In her most magnificent novel yet, award-winning author Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu showcases the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state with a deft touch and a compassionate eye for poignant detail. Linked to The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, Ndlovu’s novel nevertheless stands alone in its evocation of life in the City of Kings and surrounding villages.
“Spokes M Moloi, recently returned from the war, stood at the corner of Lobengula Street and Selborne Avenue and waited on a promise. In 1941, the British had pledged that if he went to fight against the Germans, they would give him many acres of farming land that he could call his own. What man did not want a piece of viable land that belonged to him? And so Spokes had eagerly signed the papers they put in front of him, immediately joined the ranks of the newly formed African Rifles, and gladly collected the issued uniform – feeling, all the while, certain that this was a step in the right direction for him.
Even when they refused to give him – a soldier in the African Rifles – a rifle, Spokes chose to overlook the irony of the situation and chose, instead, to believe that he was walking towards something truly glorious. So strong was his belief in this glorious something that when they made his unit carry things here and there and everywhere, Spokes steadfastly refused to call himself a porter. He had joined the war a soldier, and as he carried weapons, ammunition, sundry supplies and wares in all kinds of weather and across desert and tundra, he saw this as his necessary contribution to the war effort.
When others of his ilk began to criticise the British for what they perceived to be unfair and unequal treatment, Spokes valiantly refused to be drawn into their malaise. His only complaint, and it was a small one, was that the greens and slouch hats that constituted their uniform did not seem to have taken into consideration all the various climates through which they would have to travel.
As he walked alongside men whose boots had been filled with sand or caked in mud or frozen hard by snow, men bent double by the things they carried, men who wished they had been assigned to Burma where the real fighting – with rifles – was, or to Durban, where they could at least escort Italian prisoners of war, Spokes knew he had to tread lightly. This was because he was the only man in the entire history of his country, perhaps in the entire history of the world, whose grandfather and father had both been hanged by the neck until they were dead. This rather weighty inheritance not only made him a rare and unique man; it also made him realise that he needed to cultivate a tenable relationship with the British.
“As men around him were struck by bullets against which they could not adequately defend themselves, or were blown apart by landmines that they had previously carried on their backs, this is what Spokes held on to: a future.”
By joining the war, Spokes felt certain that the promised land would make him something that his grandfather and his father had never had the chance to become: a man with a future. So, as men around him were struck by bullets against which they could not adequately defend themselves, or were blown apart by landmines that they had previously carried on their backs, this is what Spokes held on to: a future.
Spokes, and others who had survived the war, had returned home in 1946, to much fanfare and a victory parade as their regimental song, ‘Sweet Banana’, blasted from the army band on the stand, and confetti and ticker tape filled the air. There were many sensations to feel – pride was one of them. There were many things to believe – that they were heroes was one of them. There were many things to hope for – equality was one of them. A year after the parade, Spokes found himself standing in the long-anticipated future, waiting.
It was while he was waiting in that future that he saw something that he never thought he would see on Lobengula Street: a book. Not a scrolled-up newspaper placed in the pit of an arm, not a neatly folded pamphlet placed in a pocket, but a book – leather-bound and surprisingly new – held in a pair of brown hands with long, tapered fingers and delicate wrists. Books belonged in libraries where one could only touch them once one had donned a pair of white gloves, so what was this particular book doing in such beautiful brown hands, and on Lobengula Street of all places?
Spokes moved closer to the book and its owner until he could easily make out its title: Pride and Prejudice. Once he read the title, he became fully aware of his surroundings, and was shocked to find himself sitting in a bus. Somehow, as he followed those beautiful brown hands carrying the leather-bound book, he had managed to board a bus, pay the conductor and choose a seat, without his being aware of doing any of these things. The reason he could see the book’s title so clearly was because he was now sitting adjacent to the beautiful brown hands.
The bus pulled out of the terminus rank, and, for the first time in his life, Spokes had no idea where he was headed. He should have been terrified, but, upon deeper contemplation, he found that he did not mind not knowing, because this seemed to him to be a beginning.
He hazarded a quick glance at the owner of the beautiful brown hands. She was so much loveliness that he quickly had to look away … until he felt bold enough to look again. In order not to be too overwhelmed by her comeliness, he could only look at her in parts. The neat overlap of her ankles as she sat with her silk-stockinged legs slightly stretched out in front of her. The gentle arch of her calves. The softness of the soft places, which he made sure not to look at for a moment longer than was necessary. The long, regal neck, like a column at a temple he had seen. The face – the pretty, pretty face – slightly upturned as though always waiting for a kiss. She smiled at a passage she was reading, and a dimple appeared. It was the appearance of that dimple that allowed Spokes to discover what he was about – that he meant to make this woman, who was loveliness itself, his wife.”
*****
“It was long past the time he should have left for home, he thought as he reached for his fedora, which hung on the hook behind the door. He opened the door carefully and looked down the corridor at the movement and noise coming from the canteen at the other end. The corridor itself was empty, and the Desk Sergeant seemed to be intently examining the backs of his eyelids. For all of this, Spokes was truly grateful. He confidently went to place one manila envelope in the Chief Superintendent’s pigeonhole, and the other in the receptacle for outgoing mail. Before making an unobserved escape, he stopped at the Desk Sergeant’s station and quietly placed a few coins on the desk. Next, he wrote on a piece of paper, ‘For Petty Cash. Took two envelopes – one manila, one white – for personal use,’ and then wrote his initials, S. M. M. He placed the note under the coins, thankful that the Desk Sergeant was such a heavy sleeper.
