The Collector of Treasure

The Collector of Treasures Bessie Head The long-term central state prison in the south was a whole day‟s journey away from the villages of the northern part of the country. They had left the village of Puleng at about nine that morning and all day long the police truck droned as it sped southwards on the wide, dusty cross-country track-road. The everyday world of ploughed fields, grazing cattle, and vast expanses of bush and forest seemed indifferent to the hungry eyes of the prisoner who gazed out at them through the wire mesh grating at the back of the police truck. At some point during the journey, the prisoner seemed to strike at some ultimate source of pain and loneliness within her being and, overcome by it, she slowly crumpled forward in a wasted heap, oblivious to everything but her pain. Sunset swept by, then dusk, then dark and still the truck droned on, impersonally, uncaring. At first, faintly on the horizon, the orange glow of the city lights of the new independence town of Gaborone appeared like an astonishing phantom in the overwhelming darkness of the bush, until the truck struck tarred roads, neon lights, shops and cinemas, and made the bush a phantom amidst a blaze of light. All this passed untimed, unwatched by the crumpled prisoner; she did not stir as the truck finally droned to a halt outside the prison gates. The torchlight struck the side of her face like an agonizing blow. Thinking she was asleep, the policeman called out briskly: “You must awaken now. We have arrived.” He struggled with the lock in the dark and pulled open the grating. silence. She crawled painfully forward, in

Together, they walked up a short flight of stairs and waited awhile as the man tapped lightly, several times, on the heavy iron prison door. The night-duty attendant opened the door a crack, peered out and then opened the door a little wider for them to enter. He quietly and casually led the way to a small office, looked at his colleague and asked: “What do we have here?” “It‟s the husband murder case from Puleng village,” the other replied, handing over a file. The attendant took the file and sat down at a table on which lay open a large record book. In a big, bold scrawl he recorded the details: Dikeledi Mokopi. Charge: Man-slaughter. Sentence: Life. A night-duty wardress appeared and led the prisoner away to a side cubicle, where she was asked to undress. “Have you any money on you?” the wardress queried, handing her a plain, green cotton dress which was the prison uniform. The prisoner silently shook her head. “So, you have killed your husband, have you?” the wardress remarked, with a flicker of humour. “You‟ll be in good company. We have four other women here for the same crime. It‟s becoming the fashion these days. Come with me,” and she led the way along a corridor, turned left and stopped at an iron gate which she opened with a key, waited for the prisoner to walk in ahead of her and then locked it with the key again. They entered a small, immensely high-walled courtyard. On one side were toilets, showers, and a cupboard. On the other, an empty concrete quadrangle. The wardress walked to the cupboard, unlocked it and took out a thick roll of clean-smelling blankets which she handed to the prisoner. At the lower end of the walled courtyard was a heavy iron door which led to the cell. The wardress walked up to this door, banged on it loudly and called out: “I say, will you women in there, light your candle?” A voice within called out: “All right,” and they could hear the scratch-scratch of a match. The wardress again inserted a key, opened the door and watched for a while as the prisoner spread out her blankets on the floor. The four women prisoners already confined in the cell sat up briefly, and stared silently at their new companion. As the door was locked, they all greeted her quietly and one of the women asked: “Where do you come from?”

“Puleng”, the newcomer replied, and seemingly satisfied with that, the light was blown out and the women lay down to continue their interrupted sleep. And as though she had reached the end of her destination, the new prisoner too fell into a deep sleep as soon as she had pulled her blankets about her. The breakfast gong sounded at six the next morning. The women stirred themselves for their daily routine. They stood up, shook out their blankets and rolled them up into neat bundles. The day-duty wardress rattled the key in the lock and let them out into the small concrete courtyard so that they could perform their morning toilet. Then, with a loud clatter of pails and plates, two male prisoners appeared at the gate with breakfast. The men handed each woman a plate of porridge and a mug of black tea and they settled themselves on the concrete floor to eat. They turned and looked at their new companion and one of the women, a spokesman for the group said kindly: “You should take care. The tea has no sugar in it. What we usually do is scoop the sugar off the porridge and put it into the tea.” The woman, Dikeledi, looked up and smiled. She had experienced such terror during the awaiting-trial period that she looked more like a skeleton than a human being. The skin creaked tautly over her cheeks. The other woman smiled, but after her own fashion. Her face permanently wore a look of cynical, whimsical humour. She had a full, plump figure. She introduced herself and her companions: “My name is Kebonye. Then that‟s Otsetswe, Galeboe, and Monwana. What may your name be?” “Dikeledi Mokopi.” “How is it that you have such a tragic name,” Kebonye observed. name you tears?” “Why did your parents have to

