Hunger Eats a Man (12 page)

It is now five weeks after the cutting off of Muntukabani's testicles and three weeks after the same operation was performed on Dlamini. Nomsa cannot get either of these incidents out of her mind. Dlamini's case is difficult because he tried to fight and the Grinding Stone beat him severely before removing his genitals. The mutilation of the men affected Nomsa so much that now she cannot look at a man's trousers, especially the zip, without envisioning the blood that came out of both these men. She sees Muntukabani's penis becoming tumescent and then falling forever. She feels her scalp tingle when this happens and tries hard to remind herself that what they did was right. They are speaking for the women who cannot speak for themselves and they are using the only language men understand – violence.

Nomsa is grateful that she has a very good man who understands her. Who does not beat or abuse her because of her attitude towards pregnancy and sex.

It is a hot October Sunday and Nomsa opens the fridge to get some juice. She is so shocked by what she sees that she thinks she may be hallucinating. Inside the fridge are fifteen pairs of bulls' testicles arranged in three rows of five each. She feels a superstitious fear grip her as she notices that all the white balls are in the top row and the blacks in the middle, while the reds are at the bottom. Her first response to the sight is that it must have something to do with the cutting of
Muntukabani's and Dlamini's genitals. Again, Muntukabani's penis hardens and she tries hard not to scream.

It is her helper, Ntombi, who saves her by telling Nomsa that she has seen for herself Bongani coming in with the plastic bag full of “them” and putting them in the fridge.

“Oh my God! He is mad!” Nomsa says, and holds her mouth with the palm of her left hand. “What was he thinking, bringing this dirt to my house? My fridge?”

“It's hard to tell. But he looked very pleased as he kept arranging and rearranging them.”

Nomsa's mouth is open as she listens.

“I heard him talk to himself about the joys of fatherhood and I asked him what he meant by that and he said it was so nice a book that I should read it.”

“I can't believe this!” Nomsa does not know what to think. It is better that no ghost has brought these testicles, but knowing that Bongani has done it worries her. The only explanation for it is that he is mad, and she thinks about having a mad husband and decides that it is not a good thing. “He is mad!” she says again, as if saying it can reverse the condition.

“At least,” Ntombi offers, “he sounded very happy. I have never seen him this happy before.”

“Where is he?” Anger and fear are mingled in Nomsa's voice.

“In the toilet,” Ntombi says, with a mouth full of a muffin she is eating with coffee, in spite of the heat.

“I've just been to the toilet and he is not there,” Nomsa protests. Ntombi takes a few seconds swallowing before she answers, “He said he will use the outside one because there is no privacy inside.” Ntombi takes a sip of her coffee.

“He said what?” Nomsa does not await a reply. As she briskly strides outside, she opens her mouth and Ntombi notices her tongue moving in and out of the gap. She thanks God that Nomsa is not angry at her.

The toilet to which Nomsa is going is just a few metres from the
house. It is very old but in a useable condition. It was erected many years ago when this home was built for some white family, but it has not been used since the Hadebe family was renting out the two outbuilding rooms. When they got so rich that they could build a double-storey and demolish the outbuilding, they kept the toilet to use in times of emergency, like when they have some function that brings many people together. This toilet is always locked, but Ntombi has been instructed to clean it at least once a month.

When Nomsa is close to the toilet, she remembers that a madman cannot be trusted, so she takes two steps back before she shouts, “Bongani, are you there?”

Instead of getting an answer, she hears Bongani groaning inside, “Oh my mother! Is that silly herbalist trying to kill me? Ohhh! Ouch!
Awe malo
!”

Nomsa waits for a few moments trying to hear what Bongani is saying, but her confusion dulls her ears. “Bongani, are you all right?”

Only now does Bongani hear her and cries loudly, “Ohhh! Leave me alone!”

Nomsa again asks what his problem is.

“It's beans!” Bongani is still in pain as he speaks.

Nomsa is completely lost as to what Bongani is talking about. She pushes the door forcibly and kicks it when she finds it locked. “What is wrong, Bongani? Open this door! Now!”

“It's beans. Oooo! Leave me alone, beans!”

When she hears this, Nomsa thinks her husband has been poisoned, and for a moment she forgets her anger about the bulls' testicles in her fridge and rushes to the garage in fright to start the car and take her husband to the hospital. She shouts at Ntombi to come and assist her quickly. It is better to have a poisoned husband than a mad one.

As Nomsa runs to get the car, Bongani is groaning and cursing Sgonyela. Then he hears his wife and Ntombi coming and starts groaning again, “Leave me alone, beans!”

“Where did you eat, Bongani?”

“At Zwelakhe's. Hmmn!” Bongani says without thinking. It is as if he has anticipated her.

