Don Makatile

PROLOGUE He‟d hardly slept a wink. His demons kept him awake. He tossed and turned as his wife snored softly beside him and their youngest child slept peacefully in her cot at the foot of their bed. In the distance the early morning trains had started running. The world was making plans to wake up as he struggled to sleep. His head felt swollen from the fears, the worries and the thoughts that vied for attention inside it. The back of his neck was sore, itchy or just a combination of uneasiness. They were signposts to his nemesis - stress. This could lead to a stroke, the family doctor had warned over and over again. “Avoid these at all costs,” the soft-spoken GP genius had said, looking each time like he‟d never himself had a personal brush with insomnia other than what he learned at medical school. The man was a picture of good health, everything the sleepless sod tossing and turning in bed now looked like he‟d never be. At some point he cried out like someone waking up from a bad dream. Only he wasn‟t dreaming because sleep continued to elude him. He was wide awake: “God help me.” But even the Almighty, it seemed, was catching up on His own forty winks at the time. Except for the staccato breathing of the two souls in the bedroom with him, and the rail commotion on the other side, everything was all quiet. Any given cemetery would have been nosier at the time. Even his two dogs, after a night on the prowl in the yard, were getting ready to knock off and catch up on some snooze after concluding their nocturnal obligations. He went into the kitchen for a jug of water. He‟d already done so three times previously, stopping on each trip to check the time on the grandfather clock in the lounge – 9, 12, 2, 4 … It told the correct time with chilling regularity, as if it was its chronological duty to remind him of the woes of his sleeplessness. That very morning that was threatening to dawn was his last. He had to pay off a lot of debts that ran into several thousand Rand. This was more money than the salary that was surely, at this time of the night, day, already in his bank account, could accommodate. The salary treated his bank account like a half-way stop: it came and went at amazing speed. The thought struck him that the total of his debt woes was inching closer to a million. The ill-tempered plumber was coming that morning. He owed one or two loan sharks. Those who were not coming to him expected him to report to them with their cash, which he was certain he‟d not scrape together once all the capitalists with preferential access to his bank account were done raiding it. Twenty-three individual payments he had to make in a few hours! At the most, he only had good money for six. After the bond and the repayments on the cars; school fees; the accoutrements overflowing from the wardrobes – mostly his wife‟s – and other vanity items around the house bought on hire purchase; all that was left was not even enough to buy a week‟s food ration for a moderately undemanding boarding student . But everybody was expecting their money from him. He looked around the bedroom, his eyes adjusting to the minimal light available inside. Just a few years ago when they moved in to the house as newlyweds, this was one part of the house that was a sanctuary for husband and wife. They played their games here; pillow games. This is where they made their vows to always be together, come hell or high water. But these days, as 1 his troubles mounted and they grew apart, he came here to brood and stare wide-eyed into the night as she lay asleep, untouched by his ghosts. Very little had changed in the room, just the couch had made way for Ntando‟s cot. The glossy white radiating off the doors of the built-in wardrobes seemed to throw colour at the fancy bedding, which was, as a rule, always of a lighter shade. “No drab colours in the bedroom,” the wife‟s mantra ran. In the ricochet of brightness, the room almost looked like a night under the stars. But presently, the karma promised by the bright paintwork and linen did nothing for his moods. He stood up; he sat. A few times he decided he felt better standing as the weight of lying in bed seemed overwhelming. Even as he stood up to pace around the room, his wife and daughter slept peacefully through his raging storm. Just two of the people he knew he loved. They did not deserve this dark cloud hanging over him. That‟s when he decided he had to end it. After years of fighting the same losing battle, it was time he had to let go. If he spent just one more night like this, he was sure it would be in a bed in a psychiatric ward. That‟s one route he was going to avoid. From the little light that was beginning to creep in he could make out a lot of what were his sleeping quarters. And he knew this was the last thing he‟d remember of it, if the dead too had memories. His wife stirred, only just. She revealed the back of a spotless right leg that in less gloomier days he used to tease with his lips like someone working through a slice of watermelon on a hot summer‟s day. He quickly looked away to rest his eyes on the humungous Mont Clare, then panning his vision to the matching pedestals and dressing table. The only difference between this bedroom suite and the Odyssey that came before it was a whole twenty-two Grand. They had bought it, like most things, because his wife insisted “my house will not look like my grandmother‟s”. The only plus to be said for it was that Sleeping Beauty looked more serene, a femme fatale best left to her slumber. In its felicity, her face was almost mocking his depression. He thought against kissing everybody goodbye as this would mean going into the bedrooms of his two other children, both boys, and thereby risk stirring the fickle light sleepers. No. The first to jump into the car even when they could walk, this was one trip they will have to miss. It was his alone. I will die alone, a voice he was sure wasn‟t his repeated somewhere inside the recesses of his head. It was only when his wife re-arranged the pillow underneath her head that it occurred to him he‟d said the words out loud. I will die alone, he repeated, now only as if to reassure himself there was no one else living in his head. A teardrop fell into the exposed flesh in the neck of his pyjama top. He did not recognise the face that fleetingly caught his attention as his frame inched past the mirror. Mechanically, he swung back into position so he was staring at himself again. It was a cadaverous face he imagined straight out of a horror movie. “Who are you?” he demanded of the phantom staring back at him, in the acid tone one reserved for intruders. I must die; I will die. He was in a trance. If death came right that minute, he‟d not have felt a thing. 2 This is how he wanted to go. A lone man, troubled by his recurring thoughts; minus the indignity of pain. 3 CHAPTER ONE Menziwa graduated cum laude with a bachelor‟s degree in architectural design. He was also top of his class in the diploma he did in Durban, where in his third year he tutored design theory and architectural history to first year students. When he began the university course, a few students who had attempted entry without the technical know-how gained from the diploma told him they were initially rejected for the degree. They were now returning, better armed. The rumour bandied about – for that was what it was for Menziwa, was that the technical background „you get from the diploma stands you in good stead when you do the degree.‟ Robert Humes, who was among those returning with the diploma, perpetuated the lie: “A lot of people don‟t get accepted into the degree because it is felt for some reason by people who interview them that they are not ready for the degree. So what they have done is gone and did the diploma first, like me.” Speak for your dumb ass, Menziwa, had resisted the urge to say. He knew he did not fall into this category, and those who had the temerity to ask why he took the circuitous route were told the truth: I tried the degree because the diploma did not lift my sails. I wanted more. The skeptics who offered the course soon learnt Menziwa did both for the very reason a brainy young student with time on his hands would usually advance; the diploma was too easy to do so he thought the degree version would prove more challenging. But alas, it was not to be – he found both easy sailing with marks, year on year, to prove he had the technical nous for his chosen career. He did well.

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