I had learnt my lesson, although I would have preferred an alternate learning curve as far as Sunnyside mermaids were concerned. I still carry the scar beneath my last rib; my badge of honor, my badge of foolishness.
But among the varied things surrounding my beating heart, some near some far, at the rim of it all, I have come to hold my precious Sunnyside. But how far away was my beloved city now. As I recollect that single first step. I was welcomed to Johannesburg city by its unpleasant foul air: that green and slimy alien air poisoning my human lungs while reminding me of distressing past days of my first love. How I preferred instead the fresh smell of Sunnyside roses.
After a few small steps from the station, I was greeted by a sickly looking boy. He had a shameful look, that shameful look we dare not see. I had nothing to spare for the boy, I told him. But there was no truth in that vile statement. My wallet was simply too far – buried deep in my luggage. A terrible habit I picked up along my lane of life. The boy crept behind me like my formless shadow – I felt his presence in the ambient air: stalking behind me as if I was a vulnerable and feeble prey estranged from its heard. I trailed his path on the mirrors on the building wall. Those strange dark eyes glaring at me, still, he was just a boy. What’s the worst he could have done?
“Only if I could find a taxi”, I thought, “to rid myself from this uncanny shadow of a boy”. Soon thereafter a yellow cab came galloping by. A cab that I hoped would liberate me from that dire circumstance. “Taxi” I shouted, the gentleman halted roughly next to my feet.
“Kind Sir,” I said to him, “my journey takes me to Auckland Park. If you could take me there, I would be most grateful”. He shook his head,
“Fockin tourists,” and screeched his wheels on the dirty streets as he drove away.
The boy quickly prowled closer as a tiger would have pounced on its prey, ceasing on a moment of clear vulnerability.
“Oakland Park?” he asked, “Me know where it is.”
“Auckland Park, you know the way?”
“Me know the way Sair,” he said assuring.
“Very well, I shall appreciate your guidance greatly if you can funnel me there so to speak.”
“I carry bags,” extending his darkened hands towards my luggage, with those long rusted nails where ants could live in.
“It’s quite alright young man; I do not wish to burden you with my luggage”
“Sair… let Jumbo carry BIG bag,” as he patted himself proudly on his chest – dust flying from his dirty shirt.
“Small bag carry”
“Medium bag carry… big bag -”
“Carry,” I interrupted him, this war-of-carrying I would not win. Thus I relinquished my neatly packed suitcase and laptop bag to my rather odd companion. He then led the way like a faithful and ragged campus. The companions we meet!
Like ferocious army ants, the city was filled to the brim leaving hardly any space to walk or even to breathe. Everyone forcibly pushing their way through, even old and crumpled women in walking sticks pushed like those vigorous juveniles. In this pushing mania, a strong and beastly hand grabbed my arm. It was Jumbo still holding me. When I turned back to look, before I could interrogate him, I heard a thunderous sound in my rear. Glancing back, a dreadful collision had just happened – Jumbo had saved my life. I stared at him wordlessly.
“Me take you to Oackland Park, not to grave Sair.”
I believe he was being humorous. I was grateful – it would not have been a romantic death, if such a thing ever existed. A man calmly exited from one of the collided vehicles. He had blood rushing from his nose and dripping to the floor from the tip of his nails.
“Sir,” I remarked, “you urgently require medical assistance you should be lying still.”
“Still don’t be a punk mei bru, just a few ribs sticking out!”
I was awe-struck in the voids of my spine when I heard his reply. He struggled to reach into his back pocket with the one able hand for a lighter. He then set fire on the cigarette in his mouth. With white smoke from his mouth coming out concurrently with blood from his nose, he then got into his car and roughly drove away – with one hand smoking one hand broken. I then felt it: a wintry chill in that same spine. This was no place for romantics.
“Two weeks, just two weeks, I can survive in this jungle of a city.” I reassured myself. The boy called me the appropriate cab,
“Car take sair to Oakland Park.”
I gave him ten times as much as what he had asked, and by so doing I had planted a smile on Jumbo’s face, one that grew as rapid tree. I watched him slowly walking away – my strange companion – perhaps I should have asked; what was the best he could do? The silent heroes we meet!
Journeying to the south, to my new home, although my body seated faithfully in the cab, my mind and dreams were still webbed in yesterday. I compare the state of my thoughts to a stubborn and incurable disease, or a recurring melody in my brain. She had sweetly infected my mind.
Inside the cab, by an unfortunate incident, I found myself sitting next to a very fat chatterbox, with strings in the gaps of her teeth. A lot of things spewed from her wide mouth but I do not recall hearing sense. I heard words such as boredom and dullness but not amusement or sense. I assure you, those were not present. Thus I dreamed away and thought of her. The one thought that would turn a ghastly night into a day of bliss. I thought of yesterday – I thought of Lu. I remember our conversation being brief, only passing and our hug fleeting only discrete. Nevertheless her laugh extended through centuries; and her feeling was marrow deep.
