The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (25 page)

“My grandfather used to say when you’re dead you spend your time wishing you could pay taxes.”

The beetle’s not dead yet. “It isn’t the work. That beyond this bed there’s work I have to do. All those little boys. Tomo.
Soon he’ll be awake and pulling on the edge of my sheets. He might be already awake and doing that. Because times like this
I only know what I’m thinking, not what’s happening.”

“I understand. Tomo. It’s difficult.”

“I said, it isn’t Tomo. It’s the wanting —”

“But wanting what?”

“Didn’t I just explain it to you?”

T
o give them hope, Antoinette read Genesis to the cows. She brought her Bible out to the veld and read to them.

“And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, In my dream, behold, I stood upon the bank of a river:

“And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, fat fleshed and well favored; and they fed in a meadow.”

(Kine, Antoinette explained to them, means you.)

“And, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill favored, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt
for sadness:

“And the lean and ill favored kine did eat up the first seven fat kine.”

The cows stood there and listened to her. Their eyes were hardly visible through the dust that coated them. They had dug their
faces into the earth till the earth blinded them.

What she left out, she told me later as she fiddled with the nozzle of the paraffin can in order to stoke the Primus—the swoop
of the paraffin catching, its muted steady roar—was what happened after the ill favored kine ate the fat ones. Her Bible on
the counter, a pen holding the spot, her hand reaching for it.

She reads, “And when they had eaten them up, it could not be known that they had eaten them; but they were still ill favored,
as at the beginning. So I awoke.”

The stove, a perfect circle of blue flame. The tiny black flecks in the flame. Antoinette closes the book.

That night we listened to their raspy lows from our beds. Night being the only time they expressed their displeasure toward
God at being ill favored.

A
new Goas tradition. In honor of independence, Obadiah would write a play for Cassinga Day, May 4. And so weekends he sequestered
himself in the mimeograph shack with the big crank machine, the chemicals, and the spiders. He had some boys carry over his
personal library. He’d refuse to eat anything other than rusks and cold tea. Through the grimy window we watched him, surrounded
by all those tented books. Occasionally he’d emerge lost in thought. We knew this because if you happened to be passing by
when he was standing outside the door, he’d say, “Yes, well, I’m lost in thought.” Then, if you laughed he stared at you,
not at your face, at your heart, as if something was missing there. We did not understand the tribulations.

A knock on the door. “Head Teacher?”

“Come in.”

A boy, a Standard Two named Tonderai, famous around Goas as the one who loves to run messages back and forth for teachers,
enters the writer’s chamber shyly.

“Ah, Muse, I thought you’d forsaken me. I must say I was expecting someone taller.”

“Auntie will be back to tomorrow, Teacher. Sister Ursula phoned.”

Obadiah uncaps a pen and hands it to the boy.

“Slay me.”

“Excuse, Teacher?”

“With this lance—do it.”

I
climb up the hill to the cross and find Vilho up there by himself. He’s reading and doesn’t say anything to me, and I don’t
say anything to him.

When Vilho read, he had a strange way of squinching his eyes. It occurs to me now that this might have been because he was
rereading sentences. He would hold the book close to his face and remain on the same page for a long time. On a farm full
of readers, he might have been the only one who read with pure delight.

I sit bookless and read the names of boys left on the rocks near the base of the cross: Absalom Shipanga ’81, Phillemon Silvanus
’77, Nestor Nashongo ’74, Titus Mueshihua ’86, Matundu Kapute ’77, Erwin Mbando ’70, Rodney Goaseb ’87, Adonis Gowab ’84,
Abraham Haifiku ’73, Petrus Van Weyk ’73, Johannes Isack ’77, Rueben Holongo ’79, Ihepa Enkono ’82, Stephanus Nami ’81, Andreas
Kati ’75, Joseph Manasse ’77, David Visser ’74, Phineas Shivute ’82.

After a while, Vilho peers over the rim of his book. “Do you know what today is?”

“Thursday.”

“Maundy Thursday.”

“What’s that?”

“The day in John when the supplicants wash the feet of the poorest.”

“Whose poorest?”

“How much do you have?” Vilho says.

We empty our pockets of rands, toss the money in the sand. Four rand, sixty total. The light retreats like another traitor.
Neither of us washes the other’s feet. We sit in the gray silence, our socks off. Absalom Shipanga. Phillemon Silvanus. Nestor
Nashongo. Titus Mueshihua. Matundu Kapute. Erwin Mbando. Rodney Goaseb. Adonis Gowab. Abraham Haifiku. Petrus Van Weyk. Johannes
Isack. Rueben Holongo . . .

N
othing like this has ever happened to us before. Precipitation is more common. Obadiah’s place is empty at morning meeting.
The principal sends a boy and the boy returns, stands, waiting to be told to speak. He’s a Standard Three, one of Obadiah’s,
and his uniform’s in good order. Gray wool shorts, clean shirt buttoned to the neck. I don’t know his name. He is nervous,
and his lips are trembling. He stands on one bare foot. With the other he scratches the back of his leg.

“Well?”

“Teacher says he is sick, Master Sir.”

“Sick?”

“Yes.”

“He’s in bed?”

“No, Master Sir.”

“Where is he, then?”

“On his car, Master Sir.”

“The pile of sand?”

“Yes.”

“Sick with what?”