“My father passed away at that time and it is my mother‟s tears that I am named after,” Dikeledi said, then added: “She herself passed away six years later and I was brought up by my uncle.” Kebonye shook her head sympathetically, slowly raising a spoonful of porridge to her mouth. That swallowed, she asked next: “And what may your crime be?” “I have killed my husband.” “We are all here for the same crime,” Kebonye said, then with her cynical smile asked: “Do you feel any sorrow about the crime?” “Not really,” the other woman replied. “How did you kill him?” “I cut off all his special parts with a knife,” Dikeledi said. “I did it with a razor,” Kebonye said. She sighed and added: “I have had a troubled life.” A little silence followed while they all busied themselves with their food, then Kebonye continued musingly: “Our men do not think that we need tenderness and care. You know, my husband used to kick me between the legs when he wanted that. I once aborted with a child, due to this treatment. I could see that

there was no way to appeal to him if I felt ill, so I once said to him that if he liked he could keep some other woman as well because I couldn‟t manage to satisfy all his needs. Well, he was an education-officer and each year he used to suspend about seventeen male teachers for making school girls pregnant, but he used to do the same. The last time it happened the parents of the girl were very angry and came to report the matter to me. I told them: „You leave it to me. I have seen enough.‟ And so I killed him.” They sat in silence and completed their meal, then they took their plates and cups to rinse them in the wash-room. The wardress produced some pails and a broom. These sleeping quarters had to be flushed out with water; there was not a speck of dirt anywhere, but that was prison routine. All that was left was an inspection by the director of the prison. Here again Kebonye turned to the newcomer and warned: “You must be careful when the chief comes to inspect. He is mad about one thing--attention! Stand up straight! Hands at your sides! If this is not done you should see how he stands here and curses. He does not mind anything but that. He is mad about that.” Inspection over, the women were taken through a number of gates to an open, sunny yard, fenced in by high, barbed-wire where they did their daily work. The prison was a rehabilitation centre where the prisoners produced goods which were sold in the prison store; the women produced garments of cloth and wool; the men did carpentry, shoe-making, brick-making, and vegetable production. Dikeledi had a number of skills--she could knit, sew, and weave baskets. All the women at present were busy knitting woollen garments; some were learners and did their work slowly and painstakingly. They looked at Dikeledi with interest as she took a ball of wool and a pair of knitting needles and rapidly cast on stitches. She had soft, caressing, almost boneless, hands of „strange power--work of a beautiful design grew from those hands. By mid-morning she had completed the front part of a jersey and they all stopped to admire the pattern she had invented in her own head. “You are a gifted person,” Kebonye remarked, admiringly. “All my friends say so,” Dikeledi replied smiling. “You know, I am the woman whose thatch does not leak. Whenever my friends wanted to thatch their huts, I was there. They would never do it without me. I was always busy and employed because it was with these hands that I fed and reared my children. My husband left me after four years of marriage but I managed well enough to feed those mouths. If people did not pay me in money for my work, they paid me with gifts of food.” “It‟s not so bad here,” Kebonye said. “We get a little money saved for us out of the sale of our work, and if you work like that you can still produce money for your children. How many children do you have?” “I have three sons.” “Are they in good care?” “Yes.” “I like lunch,” Kebonye said, oddly turning the conversation. “It is samp and meat and vegetables.” the best meal of the day. We get

So the day passed pleasantly enough with chatter and work and at sunset the women were once more taken back to the cell for lock-up time. They unrolled their blankets and prepared their beds, and with the candle lit continued to talk a while longer. Just as they were about to retire for the night, Dikeledi nodded to her new-found friend, Kebonye: “Thank you for all your kindness to me,” she said, softly.

