huh?”
“Maybe it was one of your old grudges, Uncle. I mean, you have no evidence it was him?”
“I knew it was him, Advo. He’d said during the day that he’d get me for throwing him out. The following morning I went to his home with PP and Dilika and we beat the shit out of him until he confessed.”
I shook my head in disapproval, but I still wanted to hear more.
“And that old man who came to the house yesterday and claimed it was his, who’s he?” I asked.
“Oh, that happened when your grandfather, my father, was still working at the city council. That man, my taima, was a real tsotsi. Many people lost their houses because of him. You see here, opposite, the Jobe’s place, where we ask for ice cubes every day, neh?”
“Yes, what about it?”
“They got that house through my taima. Some old man and his wife used to live there and they had no children. When they died in ’91, my father organised that the house be registered to the Jobe family. I think he was screwing Jobe’s wife . . .”
“So what’s going to happen about the old man’s claim?”
“He can go to the city council to check if he wants, but there’s nothing he can do because the original title deed is still in our family’s name. You saw that, didn’t you, Advo?”
I nodded.
SEVEN
Thursday, December 2
At eight forty-five the following morning I was already inside a minibus taxi on my way to town. Mama had given me R30 for the journey, but I had specifically waited for Zero’s taxi as I didn’t want to pay the taxi fare to the city.
“You’re dressed very smart, Advo,” said Zero, as I sat in the front seat next to him.
“Thanks, man,” I replied, smiling at his compliment. I was wearing an expensive white Polo T-shirt, a black leather jacket, black suede Carvela shoes and a pair of grey, five-pocketed corduroy pants.
Zero himself was wearing a black T-shirt with Tupac’s head printed on it, but the smell that came from his left armpit was an unusually cruel punishment. It was like a rat had decomposed somewhere under his arm and I’m sure I would have suffocated if it were not for the open window on my left. No wonder Mama had nicknamed him magez’epompini.
“Are you going to work this late, Advo?” Zero asked. “PP would kill me if I arrived later than half past five in the morning.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a meeting with a judge in town,” I lied.
Just after the Chiawelo clinic, near Senaone, along the Old Potchefstroom Road, I saw a lovely lady pointing her finger to the sky. Her pink T-shirt clearly defined her upper body and she was wearing a pair of white jeans so tight that I don’t think she could have bent over to pick something off the ground without them tearing.
Zero stopped the taxi for her to get in and as soon as she opened the door I smelled her strong perfume. It was as if she wore it to get rid of all the bad township smells. As she walked down the almost nonexistent aisle of the taxi with her head bent down to avoid banging it against the roof, her orange G-string was clearly visible.
“Hello, Bunjubunju, my Venus, my goddess of sexual beauty and love,” said Zero with a voice that was spiked with desire.
“Hi, Zero,” shouted the lady as she sat in the back seat, her face glistening with a smile.
“Mmmmmm! I smelled you even before you left your house. Ohhhh! That perfume, baby, you drive me crazy!” he said, widening his hairy nostrils. “Ahhhh! It smells so gooooood! I feel like eating you like an apple.”
Bunju smiled broadly, like a child who had just received an unexpected gift. She seemed to be pleased with Zero’s charm, although the sweat ran down his unwashed face like soft porridge boiling over the edge of my uncle’s blackened pot.
“Thanks, but you’re so scarce these days,” she said. “You no longer phone or visit me.”
“Ahhhhh, my Bunjubunju! You know that I still love you more than payday, but it’s this job. It doesn’t give me time to come and see you. I work from Monday to Sunday. There’s no holiday if you work for rich people like PP.”
The conversation with Bunju stopped as Zero saw some potential commuters. Zero’s hand was immediately on the horn as he tried to attract more passengers. He pointed his finger skywards, signalling that he was going to the city, but no one was interested.
“She’s the deliciousest of the deliciousest. Did you see her arse, Advo? She’s gifted with the reverse, isn’t she?” he said as soon as he was sure no one was interested in his taxi.
“Who are you talking about?” I asked, resisting the urge to look at Bunju.
Zero’s eyes darted from me to the rear-view mirror and back to the road. “Come on, man!” he said. “I’m talking about my Bunju. I saw you staring at her arse.” He smiled and looked into the rear-view mirror again. “They say you can look, but never touch!”
“Yeah, it’s true. She can sue you for sexual harassment if you’re not careful nowadays,” I said to Zero.
“But you see, Advo, these ladies nowadays have a way of challenging us men. You’ll be surprised at what we taxi drivers see in our taxis every day. Some of them don’t even bother to wear panties at all. Some of them wear revealing miniskirts just to challenge you, man. That’s why Avalon Cemetery is full, it’s because these ladies are living advertisements for Aids. I tell you, Advo.”
Mama had warned me that Zero and PP had one thing in common and that I should keep away from them as much as possible. She told me that they were notorious for undressing every member of the female species that they saw with their eyes. According to her, they lived in the over-sexualised township world. In Zero and PP’s universe, Mama once told me, a man was a man according to the number of ladies he was dating.
“You know what, Advo?” Zero whispered. “Bunju was once my meat and I used to chew her every day.”
“And what happened between you two?”
“No, I’m no longer interested in her and I don’t care what she does with her pussy now,” he said, looking at me.
“But I think she’s perfect for you, man.”
“Yeah, you’re right, she’s a perfect pain in the arse,” he responded uninterestedly.
“What happened?”
“She thinks that I’m her walking ATM. It’s as if I have to pay to have sex with her and, since I left her, she behaves like those motor mechanics that you see in the Midway scrapyards. Yeah, she’s always lying on her back for men to screw her for money. She’s a puff and pass, man. You can have her if you’re curious to know about what’s hiding under those panties, but I’m telling you now that those nice curves of hers are dangerous. She’s a social worker. Uyagayana. She gives. Don’t tell me that you don’t know about that?”
“Of course I don’t
