the way Matome always wanted them, smiling, happy. He could keep everybody smiling; after all, he was always smiling, even in the darkest of times.
Even when he lost his mother, he smiled as always, like nothing really happened, throughout the whole week. On Thursday, we were laughing as always, having one of those connections when I wished he was my blood brother, and it was then that he asked me to go with him to his home in Bolobedu. I agreed; we were writing an exam the following morning at nine o’clock and after that, we would leave the city.
He said nothing until we got to Bolobedu, where, to my surprise, I found out that we were there to bury his mother. I felt sorry and angry. I never knew he had just lost his mother. I felt sorry for him, which was, of course, the reason why he hadn’t told me. He knew that if he had told me I would act sad, and he hated it when people did that.
That day Matome wasn’t sad, it was like he was happy that she had died. I asked him if he loved his mother and he said, smiling, “The day you die is better than the day you were born.” Without any remorse but with conviction.
But there are things in our world that will touch your heart no matter how you try to avoid them. There are things that can shake an unshakeable heart, squeeze it so hard that the pretence of happiness fails and crumbles.
A few days later, I got back to the flat and discovered that Justice was having a bath – the whole flat smelled of him. Justice was the homeless man who lived around the corner.
I laughed at first, not laughing because there was anything funny, but in admiration of Matome, the Jesus-ness in him. Then he started apologising and, as my girlfriend was with me, I did not know what to say.
We always passed Justice in his corner. Sometimes I would talk to him or Matome would have something for him, but most of the time we just passed him by.
“I could not pass him today,” Matome said, innocently.
He gave him some of his clothes and food, then he shared his bed with him. My friend and I didn’t sleep a wink; you know how the female species are.
He stayed with us for four days and nights, then he disappeared out of our lives just like that and we never saw him again. We left him in our home and, when we returned, he wasn’t there and the door wasn’t locked. The clothes that we had given him were washed, hanging on the makeshift washing line in the bathroom, but he was gone.
On the bed we found a piece of paper with a cartooned face of Justice, smiling and happy, and underneath a caption that read: I have met two people in my life and they made it meaningful.
Justice was from up north. He came to dream city to make his dreams come true. You don’t have to ask what happened, just draw a conclusion for yourself; but there are people like Matome, who don’t want to talk a bit about themselves but love to listen to others.
Justice’s father had been a successful businessman, but he had lost his dear mother and father in a car accident the very same day he turned twenty-one. They had been driving back after celebrating the important day with their son.
With that he inherited everything.
When he was eighteen he had come to dream city to further his education, but Justice failed the first year and the second one and then the third. He had a car when he came here and a flat, with a washerwoman who came every day. He had a billion friends and saw the underwear of almost all the girls who were going to Wits.
“If you ever meet anyone that was a student at Wits in those years, ask them: ‘Do you know Ice?’ ” Justice said, smiling, thinking of those days that are gone and never coming back. They called him Ice in those wonderland days of his.
It took him three years, some expensive sports cars, which were written off, some expensive fashion, some travelling around this God’s green earth, a hundred thousand rands’ worth of drugs and alcohol, an innumerable number of orgasms, and then, finally, it was all gone, together with his mind.
“How much money?”
“Enough.”
“How much is enough?”
“Four point two.”
He was talking to Matome. There was a pause as Matome calculated the what ifs, giving away a smile with the thought of every what if . . .
“You were young?”
Then silence, as the truth fell on us that maybe we wouldn’t be alive if we were in his shoes. Then Matome said, “But didn’t you think of anything that would keep you off the streets?”
Justice kept silent for a moment and looked at Matome, as if he wanted to see his soul first. Then he smiled, like he had seen Matome’s soul, and, now he had seen it, it would understand.
“Ntepa.” He said it hard, and paused as if he disapproved. “Ntepa.” He said it again, this time a little softer, as if there was nothing better. “Ntepa,” he concluded in a lower tone, a deep voice that sounded like he had given in, had surrendered to it and it had taken him prisoner.
“Ntepa is a worthless, useless, shitty thing.” He said it again like the first time: hard, with anger. “No, I’m lying. It is a very powerful thing that needs to be respected, and if you disrespect it . . .”
He looked at himself from the chest down to Matome’s old shoes and then up into Matome’s eyes.
Flip the page.
On the other side he had drawn Matome, me and an exact replica of my girlfriend – with all her beauty enhanced and emboldened. She was the only one that he had drawn from head to toe. Matome and I were only half-bodies. My hand was stroking my girlfriend, but despite that I didn’t look happy. Matome was drawn with his permanent smile. Underneath, the caption read: Life is treacherous quicksand with no guarantees . . .
That was definitely from one of Head’s books, but I couldn’t remember which one.
I understood the other side, the picture and the message, but I couldn’t connect the picture and the message on this side.
That morning was the last time Matome and I saw Justice. A homeless man was the only thing in this life that I ever saw shake Matome’s heart. And the cruel part of it was that there was nothing he could do about it. Justice was gone.
3. D’nice
D’nice
Honestly, we are a drinking nation. We don’t go, during the holidays, on tours of this lovely country of ours, from the Klein Karoo to Skukuza, via Borakalalo National Park. No.
Why not?
Because we don’t care. That’s for white people. I don’t blame them. Don’t blame us. We drink, grill meat and cook some hard porridge, then quarrel and maybe end up fighting or trying to stop one fight from getting way out of hand.
I was at a New Year celebration; it was just before half-four, New Year. Only a few people, the real party animals and drinkers, were still partying and drinking. Matome and I were still fighting the war, which so far had been without incident, and then these two guys who were sitting not far from us, sharing a beer, started to quarrel about something. We didn’t take any notice of them and they quarrelled on, still sharing the beer.
The first guy said, “You take me as the things you shit in the toilet.”
The second guy, ignoring him, said, “Let me smoke.”
And the first guy took a cigarette out of his pocket and gave it to him, repeating to him, as he gave him the cigarette, “You take me for your shit in the toilet.”
He even gave him the lighter.
Then the second guy, after lighting the cigarette, replied, “If you feel like you are someone else’s shit in the toilet, then you are shit.”
“Joe! Joe! Joe! I’m going to break you, going to break you now.”
“Hey! Drink beer. This is the first day of