Sometimes There Is a Void by Zakes Mda Page B

‘genuine’, ‘alone’, or ‘pure’ – was the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, the PAC. Ntlabathi Mbuli was also a poet whose works created a great impression on me. What amazed me most about his poetry was that although the man was a guerrilla fighter his poems were not about war or even about the oppression and suffering of his people. He wrote about love and related passions – hatred, anger, desire, and lust. I also learnt that he was a scholar of the Romantic period. Though his poetry was free verse, you could hear Byron, Keats and Wordsworth in it as loudly as if they were in the room.
    We walked uphill over a rocky terrain for what seemed like hours in silence. He spoke only when he asked if I wanted to rest a bit. And I did. The trunk was heavy.
    Finally we reached a gravel road. An old bakkie – a pickup truck – was waiting for us. We loaded the trunk on the bed and both got into the cab. Without a word the driver, a scrawny man with a goatee wearing blue overalls, pulled away. I asked Ntlabathi if it was okay if I
opened the window; there was a stench of beer. On the side of the road I saw a number of bottles of lager. Apparently the scrawny man was having a party by himself while waiting for us.
    The road twisted and turned on the mountainside and in the dark I could make out shapes of huts and kraals. But there were no humans at that time of the night. Of the morning, in fact, for it must have been long after midnight. The man opened a bottle cap with his teeth and gave it to me.
    â€˜I don’t drink,’ I said.
    â€˜What makes you think I was giving it to you? You want Ntate Mda to castrate me?’ asked the driver.
    Ntlabathi reached for the beer and took one long swig. Then he gave it back to the man who put the bottle between his knees and occasionally took a swig as he negotiated his way along the treacherous bends. He was nursing the pickup so slowly that the folk tale tortoise who won the race because of the hare’s over-confidence would have outrun this truck as well.
    A teardrop rolled down my cheek. Just one drop. I rubbed it off quickly before the men could notice. I was thinking of my mother. And of my brothers: Sonwabo, Monwabisi and Zwelakhe. And of my sister Nomathamsanqa, who we called Thami for short. I was thinking of Cousin Mlungisi, Nikelo and Xolile. Anger swelled in my chest when I remembered how we used to hang out together and talk about soccer, and how Nikelo used to regale us with his exploits with some of the most beautiful ladies at St Teresa’s and then later at Healdtown in the deeper Eastern Cape where he was enrolled for his high school education, how I was no longer part of that camaraderie when the three guys returned from the initiation school. I was thinking of Keneiloe. I was wondering what she was up to at that moment. Of course she was in bed. But what about the next day? And the next? She was likely to find herself a new boyfriend. What song was she going to compose for him? He might not be knock-kneed so the song she’d composed for me would not apply to him. She’d better not sing my song to him. That would be the worst betrayal.
    My thoughts constantly returned to my siblings. I regretted that I
took them for granted when I was with them, as if they would always be there. There was a big gap of almost ten years between Zwelakhe and me, and I was six years older than Thami. Also, for the most part they lived with my mother in Johannesburg when I was banished to my grandparents’ place, so I never got to bond with them. The twins, on the other hand, were only three years younger. They were part of my world because they also lived at Qoboshane for some time. In Sterkspruit we had a lot in common as well. Not only did we sleep in the same bedroom where we played snakes and ladders in the candlelight and laughed at the antics of Chunky Charlie , we also played soccer together on the