or aquarium.
The first room was a combination of a small kitchen at the rear and a general living and dining area in front. An open door in the left-hand wall led into the bedroom where two medium-sized beds sat close together with only twin nightstands separating them. Back in the kitchen space a small gas stove and a couple of wooden chairs were placed on either side of a sink, and a steel table, like those in the Principal’s office, stood against one of the walls. In the front, where I was standing, four more wooden chairs were placed in a large, loose ring around a sturdy wooden table. The whole area was bare of any decoration and the walls had recently been repainted a flawless white – I could still smell the new paint. The whole cottage looked austere and forbidding.
The old woman had left a covered plate of food and a jar of milk on the draining board. The one thing rural folk will never deny you is food. Still, the old woman had not seemed to be the hospitable sort. Maybe it had been T. B. Mokoka’s presence.
Tiro had told me that Mokoka had been around these parts for many years. He had only left to further his studies and to gain experience in his field. In fact, he had been raised close to where we were standing now. But he and the old woman had behaved like complete strangers. I trust my instincts and I knew something wasn’t right. Mokoka, as Principal of the local school, had to know or be known by everybody within fifty miles of this sparsely populated place.
“I am sure you will be all right,” T. B. Mokoka said. “If you need anything, go up to the village and go into the first yard on your left.” He seemed uncertain and scratched his head. “Yes, on your left. Ask for Rre Molefe. He will help you. Better yet, send a message with one of the school children . . .” He picked up the lost thread of his stumbling speech. “Yes, that’s it! Send a child. It will save you time and a long, steep walk.” He was so taken up with this idea that he was breathless. He nodded his head so enthusiastically that I nodded along with him. “Don’t bother them up there and they won’t bother you.”
He looked past me into the bedroom as he said this, and I could have sworn that he was speaking not to me, but reassuring someone he was seeing in there, somebody who scared him.
Watching Mokoka as he nervously surveyed my temporary residence, I thought of my fiancée, Lesego, and what she would think of my current circumstances. Lesego, whose whole world is urban and upwardly driven, would have been appalled.
“You are out of the mainstream,” she likes to say when she is in one of her fault-finding moods.
I don’t know what she means by this. The shallow alien stream transplanted from another continent? Or the stream of people who carry the old ways with them? Whichever she means, I had a feeling that this time she was right.
Lesego Senatla is a beautiful pilot of her own personal mainstream which she navigates with admirable skill as an independent property developer.
For some years she worked in different positions for a large multinational construction company. She knew her bricks and cement, but her last boss had begun making clumsy amorous advances. He had spiced these with hints of unlimited travel to foreign ports of exquisite pleasures. And him being a married man too, with pictures scattered around his office to prove it. Pictures of people Lesego did not know. Although their real-life counterparts sometimes dropped in at the office and stared through her with glassy smiles fixed on their faces. People she often had to buy last-minute birthday cards for.
So she walked away. Part of being free is having the right to walk away from a demeaning and exploitative situation, she often declared
She had gone on to form her own small construction company, and her first major project had been to build additional classrooms at the high school in which I broke chalk and my spirit for birdseed pay.
And here I was, at it again. The only good thing was that I was not stuck here, and this time I could leave whenever I wanted to.
* * *
Principal Mokoka finally left after I got the name of the old woman out of him. He told me that she was old Mme Molefe, the mother of the Molefe I was supposed to seek assistance from.
After Mokoka had left I suddenly felt very tired and set about getting myself into bed. After unsuccessfully trying to use my cellphone to contact the broader world, and Lesego who was in it, I turned off the lights.
That night I dreamt of the food I had left untouched – the milk was achingly sweet but always just out of reach.
Tuesday
TUESDAY
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
There were two paths going to the school from the village above my cottage. The first came into the little valley and then rose again to the level ground on which the school stood. The second was much longer and skirted the hollow in a semicircle, approaching the school from the opposite direction after joining the road from Mafikeng.
Apparently the school children preferred the longer route. I had been up early, heated up old Ma Molefe’s food and made it my breakfast. I was sure that no one had passed my door, but they were all already in the school yard by the time I got there.
I had planned on arriving early, before eight, but the children had beaten me to it. And on a winter’s morning too. Incredible! My intention of poking around the school unsupervised was undone. I couldn’t do anything with so many little eyes recording my every step.
So I did what any new arrival would do. I headed for a familiar door. I had not even touched the Principal’s door knob when someone giggled behind me. I turned around to find a small boy standing there. A tiny shadow of a boy – and apparently also able to move just as silently as a shadow as well – he had the delicate features of the Khoisan.
He had a key in his hand and, extremely shyly, he gave it to me. He pointed at a door at the end of the row of prefabricated classrooms. I gave him a friendly pat on his head and what I hope was my best smile. He only thrust his finger at the door vigorously in reply and trotted towards it.
I followed him. “My name is . . .” I began as I reached him.
“You are Tichere Maje,” he said firmly, interrupting me.
This was not due to my all-conquering fame, or the boy’s supernatural powers. I should have known that by now everyone who had anything to do with the school would be in possession of my vital statistics. An invisible file had been opened on me. It would only be closed the day I left, and perhaps not even then if I did or said something amazingly novel during my stay.
“What’s your name?” I asked as he led me into the classroom.
“Jan-Jan Mothibi.”
As I watched him float away and join his friends in a scuffle about a ragged football, it came to me that he was possessed of that terrible fragility of a people staring into the abyss, with cold shadows gathering around their kind as their numbers diminished with every turning of the earth. I have seen that haunted, far-away look before and I was sure that I would see the same look again in the eyes of others before I left Marakong-a-Badimo. The look of a people who sensed that when humanity finally gathered around the last fire, they may be absent, their tongues long stilled and their last prayers unheard.
* * *
The classroom was very clean. In fact, I had never seen a cleaner classroom that was in regular use. The desks were