I first met her among my companions wherein she tried vigorously to make me laugh. However, her efforts were in futility. She later questioned my humor, or rather my lack of it. I explained how I was departing from my beloved Sunnyside the following day. How this had made sadness to visit my face. My infant years in the United Kingdom had deformed my accent into a merger of the two; Lu found it quite refreshing when we spoke.
I had been busily travelling that day. A few miles to the east, and not as few as it was in the other tracks and bearings, but Lu had been the most beautiful thing I had seen in all daylight hours. As the rest of us drank the night away, her moral compass did not sway. “Why did I have to go to leave her there?” She became sad when I announced it. But her smile quickly returned when I told her I shall endeavor to see her once more.
At last, I had reached my destination – Auckland Park. I stepped back a few steps to inspect my new home. I found it to be a clean white house with a rather quaint door knob. Upon entering I found myself staring at an ancient, roman numeric clock. It was positioned fixed to the right of a poem on a wall. I instantly recognized the piece - reviewers called it the most heart-felt poem written after the war. Or perhaps the reason I distinguished it so lucidly was because I wrote it a long time ago when I still breathed poetry through my lips. I planted my bags in my venerable aired room which was fit for a prince. A glass of wine and soft music soon followed, while summoning remembrance of how every house had high walls and multiple locks installed, they seemed to be sheltered from goblins and mongrels – ghastly creatures of the night.
I was to wake up at the break of dawn, 6:30a.m. To be precise and march to the seminar. My topic was romantic literature, a subject I had reinvented in the years following Fiona; a thing which now lived and breathed through me. I readily accepted their proposal when they asked me to teach romanticism to their pupils at Wits University. My plot was to give rise to a new generation of romantic beings. To implant upon their minds and sinew the 207th bone: the long lost romantic bone. Like planting the last seed of a beautiful flower, I would place this one into their hearts and see it grow. I knew that I owed it to myself and the ancient romantics of the past who came before my time to perpetuate our species.
A few minutes after midnight, I heard a hard knock on the door. The strange thing was that I was sure to have locked the small white gate outside. “Or did I?” The more I ignored the knock, the louder it gr
ew. Then like a burning flame, a thought lit in my mind. “Was this not why all the houses were overly secure with high walls and barricaded doors?”“Was it creatures of the night, or even worse, men of the night?”My general idea was interrupted when the perpetrator called out my name. It brought a shallow comfort to my mind. At least the goblins knew my name. Still in shorts and vests, I slowly opened the door. To my jubilant surprise, when the moonlight hit his face, I knew instantly who it was. Charles, a friend I knew in times before this.
“This is Monde,” he explained who I caught his eyes enquiringly addressed to mine.
“We’ve come to show you around,” he said. I glanced at that old fashioned clock on the wall
“Fellas, not to sink anyone’s floating ship, but I am speaking tomorrow. I have to be up just before the rising sun.”
“Dude, who speaks like that, are you some kind of a –”
“Romeo here is a famous writer,” Charlie interrupted. “C’mon on R, only a single round; for old times’ sakes:” “for devils and snakes.” We both said concurrently; smiles and sighs to follow. I had qualms and reservations about venturing into the night but I could not bring disappointment to the face of an old and dear friend – especially after he had travelled this far.
Still, the things we agree to.
When they showed up on my door, how could I have known that we would pocket the night? Make it ours, the ripened and sour fruits that this night would bring! Before I knew it the wind had carried us to 7th street in Melville. Sitting there, my back almost touching the wall, with the wooden table and few glass pieces between us, she gave me a hard stare. That stare you only give to the one who you wish to know your name. But I cared very little for her name or the texture of her blonde hair. It was still Lu who my eye wished to see. Her heart I needed to know and call my own. But as all men of valor know, the mind has more tricks than Houdini, and alcohol even greater. When I slowly emptied the glass of sour liquor – delegated to me by the charming waitress – the mind played hoax and ruse on me. But it did it so astoundingly that even politicians would not protest. It leisurely took the thing in my mind: the Lu in my mind and painted her face upon the blonde one who eyed me with smiling lips next to me. Everyone became bewildered when a jubilant and very pleasing look arrived, a countenance that came from nowhere near or close.
I asked her for a dance. Roselyn was her name. Although I believe occasionally, now and then, I called her Lu. The dance-floor was filled with human bodies singing and dancing. It was as if the world was ending or someone had paid them. Soon after that we also started to join in the mania. The rhythm changed and everyone twisted around hand to hand in pairs. Roselyn took my hands and placed them in hers. Together we swiveled with smiling eyes as the world went crazy around us.
