We finally got tired of taking the offerings to the workshop, and went about our business. But all the time we knew that Jwara was in there, lost in a trance. The workshop remained closed for many years. Sometimes we warned children, when we saw them playing outside the workshop, ‘Hey you children, go and make your noise elsewhere! Don’t you know that you are disturbing Jwara in his meditations?’
One day, some men who wanted to open a blacksmith business came to Toloki’s mother, and offered to buy Jwara’s old equipment. Toloki’s mother needed the money, and didn’t see the point of keeping blacksmithing equipment when it was clear to everyone that Jwara would never work as a blacksmith again. Accompanied by the men, and by other curious neighbours, she went to the workshop and opened the door. For the first time in years, light invaded the privacy of the workshop. And there was Jwara, sitting as they remembered him, but with his biltong-like flesh stuck to his bones. His bulging eyes were staring at the figurines as before. Glimmering gossamer was spun all around him, connecting his gaunt body with the walls and the roof. In front of him was a piece of paper on which he had written in a semi-literate scrawl, bequeathing his figurines to Toloki. We never knew before this that Jwara could write. In fact, we were sure that he could not write. He used to sign his papers with a cross, after Toloki or Noria had read them to him. But there it was, in his own handwriting, his last will and testament.
When Jwara was buried, no one wanted to be the Nurse. Everyone who was asked said, ‘We cannot call upon ourselves the wrath of the ancestors by being witness to things we do not know. We do not know how Jwara died.’
Toloki mixes flour and sugar that he has bought from Shadrack’s spaza shop, with water. He makes a paste to use for plastering the pictures from the magazines and catalogues onto the walls. The four walls are divided into different sections. On some sections, he plasters pictures of ideal kitchens. There are also pictures of lounges, of dining rooms, and of bedrooms. Then on two walls, he plasters pictures of ideal gardens and houses and swimming pools, all from the Home and Garden magazines. By the time he has finished, every inch of the walls is covered with bright pictures — a wallpaper of sheer luxury.
Then Toloki takes Noria’s hand, and strolls with her through the grandeur. First they go to the bedroom, and she runs and throws herself on the comfortable king-size bed. Toloki hesitates, but she says, ‘C’mon, Toloki. Don’t be afraid. Come and sit next to me.’ He sits, and the soft bedding seems to swallow them. Toloki kicks his legs up, and jumps up and down on the bed, like an excited child. Noria kneels on the bed, and also jumps up and down. They laugh like two mischievous children, and fight with the continental pillows. They play this game until they are exhausted. Then Noria sits on a stool and admires herself in the big dressing-table mirror. She makes up her face. There is a built-in radio on the head-board, and Toloki fiddles with the switch in order to get a station that plays beautiful music.
They move from the bedroom to explore the kitchen. There is a beautiful peach-coloured ‘kitchen scheme’, with cupboards that are fully-stocked with the ingredients for making cakes of all types, and a big fridge full of cold drinks. Some cakes are baking in the oven of the electric stove.
‘You don’t think the cakes in the oven are ready, Toloki?’
‘They are not ready, Noria. Don’t worry, a timer will call us when they are. Let’s just relax and admire our beautiful home.’
They go to the lounge and stretch out on the black leather sofas. They play some more music on the stereo set, which is known as a ‘music centre’. When they grow tired of the music, they laugh at idiotic American situation comedies on their wide-screen television set.
‘You know, I am an outdoors type. Let’s take a walk in our garden, Noria.’
‘Yes, Toloki, let’s go and admire our beautiful garden. You have put so much work into making it the best garden in all the land.’
They walk out of their Mediterranean-style mansion through an arbour that is painted crisp white. This is the lovely entrance that graces their private garden. Four tall pillars hoist an overhead trellis laced with Belle of Portugal roses. A bed of delphiniums, snapdragons, cosmos, and hollyhocks rolls to the foot of the arbour. Noria and Toloki take a brief rest in the wooded gazebo, blanketed by foliage and featuring a swing. Noria likes to sit on the swing, and Toloki enjoys pushing it for her.
The whole garden is a potpourri of colour, designed by expert landscape architects. Petals and scents drift above the pathways that twist and wind up the slope. The paving is made from flagstones, fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, and curving around a bright bank of salvia, azaleas, petunias and nicotiana. There are also varieties of grasses that create a natural palette of textures, rhythm, and soft colours. There are slashing brooks and waterfalls that cascade to a collecting pool. Pools and ponds are a haven for wildlife and water plants. Besides giving the place a rugged, semi-wild look, the variety of bushes and shrubs create hiding places for Noria and Toloki when they play hide-and-seek.
It is getting late, so they must return to the house. They choose a different path made from bark and tree-trunk sections that boldly blazes the way through the flower-clustered backyard, right up to a deck of lumber with ivy and honeysuckle climbing to the rafters. The deck has an above-ground pool, and a bar. Noria and Toloki relax on the casual furniture on the deck and view the splashy fountains and frothing falls of their wonderland. When night falls, the landscape comes to shimmering life with fireflies and moonbeams — courtesy of a combination of entrance, well, tier, globe and mushroom lights. The deck glistens with spotlights and floodlights.
Back inside the house, they proceed to the dining room. Toloki covers the large oak table with a lace tablecloth. He goes to the kitchen and gets the cakes from the oven. The oven automatically switched itself off when the cakes were ready, and while Toloki and Noria were frolicking in the garden. Using some of the silverware and china that is kept in the dining-room sideboard, Toloki serves Noria with a variety of cakes. For himself, he serves only Swiss roll and green onions. They eat quietly for some time.
‘It is a strange combination you are eating, is it not, Toloki?’
‘It is what I eat when I really want to spoil myself. It is not the kind of food that I can afford every day.’
‘But onions and cakes!’
‘It is because I am austere, like the monks from faraway mountain monasteries.’
‘Do they eat like that?’
‘I really don’t know what they eat, except for those who have faecal feeding habits — the aghori sadhu, for instance. But I had to invent a diet of my own that would mark me as an austere and ascetic votary of my own order of Professional Mourners.’
Noria does not understand what this means. But she lets it pass. She is enjoying the cakes, although in her view, which she keeps to herself, buying cakes is a waste of money. Toloki should have bought something more practical — like mealie-meal, sugar, tea, dripping, or paraffin.
After the meal, Noria clears the catalogue pages that Toloki had spread on the mud floor. They will come in handy again when she eats. Or when she sits on the floor, since her shack is devoid even of a single stool. Toloki stands up from the floor where they have both been sitting, and prepares to go. Out of the blue, Noria makes a suggestion that leaves his heart thumping at an alarmingly fast pace.
‘Perhaps my ears are deceiving me, Noria.’