To live on a white man’s farm is a precarious existence, more so when your entire family has long cut ties with the farmer; and bad blood and stubbornness keeping your family as a nauseating reminder that the land was stolen. Mabuti and his father live that life, from a distance always staring at glistening electric lights from the secluded mansion, while he spent his days and nights in a shack of wood and corrugated steel in the company of a father with grudge that spreads with each decade and new born.
Mqomo, once worked diligently for Baas Victor and that was after his father Mbuyiselo has slaved for the farmer’s grandfather decades prior, during a time of dispossessions and family unions sundered through forced migrations. Once a miserly toy-boy for white bored meVrous throughout the farmlands of Leeuwpoort, he graduated to being a sought after love potion for many widows who lost husbands to rockfalls in mineshaft stretching the bowls of the earth.
And when his prowess had proven too dangerous among the ever insecure Boere who suspected their wives of finding joy elsewhere, he was swiftly disposed of, in the form of a tractor accident in the fields which claimed his proud side and left him with a limp. Baas Koos de Bree decided he was devoid of profitable use but a paralytic leech who just had to be avoided and left alone as his father’s ill-gotten inheritance and rotting legacy of secretly loving black people.
Over the years Mqomo became somewhat of an anathema, spoken of in hushed tones among disgruntled farm-workers who labelled him a sorcerer and blamed him of impregnating their daughters. And as time grew horns over his life, he finally had to concede to having seeded a child with Monkhulwane, who after bearing his son they named Mabuti, dies suddenly in the seclusion of far-flung shack, without help from neighbours or relatives.
He had nearly buried his wife in solitude if it were not for a visit from de Bree, who came churning dust at the heels of his battered bakkie to demand he leave the farm because it had been sold to a farmer named Vickter. Vikter, Koos’ impudent father, was always an enigma among the farm-workers; the one Boer who worked with everyone humming their strange dirges and hymns that kept the day’s chores at arm’s length.
And on that fateful day, he had come to inform Mqomo of his decision to let his some manage the property, which he and his family had ploughed and cultivated with the sweat of their brown skins. As the legend goes, Mqomo had bashed de Bree’s nose and chin with his bare knuckles that the farmer was left unconscious for hours in front of Mqomo’s wife gaping grave, which he filled with whispered prayers and curses unto a son who brought death to his loved one.
De Bree was only to be found later yawning disoriented in one of his fields after his wife called the police about a missing husband, and the news spread like wild fire through the farmland, earning Mqomo the status of a fierce warrior who could slap Boere into line. But the legend didn’t last and he had to salvage his fictitious pride by performing more miracles, and selling illegal liquor became his crafty past-time which later became every farm-worker’s past-time.
The red sandy yard flanked by empty cattle pens and busy roosters parading noon and night like sentries to a castle, became a bustling playground that even attracted mine-workers from nearby hostel compounds. He was a reticent and quiet man these days, even though he had his lust for young flesh; which he somehow managed to satiate among housemaids scattered across farms.
And today Mabuti could hear sounds of passion as he approached the shack, surely his band of canines having alerted the love-birds of an approaching disturbance. By the time Mabuti arrived with mud coating his worn boots from hunting rabbits, on reaching the sun-baked yard of his father’s homestead, the sun was setting, filling the sky with a dizzying hues.
It reminded him of his childhood, when his band of hounds were still two generations in their lineage of canines that would become trustworthy companions to his family. They were lodgers on a farm, and such faintly recalled memories often brought sadness to his mind and his father’s shack on the outskirts of a gravesite was always a centre of farmland revelling.
There were often sounds of sexual games with unknown maidens that strained though the zinc walls, and as was known, his father, Mqomo, was a noteworthy womaniser and miser.
***
Some distant flashes of panic splashed with excitement always kept him listening to the sounds, mesmerised with thoughts of how love would feel, marvelling at his father’s strange delight of being old and virile.
And Mabuti often wondered if loving a woman is similar to loving a pet or a favourite dawn, and he was eternally amazed that his father could still be copulating at his age, let alone burn with passion for some of the old gossip mongers. He remembered his father’s stern face once after he discovered Mabuti eavesdropping on grown-up business, without shame like his rabid dogs that bid no man’s word.
On that bright of day suitable for their passion in the absence of children gone herding or hunting and now as the sun was setting, his father had taken a woman at noon, and kept her ignited for hours until her employers drove around the farmlands thinking she had run away.