“We must help each other,” Kebonye replied, with her amused, cynical smile. “This is a terrible world. There is only misery here.” And so the woman Dikeledi began phase three of a life that had been ashen in its loneliness and unhappiness. And yet she had always found gold amidst the ash, deep loves that had joined her heart to the hearts of others. She smiled tenderly at Kebonye because she knew already that she had found another such love. She was the collector of such treasures. *** There were really only two kinds of men in the society. The one kind created such misery and chaos that he could be broadly damned as evil. If one watched the village dogs chasing a bitch on heat, they usually moved around in packs of four or five. As the mating progressed one dog would attempt to gain dominance over the festivities and oust all the others from the bitch‟s vulva. The rest of the hapless dogs would stand around yapping and snapping in its face while the top dog indulged in a continuous spurt of orgasms, day and night until he was exhausted. No doubt, during that Herculean feat, the dog imagined he was the only penis in the world and that there had to be a scramble for it. That kind of man lived near the animal level and behaved just the same. Like the dogs and bulls and donkeys, he also accepted no responsibility for the young he procreated and like the dogs and bulls and donkeys, he also made females abort. Since that kind of man was in the majority in the society, he needed a little analysing as he was responsible for the complete breakdown of family life. He could he analysed over three time-spans. In the old days, before the colonial invasion of Africa, he was a man who lived by the traditions and taboos outlined for all the people by the forefathers of the tribe. He had little individual freedom to assess whether these traditions were compassionate or not--they demanded that he comply and obey the rules, without thought. But when the laws of the ancestors are examined, they appear on the whole to have been vast, external disciplines for the good of the society as a whole, with little attention given to individual preferences and needs. The ancestors made so many errors and one of the most bitter-making things was that they relegated to men a superior position in the tribe, while women were regarded, in a congenital sense, as being an inferior form of human life. To this day, women still suffered from all the calamities that befall an inferior form of human life. The colonial era and the period of migratory mining labour to South Africa was a further affliction visited on this man. It broke the hold of the ancestors. It broke the old, traditional form of family life and for long periods a man was separated from his wife and children while he worked for a pittance in another land in order to raise the money to pay his British Colonial poll-tax. British Colonialism scarcely enriched his life. He then became “the boy” of the white man and a machine-tool of the South African mines. African independence seemed merely one more affliction on top of the afflictions that had „visited this man‟s life. Independence suddenly and dramatically changed the pattern of colonial subservience. More jobs became available under the new government‟s localization programme and salaries sky-rocketed at the same time. It provided the first occasion for family life of a new order, above the childlike discipline of custom, the degradation of colonialism. Men and women, in order to survive, had to turn inwards to their own resources. It was the man who arrived at this turning point, a broken wreck with no inner resources at all. It was as though he was hideous to himself and in an effort to flee his own inner emptiness, he spun away from himself in a dizzy kind of death dance of wild destruction and dissipation. One such man was Garesego Mokopi, the husband of Dikeledi. For four years prior to independence, he had worked as a clerk in the district administration service, at a steady salary of R50.OO a month. Soon after independence his salary shot up to R200.OO per month. Even during his lean days he had had a taste for womanising and drink; now he had the resources for a real spree. He was not seen at home again and lived and slept around the village, from woman to woman. He left his wife and three sons--Banabothe, the eldest, aged four; Inalame, aged three; and the youngest, Motsomi, aged one--to their own resources. Perhaps he did so because she was the boring, semi-literate traditional sort, and there were a lot of exciting new women around. Independence produced marvels indeed.

