I felt very sorry for the old man as he walked out of our house with the submissiveness of a man who had just lost a fight. I watched him turning his head to look at both ends of the street as soon as he was at the end of the yard. It was as if he were debating with himself which way to go.
SIX
Wednesday, December 1
The following day I found myself sitting behind our family house next to Uncle Nyawana’s fruit-and-vegetable stall. In his left hand, my uncle was holding what he called his dream notebook, which he used to play fah-fee. Verwoerd was curled at my uncle’s feet with one eye open, watching me. I was sitting on an empty beer crate that was turned upside down. A pair of shears were on the ground in front of me as I’d been busy trimming the lawn since eight that morning. I was just about to wipe away the sweat that was streaming down my face when my cellphone started to ring and the name Mama appeared on the small screen.
“Hi, Mama.”
“Hello, baby, how are you this morning?”
“I’m fine, Mama.”
“Listen, I’m calling to ask you for a favour. I can see that your uncle is not concerned about it, but I am. I want you to go to the local Housing Department.” She paused.
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly, but I think it’s somewhere in Joburg city centre. I’m sure you’ll find it. I want you to go there and make certain that we are the rightful owners of the house.”
“Okay, Mama. When do you want me to go there?”
“As soon as possible, today or tomorrow at the latest.”
“Okay, I’ll go tomorrow morning,” I said. “It’s already late today and the queue there must be very long by now.”
“Please do that. I’ll see you in the morning . . . Oh, by the way, I saw a job advert in today’s Star. There is a company that is looking for a legal adviser. That’s why we have to get your results as soon as possible. The house must be sold or else you’ll lose out on opportunities like this one. Your profession is in high demand, Bafana. I’ll come with the newspaper in the morning.”
“But, Mama, I think they’re looking for people with some experience”
“Oh, they only need two years’ experience and that’s nothing, you meet all the other requirements. Just tell them that you’re fresh from one of the country’s biggest law schools.”
“Okay, Mama. If you come with the advert I’ll try to apply,” I said hesitantly, afraid to disappoint her.
“All right, baby, but you really must apply for this job. Let me read the benefits to you,” she said excitedly. “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