He put the white envelope under his arm on his way out the building and was just reaching for the handle of the door that would lead him into the cool evening air when he heard something fall over and the Desk Sergeant curse and then say, seemingly without missing a beat, ‘I’ve got it, sir!’
Spokes could have pretended not to have heard him above the din, but he chose to turn around instead. ‘Got what?’ Spokes said, playing along, knowing full well what the sergeant was talking about.
‘What your middle initial stands for,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Marvellous!’ he shouted.
Spokes looked at him and then said, ‘Couple of chaps came up with the same name on the second Sunday of June 1973, I believe.’
‘And?’
Spokes let him hang in suspense for a minute and then said, ‘Not it, I’m afraid.’
The Desk Sergeant made a loud disappointed sound.
‘Is it an English name?’ the Desk Sergeant called after him as Spokes placed his hand once more on the door handle.
Spokes nodded.
‘A proper English name or an African English name?’
‘Both,’ Spokes mischievously announced over his shoulder.
An African English name was understood to mean an English word that expectant African parents had taken a particular shine to, regardless of what it actually meant, and which they would give as a name to their unsuspecting child. For instance, Spokes’s first name was an African English name. When Reverend Michael of the London Missionary Society had ridden his bicycle to check on the health of one of his flock, the woman had been greatly enamoured and fascinated by his bicycle, especially its wheels, especially the metal wires that ran in its wheels, especially the fact that the metal wires kept on rotating after the bicycle had come to a stop and the good reverend had lain the bicycle on its side in her front yard. She admired the metal wires’ ability to carry on even after the journey had ended. The woman, who was not ill at all but expecting a baby, pointed at the metal wires and asked the good Reverend, ‘What is that?’
‘A bicycle,’ Reverend Michael said, happy, as always, to be the bearer of not only salvation but knowledge as well.
The woman knew from received information that the bicycle was the entire thing; she did not mean the bicycle, and so she said, ‘No. Not that … but that,’ making sure to point where the round parts were.
‘Oh, you mean the wheels?’ a still happy Reverend Michael asked.
She had seen a few carriages and automobiles. The village owned quite a number of donkey carts. She knew what wheels were. She did not mean the wheels, and so she said, ‘No. Not that … but that.’
“It is quite possible that on 20 December 1979, many men in Mpopoma Township loved their wives, but it is not possible that any of them loved their wives as much as Spokes loved the lovely Loveness”
As far as Reverend Michael could see, she was still pointing at the round parts, the wheels, so he was momentarily no longer happy; he was confounded. He looked at the bicycle trying to see what it was that she was pointing at. ‘Do you mean the spokes?’ he asked presently. ‘The silver wires?’
‘The spokes,’ she said, and it was her turn to be happy. The word was as beautiful as the thing it named. ‘Spokes,’ she repeated.
Now, as Spokes opened the station door, stepped into the cool evening air, and placed his fedora on his head, he was just grateful that his mother’s fancy had not been caught by the handlebars or the tail-light. Some others, he knew, had not been so fortunate as to have a mother name them for something that carried on after the journey had ended.
Spokes carefully placed the white envelope in the messenger bag that had once belonged to his father and which he kept in his bicycle’s basket, pegged the bottoms of his trousers, and then mounted the rusty but trusty Raleigh his wife had bought him for his forty-fifth birthday to replace the ancient Raleigh he had also inherited from his father. As he rode home through the townships, he followed the Milky Way with its constellation of many stars. The beauty of the moment made him feel better about the ending of things.
The scent of chicken and dumplings, his favourite meal, greeted Spokes even before he entered the red-bricked, five-roomed house with a tiny veranda that he and his wife had called home for twenty years. Spokes found himself salivating and smiling as he chained the bicycle to the laundry line and then locked it to his father’s bicycle, removed the messenger bag from the basket, ran his forefinger over his moustache, walked onto the stoep, walked over the shiny surface of the veranda, and opened the door to his home – each step making him stand up straighter … taller … prouder.
It is quite possible that on 20 December 1979, many men in Mpopoma Township loved their wives, but it is not possible that any of them loved their wives as much as Spokes loved the lovely Loveness when he stepped over the threshold into his home, and was surrounded by the warm and inviting smell of the perfect welcome home.
‘Is that you?’ Loveness called to him from the kitchen.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ Spokes replied as he removed his fedora and placed it on the hat and coat rack behind the front door. He bent down and removed the pegs from the bottoms of his trousers and placed them, along with his home and office keys, in a basket that the lovely Loveness had made at the Women’s Institute. He placed his father’s messenger bag next to the basket and retrieved the white envelope.
‘It is finally here,’ Loveness said when he entered the kitchen. She motioned with her head towards the kitchen table where a book, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, was lying next to a vase of colourful flowers that Loveness had made out of silk stockings. She had, a few weeks earlier, placed her name on a list so as to borrow the title from their local library.
It took Spokes some time to look at the book because he was still taking in all the loveliness that was his wife as she stood there with a pink apron tied over her magenta georgette A-line dress. What case could possibly be so important that it would make him put off spending each and every minute in her presence? Even though he did not want it to, the answer to that question came in the form of one word: Daisy.”
Extracted from The Quality of Mercy by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, out now.