But today as the day drew to sleep, their shack was a quiet dignity of modesty to say the least, with his parents’ second hand furniture and a bed that squeaked with every turn when nights were too cold and they craved each other’s warmth.
And his father loved that bed, never allowed himself to have any union with a woman on that bed because he had shared it with his mother.
After parties were often chaotic, leaving the place strewn with crates and bottles, benches stacked against tree stumps and the mere air of disrupted peace reigned for hours, his father would rather find a mat to satisfy his women.
And this afternoon was no different, as Mabuti noticed that he was arriving after those damned throws of chaotic revelling, an unkempt yard full of bottles, heaving of stranded bones and dog shit smouldering in the heat of a cursed noon on a drought stricken farm.
These hours also bore delicate secrets his longing, the one day his dogs would become victors in the upcoming dogfight organised by farm owners and their sons on nights after hunting bouts for large game. Such contests were discreet, but some farm-workers were privy to their blood-cuddling escapades that honed white boys into brutal men, where often thieves were punished by having to wrestle pitfalls naked and bloody, while facing death and laughter.
On one such contest his father’s seven dogs had been mauled to death, only one survived, the bitch that littered the hounds Mabuti was bonded with to the world’s end. And when he was a child, he recalls playing aimlessly with puppies; their nibbling teeth scarring his soft skin, with tickling licks and sniffs that bore breath that smelled of milk and soil. He still scratches their ears and they aught recall his touch and scent, because his hand was often that which fed them and mended their broken bones.
***
As evening was brewing its broth, sitting by a fire and pot streaked with charred tears of overflowing porridge, he managed to lay a word about his aims.
Mabuyi intended to take a bride, but this left his father deeply annoyed, and paternally troubled as he thought his some an immaturity lump of water birth.
His father, seated on his immobile, ever-sweat soaked chair could only whisper slurs over embers rising towards the black posts of the shack’s roofing.
His mother would have understood, he though; if she hadn’t died a month ago, just a week after his father found warmth in her friend’s thighs after a drunken bout on mid-month salaries of farm-workers. Mabuti asked if he father blesses his wishes, but a volcanic rage was all he saw written on his father’s face, sudden sweat dripping infernal on his fat, rotund and solid chunk of a stomach.
And when the door to their shack suddenly swung open to a rustle of leaves and hot summer air, they both turned their heads frantically preparing for sorcery.
Mqomo spat into the flames, then a pall of silence once again reigned among shadows dancing bleakly around their company. Dogs barked outside, then howled at the moon stuck naked on black Laval sky, specks of starts washed across the expanse as they watched through the framed to their door standing ajar for spirits.
After a long silence, Mabuti decided to retreat to his sleeping area behind a rackety wardrobe facing his parent’s bed, slightly partitioned with a curtain hanging from string nailed to planks and other makeshifts hooks.
A flood of tenuously held memories crept inside Mabuti, mainly about his mother’s love for that ambient glow from the flames that allowed for her to make shadow figurines with her fingers. He remembered the monotonous chatter that mesmerised him to sleep as a child, flames crackling; his father complaining, a stick poking the coals and rousing plumes of acrid smoke.
Mqomo raised his smoke-bitten eyes and he suddenly spoke with a strange sincerity to Mabuti, about a time when young men craved not for the bonds of marriage but to fulfil lust and unbind themselves from the shackles of youth’s erotic flames.
As he spoke, his shadow kept blending with darkness that was around them; a new companionship was being born between father and son; sharing his memories of how his band of dogs loved him before any woman could take notice of him. He joked that all putrid smells of wet fur and canine breath seemed to cling to his very person and every sinew, repelling any feminine attention; not to mention hounds prowling with bare teeth menacingly taunting any stranger.
But somehow, after he managed to convince his mother of his passionate and unending love that purchases trains and planes for dowry, suddenly women could not leave him be. His skill as an electronics repairman also added to his fame, or infamy, as all junk radio’s from farm attics and sheds were being brought by women wanting to hear the latest hits and steal a glance at him working his magic.
Fear of women however, kept reminding Mabuti of his streak bad luck and derisive remarks he received on various occasions of his bravery; so his sole comfort remained with the loyalty of his band of hounds, unwavering and brutally protective. He bore a dread of failing to find woman who would love him, and as leaned against his elbow, under covers of his thinning blankets, his father was still speaking and grunts became his only reactions to his father’s nostalgic reminiscence, and he could feel a dreamless slumber creeping.
