that the beauty woke up.
She just looked at him playing and maybe the world stopped and listened. We all stopped and listened. It was the first time that he had played a keyboard and from that day on his need to play grew in him, grew in him so that eventually she saw fit to give him the expensive keyboard.
Michelle put a stop to his drinking during this time; if it hadn’t been for that good Jewish girl, he wouldn’t have written his final examinations.
Michelle loved D’nice. She loved the darkie brother. It went on and on, despite the fact that they both knew that the relationship was a cul-de-sac from the beginning – she was from a very powerful family and the music was just a way of killing time between now and when she found Mr Right, got married and had children.
Michelle was a celebrity in her own right. For those of you that have satellite television, she used to have a show on the Jewish channel as a teenager. Beautiful, thin, thin and tall as the world’s models.
Not many people knew that D’nice was having it with her. They probably would have suspected something, but they were always told that D’nice was her music producer.
She is featured on the shelved kwaito CD by Cäres and, believe me, she was burning the pipe. She did justice to that song, which, at the time, I didn’t believe she could.
I liked Michelle, liked her fearless character, liked the fact that she could just come to Hillbrow at night, park her car in Van der Merwe and walk herself to 207.
Well, we enjoyed her company and it was the first time I ever saw the underwear of a white girl.
D’nice was picked up by this big company before he even graduated. They gave him a very good job. He worked there for two months then handed in his resignation. When they asked why, he just said he wanted to quit, so they increased his pay by hundred per cent and put in a car. He worked for another month then resigned with immediate effect and told them no negotiations. They negotiated anyway, but his mind was made up.
There was music in his head and he wanted to get the music out.
4. Molamo
Molamo
The writer, the director, the actor, the poet, the comedian, the producer, was once a tipper truck driver for a construction company. That was, as he said, a great job. Just driving up and down. He drove that ten-cubic-metre truck like Gugu coming out of that corner, whatever they call it, at Khayalami racetrack with Sarel full in his mirrors (and that’s the right way to spell Khayalami). He pushed the truck so hard that the manager didn’t know whether to let him go or keep him.
The only problem was that after he’d had his last meal of the day, after poking his pokiness, he’d start to feel uneasy and then he’d have to fight to sleep. He thought that maybe the other drivers were jealous of him and that maybe they wanted to kill him.
You know that thinking? It’s another sad black story on its own. So he went to the floor-shift people to check out what was wrong with him.
You see, we are very funny people. A black man can kill you for living your life, for trying to improve and better your life, and still come to your funeral acting very hurt. Believe it happens. Believe me, I know.
Once I had a dear friend. He was very intelligent, matriculated with six As, and won a scholarship. But, when he woke up a few days after the celebrations and joy, he was not the same friend. His mind just wasn’t his. His mind had deserted him. The floor-shift saw this and told me what their bones said. The prophets gave it their shot as well, and told the very same story. But they couldn’t retrieve his mind. His grandmother cried, but her grandchild’s mind was gone and, eventually, he died. Modern medicine could do nothing. Molamo consulted the floor-shift and they told him that he liked the job with his mind, but his heart didn’t want him to drive trucks up and down. So he asked them, “What work does my heart want me to do?”
But the floor-shift didn’t have an answer for that question.
“You can continue driving trucks, but that will result in something very bad happening to you,” they told him, so he came back to dream city to have it out with the city. To dream it out.
He was a man who talked and talked. If you gave him a beer he’d talk forever. He’d tell you the story about his uncle who came to the dream city back in the days and got himself a city girlfriend.
When his uncle was making love to the girlfriend she started moving and shaking. He stopped and looked at her. She stopped, and so he continued, but the girlfriend shook on. Then he stopped and said, “I’m doing. You are doing. You’re disturbing me. Stop that.”
He continued pleasuring her, but she started doing it again. Then he got angry and stopped.
“What are you doing? I’m doing here. You want to do?”
He took a Seven Star out of his pocket and showed it to her. Then he continued, promising her, “If you do that again, I’ll stab your butt.”
Molamo had so many of them, those stories, and he told them so well that even if he was retelling one of them, one that you had heard twenty times before, you’d die laughing. There was one that I used to love and I could have listened to it a thousand times over. I would always push him to tell that story.
He had relatives in the township and like all township houses there was a back room, a boys’ room. As the name suggests, it’s where the boys live and are allowed to do whatever boys do. When you visited them, these boys would tell you that, as a boy, if you wanted to stay with them in their boys’ room, you’d have to poke one of the female species within seven days. If you didn’t get lucky, you’d be back sleeping in the main house, and if you didn’t believe that you could poke a female in seven days, you might just as well start sleeping in the main house right away. That was the right of citizenship to the boys’ room.
Then, one day, one of their uncles from the rural areas visited. They didn’t know how to tell him about the boys’ room citizenship right. When they were about to sleep with heavy hearts, unable to do anything about the fact that he was going to sleep in the boys’ room without the right to be there, he says, “I hear that there is a rule here that in seven days I must have slept with a woman in here or I have to sleep in the main house, is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Ah! Well, now you know.”
So on the eighth day, after supper, when the uncle was still having a late family chat, the boys disappeared with the key to the boys’ room and the spare keys disappeared as well. True to the rule he had to sleep in the main house.
Talking about women; they gave Molamo a reason to live, or they once did. He had four children with four different mothers. The pictures that you saw on the wall of 207: they’re his mirror images. They made him so sad sometimes that he’d suddenly take them off the wall. This always happened when he was lost to the war against the Isando god’s disciples.
“I’m here living with the five of you in this one-room flat and what do I think they have eaten? What are they wearing? Do you think they are happy?”
What was I to say? He looked at me as if he expected me to come up with a comforting something, but no, I just gave him back the very same injured look that he had on. Then tears followed and I thanked myself for not having any children.
“It’s not that I don’t love my children. I love them as much as I love their mothers, but you know . . .”
He paused, looking at me, trying to fight the tears.
“You’ll never understand.”
Then, as soon as he was sober, they’d be back on the wall.
“I have them in my heart. I’m living for them and for them only.”
He was lying to himself, not me, drowning even deeper in the problems of being a grown-up.
Tebogo