Like the earth and her moon, turning and turning to turn. With gravity persuading us to move in pathways only she may choose. We orbited around each other as only two can do. She stopped and slowly came to a halt looking as if a blonde beautiful Ferrari that one had to insist on riding. With her hands strapped to my back she passionately kissed me like her lips were crafted from strawberry fruit. Still the bodies around us were turning and turning to turn.
Like all good things, the music stopped and we returned to the company we shared.
“What is your line of work?” Roselyn asked.
“I write a few words on a paper” said I humbly. Everybody turned away disinterested. “I am a romantic novelist, I write words that can turn into a kiss or a frown or a heartbeat” I added “words that can hiss through one ear and slither through the other.” I had won their interest. Hers even more; it was as if I had magnified the intensity of her interest in me tenfold. Questions followed, flying through like spread-out bullets. I always ruined the party mood when now and again I’d glance at my wrist.
“Guys, its 1 o’clock. I have to be going. It cannot elaborate enough how imperative it is that I wake up early tomorrow.” But my few good friends, alcohol and a lovely night derailed my most solid of thoughts.
“You’re still going to be here for two weeks, right?” Charlie questioned, after my affirmation, he insisted that we have an epic weekend; he was always calm in his speech and tone… a quality I’d always admired. As I later found out “an epic weekend” was somewhat of a tradition to them. They would buy liquor, 200 bottles at least – mixed in with tequilas, vodkas, whiskies, and other types of narcotics: intoxicants which were not for the faint-hearted. And in one perfect and lusty epic-weekend, they would lock themselves up in a house for epic tales of youth. The ladies seemed to be turned on by this when he smoothly explained. Thereafter in synchronous sequence, they all turned to look at me, like kids looking at their uptight father. I had reservations but I could use an epic tale of youth after my forlorn with Sunnyside mermaids.
We were now heading to Stones, a nearby nightclub which Charles suggested we go. On route, we dropped by Dark City NOT ALL ARE WELCOME the welcome sign wrote.
“I hope none of you is gay,” Charles said. “God forbid this is the worst place to be gay.” Nobody seemed to give his statement a second thought, but I wondered what he meant.
Driving in the dark night we saw fire; raging flames ahead of us with people cluttered all around. Stopping to quench our curiosity, I now evoke that we should have passed. We should have just passed. People were circling, throwing, cursing and loathing, as if they circled beasts, two beasts with horns. “Criminals,” we might have all thought at first glance. But far from crooks they were.
What I failed to understand was how Dark City was notoriously known for its deep resentment towards homosexuals. That is, what the sign implied. They were burning two men alive. All that remained now was burnt corpses holding each other through the flying ash on the darkened ground. They must have loved each other through their burning flames, their curses and their vile hearts.
The Roselyn in my arms could do little but drop a few tears to their hellish ground (perhaps in the foolish hope of purifying it). There, in Dark City, I found it difficult to distinguish between men from brute beasts. The dark clouds of Dark City must have written, “This is no place for romantics. No place for romantic hearts.” We then drove away in silence, with a deep haze of sadness filling the empty spaces in the car. Nobody felt eager to go to Stones anymore, not even Monde. It was 4p.m. when we reached my gate.
“Should I come in?” Roselyn asked. I could use some company although it would mean not catching up on outlying sleep. We barely slept as she showed me her tattoo and other antiques she had. She stood idly by next to a chair after reading the poem on the wall. Waiting there as if to say “Touch me like I’ve never been touched before”, soon she was right on my eyes, and my hand felt her cloth covered breast and fast beating heart. Then her lips, then the tenderness of all her god-given-gifts. Soon thereafter those clothes that shielded her from the outside cold were a hindrance, her nicely placed tattoos dawned here and there but they all ended at the one place I wished to go.
By 7:30 a.m. she passionately kissed – her stranger in the night – goodbye, 8:30 I spoke at the seminar and finally by 10:30. My lecture was about to commence at the university. I called Lu and told her that she looked beautiful today.
“How do you know?” She smilingly asked.
“Because… It cannot be any other way.” On speaking, I told her how I thought of nothing else but her.
“Come back,” she said, “Sunnyside and I think of you now and then”. I was glad she missed me as I did her. Everything had returned to its usual state; just two more weeks.
When I arrived at the venue that I was delegated to teach. As if the devil found amusement by surveying me from his lonely chair. At the front row, a blonde I knew so well, sat in the middle seat: her legs as I still remembered them. Roselyn was my student. Then I heard 'em, the ghosts of the city along with Jumbo screaming and screeching in my ear, “This is no place for romantics; no place for romantics!” “kind sair.”
Chapter 4
A poem for Lu