“I don’t know, Master Sir.”

“Go find out.”

And so we wait in silence, the principal clearing and reclearing his throat. It was unthinkable to pontificate in the morning
without Obadiah. The principal fancied himself not only Obadiah’s boss but also his rhetorical better. Every day he declared
victory in this battle.

The boy comes back.

“Speak.”

The boy hesitates.

“Out with it!”

“Teacher says he is sick with creation, Master Sir.”

At break we went out there to check on him. Above our heads, a cloud, pallid and lazy, floated by, promising nothing. I watched
it scatter and break apart above the Erongos. He was sitting at the top of the mound, on a chair he’d brought from his kitchen.
Under one of the legs of the chair, as if driven through by a stake, was his play.

“How’s it, Teacher?”

“Disgusting.”

“So you’ve finished?”

He hid his face with his hands. “Finished?” he whispered. “Finished?”

“Yes, are you —”

“There is no finished. There’s only surrender.”

He took his hands away and gazed for a long time at each of us, but it looked, somehow, as if he were only remembering us.
As if we were gone and he was lonely already.

Then he said, “They lie. It’s nothing at all like giving birth. Giving death? Yes. They lived in my head and they came out
in the world shriveled, blue.” He thumbed himself in the chest. “I’m a murderer.”

“Who’d you kill?”

“Ignatius and the others.”

“Who?”

He shook his head. We joined him on the mound until the triangle called us back to work.

The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy

of Ignatius Mumbeli
or,
The Suitcase

by

Mimnermus

The Players would like to thank the following sponsors:

Desconde Motors, Schmidsdorf Meats and Poultry, and the Kingdom of Sweden

SCENE 1:
The bedsheet rises on the cramped kitchen of a typical location house in the Ovambo section of Katatura location, Windhoek.
A battered kitchen table, a battered cupboard, a battered kettle on the stove. If possible, a cockroach should scramble back
and forth across the table during the scene. If no cockroaches are available (when are they around when you need them?), a
drawing of a cockroach in motion will suffice.
KOSMOS INDONGO
in an elegant white suit and Panama hat. His beautiful wife, in a simple frock, tends to the kettle. Throughout the scene
she gazes lovingly at her husband. There is a sharp rap on the door.

INDONGO:
Entrez.

MUMBELI (
offstage
): Sir?

INDONGO: I said,
Entrez
. It’s French for entrez.
Entrez!

The door opens hesitantly.

MUMBELI (
dressed in the simple blue jumper of a railway worker
): Good evening, sir. (
He nods to
IZELDA
, who is gazing lovingly at her husband.
)

INDONGO (
a man of action bored by pleasantries
): So, my man, you wish to join the struggle?

MUMBELI: I do, sir.

INDONGO: Very dangerous.

MUMBELI: I accept the dangers. Every night I dream —

INDONGO (
whaps the cockroach
): In dreams begin lies, my son.

MUMBELI: Excuse?

INDONGO: I have dreamed away decades. Not the years, but the dreams that age us. It’s odd. They seem so harmless in the morning.
(
IZELDA
gazes lovingly at her husband
.) Who are you, my son?

MUMBELI: I am Ignatius Mumbeli.

INDONGO: May your name be remembered.

MUMBELI: It is not my name that’s important. It is my country.

INDONGO (
smiles
): Well spoken. I too have waited long enough. Across two world wars. Two colonial powers. Two international organizations.
Countless useless toothless resolutions. The rulings of the World Court. Whose court is the World Court? Are we not part of
the world? I misplaced my faith. (
He takes a gun from his pocket and sets it on the table.
) And yet you think I am in love with the gun of this, the first act?

MUMBELI (
taking up the gun
): No, sir.

INDONGO: My son, I grant you this valise of high quality. Fill it with many things, including ammunition, but most of all
with courage.

MUMBELI: I thank you for this case, sir. I pledge to fill it not only with the necessary items, such as socks, undershirts,
sweaters, small keepsakes, but also with —

BOER POLICEMAN NUMBER 1 (
shouting
): Ah! Is this a meeting in violation of the Non-Assembly Act, SA 771, Section 10, as applicable to the mandated territory?
Am I late? Passes, var are your passes? Vostek! Bliksem! (
INDONGO
and
MUMBELI
run around the table, followed by
BOER POLICEMAN NUMBER 1
, waving his sjambok. Eventually who is chasing whom becomes confused after
MUMBELI
seizes the sjambok and he and
INDONGO
chase the
POLICEMAN. IZELDA
holds the kettle, watches
.)

Bulb dims.

SCENE 2:
The living room of a typical location house in the Damara section of Katatura location. Two blue chairs.

PARADISE (
sewing a scarf
): So you have come, my gallant, to say farewell? (
She begins to cry
.)

MUMBELI (
placing his suitcase center stage
): Don’t weep, baby.

PARADISE: Would you I show more mirth than I am mistress of?

MUMBELI: Oh, in a better world than this . . .

PARADISE: Alas. (
They clasp hands
.)

MUMBELI: Alas.

PARADISE: My pride in you is a mansion bitter built. My heart, however, is torn asunder. Go, my lovely! But know this: I will
wait for you. (
Pause. Quietly
) That’s a very nice case.

MUMBELI: Always judge the man by the caliber of his luggage.

PARADISE (
holds up scarf
): I knit you this. Carry it well.