Ways of Dying (2 page)

It is not different, really, here in the city. Just like back in the village, we live our lives together as one. We know everything about everybody. We even know things that happen when we are not there; things that happen behind people's closed doors deep in the middle of the night. We are the all-seeing eye of the village gossip. When in our orature the storyteller begins the story, ‘They say it once happened . . .', we are the ‘they'. No individual owns any story. The community is the owner of the story, and it can tell it the way it deems it fit. We would not be needing to justify the communal voice that tells this story if you had not wondered how we became so omniscient in the affairs of Toloki and Noria.

Both Toloki and Noria left the village at different times, and were bent on losing themselves in the city. They had no desire to find one another, and as a result forgot about the existence of
each other. But we never stopped following their disparate and meagre lives. We were happy when they were happy. And felt the pain when they were hurt. In the beginning, there were times when we tried to get them together, like homeboys and homegirls sometimes get together and talk about home, and celebrate events of common interest such as births, marriages, ancestral feasts, and deaths. But our efforts disappeared like sweat in the hair of a dog. Indeed, even in his capacity as a Professional Mourner, Toloki avoided funerals that involved homeboys and homegirls. Since his bad experience with Nefolovhodwe, the furniture-maker who made it good in the city, and now pretends that he does not know the people from the village anymore, Toloki has never wanted to have anything to do with any of the people of his village who have settled in the city. He is not the type who forgives and forgets, even though his trouble with Nefolovhodwe happened many years ago, during his very early days in the city. Noria, on the other hand, has always lived in communion with her fellow-villagers, and with other people from all parts of the country who have settled in the squatter camp. So, we put the idea of getting Noria and Toloki together out of our minds until today, at the funeral of this our little brother.

The distant bells of the cathedral toll ‘Silent Night', as Toloki prepares to sleep for the night. The strikes are slow and painful, not like the cheery carol that the angel-faced choirboys sang that very morning on the steps of the church. He was on his way to the funeral, and he stopped and listened. Christmas Day has no real significance for him. Nor has the church. But he enjoys carols, and always sings along whenever he hears them. He could not stop for long, since he did not know what time the funeral would be. He was not involved in this funeral
in his professional capacity. In fact, until that morning he was not aware that there was going to be a funeral on this day. It is not usual to hold funerals on Christmas Day. He thought he was doomed to sit in utter boredom at his quayside resting place for the entire day, sewing his costume and putting his things in readiness for the busy coming days in the cemeteries. Then he heard two dockworkers talk of the strange things that were happening these days, of this woman whose child was killed, and who insisted that he must be buried on Christmas Day or not at all. Toloki there and then decided to seize the opportunity, and spend a fulfilling day at the graveside. He did not have an inkling that a homegirl was involved in this funeral, otherwise we know that he would not have gone. But after all, he was happy to see Noria.

At regular intervals of one hour the bell tolls ‘Silent Night'. At the window of the tower, perhaps in the belfry, Toloki can see a Christmas tree with twinkling lights of red, green, blue, yellow, and white. The cathedral is a few streets away from his headquarters, as he calls the quayside shelter and waiting-room where he spends his nights. But since it is on a hill, he can enjoy the beauty of the lights, and tonight the bells will lull him to a blissful sleep with carols. But first he must prepare some food for himself. From the shopping trolley where he keeps all his worldly possessions, he takes out a packet containing his favourite food, a delicacy of Swiss cake relished with green onions. He pushes the trolley into one corner, where he knows it is always safe. Though his headquarters are a public place, no one ever touches his things, even when he has gone to funerals and left them unattended for the whole day. Everyone knows that the trolley belongs to Toloki who sleeps at the quayside, come rain or shine. No one ever bothers him and his property. Not the cleaners, nor the police. Not even the rowdy sailors from cargo ships and the prostitutes who come to entertain them.

He takes a bite first of the cake, and then of the green onions. His eyes roll in a dance of pleasure. He chews slowly, taking his time to savour each mouthful. Quite a tingling taste, this delicacy has. It is as though the food is singing in his mouth. Quite unlike the beans that he ate this morning. Those who have seen him eat this food have commented that it is an unusual combination. All the more reason to like it. Although it is of his own composition, it gives him an aura of austerity that he associates with monks of eastern religions that he has heard sailors talk about.

Sometimes he transports himself through the pages of a pamphlet that he got from a pink-robed devotee who disembarked from a boat from the east two summers ago, and walks the same ground that these holy men walk. He has a singularly searing fascination with the lives of these oriental monks. It is the thirst of a man for a concoction that he has never tasted, that he has only heard wise men describe. He sees himself in the dazzling light of the aghori sadhu, held in the same awesome veneration that the devout Hindus show the votaries. He spends his sparse existence on the cremation ground, cooks his food on the fires of a funeral pyre, and feeds on human waste and human corpses. He drinks his own urine to quench his thirst. The only detail missing is a mendicant's bowl made from a human skull, for he shuns the collection of alms. Votary or no votary, he will not collect alms. It is one tradition of the sacred order that he will break, in spite of the recognition of the shamanistic elements of almstaking. When he comes back to a life that is far from the glamour of the aghori sadhu in those distant lands, he is glad that even in his dreams he is strong enough not to take a cent he has not worked for. In his profession, people are paid for an essential service that they render the community. His service is to mourn for the dead.

