They leave me in the cold with my brain frying. One tenant tries talking to me. He is wearing pyjamas. He looks like a dead man. He wants to invite me to the land of the dead. I ignore his utterances and walk to the far end of the corridor. Nhlakanipho comes back with more resolve. He harbours an unclean spirit. I have to pray for him and rid him of the demon.
“Come here,” I beckon to Nhlakanipho. He stops. “Come here,” I say to him again. I walk towards him, but Nhlakanipho turns around and sprints down the stairs. I run after him, but I cannot catch up with him.
Time stands still. Blood rushes to my head. Kwanele said this happened to him when he was hospitalised. There’s no point in me worrying about it now.
Tongai points at Caroline. “Look, Caroline is here,” he says. She looks devilish in a scarlet skirt. I have nothing to say to her.
“When is your birthday?” I ask Tongai.
He takes a sharp breath. “On the first of October,” he says. Tongai once forgot his PIN number, which was his date of birth. He told me his biggest fear was getting Alzheimer’s. A relative of his suffered from the disease.
“Where do you go to church?” I ask him.
“At Church on Main. You can come with me whenever you want,” Tongai says, with his right hand stretched out.
“And the night terrors, how did you know about them?” I continue interrogating him.
“I told you, a lady I stayed with also suffered from them.”
Sydney, with his dark locks and penetrating eyes, walks up.
“You are my brother” is what comes from my mouth. “I love all of you guys, musicians, all of you . . . Thandeka, Kgotso.”
Sydney carries on the same struggle as Rasun; he is also mixed race. He could turn into Rasun. Perhaps he has come to deliver the secret number. I plunge towards Sydney and shove him back.
* * *
“If there’s one thing you should have realised from this whole experience, it is just how much people care for you,” Tongai says to me in the parking lot at Groote Schuur, his right arm around my shoulders. Nhlakanipho is smoking a cigarette. He passes it to Tongai when there’s only a quarter remaining. I hate this about Nhlakanipho – the way he hogs a smoke.
“You were there for me when I needed your help . . .” Tongai continues. “Remember when I was locked in Tagore’s. You came and helped me out.”
This revelation pleases me. I look at them, Tongai and Nhlakanipho. These are my brothers.
“You know, I keep telling you I want to make films,” Tongai says. “The first scene would open here,” he says, pointing at the traffic passing on Main Road below the parking lot.
* * *
We took a cab to Groote Schuur. I could not go on fighting. I had to meet with my destiny. Somewhere far off I feel a pot brewing for my demise. It is either me or someone in my family who has to die. I am holding on to life, my heart scalded from the bewildering air. As we approach the main entrance to the hospital, I make it a point to walk behind Tongai and Nhlakanipho. I shake the security guard’s hand and introduce myself. He is wearing khaki pants and a maroon jersey. “I am Selvyn Rooi,” he says. He has no front teeth. This name means “red cell”. Perhaps he is welcoming me to hell. Like a child, I follow my friends.
“Who do you think you are?” an old woman barks. She paces the floor, as wild as an animal, her hair short and grey. Is this my grandmother? Maybe it’s her. Life has devoured her into this.
A nurse pricks my finger to draw some blood. Hospital staff hover around me. This is a thorough diagnosis. All these things are done to judge me. The diabetes test is to see whether I am too sweet. Too much of anything is not good. Blood pressure measures my warmth. Was I kind-hearted enough to people? All these things are to judge me.
Thoughts flow from my head, informing me of what’s going on. The water will turn to blood. The water is in the drips. I am drying up. I ask for a glass of water. Drinking does not quench my thirst.
My friends are my witnesses; they attest to my character. And the doctor scribbles in his folder. Tonight Jesus has glasses, blue eyes and blond hair.
“What happened?” the doctor asks me.
“I looked into the mirror and danced . . .” I reply.
Nhlakanipho and Tongai look down.
“I realised that the world is selling us idolatry. I got tired of all these images: the TV, newspapers, magazines, internet blogs. I got tired of everything. The last time I felt like this was in high school after I smoked weed with a friend.”
“Do you smoke dagga?”
“I had my first joint when I was doing grade nine. I smoked with a friend of mine, Ringo. He is dead now. He was stabbed with a screwdriver. I mostly smoked on weekends. I never abused it – not one to smoke every day. People just assumed I smoked more than I did. I only started taking drugs this year.”
“Which drugs were you taking?”
“I snorted cocaine for the first time when I started hanging with Mfundo. It also became cool: the self-destruction. I wanted people to know I was on coke. One evening, on the day I had been paid, I spent almost two thousand rand on alcohol and cocaine. Later that night I scored myself a prostitute. I bumped into that prostitute not long ago. I told her that I felt very bad for having had sex with her. She looked sorry. I became too full of myself. I could even make prostitutes feel bad. Tongai came in the room when I was with the lady. He knew that I had company. He told me that he took a good look at her. What sort of a person does things like that? Since that night, I haven’t taken drugs, haven’t had alcohol or smoked. I broke a window in my room the week following my encounter with the prostitute. I think it was caused by stress. I felt trapped. The last time I smoked weed was when you, Nhlakanipho, came running into my flat with Mpumelelo. You were running from Mfundo. Since that day I felt nervous in the flat. I feared I’d walk in to find a gunman.”
“How much does cocaine cost?” the doctor asks.
“It goes for four hundred rand,” I reply.
“Four hundred rand a line?” he asks, looking shocked.
“No, they sell it in grams. It is four hundred rand a gram,” I correct him.
“How much did you get paid?”
“About nine thousand rand a month. When I was young, I cursed God. I remember I was sitting on the lawn of our house in Alice. I cursed in isiXhosa.”
Nhlakanipho rolls his eyes upon hearing this.
“My grandmother once came and cut all my hair with a pair of scissors. I used to have bad dreams when I was young: running in town seeing people dressed in black with necklaces of horns. Before sleeping, my grandmother used to rub me with pig fat to ward off evil spirits. I once dreamt of white women with black hair masturbating; they also had small penises.”
My speech is rapid. I am not thinking. My words cut Tongai’s and Nhlakanipho’s eyes.
“My father I saw only once dressed in his Zulu outfit. I did not really see him. I only saw a photo. It was in his parents’ home in Soweto. One morning he kept on beating me for spilling food while I was eating. His mother shouted at him to stop. I did not want to cry, but tears streamed down my cheeks. Tongai is the only person I’ve told that the last time I saw my father, he wanted us to take a blood test. I was fourteen years old then. I refused to go for the test. He once took me to a graveyard in Zola and spoke to the ancestors. When I hear that song by Zola, ‘Bhambata’, I go crazy. ‘Tsotsi usus’eka Bhambata namhlanje, sofa sibalandele baningi la siyakhona,’” I sing.
Tongai looks fearful as he exhales through his mouth.
“What does that mean?” the doctor asks.