The Archbishop reported Toloki to his father, who in the presence of the holy man, talked with him strongly. The holy man himself added his heavy words, and said that it was indeed unfortunate that Toloki was fulfilling an adage that our forebears created: that glowing embers give birth to ashes. His father was an important man in the village, yet his son was as useless as cold ash. As his father spoke in serious tones, Toloki vowed in his heart that he was going to make life even more uncomfortable for the Archbishop and his flock in the village. Hence the stone-throwing incidents.
After the Archbishop had left, Toloki overheard his father telling Xesibe and a few other customers about the feud between Toloki and the church. They were all laughing and joking about it. ‘They deserve what they get from these youngsters! Can you imagine grown people displaying their buttocks and doing all these strange things in front of children!’ So, his father had only been pretending to be angry with him in the presence of the Archbishop! The whole fuss was just a big joke to him. This was precisely why Toloki was taken aback by Jwara’s violent reaction to his Methodist Church adventure. It really had nothing to do with the church at all, and everything to do with Noria.
Toloki arrives at the settlement, carrying his bulky load of presents. He walks to the shack. This time, he is not followed by dogs and children. Perhaps they are getting used to his presence. He arrives at the shack, but Noria is not there. He sits outside and waits for her. After some time she arrives, and says that she had been at Madimbhaza’s place when a child came to inform her that there was a visitor waiting for her outside her shack.
‘I hope you have not been waiting for a long time.’
‘No. It was not that long. Anyway, I did not tell you that I would be coming this morning.’
‘It does not matter, Toloki. You are always welcome here.’
‘This Madimbhaza is a friend of yours?’
‘In a way, yes. It is where I do some work for the community. I will take you there one day. What are all these heavy things you are carrying?’
‘I brought them for you, Noria. I brought you roses, because flowers become you like. . like a second skin. Here I have magazines and catalogues with which you can decorate your walls. And here I have cakes, and green onions for myself.’
Noria thanks him, and says that he should not have gone to all that trouble on her behalf. Toloki tells her that he will help her plaster the pictures from the magazines and catalogues onto the walls in the afternoon. As for now, he has to go to a funeral, where he has been invited to mourn.
‘Please let me come with you, Toloki. I want to see how you mourn.’
‘You are welcome to come with me, Noria. Let us go right away. I do not want to be late.’
‘I am ready. Let me just put my roses in a bottle of water first.’
At the cemetery Toloki sits on one of the five mounds, and groans, and wails, and produces other new sounds that he has recently invented especially for mass funerals with political overtones. These sounds are loosely based on chants that youths utter during political rallies. But Toloki has modified them, and added to them whines and moans that are meant to invoke sorrow and pain. He sways from side to side, particularly when the Nurse tells us the story of the death of these our brothers and sisters. He knows that Noria is watching keenly from the audience, so he gives a virtuoso performance.
‘These our brothers and sisters died in a squabble over a tin of beef,’ the Nurse laments. He explains that the death of these five people happened in a township that had been free from political violence for months. Then one day a man sent his wife to buy a tin of beef at a spaza shop owned by a member of the tribal chief’s party. The spaza shop had run out of canned beef, so the woman bought chicken pieces instead.
When he got home her husband said he was too hungry to wait for chicken pieces. The couple returned them to the spaza shop, and asked for a refund. The shop owner refused, and an argument ensued. Blows were exchanged. The shop owner eventually took the chicken pieces back, but refused to refund the money.
The man reported the matter to his street committee, which then tried to resolve the dispute peacefully. But the shop owner was defiant, and threatened to invite the tribal chief’s followers from the hostels to protect him from the street committee. The residents of the township then decided to boycott his spaza shop, and patronised other shops in the area. With his livelihood threatened, the shop owner called on the hostel dwellers to wipe out his perceived enemies in the neighbourhood. Tension mounted, and this culminated in the hostel dwellers and other supporters of the tribal chief rampaging through the township, killing student leaders, and burning down several houses belonging to community leaders.
‘Since Tuesday last week five people have been killed,’ said the Nurse. ‘These five brothers and sisters we are laying to rest today. Many others are in hospital with serious injuries.’ In the meantime, the shop owner had disappeared, and his spaza shop was now a gutted shell.
After the funeral, people come and thank Toloki, and give him some coins. One old woman says, ‘I particularly invited you because I saw you at another funeral. You added an aura of sorrow and dignity that we last saw in the olden days when people knew how to mourn their dead.’ Then she gives him some bank notes. Toloki puts them in his pocket without counting them. He never counts what he receives from individual funerals. However, he is still bent though on devising a fixed rate of fees for different levels of mourning, once people are used to the concept of Professional Mourner.
Noria and Toloki walk quietly back to her shack. She does not seem to know what to make of what she has just seen. Toloki was hoping for immediate praise, or at least some positive comments from her. But it seems that she chooses to reserve her opinion, almost as though she is disturbed. Oh, how eager he is to hear at least one word of approval from this powerful woman who killed his father. As they make their way back to the settlement, Toloki remembers how his father died. He had to hear it all from Nefolovhodwe, for Jwara’s death began while Toloki was already on the road to the city, and was completed many years after he had reached the city.
When Noria got married to Napu and moved to town, she stopped singing for Jwara altogether. He sat in his workshop for days on end, without ever venturing out. Policemen brought horses to be shoed, but Jwara told them to go away. He was mourning the death of his creativity. He just sat in his workshop, and refused even to eat. We went to take a look at him, and found him sitting wide-eyed, staring at his figurines. We brought him food and fruit, but these remained untouched.
His wife gave up on him, and got a job doing washing for the manager of the general dealer’s store. She had to earn a living, since no money was coming into the house from the smithy. After a while she no longer bothered going to the workshop, but decided to get on with her life.
We, however, continued to take him food and fruit, which kept on piling up all around him. While the food decayed, and there were worms all over the place, and a stench, he stayed intact for months on end, just staring at the figurines, and pining away. Not even once did he go out in all that time.