To All The Books I’ve Loved Before (Part 2)

It is December 1996. I have just arrived in Pretoria from Malawi a few days ago. I have come to this country with one sole mission – to become a writer. It is irrefutable that this country has produced some of the finest writers on the African continent: the likes of JM Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Eskia Mphahlele, Zakes Mda, Can Themba, Alex La Guma, Herman Charles Bosman and many others. I am here to walk in their footsteps and I can feel in my bones that one day, though it might take some donkey’s years; my dream would be realized in this country.

However, I am ill-equipped with just an O-Level certificate; I am prepared to undergo the agony of teaching myself writing through guzzling books and writing every day. I know I am on a right track. I have published two successful short stories back home. Though my command of the English language is not yet well polished, I have an invaluable English grammar book – Fowler’s King’s English at my disposal: a gift I was given by a Congolese friend, Mahoro Semege. This has become my valuable companion throughout my journey of learning the Queen’s language.

In the wretched circumstance, I find myself in, with no coin jingling in my pocket, I cannot dream of studying further. The only hope for a poor child like me is to get an education; in order to obliterate the ugly circle of poverty and misery. I have discovered that even if I do two odd jobs a day, it looks absolutely impossible to study with the money I would earn. The only way now is to carry on teaching myself to write by reading a lot and writing every single day.

I have started working at a fabric shop in Pretorius Street and my humble salary stands at six hundred and fifty rands. We work from 8 am to 6 pm every day – Sunday to Sunday, even on Christmas Day and Eid Mubarak. Worse still, for us immigrants we work sometimes up to 10 pm – cleaning and packing the shelves while our local brothers and sisters have gone home to their families, canoodling with their loved ones. As the world favours always the well-off, the unfortunate ones have to be obsequiously subservient to their masters and endure all the hardships without complaining. Just like donkeys pulling the wagon. Even somewhere in the scriptures endorses the act.

 Yesterday I went to Pretoria Book Exchange and I bought Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, widely regarded as his masterpiece. This is the book I have been looking forward to reading. My Congolese friend, Mahoro Semege had recommended this book and when I saw it on the shelf in the classic section I was so bowled over. I couldn’t contain the excitement. I turned back and checked if someone was not stealthily aiming to snatch the book before me. I pulled out the book quickly, kissed it and savoured the faint aroma of the pages, and sat down to peruse the blurb. I found the blurb so enticing. The book is set in Sierra Leone during World War II. The Heart of the Matter comments on ambitious subjects of war, espionage, love, adultery, treachery, and betrayal. I found the classic section fully stocked with great writers: Thomas Hardy, W. Somerset Maugham, D H Lawrence, Anton Chekhov, Leon Tolstoy, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, George Eliot, and many more. Alas! When I shook my pocket there was a faint clinking of coins. I had not enough money to buy more than two books. Thereafter I made a pledge to myself that I would buy all the books on the classic section shelf.

With limited time to myself, I find my odd job a great hindrance to my reading and writing. I abhor it. I come back home from work every day at around 7 pm and sometimes 10 pm. By this time I am dog-tired. I have to make supper and shower which takes me up to midnight and then four hours later I have to get up and read for two hours before I get ready for work.  

I am living with three other guys in one big room. One is an elder man in his late forties whilst the rest of us are whippersnappers, in our early twenties. We have demarcated our beds with curtains. When everyone has drawn up his curtain, we look like patients in a hospital ward. I cannot selfishly wake up at 4 am, and switch on the sole light hanging from the rafter and disturb my sleeping friends. Instead, I read in the toilet until 5 am, and at that time, my friends start one by one to get up and get ready for work. TV and music come to life and the new day has begun. This is the time I walk out from the toilet to my confinement. I leave at 7 am and run to my boss’s house to get a lift. The wages I get are slave wages; I cannot afford to take public transport to and from work. It is a very stressful life. I have to send two hundred rands to my mother every month and deduct another two hundred rands for a room I share with friends and one hundred rands for food and I remain with one hundred and fifty for myself. Buying books makes me more destitute and I cannot borrow books from the library without an ID.

Come weekend the room looks like a brothel, my friends bring in their girlfriends. To avoid the disturbance of beds shaking, augmented by feigning cries of the girls in sexual jamboree to please their lovers; I spend most of my weekend at my friend, Davie’s place in Gezina.

As we are working near the park, I use my one-hour lunch break to read. Ausi Victoria whom I work with finds me in a cafe. She asks to have a look at the book I am reading. I am reading The Mayor of Casterbridge. She looks at the cover, flips a few pages, and gives it back to me.

‘Why you like reading?’ Ausi Victoria asks.

‘It opens my eyes to the world?’

‘My daughter also likes reading.’

‘That is good. What grade is she?’

‘She is at UNISA (University of South Africa.)’

‘What is she studying?’

‘She is studying Bachelor of Commerce, but likes to read novels.’

‘She must have good books.’

‘Do you want some books? I can ask her to borrow you some from the university’s library.’

‘Please, Ausi Victoria.’

We are now walking along the road trying to cross the busy road. Finally, we cross the road. Ausi Victoria joins her friends lunching outside the shop and I walk to Prince’s Park. I have thirty minutes left before lunch break is over. I hurry into the park and sit down under the shade of the tree. I lean against the tree whose bark cuts into my skin. I lean forward and start reading.

***

Three days later, before the shop is opened for business, I see Ausi Victoria carrying something on her head and she calls to me. I run to relieve her of the burden. It is a huge book that a grade R child cannot carry – a handwritten manuscript bound into the book. It is Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence. I cannot contain my excitement. I give Ausi Victoria a hug and thereafter we hurry into the shop as the doors are being opened for business.

