“Oh yes, they are ready,” declares an elder of the Believers. “This time for sure he’ll succeed to go. NoEngland is very powerful.”
There is Gxagxa standing outside Zim’s door, neighing endlessly.
Then there is NomaRussia.
While Zim is busy dying, she sits in a vigil on the sleigh outside his hexagon. She pleads with him in a feeble voice through the cracks of his door, “Tell her when you get there. . tell NoEngland to release me. . to make me well again. . to take away the pain. . to take away all this flow.”
“He can’t hear you,” says a kindly old lady. “He is between the worlds.”
From time to time her friends — those who had harassed Qukezwa all over the place — bring her food and water. They sit with her and try to comfort her whenever the pain flares up. They repeat what they have always believed: that whoever caused her this is burning in the fires of hell. Their parents have told them that the igqirha who “worked” their friend to be like this cannot be a genuine igqirha. A genuine igqirha does not harm people. An authentic igqirha has been given only those powers that heal. This one who caused NomaRussia to have this constant flow that is now accompanied by pain is an igqwirha—an evil one who only causes harm. He too will burn in the fires of hell.
When the astounded Camagu found NomaRussia outside Zim’s door for the first time, he was hurt when she did not remember him. But he was not given the opportunity to talk with her any further. Her friends came and fussed over her and told Camagu to leave her alone. So he went into Qukezwa’s hexagon to see her and to play with Heitsi. He was cross with Qukezwa for not revealing the truth about his hopeless quest all those months ago.
“I followed you. All the way from Johannesburg,” he tells Noma-Russia one day when he finds her alone on the sleigh. “I came searching for you.”
“You are Qukezwa’s,” she whispers.
“Yes. I am engaged to Qukezwa. But it is you who brought me here. It is about you that I dreamt. She merely invaded those dreams.”
“You had no right to dream about me. Do not dream about me. I am like this because my eye roved to a man of this homestead.”
“Like this? The curse, you mean?”
“Qukezwa has been talking?”
“Your friends attacked her in my presence. It is because of the curse?”
“Yes. The curse has something to do with it.”
Camagu tries to say something that will comfort the dying woman.
“That is the river of life. You are the river. It is from this river that men and women have come. Humanity flows from the same mouth that gushes your curse. It is no curse. I do not mind to swim in that river. I can swim in that river for all my life.”
“You do not know what you are saying. Go away. Even if I were not dying you would not swim in any such river. When I heard there was a strange man looking for me, I thought they were talking of a madman. Now I know that you are indeed mad. I do not want any more curses on what is left of my life.”
“She is right, Camagu,” says Qukezwa, smiling cynically.
Camagu almost faints. He was not aware that Qukezwa had been standing at the door listening all the time.
“At last you will rid yourself of demons that got hold of you in the streets of Johannesburg,” she adds, leading him away into the house.
Days pass. Zim refuses to die. Amahobohobo weaverbirds fill the homestead with their rolling, swirling song. They miss the man who spent most of the day sitting under their giant wild fig tree. Gxagxa refuses to move from his vigil outside Zim’s door. NomaRussia continues her own vigil.
Qukezwa is amused by Camagu’s confusion — his hankering after a phantom he had created in his feeble mind.
“I sought you all over,” Camagu tells NomaRussia one afternoon.
“Once I was employed here,” she responds. “A man of this home-stead sought me and found me. Look what happened to me.”
“It has nothing to do with that. You said yourself that the doctors at the hospital in East London say you have cervical cancer. It is a disease that is there and kills many women when it is not found and treated early through radiotherapy or whatever else medical doctors can do. Perhaps if this had been attended to when your bleeding started you would have been cured by now.”
“They did say you are a doctor.”
“No. Not that kind of doctor. I know nothing about medicine. But cervical cancer is a well-known disease even among laymen like me — that is, people who are not medical doctors. This is not a curse. Please let me take you to hospital. Okay, they have told you there that it has reached an advanced stage and cannot be cured. But you need care and support.”
“Do you think just because white doctors have a name for the sickness that it was not caused by NoEngland?”
“No one can cause someone else to have cancer.”
“Then how come your white doctors didn’t understand how I got this terrible thing at such a young age? How come they said mine was an unusual case?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have a lot to learn, doctor.”
“All I want is to help you. Please let me help you. I am prepared to pay for you at a hospice where they will take good care of you. They will relieve your pain and make your life a bit more comfortable.”
“No, I will sit here. . at this homestead that brought this on me. I will die here. Let my death hang on their necks for the rest of their days. Now leave me alone and go to your wife,” she says, smiling ruefully at him.
She can still smile in the middle of such pain.
Days pass. Zim refuses to die. Once more, relatives come from far and wide to make appeals to Qukezwa. “Please leave the elder alone! Let him go in peace!”
Her anger at being accused like this has dissipated. She assures the relatives that she is not holding Zim. They see her earnestness. Perhaps they should look elsewhere for Zim’s stubbornness against the call of the Otherworld. Twin. Zim’s son who went to Johannesburg and never came back. Perhaps the elder does not want to leave without saying good-bye to Twin. People must be sent to Johannesburg to track Twin down.
“Where will they find Twin?” asks NomaRussia when her friends tell her about the plan. “He is dead. I sang at his wake in Hillbrow.”
Everyone is shocked to hear for the first time of Twin’s death. Women wail when they are told that he died in the streets of Hillbrow drunk and frustrated.
Twin had been frustrated for a long time. No one was buying his carvings anymore, for he carved people who looked like real people. No one wanted such carvings. Buyers of art were more interested in twisted people. People without proportion. People who grew heads on their stomachs and eyes at the back of their heads. Grotesque people with many arms and twisted lips on their feet. Twin refused to create things that distorted reality. He could only carve realistic figures the way that Dalton had taught him to. He starved and died a pauper. He was mourned by the aged and forgotten in a tattered tent on top of a multistory building in Hillbrow. He was also mourned by NomaRussia and Camagu.
“You were dressed like a makoti. . like a newly married woman. . yet you are not married,” wonders Camagu.
“To put men off,” explains NomaRussia.
Qukezwa laughs and says, “Obviously it didn’t work. Here is a man who came running after you even though he could see you were someone’s daughter-in-law.”