Now, T. B. Mokoka turned to the matter in hand. “You shall take over Miss Marumo’s class,” he began.
“Yes, sir.”
“Those are the grade fives.”
“I am ready, sir.”
T. B. Mokoka went on to tell me about my duties and his relief at my arrival. He told me everything twice over, wringing his hands distractedly as he alluded to problems of discipline and parental interference. “They are sometimes difficult,” he confided, “but they are very good children under the circumstances.”
Poor T. B., he didn’t know that before my premature retirement I had taught in a township high school for several years and had lived to tell my war stories to disbelieving novices. I didn’t see how these children’s circumstances could be that different to those of thousands of other children throughout the country.
Retirement. I turned the word over in my mind as Mokoka worried out loud over whether his problems were caused by too rigid a disciplinary regime or too little parental involvement.
At the time of my retirement I was only thirty, but I was burnt out. The educational field had become too complex. Old certainties had been overturned and washed away. New truths had been proclaimed. But when we had prophesied a new type of education, like countless others in all revolutions the world has ever seen, we had failed to foresee our own demise, our inevitable irrelevance in the new order.
Counselling had been recommended by the progressive management in the newly reorganised Department of Education, after what they called my “stressful experiences” at a rural school.
I had peaked too early, tried to do too much, Doctors Padayachee and Littlewater had pronounced in their separate turns. One had prodded my bones while the other had puzzled over my psyche. It was depressing for all three of us. Intensive medication and therapy was prescribed for me and high fees for them. I had vetoed both. They had sneered politely and consigned my depression to the back of their files while assuring me of their respect of my right to choose
After that it was only a short step to handing in my resignation.
However, all Mokoka was supposed to know was that I was a substitute teacher. Even my CV was to remain closed to him. As far as he was concerned I was just one of the rootless nomads of the teaching world, either one of the tramps, who shirk long-term commitment, or one of the pirates, who arrive, astound and then abdicate, thus earning the just wrath and unworthy envy of the more responsible members of the profession who have to remain behind and try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
So I smiled at him and asked him about the thing that really concerned me at this time.
“Sir, where am I going to rest my bones tonight?” I nodded at the sinking sun.
The school had long been dismissed and a brooding silence had fallen over the empty yard and classrooms.
“Ah, the matter of your accommodation. I think you will use the teacher’s cottage. Miss Marumo used it and Mr Tiro was insistent that you also use it. Something to do with saving money. Yours . . . or maybe the department’s . . . I am not too clear. It has been cleaned of course.” He added the last hurriedly. “But if you want alternative lodgings I can –”
“No, don’t bother,” I said, interrupting him. “The cottage will be fine.”
“Nothing of hers is still there. The police took it all. For their investigation. I have not heard from them since. But if you find anything. Anything. Please bring it to me. The police . . . I am sure you understand.”
“Do the other teachers live in the village?” I asked.
“No! No! No!” he cried, flapping his hand as if swatting at an obscenity uttered by a child. “They live in another village eight or nine miles from here. I pick them up in the morning and drop them off in the afternoon.” He coughed, looked away and flapped his hand again. “I myself live in Bullsdrift,” he continued with restrained pride.
A vague recollection of a dot on the map came hazily back to me and I tried to look impressed. At least the world knew that the town existed. Mokoka, like the rest of us, was not immune to some vanity. He had graduated from the dusty villages to a town, probably to the formerly whites-only part of it too. It was his due and he had earned it. Of what good was a long career, dedicated service, liberation and so on if Mokoka could not enjoy some of the rewards? If that is what he really equated freedom with.
“So I am alone in the cottage?” I asked.
“If you want alternative acco–” he tried once more, but I got in before he could finish.
“In fact, I don’t mind at all. I will enjoy the peace and quiet.”
“Peace and quiet,” he whispered to himself. “Yes . . . peace in our time.” He turned to me and shared his great revelation. “We always forget that.”
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
An old, silent woman had given us the keys to the cottage at its door. The cottage itself was a half-mile from the school. It was roughly halfway between the school and the village, but it was not visible from either because it had, for some obscure reason, been built in a small, unexpected hollow. It was therefore not part of the village which stood on higher ground above it.
Mamorena had literally buried herself in this place, I thought, as the Principal began to reassure me, at great length, that the cottage was safe from flooding as the rain water, if and when there was any rain, ran into the underground streams in the area. I didn’t really believe him, but I knew I would be long gone before the summer rains came and transformed the cottage into an ark 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