Waiting for the rain, p.9
Waiting for the Rain, page 9
And with a shake of his stick towards John, he leaves.
Tongoona sighs.
‘He is just like his mother,’ Rhoda says, taking an amused look at Old Japi. ‘Sobbing like a baby.’
Old Japi glares at her and says: ‘And would you have that mouth if I hadn’t been born?’
‘Well-done, Mbuya Japi!’ John shouts, clapping his hands.
Everyone laughs but it is an uneasy and short-lived laugh. There is something oppressive in the air, something that doesn’t call for mirth. They can all feel it.
A heavy silence settles.
Chapter Twenty
It’s John who finally breaks the silence with a yawn, saying: ‘Aunt Raina.’
‘Yes, John.’
‘I am happy. I haven’t got anything more to give, but with this—’ he hands the radio to Betty who claps her hands, receives it, passes it on to her mother who accepts it, clapping her hands too—‘I say fare you well to my brother, Lucifer.’
Raina claps her hands once more and addresses Lucifer: ‘Lucifer.’
‘Mother.’
‘Your brother John bids you farewell. And this is to remember him by.’ She passes on the radio to him. ‘Tell your father and your sister and your grandmothers and your aunt.’
Lucifer claps his hands, receives the radio, and says: ‘Father—’
‘Yes—?’
‘This is what Brother John has done for me at this my—my going away. Pass the word for me, please.’
Tongoona passes on the word, clapping his hands, to the two old women and Rhoda. They are all now clapping their hands and Raina and Rhoda stand up and do a little dance, then sit down ululating.
Raina says: ‘That it should always be like this among those of the same blood.’
‘Always like this and Those-Under-The-Earth watching over them,’ Rhoda answers.
Old Mandisa intones: ‘Watching over them, their hearts and their interests. That when the world says this of one in the other’s presence, the other should stand for the one.’
‘What is talking? Isn’t silence thanks enough? The Earth hears,’ Old Japi winds it up and there is a crash of hand- clapping and ululating and everyone wanting to take a closer look at the radio. The air is almost festive.
Finally Tongoona says: ‘Thank you, John.’
‘Thank you, Brother John,’ Betty says.
‘Well—I don’t really know what to say,’ Lucifer says, hesitates, then stammers on: ‘I hope—I—shall be able to do as much for you.’
Old Mandisa shakes her head, saying: ‘That’s not how we say it. The Earth hears you.’
Raina says it for him: ‘What you will do for him is a secret between your heart and the soil.’
A little silence, then John says: ‘You will write me as soon as you get there, won’t you?’ In the half-dark, Lucifer notices John’s wink as if to absolve him should he find no time to write. Feeling guilty, Lucifer stammers: ‘I shall—try to.’
John pats him on the shoulder and says briskly: ‘Well, that’s that. About that other thing Father was talking about—you know—about me and Paul—well, there are all sorts of things going round about my part in it—I shall try and explain some day. I hope you will understand.’ An uneasy pause, then in a business-like tone: ‘Well, this is it. Shan’t see you. Going back tomorrow morning.’
In the dark, with face averted, John’s hand. Lucifer shakes it, then John sighs, yawns, bringing his hands down his face as if to wash the sleep out of it, and says: ‘Well, Mother?’
‘I am ready,’ Rhoda says, then addresses Raina: ‘Mother of Lucifer—that basket… something for the boy. And if I can have the basket… You can send Betty with the plates tomorrow morning.’
‘Thank you, amaiguru.’ Raina claps her hands.
‘That’s nothing,’ Rhoda says. ‘Just a little—’
‘Ai, Rhoda. You multiply your words,’ Old Mandisa says. ‘“He who has remembered you is yours” our mothers used to tell us.’
‘And right they were,’ Old Japi says, looking intently at the basket.
Raina takes out the covered plates and fills the basket with unshelled nuts and gives it to Rhoda.
‘No. Not this way—’ Rhoda protests.
