The History of Man. Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

on her 1940 HMV New Yorker Smart wireless and make what she believed to be a highly informed decision. A retired engineer knew that by providing for all his needs through Morrison’s Mail Order Catalogue, he could best stretch his pension funds because a carefully placed advert in the Railway Review had told him so. A young man, wanting to impress his sweetheart and his boss alike, went to buy his first Rolex watch at T Forbes & Son, Ltd, on Abercorn Street because, according to the intertitle he had read at the bioscope the night before, the watches sold there were for men who meant business. The newly engaged young lady who wanted the best honeymoon that money could buy knew to subtly suggest the New Woodholme Hotel in East London to her fiancé because it was said by The Chronicle to be modern, situated on a golden beach and overlooking the sparkling Indian Ocean. The frugal housewife, the retired engineer, the impressive young man and the aspirational fiancée acted individually without knowing that they had all been spurred to action by one man, Scott Fitzgerald, such was the amorphous nature of his power.

      Ever since he had arrived in the City of Kings, Scott Fitzgerald had encouraged Emil to call him Uncle Scott. When Emil visited him, Uncle Scott would, as soon as Emil arrived, gratefully stand up, move away from the typewriter and the bottle of whisky (a sad cliché if ever there was one, he often lamented), grab his overcoat, regardless of what the weather was like outside and say, over his shoulder, ‘Ah … the prodigal returns. Let us go forth and be men,’ before leading Emil out of the house and back onto the tree-lined avenues of the suburbs.

      ‘Being men’ according to Uncle Scott consisted of going to Scobie’s on Selborne Avenue where he ordered a whisky on the rocks for himself and an ice-cold lime cordial for Emil. Uncle Scott’s frequent patronage of Scobie’s, and the six words – The place with a pioneering spirit – that he had written that made Scobie’s the favourite haunt of a particular type of man, brought with it such privileges as bringing his underage ‘nephew’ into the bar with him.

      Emil scrutinised the men sitting at Scobie’s. They were a constant at any hour of the productive day and he strongly suspected that they were what Master Duthie called ‘the rejects of empire’ – men who, with all the superiority of their European race, had not been able to amount to much because their dashed prospects had rendered them men too disappointed to do anything other than feel sorry for themselves. Master Duthie would constantly caution, ‘I never want to hear that any of you sitting here before me today grew up to be the rejects of empire. The imperial project is the greatest event in the world’s history. It takes men, real men, to carry it out. And we here at the Selous School for Boys are in the business of making men, real men.’

      After a few years at the Selous School for Boys, the last thing in the world Emil wanted was to be a reject of empire. He wanted to be a man, a real man, a man like Frederick Courteney Selous.

      In spite of the fact that he spent a lot of time at Scobie’s, Uncle Scott was, most certainly, not a reject of empire. He spent his days writing words that would transact in the necessary exchange of goods and services for money. As Master Duthie often pointed out, commerce was the hallmark of a civilisation and capitalism the hallmark of a superior civilisation. Uncle Scott was the oil that made the entire imperial machine run smoothly. He wrote words that made people want to buy things. In a fledgling capitalist country, there was a lot to be admired in that.

      Uncle Scott’s own thoughts, on the other hand, were often far from imperialism, capitalism or civilisation. ‘How is your mother?’ he would ask after his first sip of whisky. ‘Still as lovely as ever, I’d wager. Still sweetness and light. I have almost captured her in the novel … tell her that. This time … this time she will love the portrayal. I can almost guarantee it.’ Uncle Scott would take another sip of whisky and then say the words Emil had been waiting for all along, ‘Remember the outpost? Remember the wonderful time we had there?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Remember how she danced the Charleston and the foxtrot? She made us fall in love with her, didn’t she?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So, it is really not our fault that we are in this sorry state now, is it?’

      ‘No.’

      Even at a young age, Emil understood that Uncle Scott’s frustration lay in being able to persuade everyone but the woman he loved with his words.