At last we got the body. Wednesday. Just enough time for a Saturday funeral. We were exhausted. Empty. The funeral still ahead of us. We had to find the strength to grieve. There had been no time for grief, real- । ly. Only much bewilder- j ment and confusion. Now grief. For isn’t grief the awareness of loss? That is why when we finally got the body, Buntu said: "Do you realize | our son is dead?” I realized. Our awareness of the death of our first and only Child had been displaced completely by the effort to get his body. Even the horrible events that caused the death: we did not think of them, as such. Instead, the numbing drift of things took over our minds: the pleas, letters to be written, telephone calls to be made, telegrams to be dispatched, lawyers to consult, “ influential” people to “ get in touch with,” undertakers to be contacted, so much walking and driving. That is what suddenly mattered: the irksome details that blur the goal (no matter how terrible it is), each detail becoming a door which, once unlocked, revealed yet another door. Without being aware of it, we were distracted by the smell of the skunk and not by what the skunk had done. We realized something too, Buntu and I, that during the two-week effort to get our son’s body, we had drifted apart. For the first time in our marriage, our presence to each other had become a matter of habit. He was I saw that day, how the language of love could so easily be trampled underfoot. there. He’ll be there. And I’ll be there. But when Buntu said: “ Do you realize our son is dead?” he uttered a thought that suddenly brought us together again. It was as if the return of the body of our son was also our coming together. For it was only at that moment that we really began to grieve; as if our lungs had suddenly begun to take in air when just before, we were beginning to suffocate. Something with meaning began to emerge. We realized. We realized that something else had been happening BUNTU AND I to us, adding to the terrible events. Yes, we had drifted apart. Yet, our estrangement, just at that moment when we should have been together, seemed disturbingly comforting to me. I was comforted in a manner I did not quite understand. The problem was that I had known all along that we would have to buy the body anyway. I had known all along. Things would end that way. And when things turned out that way, Buntu could not look me in the eye. For he had said: “ Over my dead body! Over my dead body!” as soon as we knew we would be required to pay the police or the government for the release of the body of our child. “ Over my dead body! Over my dead body!” Buntu kept on saying. Finally, we bought the body. We have the receipt. The police insisted we take it. That way, they would be “ protected.” It’s the law, they said. I suppose we could have got the body earlier. At first I was confused, for one is supposed to take comfort in the heroism of one’s man. Yet, inwardly, I could draw no comfort from his outburst. It seemed hasty. What sense was there to it when all I wanted was the body of my child? What would happen if, as events unfolded, it became clear that Buntu would not give up his life? What would happen? What would happen to him? To me? For the greater part o f two weeks, all Buntu's efforts, together with friends, relatives, lawyers and the newspapers, were to secure the release of the child’s body without the humiliation of having to pay for it. A “ fundamental principle.” Why was it difficult for me to see the wisdom of the principle? The worst thing, I suppose, was worrying about what the police may have been doing to the body of my child. How they may have been busy prying it open “ to determine the cause of death” ? Would I want to look at the body when we finally got it? To see further DEATH OF mutilations in addition to the “ cause .of death” ?What kind of mother would not want to look at the body of her child? people will ask. Some will say: “ It’s grief." She is too grief-stricken. “ But s t i l l...,” they will say. And the elderly among them may say: “ Young people are strange.” But how can they know? It was not that I would not want to see the body of my child, but that I was too afraid to confront the horrors of my own imagination. I was haunted by the thought of how useless it had been to have created something. What had been the point of it all? This body filling up with a child. The child steadily growing into something that could be seen and felt. Moving, as it always did, at that time of day when I was all alone at home waiting for it. What had been the point of it ail? How can they know that the . mutilation to determine “ the cause of death” ripped my own body? Can they think of a womb feeling hunted? Disgorged? And the milk that I still carried. What about it? What had been the point of it all? Even Buntu did not seem to sense that that principle, the “ fundamental principle,” was something too intangible for me at that moment, something that I desperately wanted should assume the form of my child’s body. He still seemed far from ever knowing. I remember one Saturday morning early in our courtship, as Buntu and I walked hand-in-hand through town, window-shopping. We cannot even be said to have been windowshopping, for we were aware of very little that was not ourselves. Everything in those windows was merely an excuse for words to pass between us. We came across three girls sitting on the pavement, sharing a packet of fish and chips after they had just bought it from a nearby Portuguese cafe. Buntu said: “ I want fish and chips too.” I said: “ So seeing is desire.” I said: “ My man is greedy!” We laughed. I still remember how he tightened his grip on my hand. The strength of it! Just then, two white boys coming in the opposite direction suddenly rushed at the girls, and, without warning, one of them kicked the packet of fish and chips out of the hands of the girl who was holding it. The second boy kicked away the rest of what remained in the packet. The girl stood up, shaking her hand as if to throw off the pain in it. Then she pressed it under her armpit as if to squeeze the pain out of it. Meanwhile, the two boys went on their way laughing. The fish and chips lay scattered on the pavement and on the street like stranded boats on a river that had ASO N By Njabulo S. Ndebele gone dry. “ Just let them do that to you!” said Buntu, tightening once more his grip on my hand as we passed on like sheep that had seen many of their own in the flock picked out for slaughter. We would note the event and wait for our turn. I remember I looked at Buntu, and saw his face was somewhat glum. There seemed no connection between that face and the words of reassurance just uttered. For a while, we went on quietly. It was then that I noticed his grip had grown somewhat limp. Somewhat reluctant. Having lost its self-assurance, it seemed to .have been holding on because it had to, not because of a confident sense of possession. It was not to be long before his words were tested. How could fate work this way, giving to words meanings and intentions they didhot carry when they were uttered?'! saw that day, how the language of love could so easily be trampled underfoot, or scattered like fish and chips on the pavement, and left stranded and abandoned like boats in a river that suddenly went dry. Never again was love to be confirmed with words. The world around us was too hostile for vows of love. At any moment, the vows could be subjected to the stress of proof. And love died. For words of love need not be tested. On that day, Buntu and I began our silence. We talked and laughed, of course, but we stopped short of words that would demand proof of action. Buntu knew. He knew the vulnerability of words. And so he sought to obliterate words with acts that seemed to promise redemption. On that day, as we continued with our walk in town, that Saturday morning, coming up towards us from the opposite direction, was a burly Boer walking with his wife and two children. They approached Buntu and me with an ominously determined advance. Buntu attempted to pull me out of the way, but I never had a chance. The Boer shoved me out of the way, as if clearing a path for his family. I remember, I almost crashed into a nearby fashion display window. I remember, I glanced at the family walking away, the mother and the father each dragging a child. It was for one of those children that I had been cleared away. I remember, also, that as my tears came out, blurring the Boer family and everything else, I saw and felt deeply what was inside of me: a desire to be avenged. But nothing happened. A ll I heard was Buntu say: “ The dog!” At that very moment, I felt my own hurt vanish like a wisp of smoke. And as my hurt vanished, it was replaced, instead, by a tormenting desire to sacrifice myself for Buntu. Was it 16 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988
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