“The salary range is R290 000 to R350 000 per annum. Uh, there is a thirteenth cheque as well and all they want is your LLB degree. That one you have, baby. They also need basic computer literacy and good listening skills, which I’m sure is nothing to you.”
“Fine, Mama, I’ll try.”
I finished talking on my cellphone and put it on the brick next to the lawn. My uncle was standing right behind me, but he seemed to be concentrating on his notebook rather than on the conversation I had just had with Mama.
“So, tell me, Advo, what did you dream about last night?” he asked, scratching out something in his notebook with his pen.
“Let me think, Uncle,” I responded, wiping away the sweat that was running down my face with the T-shirt that I was wearing.
“We don’t have much time, Advo,” he said, his eyes swinging in the direction of maMfundisi’s house. “That Chinese man, Liu, is coming in thirty minutes to collect all the bets.”
“Okay, give me a minute to remember, Uncle.”
“At ten o’clock that Fong Kong will be here.”
“All right, that dream is coming now, Uncle.”
He looked down at my watch, which he was wearing without my permission. Impatiently, he tucked his crutches under his arms and limped towards the low fence. He put his right hand up to his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun.
At the corner of the street a group of women had gathered and, within seconds, Priest Mthembu’s wife, maMfundisi, appeared. Not only was she Priest Mthembu’s wife, which is why we called her maMfundisi, but she was also the person who ran the fah-fee game in our part of Chi. I had heard from my uncle that her husband wasn’t aware that she was involved in fah-fee. The money bags that she was carrying were to be given to Liu.
Upon seeing maMfundisi, my uncle shouted, “I’m on my way, maMfundisi! Please wait for my bet!”
My uncle gave me an impatient stare as if he had just found a fresh reason to be angry with me.
“Please hurry, Advo! Liu will be here any moment now.”
“Okay, Uncle, it was a bad dream that I had last night and I’m not sure if I should tell you about it.”
“That’s fine, my laaitie, every dream has a number and a meaning in this game.”
“All right, Uncle . . .”
“Go on, I’m listening.”
“Mama caught me smoking a cigarette and scolded me.”
“Good! That’s a very good dream, my Advo,” said my uncle, barely concealing his delight. “When someone scolds you, the number to play is twenty-four.”
He wrote down the number in his notebook in his deformed, semi-literate handwriting.
“And then what happened?”
“Well, she called me a pig and broke my cigarette into pieces.”
“Aha! She called you a pig?” he asked, laughing. “Did she really say that?”
“Yes, she did, in my dream, of course.”
He nodded slowly in approval.
“Okay, a pig is number eight. This is why I like you, Advo. Ever since you came back here from university in Cape Town I’m a lucky person.”
I smiled while my uncle held forth on his favourite subject.
“My dreams are always bad for this game, Advo,” he said. “I tell you, just a week before you came back I dreamt of my dog Verwoerd’s penis. I played thirty-six, because a penis is that number in fah-fee, and I lost all my money.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, “is that right?”
My uncle smiled and slapped my back tenderly.
“That’s the truth, my laaitie. Your dreams are real because you’re very educated.”
My uncle was still scribbling some numbers on a piece of paper when a white four-wheel drive Toyota van passed stealthily along our street. Inside the bulletproof van were two Chinese guys wearing panama hats.
The car stopped in the middle of the street next to maMfundisi’s house where the group of women had gathered. Uncle Nyawana immediately gave me a piece of paper with the numbers on it, as well as R48.
“Look, Advo!” he said, spitting on the ground playfully. “If you come back before this saliva dries up, I’ll buy you four ngudus of Hansa Pilsener.”
With my uncle’s promise on my mind I ran immediately towards maMfundisi’s house, passing some kids that were playing hopscotch on the street. At the gate of her house I gave maMfundisi the bet and watched as she approached the car. The window was rolled down and I saw a hand receiving four bags of money.
When I got back to our house, my uncle was sitting on the beer crate and a woman was sitting on the lawn next to him.
“The millennium is just around the corner,” the woman was saying to my uncle, “so I have come here to make peace with you. Priest Mthembu told us that those who sin by hating others are not going to see the Kingdom of God.”
“Good! I forgive you,” said my uncle, as if he had been the wronged party, “and where is Mbuso?”
“He’s at work. He finally got a job. But he’ll also come to make peace with you because it’s not a good thing to hate each other. He understands that it was a mistake that you and your friends beat him so badly.”
They shook hands and the woman left. My uncle limped towards his room with his empty glass in his hand. He came back a few minutes later with the glass full of whisky.
“What was that all about, Uncle? Is she your girlfriend?” I joked.
“Girlfriend? Hell no, she’s too old for me, Advo. She’s the mother of that guy Mbuso, the one who was staying here until June.”
“You mean that guy who was staying where Zero’s zozo is now? I heard that you knocked his teeth out after he failed to pay the rent in time?”
“Exactly. The same guy who made us sleep in a prison cell for a week in winter. I tell you that if it was not for bra PP, who bribed the police officials with two straights of KWV brandy, we would still be in jail now. Money can really talk in this country, Advo. I’ve seen it.”
“But why did you beat him up? You should have simply told him to leave.”
“You don’t understand, Advo. It wasn’t that simple. You see that hosepipe in the toolbox behind the toilet?”
“Yes. What about it?”
“That guy came back in the evening, just after I’d told him to pack and go. I was out drinking at The White House with PP and Dilika, but when I came back at midnight my room was flooded. My bed, my clothes and everything was all wet. And, imagine, it was