***
At dawn, Mabuti was awoken by growls from thirsty dogs and as the sun crept up the horizon, strips of light slanted into their moist and stuffy shack. Mabuti watched dust specks dance the morning awake, his face compact with drowsiness after a dream about a girl.
They’d met three days ago in the vast wild bushes that were grounds for most pastures for herd, he was hunting for rabbits there, often resting the noon sun under shade of trees scattered across the floral carpet that often cover the hills in summer. Among bristles of tall grass a herd sauntered grazing, and a shrill whistle startled him and his band of hounds from their reverie of a hunt.
He looked about and seen her, a dark-skinned girl bearing a short posture and elegant gait, standing on a rock overlooking the herd. Clearly her herd belonged to another white farmer and this meant that since she was farm-worker’s child, she would inherit that chose until she is married off to start her family elsewhere, yet possibly nearby.
He approached her unafraid figure clad in skimpy rags, handed down from white children who had outgrown their clothes, beneath her frayed jersey, decorated with holes and loose threads. Mabuti loved her instantly, and after a short introduction he knew she was named Nobantu. As they spoke through the yellowing day, Mabuti could swear he caught glimpses of his mother’s face, in her grimace and smile, shyly exposed but vividly innocent.
She was the eldest in her family, living with her mother after her father’s death. Her family had been close to his own during his mother’s days, held in high regard across the farmlands as a family of pious Christians.
Nobantu was keenly known as the priest’s daughter, her father having established an Ethiopian Orthoxdox Christian Church on one of the farms in the vicinity of Leeupoort.
And this unsettled Mabuti because he felt he was committing a moral sin, tempting a righteous girl to fall into dishonour with him. Yet he felt a compulsion to venture into an unknown space, a precipitous edge where he could be harshly reprimanded by Nobantu, or his advances received with indelible love and warmth.
The initial dread at speaking to her newly choked him, but he managed first to reprimand his dogs menacing her cattle, and that way together they had spoken, a unison that made them chuckle and them smile at one another.
Hers was a mature smile, that of a woman who had seen life beyond the herd, filled with some knowledge of strange joys and some recollections of a painful flow of time on the farmlands devoid of hope for departure.
She looked as though she was content, but a drowsy dream lingered of a faraway place with only cares for tomorrow. She wanted out but had no exit, and often her mind told her that love would be her sole escape from the drudgery of her life.
He was seated beside that rock she mounted to call her herds to order, and as he glanced upwards at her, he could see beneath her skirt and felt a tinge of shame. But she was unfazed and this told Mabuti that perhaps she felt a yearning similar to his own.
***
Suddenly the muted glow of his room filled with a striking voice of a woman - he recognised it as that of Nobuntu’s mother, and apparently all hints of the outside world were listening unnerved.
His bed felt cramped as he strained to make sense of the woman’s words trilling through the asphyxiating shack. He tried to breath in the pungent toe-jam stench, through moist air fumed with cigarette bud and ash.
He slid from under his blankets and reaching for his overalls, he started pulling them on as he limped over to his father’s room. The voice infuriated, and his half-naked body struggling with twisted arms of his garment, he felt a knot clinch his gut as the harangue was hitting a nerve in his father.
They met both peeling a curtain partitioning their sleeping rooms, and Mabuti could only utter a single lament: “Uyenze Toni Tata? Uyenze Toni? What have you done father, what have you done?”
Clearly his father’s inequities had caught up with him and went and sat riveted on his worn chair, naked, save for the torn Hilfiger Jockeys he had on, stunned by thoughts lucidly unfolding the identity of his accuser.
The woman cursed his ancestors and Mabuti walked into the living area in a fit of rage looking for something, muttering insanely under his heaving breath. A shiver raked his backbone as he reached for a shovel behind their coal stove where logs of wood had been consumed by last night’s fire.
The voice was nearing their door with its wild statements; Mqomo had impregnated her daughter!
She wondered and questioned the moral sanity of a man who beds a child his son’s age?
Any sense of respectability should have made Mqomo think twice about his actions, but he like a lust crazed maniac, all he wanted were constant orgasm.
His wife hadn’t even gone cold in her grave, but her wretch of a widow had sullied her only seed, a virgin enticed with God’s knows what sordid promises.
