‘I only went to wash my hands, and left quickly.’
‘It is the house of the chairman of the street committee.’
‘Is he a homeboy?’
‘No. Otherwise you would have known him.’
‘Not necessarily. I left the village long time ago. And I chose not to remember the people from there.’
‘How did you leave the village, Toloki? Were you looking for work?’
‘No. I was running away from home.’
‘Why?’
‘I fought with my father.’
Fought? Actually fought with Jwara? No, Toloki explains, his father beat him up, so he ran away and vowed never to return while his father was alive. He did not have any money. He walked all the way from the village to the city. It was a long journey that took him three months.
Toloki’s odyssey to a wondrous world of freedom and riches. He walked day and night, passing through farmlands and through small towns that reeked of discrimination against people of his colour. For the first time in his life, and the last time, he found himself having to beg for food. It was so demeaning to stand at a corner of a street in some nondescript town, and ask for a coin from a passer-by. He never realised it would be such a harrowing experience to be a beggar, and he vowed that he would never do it again. The experience haunts him still, even in his days as an established Professional Mourner, and it is for this reason that he will not take alms.
He walked for long distances on gravel roads. He took off his boots in order to save them from wear and tear. He hung them on his shoulders from their straps, and walked barefoot.
He was dog-tired, and his feet were swollen and numb when he entered yet another small town. It was not different from the others, for when you have been through so many country towns they all end up looking the same. He sat on the pavement, in front of a fast-food cafe. His mouth was dry with hunger. The smell of fish and chips frying in stale cooking oil made him even hungrier. It had been days since he had a morsel in his mouth, and he had terrible pains in his stomach. It was as though his empty intestines were tied in knots. If he did not get anything to eat he was surely going to die, he thought. He was not going to allow that to happen. He would rather rummage for scraps of food in the rubbish bins. Or steal. To steal is better than to beg.
A man in overalls stopped and looked at him ruthfully. Then he searched his pockets, found a coin, and gave it to him.
‘Thank you, father, but I do not accept alms.’
‘You do not?’
‘It is true I am hungry, and if I don’t eat I will die. But I do not accept charity.’
‘So you’d rather die? What a stupidly proud boy!’
‘I desperately need this money, father. But I insist on doing some job for you in return.’
The man in overalls laughed for a long time. Then he asked Toloki where he came from, and what he was doing in that town. Toloki told him he was on his way to the city to search for love and fortune. The man laughed again. Toloki wondered what was funny about a quest which was, in his view, so noble.
‘Are all people such dreamers where you come from?’
‘I do not understand why you laugh at me, father. But I am willing to do piece jobs to survive on the road.’
‘I cannot offer you a job. I am just a poor labourer who lives with his old father and a lot of other labourers in a labour camp. I can introduce you to my employers who will give you a job. One of the workers left last week, and he has not been replaced yet. But don’t tell them it’s a piece job. They only hire people who want to work permanently. Or are you too proud to lie?’
Toloki assured him that he could lie as well as any man. The only aberration in his character was that he eschewed charity. He apologized profusely for this hang-up, and explained that he had no idea what its source was. The man bought him three fat cakes from the fast-food place, and said, ‘This is not charity. You will pay me back when you receive your wages.’
They walked through the streets, while the man in overalls ran a few errands. Toloki wolfed the fat cakes, and was suddenly attacked by stomach cramps. He fell on the ground in convulsive agony.
‘Hey, you can’t die on me now!’
‘No, it is not that, father. I ate too fast on an empty stomach.’
‘Stay here. I’ll go and buy you milk.’
‘Thank you very much. I will pay you back. I promise I will.’
Toloki was employed as a malayisha at a mill, which meant that he loaded and unloaded bags of maize and mealie-meal. In the evenings, he slept in the watchman’s shelter at the gate of the mill. He got to sleep there because he offered to help the nightwatchman guard the place, while he went to drink beer and play with women in the shebeens. Toloki’s intention was to work for a few days, and then to move on as soon as he received his first weekly wages envelope.
Some days he went to visit the man who had got him the job at the labour camp, where he lived in a shack with his father. The three of them sat in front of the shack and gossiped about the neighbours, and drank beer. Sometimes they discussed the state of the nation, and the protests and demonstrations that they heard were beginning to happen in the cities. They tried to persuade Toloki to forget his quest, and keep the good job he had. Such good jobs were hard to come by, they said, and it was fortunate for him that the owner of the job had just been sacked.
‘Why was he fired?’
‘Oh, they accused him of stealing some bags of maize from the mill.’
His problems, Toloki was told, began one morning when he reported for duty at the milling company. The foreman ordered him to go to the manager’s office, where he found policemen waiting for him. They took him away to the interrogation chambers at the police station. There they stripped him naked, and asked him to confess. But he did not know what to confess, so they beat him up. He screamed, and began to confess all the sins he could remember doing since the time he was a child. ‘That’s not the confession we want to hear,’ the police shouted. ‘We want to hear about the bags of maize you have been stealing to sell to one farmer whom we know very well.’ The man denied any knowledge of stolen bags of maize, and his interrogators got angry and punched his testicles. Then they tied him to a chair and attached wires to his fingers and neck. They connected these to the electricity outlet on the wall, and the man screamed in agony and lost control of his bowels.
‘Who is the farmer, and where does he stay?’
‘Honest, my baas, I do not know him.’
‘You sold him the maize, and yet you do not know him?’
‘I never sold any maize, my baas.’
Even with all the torture they could not get any confession from this man. So they let him go. Although he was not charged with any crime, the mill refused to take him back. He lost his job, and his manhood. His wife was very angry with the police for what they did to him, and to their conjugal life.
Toloki wanted to know about the selling of maize: did it really happen? Yes, some senior workers did this from time to time. A farmer would sell a truck-load of maize to the milling company. His labourers would unload the bags at the mill. After being paid cash for the maize he would then drive back to his farm. That same afternoon, one of the drivers and the foreman at the mill would instruct the mill labourers to load a truck with the same maize. At the gate they would pretend to the security people that they were delivering mealie-meal to some wholesaler, and sign false papers. They would then take the maize back to the farmer, who would pay the driver and the foreman some money. For a long time the labourers got nothing from these transactions. But they were aware of what was happening. When they began to grumble aloud, the drivers and the foremen would buy them a lot of beer and meat after such expeditions, and they would forget about the whole thing.