He curls up on the bench and sleeps in the foetal position that is customary of his village. Although he has been in the
city for all these years, he has not changed his sleeping position, unlike people like Nefolovhodwe who have taken so much to the ways of the city that they sleep in all sorts of city positions. In all fairness, he has not seen Nefolovhodwe in his sleep, but a man like him who pretends not to know people from his village anymore now that he is one of the wealthiest men in the land, is bound to sleep with his legs straight or in some such absurd position. Unlike the village people, Toloki does not sleep naked however, because his headquarters are a public place. He sleeps fully-dressed, either in his professional costume or in the only other set of clothes that he owns, which he calls home clothes. Since his mourning costume is getting old, and the chances of his getting another one like it are very slim indeed, he often changes into his home clothes in the public toilet as soon as he arrives back from the funerals. He would like to save his costume, so that it lasts for many more years of mourning. This is December, and the weather is very hot and clammy. So he does not cover himself with a blanket. For the winters, when the icy winds blow from the ocean, he is armed with a thick blanket that he keeps in his shopping trolley.

Sleep does not come easily, even with the hourly lullaby of the bells. He thinks of the events of today. Of course he is piqued. What self-respecting Professional Mourner wouldn't be? Why did they treat him so at this boy's funeral? He is well-known and well-liked all over the city cemeteries. Only yesterday he surpassed himself at the funeral of a man who died a mysterious death.

Normally when he is invited to mourn by the owners of a corpse, he sits very conspicuously on the mound that will ultimately fill the grave after prayers have been made and the Nurse has spoken, and weeps softly for the dead. Well, sometimes the Nurse and other funeral orators speak at the home of the corpse, or in church if the corpse was a Christian in its
lifetime, before it is taken to the graveyard. But in any case, he sits on the mound and shares his sorrow with the world. The appreciative family of the deceased pays him any amount it can. One day he would like to have a fixed rate of fees for different levels of mourning, as in other professions. Doctors have different fees for different illnesses. Lawyers charge fees which vary according to the gravity of the case. And certainly these professionals don't accept just any amount the client feels like giving them. But for the time being he will accept anything he is given, because the people are not yet used to the concept of a Professional Mourner. It is a fairly new concept, and he is still the only practitioner. He would be willing to train other people though, so that when he dies the tradition will continue. Then he will live in the books of history as the founder of a noble profession.

Yesterday saw the highlight of a career that has spanned quite a few years. As we have told you, the man in question died a mysterious death. The family of the deceased gave Toloki a huge retainer to grace the funeral with his presence. It was the biggest amount he had ever received for any one funeral. Not even at mass funerals had he earned such an amount. So, he made a point of giving of his very best. Throughout the funeral, orator after orator, he sat on the mound and made moaning sounds of agony that were so harrowing that they affected all those who were within earshot, filling their eyes with tears. When the Nurse spoke, he excelled himself by punctuating each painful segment of her speech with an excruciating groan that sent the relatives into a frenzy of wailing.

The Nurse explained that no one really knew how this brother died. What qualified her to be the Nurse was not that she was the last person to see him alive; she was the only person who went out of her way to seek the truth about his death, and to hunt his corpse down when everyone else had given up.
People should therefore not expect of her what they normally expected of the Nurse: to hear the exact details of what ailed this brother, of how he had a premonition of his death, of how he died, and of what last words he uttered before his spirit left the body.

This our elder brother, we learnt from the Nurse, left home one day and said he was visiting his beloved sister, who now found herself standing before this grieving multitude in the person of the Nurse. But since the day he stepped out of the door of his house, no one had seen him alive again. For the first two days, his wife and four children did not worry unduly. ‘After all,' said the Nurse, ‘men are dogs, and are known to wander from time to time.'

Now, this part was not pleasant to the ears of the men. ‘How can a young girl who still smells her mother's milk say such disrespectful slander about us? What kind of an upbringing is this?' they grumbled among themselves. But the Nurse brazenly continued on the scandalous behaviour of the male species. Then she went on to say that after two days, the wife phoned the sister, and all the other relatives, but none of them had seen him. He had never reached his sister's house. As is the practice, they searched all the hospitals in the area, and all the police stations and prisons. None of them had any information about their brother. This was a process that took many days, since prisons and hospitals were teeming with people whose relatives didn't even know that they were there, and the bureaucrats who worked at these places were like children of one person. They were all so rude, and were not keen to be of assistance to people – especially to those who looked poor. ‘And you know what?' the Nurse fumed, ‘these are our own people. When they get these big jobs in government offices they think they are better than us. They treat us like dirt!'

The family sat down together and decided that this brother was lost, and there was nothing that could be done. But his sister
said, ‘How can a human being be lost when he is not a needle? I say someone somewhere knows where my brother is. We have not even completed the custom of searching. We have not gone to the mortuary.'

And so she went to the big government mortuary. There were many people there, also looking for relatives who were missing and might be dead. She joined the queue in the morning when the offices opened. At last her turn came at midday. The woman at the counter looked at her briefly, and then took a pen and doodled on a piece of paper. Then she shouted to a girl at the other end of the office, and boasted to her about the Christmas picnic she and her friends were going to hold. They discussed dresses, and the new patterns that were in vogue. They talked of the best dressmakers, who could sew dresses that were even more beautiful than those found in the most exclusive and expensive city boutiques specializing in Italian and Parisian fashions. The girl said she was going out to the corner cafe to buy fat cakes, and the woman at the counter said, ‘Bring me some as well.' Then she went back to her doodling. A kindly old man standing behind this our sister who was looking for her beloved brother whispered, ‘My daughter, maybe you should remind her royal highness that we are all waiting for her assistance.'