There was another kind of man in the society with the power to create himself anew. He turned all his resources, both emotional and material, towards his family life and he went on and on with his own quiet rhythm: like a river. He was a poem of tenderness. One such man was Paul Thebolo and he and his wife, Kenalepe, and their three children, came to live in the village of Puleng in 1966, the year of independence. Paul Thebolo had been offered the principalship of a primary school in the village. They were allocated an empty field beside the yard of Dikeledi Mokopi, for their new home. Neighbours are the centre of the universe to each other. They help each other at all times and mutually loan each other‟s goods. Dikeledi Mokopi kept an interested eye on the yard of her new neighbours. At first, only the man appeared with some workmen to erect the fence, which was set up with incredible speed and efficiency. The man impressed her immediately when she went around to introduce herself and find out a little about the newcomers. He was tall, large-boned, slow-moving. He was so peaceful as a person that the sunlight and shadow played all kinds of tricks with his eyes, making it difficult to determine their exact colour. When he stood still and looked reflective, the sunlight liked to creep into his eyes and nestle there; so sometimes his eyes were the colour of shade, and sometimes light brown. He turned and smiled at her in a friendly way when she introduced herself and explained that he and his wife were on transfer from the village of Bobonong. His wife and children were living with relatives in the village until the yard was prepared. He was in a hurry to settle down as the school term would start in a month‟s time. They were, he said, going to erect two mud huts first and later he intended setting up a small house of bricks. His wife would be coming around in a few days with some women to erect the mud walls of the huts. “I would like to offer my help too,” Dikeledi said. “If work always starts early in the morning and there are about six of us, we can get both walls erected in a week. If you want one of the huts done in woman‟s thatch, all my friends know that I am the woman whose thatch does not leak.” The man smilingly replied that he would impart all this information to his wife, then he added charmingly that he thought she would like his wife when they met. His wife was a very friendly person; everyone liked her. Dikeledi walked back to her own yard with a high heart. She had few callers. None of her relatives called for fear that since her husband had left her she would become dependent on them for many things. The people who called did business with her; they wanted her to make dresses for their children or knit jerseys for the winter time and at times when she had no orders at all, she made baskets which she sold. In these ways she supported herself and the three children but she was lonely for true friends. All turned out as the husband had said--he had a lovely wife. She was fairly tall and thin with a bright, vivacious manner. She made no effort to conceal that normally, and every day, she was a very happy person. And all turned out as Dikeledi had said. The work-party of six women erected the mud walls of the huts in one week; two weeks later, the thatch was complete. The Thebolo family moved into their new abode and Dikeledi Mokopi moved into one of the most prosperous and happy periods of her life. Her life took a big, wide upward curve. Her relationship with the Thebolo family was more than the usual friendly exchange of neighbours. It was rich and creative. It was not long before the two women had going one of those deep, affectionate, sharing-everything kind of friendships that only women know how to have. It seemed that Kenalepe wanted endless amounts of dresses made for herself and her three little girls. Since Dikeledi would not accept cash for these services--she protested about the many benefits she received from her good neighbours--Paul Thebolo arranged that she be paid in household goods for these services so that for some years Dikeledi was always assured of her basic household needs--the full bag of corn, sugar, tea, powdered milk, and cooking oil. Kenalepe was also the kind of woman who made the whole world spin around her; her

attractive personality attracted a whole range of women to her yard and also a whole range of customers for her dressmaking friend, Dikeledi. Eventually, Dikeledi became swamped with work, was forced to buy a second sewing-machine and employ a helper. The two women did everything together--they were forever together at weddings, funerals, and parties in the village. In their leisure hours they freely discussed all their intimate affairs with each other, so that each knew thoroughly the details of the other‟s life. “You are a lucky someone,” Dikeledi remarked one day, wistfully. “Not everyone has the gift of a husband like Paul.” “Oh yes,” Kenalepe said happily. “He is an honest somebody.” She knew a little of Dikeledi‟s list of woes and queried: “But why did you marry a man like Garesego? I looked carefully at him when you pointed him out to me near the shops the other day and I could see at one glance that he is a butterfly.” “I think I mostly wanted to get out of my uncle‟s yard,” Dikeledi replied. “I never liked my uncle. Rich as he was, he was a hard man and very selfish. I was only a servant there and pushed about. I went there when I was six years old when my mother died, and it was not a happy life. All his children despised me because I was their servant. Uncle paid for my education for six years, then he said I must leave school. I longed for more because as you know, education opens up the world for one. Garesego was a friend of my uncle and he was the only man who proposed for me. They discussed it between themselves and then my uncle said: “You‟d better marry Garesego because you‟re just hanging around here like a chain on my neck.” I agreed, just to get away from that terrible man. Garesego said at that time that he‟d rather be married to my sort than the educated kind because those women were stubborn and wanted to lay down the rules for men. Really, I did not ever protest when he started running about. You know what the other women do. They chase after the man from one hut to another and beat up the girlfriends. The man just runs into another hut, that‟s all. So you don‟t really win. I wasn‟t going to do anything like that. I am satisfied I have children. They are a blessing to me.” “Oh, it isn‟t enough,” her friend said, shaking her head in deep sympathy. “I am amazed at how life imparts its gifts. Some people get too much. Others get nothing at all. I have always been lucky in life. One day my parents will visit--they live in the south--and you‟ll see the fuss they make over me. Paul is just the same. He takes care of everything so that I never have a day of worry...” The man Paul attracted as wide a range of male friends as his wife. They had guests every evening: illiterate men who wanted him to fill in tax forms or write letters for them, or his own colleagues who wanted to debate the political issues of the day--there was always something new happening every day now that the country had independence. The two women sat on the edge of these debates and listened with fascinated ears, but they never participated. The following day they would chew over the debates with wise, earnest expressions. “Men‟s minds travel widely and boldly,” Kenalepe would comment. “It makes me shiver the way they freely criticise our new government. Did you hear what Petros said last night? He said he knew all those bastards and they were just a lot of crooks who would pull a lot of dirty tricks. Oh dear! I shivered so much when he said that. The way they talk about the government makes you feel in your bones that this is not a safe world to be in, not like the old days when we didn‟t have governments. And Lentswe said that ten per cent of the population in England really control all the wealth of the country, which the rest live at starvation level. And he said communism would sort all this out. I gathered from the way they discussed this matter that our government is not in favour of communism. I trembled so much when this became clear to me...” She paused and laughed proudly. “I‟ve heard Paul say this several times: „The British only ruled us for eighty years.‟ I wonder why Paul is so fond of saying that?” And so a completely new world opened up for Dikeledi. It was so impossibly rich and happy that, as the days went by, she immersed herself more deeply in it and quite overlooked the barrenness of her own life. But it hung there like a nagging ache in the mind of her friend, Kenalepe.