Old Mandisa shakes her head and scolds her: ‘Didn’t I say you make your words too many? Since when have we learned to return empty baskets to people who have given us something?’
Rhoda gives in: ‘Well, thank you.’
‘We thank you,’ Raina says.
John and his mother stand up, say good night and leave.
‘Well—’ Raina says, opening the plates Rhoda has brought with her.
‘Well?’ Old Mandisa queries.
‘What is it?’ Old Japi whispers, leaning across Betty towards Raina.
‘Rice and chicken,’ Raina says.
‘Well—think it’s all right for the boy?’ Old Japi asks.
Tongoona says something in his throat, shaking his head almost invisibly.
Raina says: ‘Of course—it may be a trick. One can never tell and I am not going to take any chances.’
The two old women sigh at the same time, relieved. Betty looks into the fire, unconcerned. She would have said something which would have brought a concerted: ‘And what do you know with the snot not yet dry on your nose?’ So she keeps quiet.
Only Lucifer, sitting in the dark, seems not to know what’s going on, although he has a feeling…
Raina shares the rice with the two old women. Old Mandisa takes only a little, to make sure. She says: ‘Hearing her talk, one would believe she is all right.’
‘She is like the weather,’ Raina says, tearing apart a wing. ‘Some days—like today—she is all shining and love. And then on other days she is just about as bad as a sky about to storm. And of course I can’t take any chances. Her cheerfulness may just be a disguise to trick us. I don’t think either of them are as happy as all that to see the boy leave for overseas. Well, one funeral in the family is enough. I am not going to let them take Lucifer as well.’
A column of bile rises in Lucifer’s chest. He stands up, picks up the radio, says a curt good night and leaves, their surprised eyes following him and his mother’s pained ‘Where do you think you are going?’ making the air round his ears hot.
Betty’s mouth twists into an amused but sympathetic smile and she immediately assumes her mask again as her mother whirls round on her and says crossly: ‘And what’s so funny, you shameless slut? You think rice and chicken is such a wonderful dish that we should let him walk into his death with our eyes open?’
Betty stands up quietly and goes to her room without saying good night.
‘They are only children,’ Old Mandisa says. ‘What do they know?’
Old Japi cracks a drumstick, and with her mouth full, lisps: ‘What ith talk? Ithn’t thienthe talk?’
And a deep silence, broken only by the cracking of bones, settles upon the room.
Outside, the night is still and hot. Lucifer sees the Old Man’s fire burning. Shall I? He takes two steps towards his room. Or shall I? Then he turns and advances towards the fire.
The Old Man sees him approaching and stops what he is doing to ask: ‘Are you going to bed now?’
‘Yes, Sekuru. I came to say good night.’
The Old Man scrapes some shavings out of the drum and lays them in a pile on the ground. Without looking at Lucifer, he asks: ‘Do you always sleep this early?’
‘When I am tired, yes.’
A pause, then: ‘Yes. It’s a long way from Salisbury and this heat doesn’t make it any easier.’ Pause. ‘Went there once with your uncle—that’s Kuruku—when he used to work there—that’s long back now, I think you were still in your mother’s arms.’ Another pause, then: ‘And what does he say?’
‘Who?’
‘Your uncle, of course. I heard him talking as if he had a demon sitting in him. What was he talking about?’
‘Oh, all sorts of things—how to behave and that kind of thing.’
‘Him—telling you how to behave?’ the Old Man laughs.
‘Yes. What’s wrong with him?’