“But I told you that they hate you, those people. Look now!”

Bongani drags himself out of the toilet and Nomsa and Ntombi help him to the car.

When they are about to reach the Central Hospital, Bongani is no longer groaning as much. Nomsa takes the opportunity to ask him why in hell did he bring “those” things to her house.

“What are testicles for?” Bongani answers. “There is only one biological function of testicles that I know of: to create something which, if pumped into something, creates something that I want.”

“You are mad!” Nomsa yells at Bongani, and for a moment she forgets that she is driving and almost loses control of the car. “Would you stop talking in parables and answer my question?”

But then they arrive at the hospital and the matter is put aside for a moment. Nomsa makes arrangements with the nurses and clerks – many of whom live in Canaan and respect them – to let Bongani see the doctor before the people already waiting for the doctor to arrive. Because it is a Sunday, the doctor only comes when she has been called. The wait will be long, and Nomsa is in no mood for her mad husband, so she leaves him sitting on the bench, telling him to call her when he is done.

When the doctor finally arrives at quarter to twelve, Bongani is called to see her first. The other patients protest, but the nurse tells them that Bongani phoned early in the morning to make an appointment. He is indeed a VIP and is unlike them, who simply brought their big foreheads to the hospital without making an appointment.

Bongani does not know the name of his doctor and no one tells him, so he decides that she is a Chinese woman as young or as old as he is. When she asks him what his problem is, the best Bongani can say is, “It's beans.”

For a while the doctor thinks maybe it is her poor English that
makes her misunderstand or be misunderstood by Bongani. It is when she looks at the nurse and sees her smiling that she realises the problem may be with the answering, not her question.

“What I'm trying to say is, ‘Where is the pain?'” she tries again.

“It's here,” Bongani points to his posterior.

When he tells her this, the doctor takes a pen and hurriedly scribbles in Bongani's file. It is her day off, but she has many patients to see and so she is in a rush. “I think you have piles, Mr Hadebe. Take this to the dispensary and they will give you pills and painkillers. If that does not work, you will have to be operated on to have them removed.”

As he stands up to leave, Bongani feels some strange movement in his anus. “Oh! My mother! They are starting again!” he tells the waiting patients and the walls of Out-patient Department.

He drags himself to the hall where the window to the dispensary is and seats himself in the queue. The ailment is not new to him. He started suffering from piles as a very young boy. He smiles as he recalls that he felt so special when he knew that he had an anus that nobody else had. He used to stoop, display his anus and push. When he did this, something came out from within and it was that which the people viewed and were pleased by. Not a day passed when Bongani was not asked to show his anus. Many times he even got paid for it. “Show us your anus, Bongani!” they used to say.

It was in the 1980s when he was in high school that he came to know the piles for what they were – painful and bleeding intruders. They almost killed him. He made an observation concerning them: The intruders were Satan's disease that could breathe on their own.

“Oh God, I am going to be lean again!” he laments aloud, and the man who is next to him laughs.

When he has finally got his prescriptions, he calls Nomsa from his cell phone to come and fetch him. He then moves slowly outside to wait for her. On the way out is a shop where he buys
The Eye of People
. He knows that Nomsa will not come right away, but will make a point of taking her time.

As he comes out of the gates, two boys run to him and tell him that if he is going to town, he should use the car that each is pointing to.

“No. Someone is coming to fetch me! Thanks.”

“Shit!” one of the boys curses and leaves as the driver of the car hoots for him. The other goes inside to get two people who are coming from the hospital.

Bongani sits and reads without making any sense of what the stories he is reading are about. His mind is troubled that the disease from hell has attacked him again. It is on page three that he finds a face that catches his attention. Although at first he cannot place the man with a big head full of pimples, he soon sees that it is a man he has visited twice in a month and that the man is Sgonyela. It angers him that the medicine from this man whose photo is in front of him has caused the return of his disease from hell.

His anger increases when he reads that Sgonyela has been arrested in connection with the murder of an old man who lived somewhere around Manakanaka. The article continues that Sgonyela is also under investigation for other related crimes, such as killing people for body parts. The reporter suggests that these body parts are allegedly used by the popular herbalist to make medicine for many of his clients' needs.

“Bastard!” Bongani curses aloud. “My children? My money?”

“What children?” Nomsa asks from behind, and for a moment Bongani runs out of words. “What the hell are you talking about? Hhe, Bongani? Are you trying to tell me that you have children I do not know about?” Nomsa starts to feel hot. “Oh my God! What is happening to me? Why this now?”

“It's not like that. The thing is—”

“Shut up! You're lying about something!”