“You ought to find another man,” she urged one day, when they had one of their personal discussions. “It‟s not good for a woman to live alone.” “And who would that be?” Dikeledi asked, disillusioned. “I‟d only be bringing trouble into my life whereas now it is all in order. I have my eldest son at school and I can manage to pay the school fees. That‟s all I really care about.” “I mean,” said Kenalepe, “we are also here to make love and enjoy it.” “Oh I never really cared for it,” the other replied. “When you experience the worst of it, it just puts you off altogether.” “What do you mean by that?” Kenalepe asked, wide-eyed. “I mean it was just jump on and jump off and I used to wonder what it was all about. I developed a dislike for it.” “You mean Garesego was like that!” Kenalepe said, flabbergasted. “Why, that‟s just like a cock hopping from hen to hen. I wonder what he is doing with all those women. I‟m sure they are just after his money and so they flatter him . . .” She paused and then added earnestly: “That‟s really all the more reason you should find another man. Oh, if you knew what it was really like, you would long for it, I can tell you! I sometimes think I enjoy that side of life far too much. Paul knows a lot about all that. And he always has some new trick with which to surprise me. He has a certain way of smiling when he has thought up something new and I shiver a little and say to myself: “Ha, what is Paul going to do tonight!” “I can loan Paul to you if you like,” she said, then raised one hand to block the protest on her friend‟s face. “I would do it because I have never had a friend like you in my life before whom I trust so much. Paul had other girls you know, before he married me, so it‟s not such an uncommon thing to him. Besides, we used to make love long before we got married and I never got pregnant. He takes care of that side too. I wouldn‟t mind loaning him because I am expecting another child and I don‟t feel so well these days...” Dikeledi stared at the ground for a long moment, then she looked up at her friend with tears in her eyes. “I cannot accept such a gift from you,” she said, deeply moved. “But if you are ill I will wash for you and cook for you.” Not put off by her friend‟s refusal of her generous offer, Kenalepe mentioned the discussion to her husband that very night. He was so taken off-guard by the unexpectedness of the subject that at first he looked slightly astonished, and burst out into loud laughter and for such a lengthy time that he seemed unable to stop. “Why are you laughing like that?” Kenalepe asked, surprised. He laughed a bit more, then suddenly turned very serious and thoughtful and was lost in his own thoughts for some time. When she asked him what he was thinking he merely replied: “I don‟t want to tell you everything. I want to keep some of my secrets to myself.” The next day Kenalepe reported this to her friend.