The woman seemed squeezed by a diabolical spirit, and Mabuti also felt an explosive realisation crush his dreams of love, strangling his throat and he heard Mqomo indignantly prowling about the shack during this entire hailstorm.
Mqomo kept mumbling that the dogs will keep her at bay and indeed they were keeping chorus with barks and growls as she kept spewing her vermin against a shut steel door of a rusted shack.
This morning there were no hungover revellers stranded on the dusty yard or sprawled on benches and crates, and the dogs kept howling like they were seeing a ghost at daytime.
Inside the shack, Mqomo seemed unfazed by the words save for the rage in his son’s eyes as he stared morosely at him pacing about, a shovel in his hand.
The lucidity of her words; his father had seduced and sullied the one he had planned for a brilliant love and this means that Nobuntu must have known about him long before their meeting. His father had played a foul game, but could he have known that his father had defiled his dream girl?
His feet itched for a while as he gripped the handle tightly and as he felt rage turn infernal in his brain, he tossed the shovel aside and headed towards his room, shoving his toes into his worn boots and dragging his his hat from under his pillow.
He glanced through the window for a moment, slinking to inspect the commotion outside and saw Nobuntu’s mother seated on the ground sobbing.
Before he walked out of the shack he looked back to see his father battling with his trembling fingers, chest streaked with sweat and he knew that he was at the beginning of a war with his private demons towards some compelling end of his life of delinquent debauchery.
***
A Testimony Of Emasculation
As that day dawned bright blue in winter, to be the last time they walked the walked homeward together; they promised one another an escape from the monotony of farm life.
“ We have heard that your damned father rapes little girls - kwedini, young and innocent girls!” One man said clutching at his throat with a grip made for shovels.
“We know that you know. He must have been teaching you his sorcery as well.” A sarcastic laughter rung in his ears as the crowd grow larger and its thrill reaching fever pitch.
“But please,” Mabuti tried to speak in a stammering voice, “I beg you. Can’t you see for yourself that my own father has sullied my own chosen lover?”
“You must have lured the girl into his snare!” A jolt of a stick rammed into Mabuti’s rib, as the voice sounded ever so pastoral and admonishing.
“You are a victim you say. You the seeds a serpent. I wonder if your own mother was not raped by this hound to give birth to you!” Women were saying in a chorus of accusations, and complicit snares from onlookers were jilting their faces with venomous rage.
As though ears were being pricked with thorns, another bulgy man with a rounded face was chanting: “Mohlomong bro fats went!
You might be castrated by your father as well, I see!”
A burly loafer with spittle dripping from his chapped lips said:“Okanye uyisishimane yını wena?”
Curled unto the dust, Mabuti could only sob, shuttering beneath blows rained by mad men and stone tossed by giggling children naming him and cursing his manhood.
Children born by underage women, who had no dreams of leaving the white man’s yard, those who addled along wishing their sons could mow a lawn that belong to the pleasure of a pale angels they always see on verandahs of farm mansions.
In the darkness, a knife glinted - he was bound to be sliced for his father’s profanities.
A gaggle of urchins kept in close tow mingled with this murderous crowd, throwing stones to taunt the victim of this slaughter.
They threaded their way through a mess of thighs and dusty feet to only discover the still, bloated body that looked like a tortured frog.
A few paces from the frenzy, with reams of barbed wire rusted about old yards of farm labourers, there played out a dejectedly morose imagining in his mind, he felt elated and holy but sinful and worthy of the blows and curses hurled against him.
A howling youngster lunges forward, and Mabuti painfully whines garbled words muttered as though they were vomit that had been stored for hours: “Ngixoleleli bakithi. I am truly sorry my people.”
A wide-eyed girl stared as bands of armed boys started to crowd the street, from corners streaming with ululating women springing on slippers, and lashing tongues on every pole standing watch over the commotion.
A broken bundle of a rapist’s son snuffled tears and snort, on feet that stumbled with each drag by his torn shirt. A rod, then a blade thrust frenzy, plunging into his back and then his neck, his pursed lips a painful murmur escaping.
Stirred by a resolve to embrace his death, the son sighed, gurgling blood; a drove of women and masses of shadows prowling at the edges of eyes burning like torches, as he was shackled to this nightmare.
“Father, where are you in my hour of death?”
***
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