‘Nothing wrong with him—surprised that’s all… Because I think it is him who needs someone to tell him how to behave. Once, yes, he was all right, not now. I sometimes wonder what they did to him. He was all right once, determined, although he had wrong ideas. They were only wrong ideas, otherwise he behaved in the right way and I thought he would forget his ideas with growing up. But after they locked him up for—was it a year?—before they locked up Paul—he came back not only with his wrong ideas, but acting as if his ideas were life itself. “I am carrying the burden of the country” he came back saying, stooped too. Well, all I could see was he was carrying beer and some other burdens, not the country. Maybe Paul’s being locked up, that trouble your aunt—his wife—cooked up about your father, and add on to it the fact of his five children exiling themselves in Zambia—all this I think worried him into the bottle—also the rumour of John’s part in Paul’s arrest. I think this, more than anything else is the heaviest burden he is carrying. And when he cries—which is a thing that started when they released him and he began taking the bottle hard—when he cries I think he is crying for all this, not for the country. Well, I don’t know. I was just wondering what sort of advice he would give in his state. Well, good night, boy.’
‘Good night, Sekuru.’
Lucifer takes a step and the Old Man remembers something:
‘Lucifer?’
‘Sekuru?’
‘The place where you are going—I hear there is trouble over there too—just heard it on that talking machine of yours. And I asked John and he said there is trouble over there too.’
‘There isn’t any trouble there, Sekuru. Of course if you are looking for trouble you will get it anywhere. I am going there to study.’
‘Well, if you are going there to study, that’s all right.’ The Old Man feels that Lucifer is annoyed and doesn’t want to be asked any more questions, so he asks instead: ‘Do they say Garabha is coming?’
‘I haven’t heard.’
‘I have a feeling he is coming. He has been appearing in my mind all day long. I am sure he is coming.’
‘I don’t know,’ Lucifer says and begins to walk away.
‘If he comes, you talk to him,’ the Old Man says after him, ‘he is always talking about you. You don’t know how much he cares for you. He might have one or two words to help you.’
‘I shall talk to him,’ Lucifer says and quickly disappears towards his room.
The Old Man looks after him, shakes his head, spits into the fire and turns to his work. With the work, the thought of Lucifer is pushed far back into his mind where it huddles with other darker thoughts in the cold, denied entry into the Old Man’s waking consciousness.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Talk to him—he cares for you,’ the Old Man has said. That’s love. The word frightens Lucifer. The most-quoted word, and the least-understood. At least, he, Lucifer, doesn’t understand it. Unless it is this constant pain that’s washing over him in waves every once in a while like a toothache, this eternal dissatisfaction with everything, this lack of belief in anything he is doing—like his wanting to go overseas now. He feels it’s just pride, a childish reaction to his bad days in school, something with which to bludgeon people like Maraini with. Maraini, his classmate and worst enemy throughout secondary school. And Lucifer had tried to love him following the dictum in the Holy Bible: Love thy enemies. But somehow this had failed. He would always find himself standing outside of himself, watching himself trying to love Maraini. And this too was pride. He was only trying to be better than Maraini. Maraini to whom everything Lucifer didn’t have seemed to come like rain in summer, without trying. Even his cheerfulness: Maraini angry? Maraini gloomy? Your eyes must be seeing things. Pull that beam out of your eye. And only his heart knows how Lucifer had pulled and pulled till his vision had become so distorted that he had finally come to believe that he really had the beam.
Maraini’s father owned a chain of businesses all over the African townships in Salisbury and so Maraini always had enough money to throw about on whatever he wanted. He was the best-dressed boy in school. Contrary to the general belief about the laziness of children born of rich parents, Maraini excelled himself at everything he put his mind to. He was always top of the class, and for the last two years of school, he was captain of the school football team, president of the Students’ Union, chairman of the Debating Society, secretary of the Music Club, treasurer of the Drama Club, the School Librarian—and there were always girls round him wherever he happened to be.
Not that he was inconsiderate, a boor or self-centred in the manner of the rich—in fact, Maraini was the model of an honest, upright and gentle person—it was only that his personality seemed to show off Lucifer’s in an ill light. And for this, Lucifer intensely hated Maraini and the cult of ‘Marainism’ that seemed to be the call of every student at the school. This hate for Maraini had driven Lucifer into prayer. He would wake up at five before everyone else and go to church to read the Bible and pray. This went on for four or more months.
