Gravel Heart(27)

My mother wrote: Your Baba will be there with his family now, with his mother and his sisters and their children. They will look after him and make him happy. I am saddened to hear that your studies have not succeeded so far, but you must not think it’s because you are incapable. You are young, and it is not always easy to go so far from your home and succeed at what you try. But you must not give up. I know you will not stop trying, and after you have completed your work, you will return to us. I was also saddened to hear that you have said unkind things about me to your uncle. I don’t know what I have done to you to deserve that. Alhamdulillah, but I have an obligation to care for you whatever you say, and you have an obligation to me. In addition you must always remember to be courteous to everyone, and you most certainly should always remember to be grateful for what your uncle has done and is willing to do for you. You can have no understanding of how much he wanted to be of help to you. I have the highest expectations of you. Call me when you have time. I would like to hear your voice.





Your mother

I wrote: Dear Mama, he lied. I did not say anything unkind about you. I asked if that man forced you.

I left that page in my notebook.

*

Mine was the smallest room in the house, big enough for a bed, a narrow hinged shelf under the dormer window and some floor space in between. I could reach everything from my mattress. The wallpaper was clean and the window opened easily so that was something. The room overlooked a small paved yard, which had some pots of struggling plants or maybe weeds, and an abandoned and rusted barbecue. The window of the house opposite squarely faced mine, about a dozen feet away. I would have to get a curtain to add to the venetian blind, if only to keep the early-morning light out. The shower and toilet were downstairs, not gleaming marble but not disgusting either.

Mr Mgeni called it the OAU house, the Organisation of African Unity, because all the tenants were Africans, Alex from Nigeria, Mannie from Sierra Leone, who was Mood’s cousin, and Peter from South Africa. Mr Mgeni introduced me to them that Sunday morning when I arrived. Peter was the most outrageously disrespectful of them and the most worldly, and it was to him that the others addressed questions. After Mr Mgeni made his joke about the OAU house, Peter said: ‘To me the OAU has the sound of a sleazy loan company, or a money-laundering bank.’

‘What is money laundering?’ Mr Mgeni asked.

‘Money laundering is making criminal loot legal,’ Peter said, and explained to them about over-invoicing, off-shore bank deposits, over-valuing property deals, the cash economy, and endless variations of those scams. ‘All international criminals, including our OAU heroes, have to know about that kind of stuff, or they have to hire someone who does, or make it part of the deal they cut with the big global companies when they negotiate their kickbacks, otherwise they can only hide their dirty money under the bed because of the risk of criminal charges when they try to spend it outside their own filthy yards.’

‘How do you know such things?’ Mr Mgeni asked admiringly.

In time, I came to understand that all four of us were living lives in some disarray, working long hours, struggling with debt and fantasies of making good. I did not think that when I first met them. They seemed composed and at ease to me, people used to living in the city whereas I still felt like a stranger from a small town, anxious about destinations and directions although I did my best to disguise this.

Alex worked as a security officer at the National Gallery. He was slim and stylish, and strutted as he walked. Sometimes he mouthed a song or mutely broke into unexpected dance steps in the middle of a conversation. I imagined him doing that in the galleries when there were no visitors around, astonishing the solemn burghers who hung on the walls. Alex had personality in abundance, but I did not think Uncle Amir would approve of his style. He loved to wear jeans and leather jackets and shirts with two different blocks of colour, which made him look like an incompetent conman in a slum market, but he carried off this costume because he made it seem that he was doing it for fun and that he expected you to smile at the audacity of his taste. I knew he would be able to carry off a leopard-skin mantle and a penis sheath if he so wished.

Mood’s cousin Mannie worked for an office-cleaning firm, and was out until the early hours of the morning vacuuming and polishing London’s towers in the City. He had a thoughtful and silent manner that made him seem serious, someone I felt I could trust, although that may have been because he was Mood’s cousin. It made a difference knowing someone who was related to someone else when so many of us were bumping into each other so casually in the middle of nowhere.

Peter was the wit of the house, a cynical mocker of what he called bullshit, which was whatever he felt like mocking: newscasters on TV, politicians of all complexions, Muslim fanatics, Afrocentric gurus, the international community – especially the international community, bankers, generals, faith-healers … liars, liars and bullshitters, all of them. He worked as an advertising salesman for the local free newspaper. He rang up businesses and tried to persuade them to advertise, and in the meantime, whenever an opportunity arose, he wrote a little piece for the paper. His latest was: Pensioner Puts Out Fire in Corner Shop. It was all experience for the day apartheid would be over – which will be any day now, my bro, and then he could return to Cape Town to work on a proper newspaper. In unguarded moments his silences were deep and troubled.

Uncle Amir would have described them as losers and paupers, people without talent, immigrants, none of them going anywhere. For me this was the first time in my life when I could choose how to spend each moment: to study, to sleep, to eat, to sit all day long in front of the TV. The scope for lounging was limited by the need to go to classes and to work but in between I could still believe in that fantasy of choice. In the evenings I worked in the supermarket for a few hours, my legal work, moving stock and mopping floors as usual. I did illegal work in a clothes sweatshop in New Cross and when Mr Mgeni needed help on a job, he asked me along and paid me in cash. I think he understood my situation from the beginning and found me work whenever he could.