Bongani begs his wife to calm down and promises to tell her the whole story, which he does. He tells her how having children is so important to him, and what he has done to try to get them.

“Do you even love me?” she asks. “Or is all you care about children?”

“Of course I do! Why do you think I am still committed to you and don't have a child with someone else? You are so precious to me that I can't think of not creating this special thing with you. Children are a blessing.”

Nomsa sits down beside her husband. “It is time that we are honest with each other. I will tell you the actual reason why I am resolved not to have children.”

“For as long as I can remember, I have not been a complete person,” Nomsa says. “There has always been a void in me and I want you to understand. Perhaps then I will be able to be a human being again. I always ask myself why the Living Ghost chose me? Maybe this is a question I will keep asking but will find no answer to.

“It all started when I was about six years old. I did not know what it was then. My father used to be so interested in me, offering to wash me and all. I did believe he loved me as he always said when he wanted to spend time with me. I remember that when he washed me, he took time touching my private parts. I did not worry too much because I did not know what it meant. Every time he got a chance he would offer to wash me. Even when I refused, saying that I could wash myself, he insisted. I think that Mother was pleased at first because she believed it proved that he loved me. This went on for a long time and I was getting used to it. Then he started to do other things. When he washed me, he would sit me on his lap, making sure that I touched his private parts.

“I was eight when he began to take out his penis. I remember that he used to let me sit with my legs wide open so my private parts touched his. I began to feel uneasy about this. As young as I was I just knew that something was wrong about what he did to me. What worried me even more, though, is that it felt good when he did it. Even today I still hate myself for ever feeling like that.

“He would always stop once he had peed on me, though of course it wasn't really pee. It just seemed that way because I was so young. I could see that every time he peed he changed, becoming agitated and afraid. I started to hate and fear him. He told me that what he did was our special secret. I was not supposed to tell anyone. I was not supposed to tell, even in my dreams.

“But the worst was yet to come. I was ten when I told my mother that I did not want my father to wash me any more. She asked me why and I did not tell her the truth. I said I was grown enough to wash myself. When Mother told him to not wash me any more, I could see that he was really angry. But he pretended he was only disappointed because he was trying to help me. Our relationship started to be tenser now. He knew I said what I said because I knew what he did to me was wrong.

“Then one day he came to my room. I could tell by the look in his eyes that something was really amiss. There was something evil on his mind. At first he started by trying to be nice, telling me that he loved me very much. He said I was his favourite little girl and I would always be special to him. It was a hot day and I was only wearing a light skirt with nothing on top. After going on about his love for me, he started to touch me, trying to get my skirt off at the same time. I began to cry and told him to leave me alone. Now he had become a fearsome person who looked like a stranger to me. I thought the devil had taken over. I cried even louder and soon realised that it was useless because there was nobody home who could hear me. The devil had chosen his timing perfectly. I tried to push his hands off me but he was too strong. He managed to put his hands under my panties while he held me down with his other hand. He kept telling me that it was okay. He was not going to hurt me. I struggled until I completely ran out of strength. He took off my pants and … all I can say is the man killed me that day.

“When he was finished he told me not to tell anyone. I told him I was going to tell Mother, but he said she would not believe me,
nobody would believe a lying little whore like me. I told him to go to hell, but he laughed at me, saying he would gladly go when the time was right. I was hurt and hopeless. He knew that he had won and so he kept doing it whenever he felt like it or got a chance.

“One day I did tell Mother but, as he had said, she did not believe me. She went to ask him if it was true and he said I was crazy, that I hated him and so I was making up lies about him. She only believed my story when I was fourteen and got pregnant. I could see that she was hoping I would say I had had sex with another boy, but I kept telling her that it was him. My father was the father of the child I was carrying. She then suggested we get rid of the baby, which we did. It was after that that I vowed never to have a child again. In honour of my dead baby.”

“But you should have told me,” Bongani says. “I would not have pushed you and tried all these ploys to get children. If I had known all of this I would have been a different man towards you.”

As they drive back home Nomsa is silent, thinking about what Bongani has told her about Sgonyela's medicines. Can that black medicine really work? Can it be the reason for the dreams she has been having? Dreams of her unborn baby, begging her to be taken home. Can it be the reason for the nausea she has been feeling in the mornings recently?

She recalls a story her grandmother told her about a couple who consulted an
inyanga
when they were unable to have children. As a result, they got a son who turned out to be something very scary. At the age of six months he started to steal raw meat and eat it. When they went to ask the
inyanga
what was wrong with the baby he told them that he had given them one of his children – one who had become a problem for him. The
inyanga
told them not to complain. They had asked for a child and he had given them one.

Nomsa is worried. Will whatever is growing inside her be human or will it be something created by Sgonyela's potions?