Then one day, Lucifer found that Maraini had beaten him to church. He came in at his usual time, found Maraini kneeling in one of the pews, eyes tightly shut, hard at prayer. This disturbed Lucifer. He couldn’t pray that day, try as he would. He left the church, leaving Maraini in there, and went into the bush.
For days and weeks after this, Lucifer didn’t go to church. He hadn’t much appetite for anything else: food, games, lessons—and he kept away from the other students. That’s when he started drawing. He found himself drawing figures, landscapes, all sorts of things that came into his head everywhere he was. It grew into a kind of mania. He began to drop in class, he played truant from school games or Mass to go into the hills round the school with his exercise book and pencil.
It was during one of these escapades that something came to him with a force that made him want to hang himself.
He discovered that he was full of conceit, self-importance and disgusting self-pride. That had been his reason for taking up prayers. Under the guise that he was praying to God to take away his hatred for Maraini and supplant it with love, he was, in fact, saying: ‘Look, God, I am better than Maraini. I pray to you, I know you exist and if you would put Love in my heart then I shall know that I am better than Maraini because all he has is material accomplishments which will die with his material body. But I won’t die because in me you will have planted eternal life.’ That’s what his praying had meant. It was unpardonable jealousy, and it showed itself for what it was when he discovered Maraini praying. Why hadn’t he been able to stand the idea of Maraini praying? Because he had felt that Maraini was trespassing.
This discovery soured the idea of love in Lucifer. It killed his belief in God, because he couldn’t see himself as capable of not having a motive for anything he did. To have Love was to gain Heaven. This was what disillusioned him. He always saw people doing this or that—good or bad—for the reward. And this desire for a reward is pride—false to Lucifer.
Thus he comes to see his desire to go overseas in this light. And in this light, he can’t believe in it.
Thus he comes to see his parents’ love in this light. They would make him something more than what he really is. They want something from him, something that he doesn’t know how to give. He can’t just live for the sake of living. He has to have something to his name, something to make them proud of him, something to show off to all those other people who think they are better than themselves, something to make the whole world kneel down on its knees in front of them.
Lucifer is confused. Yet the Old Man talks of love. What is it? Where is it? Is this farce being enacted here love? Eating the rice that had been meant for him just because Aunt Rhoda might have poured a little poison in it? Is this love? It can’t be. Lucifer can’t accept it…
There are so many things Lucifer can’t accept at this time in his life, so many things he can’t believe in. And this lack of belief bothers him too. It is a form of pride. He is proud of being an outsider, standing outside everything, looking on, passing judgement. He wants so much to be able to get inside some things, to be able to whole-heartedly believe in his own people, in life, in his drawing—in everything. But he feels a false note in everything he is doing. There is a selfish motive behind everything he does, he feels. A childish self-advertising: Look at me! Aren’t I wonderful?
And he knows it’s partly because of his lack of belief, his own uncertainty and restlessness that’s helping to create this tension in the family. Somehow, when he is around, everybody begins to panic, everybody seems to be measuring his or her actions in the light of Lucifer’s silent criticism. And Lucifer can’t help feeling he is letting them down. It’s them who put him in a false position.
‘Why can’t they for once accept me as I am?’ Lucifer says to himself. ‘Why do they all become so damned serious all of a sudden?’
He turns to face the wall. He frets and tosses between sleep and wakefulness and he isn’t quite clear whether he has been asleep or not when he hears knocking on the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘If you are already asleep I will—’ it’s his father.
‘No. You come in,’ Lucifer says, standing up to put on his shirt and trousers.
Tongoona enters, a big timid man. Lucifer feels like screaming: I don’t bite. But all he does is pick up a pencil and begins to doodle on a piece of paper.
Tongoona sits in a chair opposite Lucifer who is sitting on the bed, with the table between them. He scratches his chin, coughs, and seeing that Lucifer seems not to hear, says: ‘I ran away. I find your mother gets rather tiresome.’
