Piggy Boy's Blues

Nakhane Touré is a multimedia artist born in a small town in the Eastern Cape called Alice. He was raised predominantly in Port Elizabeth and is now based in Johannesburg. After beginning his studies in literature at the University of Witwatersand, he embarked on a music career, resulting in an album – Brave Confusion – which went on to win a South African Music Award for Best Alternative Album.

PIGGY BOY’s BLUES

NAKHANE TOURÉ

Nakhane Touré’s debut novel, Piggy Boy’s Blues, a distorted pastoral, is for all intents and purposes a portrait of the M. family. Centred mostly on the protagonist, Davide M., and his return to Alice, the town of his birth, the novel portrays a Xhosa royal family past its prime and glory. Davide’s journey, from the city to pastoral Alice for peace and quiet, is not what he or the characters living in the forgotten and dilapidated house have bargained for. His return disturbs and troubles the silence and day-to-day practices that his uncle, Ndimphiwe, and the man he lives with have kept, resulting in a series of tragic events.

Set mostly in the Eastern Cape (modern and historical) – in Alice and Port Elizabeth, Piggy Boy’s Blues is a novel about boundaries, the intricacies of love and how the members of the M. family sometimes fail at navigating them.

PIGGY BOY’s BLUES

Dusk was settling into night. From afar, silhouettes of belfries stood black and tall, towering over houses and trees. The air was still. Leaves, dead or alive, were left unmoving and branches un-nodding. The sky was mad with a rusty and blue hue, the clouds thin and silver scrapes. Somewhere far off a dog barked and another responded. A van was seen navigating the pot-holed tar road, whipping up small stones and leaving behind a storm of dust.

a novel by 9 781928 337089

ISBN 978-1-928337-08-9 www.jacana.co.za

NAKHANE TOURÉ “Rendered in exquisite prose that guides readers through the devastating knots of past and possibility, Nakhane Toure’s debut novel is magic. Piggy Boy’s Blues is a tour de force” – Pumla Dineo Gqola

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First published by BlackBird Books, an imprint of Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, in 2015 10 Orange Street Sunnyside Auckland Park 2092 South Africa +2711 628 3200 www.jacana.co.za © Nakhane Touré, 2015 All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-928337-08-9 Cover design by Shawn Paikin Set in Sabon 10/13pt Also available as an e-book: d-PDF 978-1-928337-09-6 ePUB 978-1-928337-10-2 mobi file 978-1-928337-11-9 See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za

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PIGGY BOY’S BLUES

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Nakhane Touré

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For my mother, Nothemba and Chris

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Prologue M. the progenitor, patriarch and father of most who will be important in this story was a general and advisor to the Mfengu chief during the Ninth and final Frontier War. A man of blood and ideas, said the chorus of children who were the fruit of his loins. He was hot-headed and irascible. Bloody and cunning enough to escape the stronghold of King Shaka and his Mfecane war, a war so vast it was felt all the way up to Tanzania, so said his chorus of children and followers, livid that they had been written out of history and replaced by some “ox-wagon farmer exodus”. AmaMfengu, the marginalised, motley and disillusioned collective of wanderers, panted instead after the gleanings of their cousins, AmaXhosa. They spoke their language. They learned and performed their customs. They begged. They wandered (earning their name) until, irate, disappointed and hurt enough from being treated like mongrel dogs not worth their bark, they made a temporary alliance and sold their cousins to the white settlers.

So said the choruses, all in different keys, revising their histories to make sure their own patriarch was at a vantage point.

M. had two sons. They grew up to be strong, hand­ some men cut from the same cloth as their father.

However, they fought each other violently. Villagers screamed at them while they rolled in the dust, panting and wheezing. “This is not the way for the chief’s sons to

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behave! How could we be cursed with such heirs? This is the end of us!” No one understood that it was their uncanny resemblance which caused a ‘satanic’ anger in them, flaring up like an ember suddenly fanned, which made them fight. Too many times they were jocularly asked if they were sure that they were not twins.

“Yes,” they would say. “We are sure. Our births are marked by a very strong and deliberate distance.”

Sizing each other up and stacking up resentments for the next fight. They hated each other. Purely because they were each other’s spitting image, both in terms of the physical and the intangible spiritual. They were each other’s unmarked mirrors. Narcissus saw his image in the pool and it was abhorrent to him. So he did all in his power to destroy it.

M., now an important chief in the tribe, was grieved by his sons, and so he divided their inheritance while he was still alive and they parted ways to start their own chiefdoms on opposite sides of the Kei River. Each was blessed. They had plenty of children, and so did their children. One of these seeds was Jeremiah M., Davide’s great-grandfather, a first-born son educated in a missionary station. He was tall, with high Khoisan cheekbones, eyes brown and oval with a certain Asiatic and pecan nut slant. A first-grade Lothario, he flirted with all who would have him. He sauntered through the village on his many walks, for he loved to walk – loved by mothers who knew their daughters (and themselves?) would be taken care of – with a feline gait, hands large and uncalloused, for he did no manual labour.

In trousers, women swooned over his thighs and high, plump posterior.

It was unsurprising, then, that hearts sagged when the news was out that Jeremiah had, without warning, married and impregnated a surly and quiet girl whose family was of no importance. Her name was Nombuso.

There were whispers around the village that the only

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reason he married her at all was that she (“the quiet slut that she is”) had fallen pregnant. Behind doors the marriage was cursed, even though the same naysayers were there at the wedding dancing and singing, wishing the young couple well, eating more meat than they ever had. That night after the celebrations, young girls cried themselves to sleep while their mothers consoled them: “Don’t worry, my child. It won’t last.”

The son they had was named as a reminder that two different families had now become one. He was named Mdibanisi.

