, wanted to feel she was doing something worthwhile – she didn’t just continue with her volunteer work. It would certainly help MAPAMO if his wife was known to be at the forefront of various charity organisations.
She had looked at him and said, “It would help your business. It won’t make me feel any better. Give me a chance to do this thing with the designs. I know I can do it. What do you say?”
That night, he wasn’t in the mood to humour her silly notions. She didn’t know when to stop. She just kept pushing and pushing. He had finally ended the conversation by telling her that if she wanted to get into business she could go right ahead, but she should be prepared for a divorce.
