Chapter 9 (I wish I was special)
I made us tea. I didn’t want to know more, so for once I didn’t ask any questions.
“There was an old guard, he helped me write the letters, so I could study. First they wanted to put me in MAX, I would have to do hard labour, I would have, but this guard saw something in me, I had forgotten, he was a Zulu, he saw a King, and that drove me to study harder. I know I was given this position because no one wanted to come here. Too hot, too cold, too dangerous, so took it. And just look what it brought me? How did you find me Nichole?”
“I wasn’t looking for you per se’, I had the address Funani gave me, and well I didn’t even know that you were the Principal, hiring me, wasn’t very formal, as you pointed out, no teachers want to teach here. They have all moved to the cities, to the big schools. “
He smiled and added another log to the fire. “Fate.” I looked up at him.
“Destiny.” We both laughed. “Then I shall drink to both.”
I thought the topic was done and dusted. He looked at me.
“I dare say, you were right again, you would have been tried as me, you would have been sent off to a Black prison. I should have listened to you. I guess you are right, I am pig-headed, just as you are stubborn.”
“Each to their own. Live and let live.”
He stood up and held his hand out to me. Inkosi gently pulled me up. He embraced me.
“I really understand why you couldn’t answer me, even now, with all these changes, people fear prosecution. Truthfully, I never want to go back to that place. They showed me where the inmates where hung. I saw the nooses with my own two eyes, that’s not a myth. They hung people.”
“I am so sorry.” Inkosi shook his head. “Don’t be, you never pointed on finger at me, not when I was naive, or when I was wrong, and I could have gotten us both killed, they wanted to kill you a hell of a lot more than me, they were going to tell you to run, and then let those dogs loose.”
“I think, I would have been dead that day, if I had to see that with my own eyes, the animal in me would have snapped, I would have killed them all, and if they shot me, I would have laughed at them.”
“Let’s not speak of the past, we are here in this lovely warm place, I call my home, we have tea, and biscuits, a warm fire, and Inkosi, we are home.”
“Tea and biscuits? You will eat a meal later. I am worried about you, please eat, why don’t you eat?”
“It hurts me. I can’t eat. It makes me bleed.” I explained what I could and couldn’t eat, and he left the flat once more.
I think we might be starting to understand each other again. I felt by far more relaxed, I could see so did he. I often wondered how we became strangers to one another. He was all I knew, for so long.
“Inkosi?” I got another “Hmm” When he sat down, and covered me with the blanket, I felt like knitting just for the hell of it.
“You do know, I loved you, not because of my heart, but because of yours. One cannot love alone; you need two hearts to become one. I have no definition for love, not then and not now. Nonetheless, call it fate, choices, or being coerced. I couldn’t have loved you, if you didn’t love me back.”
We had a good laugh at my warped philosophy.
“Loved, past tense, does that mean you no longer love me?” I know he was pulling my leg; he did that when the topic became to serious.
“I know you said it to me when we were young, say it. I need to hear it, not because it’s words, words are easily spoken, I need to hear it so I can see the look in your eyes when you utter those words.”
I honestly thought he was going to bolt from the room. Age has helped. He turned to me, took my hands in his, I loved the contrast between us. The best of both worlds, if we were bread.
“You know, I will die for you, in a second. I do love you, you changed every part of me, if you had not come into my life, I think I would have done many bad things, out of anger. The knowledge that someone as beautiful and pure as you loved me, just as I am. It softened my heart, opened my ears and my eyes to the world around me, I no longer felt trapped, I was free in constraints, and that was palatable, at the time. Now I am actually free, and shit if I know what to do with my freedom.”
“I do, I know exactly what to do.” I motioned to my bed. “Two naked bodies warm up faster, it’s a fact.” He laughed.
“Hmm, coerced. Now there is a word I like.” He picked me up. “Hmm, coerced.”
I kissed him, before he could get his socks off. Inkosi in socks, it still boggles the mind. I kissed his neck, his back, he still felt like marble under my fingers. I dug my nails into him, it had response I had hoped for. He let go. I know he was afraid of hurting me, but I needed him to be Inkosi, a man that didn’t think, he loved with his soul, I needed that part of him to merge with me.
I fell asleep, he sure was the cure for insomnia.
It was dark when I woke up, the flat was dark. I switched on the lights. A storm was raging outside.
I bathed and rubbed my chest, it was getting worse by the hour, I knew I was sick, I didn’t know how to get to the doctor in this storm. I wondered where Inkosi was, I guess he had fallen off to sleep.
I wish I didn’t have to say the next words, truth be told, that was the last time I saw Inkosi. The following morning, I was in bad shape, I called the school doctor, he came at once.
“Doctor, have you seen Inkosi?”
He was concerned for my health, and he had made arrangements for an ambulance to fetch me.
“My dear, you didn’t hear?” I wiped the perspiration from my face. “What, haven’t I heard?”
“He is dead, lightning set his hut on fire, his son, and the child’s grandmother had succumbed in that fire.”