“Now whatever does he mean by that? I want to keep some of my secrets to myself?” “I think,” Dikeledi said smiling, “I think he has a conceit about being a good man. Also, when someone loves someone too much, it hurts them to say so. They‟d rather keep silent.” Shortly after this Kenalepe had a miscarriage and had to he admitted to hospital for a minor operation. Dikeledi kept her promise “to wash and cook” for her friend. She ran both their homes, fed the children and kept everything in order. Also, people complained about the poorness of the hospital diet and each day she scoured the village for eggs and chicken, cooked them, and took them to Kenalepe every day at the lunch-hour. One evening Dikeledi ran into a snag with her routine. She had just dished up supper for the Thebolo children when a customer came around with an urgent request for an alteration on a wedding dress. The wedding was to take place the next day. She left the children seated around the fire eating and returned to her own home. An hour later, her own children asleep and settled, she thought she would check the Thebolo yard to see if all was well there. She entered the children‟s hut and noted that they had put themselves to bed and were fast asleep. Their supper plates lay scattered and unwashed around the fire. The hut which Paul and Kenalepe shared was in darkness. It meant that Paul had not yet returned from his usual evening visit to his wife. Dikeledi collected the plates and washed them, then poured the dirty dishwater on the still-glowing embers of the outdoor fire. She piled the plates one on top of the other and carried them to the third additional hut which was used as a kitchen. Just then Paul Thebolo entered the yard, noted the lamp and movement in the kitchen hut and walked over to it. He paused at the open door. "What are you doing now, Mme-Banabothe?” he asked, addressing her affectionately in the customary way by the name of her eldest son, Banabothe. “I know quite well what I am doing,” Dikeledi replied happily. She turned around to say that it was not a good thing to leave dirty dishes standing overnight but her mouth flew open with surprise. Two soft pools of cool liquid light were in his eyes and something infinitely sweet passed between them; it was too beautiful to be love. “You are a very good woman, Mme-Banabothe,” he said softly. It was the truth and the gift was offered like a nugget of gold. Only men like Paul Thebolo could offer such gifts. She took it and stored another treasure in her heart. She bowed her knee in the traditional curtsey and walked quietly away to her own home.

*** Eight years passed for Dikeledi in a quiet rhythm of work and friendship with the Thebolos. The crisis came with the eldest son, Banabothe. He had to take his primary school leaving examination at the end of the year. This serious event sobered him up considerably as like all boys he was very fond of playtime. He brought his books home and told his mother that he would like to study in the evenings. He would like to pass with a “Grade A” to please her. With a flushed and proud face Dikeledi mentioned this to her friend, Kenalepe. “Banabothe is studying every night now,” she said. “He never really cared for studies. I am so pleased about this that I bought him a spare lamp and removed him from the children‟s hut to my own hut where things will be peaceful for him. We both sit up late at night now. I sew on buttons and fix hems and he does his studies...”

She also opened a savings account at the post office in order to have some standby money to pay the fees for his secondary education. They were rather high - R85.OO. But in spite of all her hoarding of odd cents, towards the end of the year, she was short on R20.OO to cover the fees. Midway during the Christmas school holidays the results were announced. Banabothe passed with a “Grade A”. His mother was almost hysterical in her joy at his achievement. But what to do? The two youngest sons had already started primary school and she would never manage to cover all their fees from her resources. She decided to remind Garesego Mokopi that he was the father of the children. She had not seen him in eight years except as a passer-by in the village. Sometimes he waved but he had never talked to her or enquired about her life or that of the children. It did not matter. She was a lower form of human life. Then this unpleasant something turned up at his office one day, just as he was about to leave for lunch. She had heard from village gossip that he had eventually settled down with a married woman who had a brood of children of her own. He had ousted her husband, in a typical village sensation of brawls, curses, and abuse. Most probably the husband did not care because there were always arms outstretched towards a man, as long as he looked like a man. The attraction of this particular woman for Garesego Mokopi, so her former lovers said with a snicker, was that she went in for heady forms of love-making like biting and scratching. Garesego Mokopi walked out of his office and looked irritably at the ghost from his past, his wife. She obviously wanted to talk to him and he walked towards her, looking at his watch all the while. Like all the new “success men,” he had developed a paunch, his eyes were blood-shot, his face was bloated, and the odour of the beer and sex from the previous night clung faintly around him He indicated with his eyes that they should move around to the back of the office block where they could talk in privacy. “You must hurry with whatever you want to say,” he said impatiently. “The lunch-hour is very short and I have to be back at the office by two.” Not to him could she talk of the pride she felt in Banabothes achievement, so she said simply and quietly: “Garesego, I beg you to help me pay Banabothe‟s fees for secondary school. He has passed with a „Grade A‟ and as you know, the school fees must be produced on the first day of school or else he will be turned away. I have struggled to save money the whole year but I am short by R20.OO.” She handed him her post office savings book, which he took, glanced at and handed back to her. Then he smiled, a smirky know-all smile. And thought he was delivering her a blow in the face. “Why don‟t you ask Paul Thebolo for the money?” he said. “Everyone knows he‟s keeping two homes and that you are his spare. Everyone knows about that full bag of corn he delivers to your home every six months so why can‟t he pay the school fees as well?” She neither denied this, nor confirmed it. The blow glanced off her face which she raised slightly, in pride. Then she walked away. As was their habit, the two women got together that afternoon and Dikeledi reported this conversation with her husband to Kenalepe who tossed back her head in anger and said fiercely: “The filthy pig himself! He thinks every man is like him, does he? I shall report this matter to Paul, then he‟ll see something.” And indeed Garesego did see something but it was just up his alley. He was a female prostitute in his innermost being and like all professional prostitutes, he enjoyed publicity and sensation--it promoted his cause. He smiled genially and expansively when a madly angry Paul Thebolo came up to the door of his house where he lived with his concubine. Garesego had been through a lot of these dramas over those eight years and he almost knew by rote the dialogue that would follow. “You bastard!” Paul Thebolo spat out. “Your wife isn‟t my concubine, do you hear?”