A year later it was reported that Jeremiah had left his village for the city, leaving behind one-year-old Mdibanisi and his wife, Nombuso. She, in turn, out of grief, realising that this man was never ever going to return, lost her mind.

The young girls slept with pitiless little smiles on their lips, remembering their mothers’ consolations.

* This was the history, then. These were the pieces Davide stitched together.

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Part 1

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1 Ndod’enkulu’s House The morning light forced its way through the curtains, gently but not without coercion, tapping him on the shoulder. It called his name, waking him up. Finally, and with much trial, his eyes opened to meet the bedroom’s reluctant darkness. It, too, wanted to be joined to the light from outside. The quiet – which was sometimes interrupted by the crow of a rooster, the excited barking of a dog, or the voice of a man passing, greeting his neighbours – it, too, wanted its walls to be bathed by the morning sun, the virginal light, untouched by the day’s toil.

The old house Davide woke up in, the one he had thought he would run away to, had once belonged to Ndod’enkulu. Long dead. In fact, to Davide and his generation, Ndoda (a precocious nickname as it meant ‘man’; here was a boy called a man when he still had possession of his foreskin) was nothing but a series of both boring and bizarre tales. He had become a myth of almost biblical proportions. A tall, dark-skinned, tennis-playing, Mercedes Benz-driving, every beautiful woman he had his eye on he would fuck myth.

“He was lucky to have died before the AIDS plague.

Let’s thank Jesus for that,” said the mothers.

“Thank you, Jesus, for sparing our whorish, phi­ landering grand-uncle. And thank you, Jesus, for

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making sure that we were born right in the midst of it.” And mouths were slapped with ringed fingers.

“You respect the dead!” said the mothers. “That is your ancestor.”

“You don’t even believe in ancestors,” the children railed, tasting blood.

“Irregardless!”

“Regardless.”

“Thank you, Model-C.” “You think they’re demons. And now I’m tasting blood for demons?!”

Ndod’enkulu M., unlike his father, did not have the eye-narrowing beauty of Khoisan-Xhosa-Mfengu ancestry. If you noticed something beautiful in him, it was another off-kilter feature that drew your attention.

His height, for example, should have counted to his favour, but his rake-thin frame gave him unsavoury nicknames such as “wire hanger”, “barbed wire fence” (“Ow, but why would people call someone that, though?” “Would you want to get fucked by a barbed wire fence?” Cue raucous laughter), “tennis ball knees”, and the last and most absurd, “AK-47”.

Instead of carrying these around like the burdensome Christ on St Christopher’s back, Ndod’enkulu wore these pejoratives with an obstinate re-appropriating pride. He claimed them as badges of honour, finding relief in age-old maxims such as “A man’s beauty is his cows”. And dear God, did he become beautiful.

After accumulating his beauty he followed in the footsteps of his father who had, over the years, built on the far right corner of his homestead a rondavel from red bricks. Next to it was a stately home for his progeny with a massive veranda for hot, midday conversations.

Finally then, Ndoda, deciding against the new custom of leaving your family to cleave to your wife, built his

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own house in Jeremiah’s homestead. While it did not compete in terms of size with his father’s, it did excel in modernity, boasting a one-car garage and a bigger veranda, which led to a carpeted lounge furnished with velvet couches. It also had a drainage system and a massive pantry.

His one and only son from marriage was Ndimphiwe, begotten from a wife who had left him within a year of marriage. Funny thing, history. It skulks around, winking at you when it chooses to remind you of something you had thought had past. She left him.

Quietly. With a teething, still breast-feeding boy, for reasons known, but conveniently forgotten. * The passage light had not been giving light for years.

It wasn’t surprising, as many things in this house had been abandoned. Davide walked with caution from the bedroom, running his hands on both sides of the passage, feeling the flaking wallpaper disintegrating behind him as he walked towards the sound of movement, towards the light in that kitchen.

“You’re up already? I thought you’d sleep longer,” his uncle said with his back turned to him.

The kitchen was too bright.

“Morning.” Davide’s voice croaked.

Davide stood with his hands at his sides, doing nothing, saying nothing else, his joints stiff. The sun was relentless. He felt it in his nostrils: a musty brew of heat, dust and age. The outside world was unwelcoming. Inside was different. Yes, it was ugly.

But ugly was somewhat comforting to him. The ugly dark room he had slept in, the ugly bright kitchen with the blue kitchen table which looked tempting, and the

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ugly wallpaper he had felt on his fingertips. Dust now.

Beauty, on the other hand, always had a devil waiting to suck you in, the moment you lost focus. Finally, his uncle turned and looked in his direction. His face was folded with concern, brilliantly handsome even after the years. He was still thin. His red shirt was tucked in neatly. He unfolded his face and stuck out his hand, a cup in front of him. The floor had decided to hold onto Davide’s feet. He became vacant and still.

Ndimphiwe put the cup on the kitchen table and said that he was going to East London for the day. He had thought Davide would still be asleep by the time he left. Breakfast was ready for him in the microwave. He stood against the blue cupboard that faced the kitchen window and the sun hit his face, turning his eyes a walnut brown. He creased his forehead in thought.

“Davide …”

Davide looked at the floor and implored it to let go. It relented. He shuffled to the table and pulled back the chair. It screeched diabolically. He sat down with his hand cupping his cheek. Ndimphiwe lingered, desperate to surrender whatever dividing distance to the past, to when Davide was a child, before he had the ability to give up, to be restrained by his presence, before he felt this unutterable similarity between them. He was never going to be ready for it: Davide’s ravenous youth, seeking free will. He was comfortable where he was. He pushed himself off the cupboard and walked towards the lounge.

“Thanks for this,” said Davide, his eyes looking at the cup.

Ndimphiwe smiled sombrely, not at Davide, but at the floor, knowing for sure that something was about to shift tremendously.

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