After I had been discharged, I moved away. I moved a lot in those days, my circle not quite complete.
I moved in the opposite direction. I worked to maintain my independence, my health had taken quite a toll on my inheritance.
I wish I could say I had some fanciful or romantic notation about my life, but I had never uttered those words. The shallow void in me became larger with time, reality had knocked me down more times, than I could get up, yet here I am.
It was many years before I got on a bus and returned ‘home’. The house was a mere shell. I did not greet my neighbours. Time can only erase so much, then I guess the bottle does over flow. I had told myself that I shall never return, yet the pull was my far greater than my inner monologue.
I walked through the house, I dare not step into the fields. It was too overgrown. I willed myself to remember, smells, laughter, even tears. I needed to feel, anything.
I think I stood there for an hour watching myself run through the house, Sheba at my side, Gran scolding me, for running through the house. I wish I knew what had happened to her belongings.
Her tea-sets were one of a kind, it arrived here with her. I have looked for one like it, somethings shall remain in my ‘box.’ It cannot be duplicated.
I wrote to Aunt Mary on several occasions, to no avail. I accepted that our paths had crossed, and that she now too has her place in my box.
I shall never say I wish I knew then what I know now. I have no regrets, life took me on an incredible journey, sometimes it was smooth sailing, other times, I literally held on for dear life.
I have not returned since, I can honestly say, I don’t know if I shall. I think I might have reached the point, were what done was done, water under the bridge. Yet my heart is relentless in its need to go ‘home.’
Have I made other mistakes, of course I have? I have lived, loved, lost died, lived again, and my circle is not complete. Have I pushed the boundaries? Hell yes, not because I am some overgrown adolescent. I needed to fill the void. Did my indecisions cure me? Not by a long shot. I am incurable in my ways, the need to know outweighs logic.
I shan’t call him by name, for a brief time a man entered my life, not a Zulu. I didn’t give myself to him, I think I was afraid of the unknown, I am a walking cliché.
I am a recluse, nonetheless life did throw me a bone when I least expected it, and for a while, I was happy, I dare say I was infatuated to my soul. Yet again a happily ever after eluded me. In his way he showed me what I was capable of, he pushed me beyond my boundaries. As I had said to Inkosi so very long ago, one can only love if that love is reciprocated.
I am grey now. None the wiser, my circle is incomplete. I fill it in different ways now, I no longer believe that my heart shall smile again.
Henry is a man; our bond has never been broken. An exceptional entrepreneur. When I speak to him, I tend to see a little of myself in him. I might not have borne him, however he has shown me, the differences between his upbringing and mine, in this knowledge I have come to understand my father in ways I never could have.
I wish I could say, that the next part of the story was a utter exaggeration of the truth. I cannot.
I no longer kept track of time. when I had moved away from the little school, time was inconsequential to me. It was a reminder of things I wished I could have forgotten.
Life isn’t that lenient, the nightmares plagued me. I cannot say for certain how long I had been living in Port-Natal. It was amazing. The weather was fantastic. The towns boomed, even though I had chosen one of the suburbs to call my home. I often travelled to town, as we called it back then. Took the bus. Had my coupons. Would wait for the ‘cling’, and take my ticket. Travelling from home to town was a pleasure. I would walk for hours, got to the museums, I have a fascination with history.
Right opposite the train station, use to be a bakery. It was quiet a distance to walk, but it was worth it, they baked the best pies I have ever eaten in my life. That would be my last stop, after I had watched a train or two depart. I had been on a train often, sometimes just for the journey.
If I recall correctly it might have been a Saturday morning when I knock came at my door. I had little left in the way of family, so I was a little unsure if I should answer the door or not. I was getting ready to go to town.
The knocking was persistent. Eventually I opened the door. I think I stood there holding on to the door until my fingers went numb.
We both did not say a word. I had a million questions assailing my mind.
He was the first to speak. “Do you know how long I have been searching for you?”
I don’t think I could answer if I wanted to, all words had eluded me. my tongue was stuck to my pallet. I might have shaken my head no, I don’t really recall, all I knew is, I thought my heart would beat right out of my chest.
“He told me. The doctor told me you were dead.”
“I know, I beat the truth out of him, when I returned home and you were gone. Are you going to invite me in before one of your neighbours call the police?”
I stepped aside. He looked at me. “I need you to come with me.”
“Like hell, you cannot walk in the door, and expect me to follow you, I thought you were dead. I have mourned you, buried you in my heart, yet here you stand before me. Do you care to elaborate?”
He switched on the kettle, glanced at my handbag, looked over his shoulder at me, and made us tea. I had to sit down.
He made mine too sweet. “They say lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. When the first both struck, I had pulled the mattress over Sifiso and I, I don’t know what took his life. I think the smoke. I was about to open the door when the second bolt struck, it flung me right out the door.”
I don’t believe in ghosts, nonetheless time would cure me of this illusion.
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