I am now well supplied with books and my humble small bookcase is growing.  So far I have bought fifteen books: The heart of The Matter, Mayor of Casterbridge, Of Human Bondage, David Copperfield, The Necklace and Other Tales, Pride and Prejudice, Dr Zhivago, Steppenwolf, Things Fall Apart, July’s People, Anna Karenina, The Bet, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Middlemarch and Heart of Darkness.  

Yesterday I went to CNA to buy a ream of paper. I would like to start writing a novel. The title has been ringing in my head and ears for a time – Of Inscrutable Providence. It is a weird title though, but I love the ring of it on my tongue. It would be a semi-autobiographical novel. An experimental novel. My learning canvas. Since I cannot afford to buy a typewriter, I have started writing in longhand.

My probationary period has come to an end. And I go to my boss to remind him. He promised he would increase my wages after my probationary period is over. However, he refuses to increase my wages citing the company is still in its infancy. I have realized that even if I work for yonks, I would achieve nothing tangible working at this fabric shop. It is better to quit and look for work somewhere. If something is not working, we must be quick to notice it and try something new; time lost is never recovered as the saying goes. So many people today are trapped in ineluctable, deplorable circumstances because of failing to listen to the voice of reason.

A few months later, my boss fires me for being an instigator of failed workers’ uprising against poor working conditions. As an individual without a voice in a foreign country, I bear my cross with grace; otherwise, I could have taken the company to CCMA for unfair dismissal. However, I don’t regret it, I move on with my life. My friend Davie is accommodating and invites me to stay with him in Gezina. The next day Davie comes at night with his uncle’s Toyota Cressida, I pack my books in a box and pull out my bag from under the bed and we hit the road to Gezina. Davie is working in Marabastad at a fabric shop. It is difficult for him to ask his boss to employ me as his boss is related to my previous boss.

I am now free like a bird. I have free time to read and write and think. We live in a two-bedroom flat. Davie and I have our own room to ourselves. His uncle and his wife sleep in the master bedroom. Two days ago, I bought a small bookshelf at a secondhand shop. I pack my books on the shelf and the room looks splendid with the books, a small table, and a desk. Luckily, his uncle has given us his reading light. I am not working at the moment so I write now in the morning when everyone is gone to work. After lunch, in the afternoon I go to the park to read.

Presently, I am at the park reading Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. I read until sunset and Davie comes straight from work to pick me up. Davie is learning to drive. He is getting better and better with his driving lessons. His ambition is to learn to drive a truck. He is mad about truck driving. He finds me writing notes in my journal.

‘Are you done?’

‘Oh Yeah.’

‘Are you ready for a spin?’

‘You’re still an amateur.’

‘Will show you.’

We jump into Toyota Cressida (MX62) GL sedan. The car has a starting problem. As instructed by his uncle, Davie takes a small hammer from under the seat. He gets out and opens the bonnet. He gives the starter a few raps and goes inside to start. The car starts. We cruise through the white neighbourhood under hostile looks from the balconies, their eyes shouting: Go back where you belong you two bobbejane! At a T-junction, the car switches off. Davie tries the magic of hitting the starter with a hammer but yields to nothing. We try to push start, to no avail. Soon we see a police van rumble to a stop before us. Two white policemen men jump out.

‘What are you doing with the car?’ asks a fat policeman whose big belly threatens to spill over his belt.

‘The car cannot start?’ says Davie.

‘Are you trying to steal the car?’

‘This is my uncle’s car.’

‘People are complaining that you’re trying to steal the car.’

‘Let me phone my uncle.’

‘We’re giving you thirty minutes to make sure you leave this area,’ says the fat policeman as they get into the van and rumble away.

Davie taps once more with his small hammer on the starter. Luckily, as our thirty-minute grace period comes to an end, the car comes to life. We leave the area and disappear immediately.

***

A week later, I find a job in Marabastad at the supermarket facing the taxi rank. Every morning we walk from Gezina to Marabastad and take a taxi to Gezina in the evening. My job is to watch the customers. I just watch them and do not stop them if I happen to see someone hiding something in the pocket or under the dress. Thieves know well that if they catch them, I am the one who would tip off the boss. One guy with crossed eyes and a knife scar that run from the forehead to the tip of his nose warned me one day at a taxi rank that he would kill me if I report him stealing to my boss. It is a dangerous job. I don’t understand why they cannot hire a security guard from a reputable security company; after all, the shop is busy all time and is making money.

Three days later, I am fired because I couldn’t catch a thief stealing. My boss’ son nabbed a fat woman hiding a packet of 2kg frozen chicken in her long skirt. Immediately the boss called me to his office and fired me on the spot. He said I was doing nothing and I could be in cahoots with the thieves.

If a respectable-looking woman relinquishes her rationality and pilfers in a shop; there must be something wrong with our society. No vice so touches the common heart of humanity as does seeing a woman stealing.

I am now at the park reading but I cannot concentrate. My mind is befuddled with apprehension. I am starting to lose faith in this life. I try to find if there’s meaning in this life. What is life? My father died three years ago leaving his five children and wife destitute. Death is so cruel that it has broken many homes and made many children orphans, yet the scriptures say who feed the orphans would be rewarded in the hereafter. Yet people of this world look the other way.

I have lost faith in this city. It is making my life so miserable. I have to try my luck somewhere.

Cape Town rings in my head like a gong. Why Cape Town?