"Then why are you keeping her in food?” Garesego drawled. “Men only do that for women they fuck! They never do it for nothing.” Paul Thebolo rested one hand against the wall, half dizzy with anger, and he said tensely: “You defile life, Garesego Mokopi. There‟s nothing else in your world but defilement. Mma-Banabothe makes clothes for my wife and children and she will never accept money from me so how else must I pay her?” “It only proves the story both ways,” the other replied, vilely. “Women do that for men who fuck them.” Paul Thebolo shot out the other hand, punched him soundly in one grinning eye and walked away. Who could hide a livid, swollen eye? To every surprised enquiry, he replied with an injured air: “It was done by my wife‟s lover, Paul Thebolo.” It certainly brought the attention of the whole village upon him, which was all he really wanted. Those kinds of men were the bottom rung of government. They secretly hungered to be the President with all eyes on them. He worked up the sensation a little further. He announced that he would pay the school fees of the child of his concubine, who was also to enter secondary school, but not the school fees of his own child, Banabothe. People half liked the smear on Paul Thebolo; he was too good to be true. They delighted in making him a part of the general dirt of the village, so they turned on Garesego and scolded: “Your wife might be getting things from Paul Thebolo but it‟s beyond the purse of any man to pay the school fees of his own children as well as the school fees of another man‟s children. Banabothe wouldn‟t be there had you not procreated him, Garesego, so it is your duty to care for him. Besides, it‟s your fault if your wife takes another man. You left her alone all these years.” So that story was lived with for two weeks, mostly because people wanted to say that Paul Thebolo was a part of life too and as uncertain of his morals as they were. But the story took such a dramatic turn that it made all the men shudder with horror. It was some weeks before they could find the courage to go to bed with women; they preferred to do something else. Garesego‟s obscene thought processes were his own undoing. He really believed that another man had a stake in his hen-pen and like any cock, his hair was up about it. He thought he‟d walk in and reestablish his own claim to it and so, after two weeks, once the swelling in his eye had died down, he espied Banabothe in the village and asked him to take a note to his mother. He said the child should bring a reply. The note read: “Dear Mother, I am coming home again so that we may settle our differences. Will you prepare a meal for me and some hot water that I might take a bath? Gare.” Dikeledi took the note, read it and shook with rage. All its overtones were clear to her. He was coming home for some sex. They had had no differences. They had not even talked to each other. “Banabothe,” she said. “Will you play nearby? I want to think a bit then I will send you to your father with the reply.” Her thought processes were not very clear to her. There was something she could not immediately touch upon. Her life had become holy to her during all those years she had struggled to maintain herself and the children. She had filled her life with treasures of kindness and love she had gathered from others and it was all this that she wanted to protect from defilement by an evil man. Her first panic-stricken thought was to gather up the children and flee the village. But where to go? Garesego did not want a divorce, she had left him to approach her about the matter, she had desisted from taking any other man. She turned her thoughts this way and that and could find no way out except to face him. If she wrote back, don‟t you dare put foot in the yard I don‟t want to see you, he would ignore it. Black women didn‟t have that kind of power. A thoughtful, brooding look came over her face. At last. at peace with herself, she went into her hut and wrote a reply: “Sir, I shall prepare everything as you have said. Dikeledi.”

