in what they had done – talking about it triumphantly and laughing victoriously. They mocked Khutso about the act and in the end it was this that guaranteed the end of their friendship. One day Khutso just stopped hanging around with them, and this time he didn’t miss them.
* * *
Khutso had always thought of himself as the friendliest of people, but without Maoto and Ngwan’Zo he soon discovered that he was just not a sociable person. He found it hard to make new friends, and in the end he became friends with the classroom and its work. It was then that he discovered that books were much friendlier than people.
That year Khutso passed Standard Eight, which he was doing for the second time, relatively easily, and his mother wondered at the change in him, because he would spend weekend after weekend at home without once going out of the gate.
The following year he went on to pass Standard Nine at his first attempt, and in his Standard Ten year his mother prayed every night as Khutso sat at the kitchen table consuming book after book.
* * *
Khutso could not wait to write his final examinations – he was confident – but afterwards, although he knew that he had done very well, his anxiety reached a new level as he waited for the schools to reopen in the new year so that he could get his results. And, yes, he had done very well. He had the best results in the school. In fact, he had topped the whole circuit, and his teachers wanted him to go to a training college, because with a B in mathematics in the higher grade he could teach the subject in any school – even his own mathematics teacher only had a D in the higher grade.
Khutso’s anxiety turned into fear, his thought processes overheating. He wasn’t sure of anything. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his future. His teachers were only talking. There was nothing concrete in what they were saying, and Khutso knew that passing matric so well was the equivalent of exposing one’s family as poor – he knew that his mother would never be able to pay for him to attend college. So, with that thought in his head, he slowly dragged his feet home.
At home, his mother was so excited that she couldn’t contain herself. She hugged and kissed him like she used to when he was still a toddler, long ago. She kissed him till it became an embarrassment to him. “I never had one of these,” she said, holding up his statement of results. “Your father never had one either, and your brothers and sisters . . . none of them ever had a matric certificate.”
Then his mother danced a ritual dance, thanking all of her ancestors because she had never believed that she would ever hold a matric certificate in her hands.
* * *
Late that night, after the celebrations had died down and all her grandchildren were sleeping, his mother called Khutso to the kitchen table. He had been rolling about in his bed, fighting hard not to cry, his thoughts running into cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac, but when he got to the table his thoughts froze. There was money on it. More money than he ever thought his mother could save.
His mother looked at him, wiping away happy tears. “I am crying,” she said, trying to compose herself. “I am crying because I am happy. I never thought we would see this day. I thought that you were going to turn out just like your brothers. I am very happy today that you have passed your Standard Ten so well. I am so happy that I am crying.”
She took her time composing herself and her thoughts. “Here is all the money that I was saving for you,” she finally said. “What are you going to do with it?”
“They say that I should go to teacher-training college.”
“What are you saying?”
“I want to go to college.”
“Do they produce doctors at college?”
“No, they only produce teachers.”
“And where do they produce doctors?”
“University.”
She paused and looked at him. “Khutso, I want you to be a doctor,’ she said. “Go to the University of the North and come back a doctor, my child. Forget about being a teacher. You have finished with school. Go to the university. I am asking you to go to university and be a doctor.”
Chapter 5
Khutso was admitted to the University of the North, but the university didn’t produce medical doctors, so Khutso enrolled to study law. His mother didn’t mind, he was a student at the University of the North and that was all that mattered to her.
The library was the first thing that he wanted to see when he arrived at the university. He had read about libraries – places full of books – and they fascinated him because he had never been inside one. Back at home, before his journey, he had decided that he would read each and every book in the university library.
Following the directions to the library, he soon found himself outside it. He stopped, his excitement growing as he looked at it, wondering how many books – books that he was going to read – were inside.
Inside the library he wanted to scream – his mouth wide open – totally amazed by even the few books that he could see. He covered his mouth with his hand. This wasn’t what he had thought the library would be. He had thought that he would read all the books in the shortest time . . . He had thought that it would be the size of a classroom.
Still smiling, Khutso sank down onto the floor, shaking his head, defeated by his thoughts. “I am in a library,” he said quietly to himself, his eyes filling with tears.
* * *
Later that afternoon Khutso found himself sitting with his roommate, Tshepo, in front of their residential block, carefully observing the student life that they had just joined. There were many beautiful young women at the university, and Khutso looked at them, knowing that Tshepo was doing the same.
“I never had a girlfriend in high school,” Tshepo said, revealing something from his past.
But Khutso didn’t answer him, and so they just sat there, looking at the student life that was passing them by on their first Friday as students of the University of the North.
“I think I should not have a girlfriend here as well,” Tshepo added after some time, but still Khutso did not say anything.
“I think I will just try to be a student one hundred per cent, just like I was a pupil one hundred per cent. I always wanted a girlfriend. I thought about it constantly. But, truthfully, having a girlfriend would mess up my work. She would be a hindrance to my academic advancement.”
“Women, my dear roommate,” Khutso said cryptically.
“Did you have girlfriends in high school?” Tshepo asked.
“I had my fair share,” Khutso lied. “They are nothing, dear roommate, but I see what you’re saying. They can be a problem, and I think I will also take an academic break from the game of breaking hearts, because my dreams are on the line here.”
But before the end of their second week at university Khutso had seen a young woman who stirred something deep inside him. When he looked at her, his heartbeat changed, and the very fact that she made his heart beat faster scared him, which in turn made his heart beat even faster.
The first time he had seen her had been in the lecture hall.
“Sorry, I am late,” she had said, closing the door quietly behind her.
Immediately, the packed hall had gone dead quiet. “What’s your name, young lady?” the lecturer, who had been struggling to gain control of the students, had asked her.
“Pretty,” she replied.
Chapter 6
Pretty, as the name suggests, was pretty. Girls like her were not for marriage but for show, so people believed. They believed that her kind were made for sharing amongst men, as no one man could ever handle such beauty alone without jealousy rendering