It was about midday when Banabothe sped back with the reply to his father. All afternoon Dikeledi busied herself making preparations for the appearance of her husband at sunset. At one point Kenalepe approached the yard and looked around in amazement at the massive preparations, the large iron water pot full of water with a fire burning under it, the extra cooking pots on the fire. Only later Kenalepe brought the knife into focus. But it was only a vague blur, a large kitchen knife used to cut meat and Dikeledi knelt at a grinding-stone and sharpened it slowly and methodically. What was in focus then was the final and tragic expression on the upturned face of her friend. It threw her into confusion and blocked their usual free and easy feminine chatter. When Dikeledi said: “I am making some preparations for Garesego. He is coming home tonight,” Kenalepe beat a hasty retreat to her own home terrified. They knew they were involved because when she mentioned this to Paul he was distracted and uneasy for the rest of the day. He kept on doing upside-down sorts of things, not replying to questions, absent-mindedly leaving a cup of tea until it got quite cold, and every now and again he stood up and paced about, lost in his own thoughts. So deep was their sense of disturbance that towards evening they no longer made a pretence of talking. They just sat in silence in their hut. Then, at about nine o‟clock, they heard those wild and agonized bellows. They both rushed out together to the yard of Dikeledi Mokopi.

*** He came home at sunset and found everything ready for him as he had requested, and he settled himself down to enjoy a man‟s life. He had brought a pack of beer along and sat outdoors slowly savouring it while every now and then his eye swept over the Thebolo yard. Only the woman and children moved about the yard. The man was out of sight. Garesego smiled to himself, pleased that he could crow as loud as he liked with no answering challenge. A basin of warm water was placed before him to wash his hands and then Dikeledi served him his meal. At a separate distance she also served the children and then instructed them to wash and prepare for bed. She noted that Garesego displayed no interest in the children whatsoever. He was entirely wrapped up in himself and thought only of himself and his own comfort. Any tenderness he offered the children might have broken her and swerved her mind away from the deed she had carefully planned all that afternoon. She was beneath his regard and notice too for when she eventually brought her own plate of food and sat near him, he never once glanced at her face. He drank his beer and cast his glance every now and again at the Thebolo yard. Not once did the man of the yard appear until it became too dark to distinguish anything any more. He was completely satisfied with that. He could repeat the performance every day until he broke the mettle of the other cock again and forced him into angry abuse. He liked that sort of thing. "Garesego, do you think you could help me with Banabothe‟s school fees?” Dikeledi asked at one point. “Oh, I‟ll think about it,” he replied casually. She stood up and carried buckets of water into the hut, which she poured into a large tin bath that he might bathe himself, then while he took his bath she busied herself tidying up and completing the last of the household chores. Those done, she entered the children‟s hut. They played hard during the day and they had already fallen asleep with exhaustion. She knelt down near their sleeping mats and stared at them for a long while, with an extremely tender expression. Then she blew out their lamp and walked to her own hut. Garesego lay sprawled across the bed in such a manner that indicated he only thought of himself and did not intend sharing the bed with anyone else. Satiated with food and drink, he had fallen into a deep, heavy sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. His concubine had no doubt taught him that the correct way for a man to go to bed, was naked. So he lay, unguarded and defenceless, sprawled across the bed on his back.

The bath made a loud clatter as Dikeledi removed it from the room, but still he slept on, lost to the world. She re-entered the hut and closed the door. Then she bent down and reached for the knife under the bed which she had merely concealed with a cloth. With the precision and skill of her hardworking hands, she grasped hold of his genitals and cut them off with one stroke. In doing so, she slit the main artery which ran on the inside of the groin. A massive spurt of blood arched its way across the bed. And Garesego bellowed. He bellowed his anguish. Then all was silent. She stood and watched his death anguish with an intent and brooding look, missing not one detail of it. A knock on the door stirred her out of her reverie. It was the boy, Banabothe. She opened the door and stared at him, speechless. He was trembling violently. “Mother,” he said, in a terrified whisper. “Didn‟t I hear father cry?” “I have killed him,” she said, waving her hand in the air with a gesture that said--well, that‟s that. Then she added sharply: “Banabothe, go and call the police.” He turned and fled into the night. A second pair of footsteps followed hard on his heels. It was Kenalepe running back to her own yard, half out of her mind with fear. Out of the dark Paul Thebolo stepped towards the hut and entered it. He took in every detail and then he turned and looked at Dikeledi with such a tortured expression that for a time words failed him. At last he said: “You don‟t have to worry about the children, Mma-Banabothe. I‟ll take them as my own and give them all a secondary school."