The Quality of Mercy

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Theory of Flight (2018)

The History of Man (2020)

Published in 2022 by Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Company Reg. No. 1953/000441/07

The Estuaries No. 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441, South Africa

PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

© 2022 Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

First edition, first printing 2022

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

ISBN 978-1-7763-8000-8 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-77638-023-7 (ePub)

The quotation from The Sunday News is from ‘Ceasefire Hopes’, p. 10, 23 December 1979.

Quotations by Zora Neale are from ‘How It Feels to Be Colored Me’ by Zora Neale Hurston, first published in The World Tomorrow, May 1928.

Cover design by Gretchen van der Byl

Text design by Fahiema Hallam

In loving memory of my grandparents, Sibabi Charles Ndlovu and Kearabiloe Mokoena Ndlovu. Thank you both for the love given and the promises kept.

THE PROLOGUE

Based on a story my grandmother told me

Spokes M Moloi, recently returned from the war, stood at the corner of Lobengula Street and Selborne Avenue and waited on a promise. In 1941, the British had pledged that if he went to fight against the Germans, they would give him many acres of farming land that he could call his own. What man did not want a piece of viable land that belonged to him? And so Spokes had eagerly signed the papers they put in front of him, immediately joined the ranks of the newly formed African Rifles, and gladly collected the issued uniform – feeling, all the while, certain that this was a step in the right direction for him.

Even when they refused to give him – a soldier in the African Rifles – a rifle, Spokes chose to overlook the irony of the situation and chose, instead, to believe that he was walking towards something truly glorious. So strong was his belief in this glorious something that when they made his unit carry things here and there and everywhere, Spokes steadfastly refused to call himself a porter. He had joined the war a soldier, and as he carried weapons, ammunition, sundry supplies and wares in all kinds of weather and across desert and tundra, he saw this as his necessary contribution to the war effort.

When others of his ilk began to criticise the British for what they perceived to be unfair and unequal treatment, Spokes valiantly refused to be drawn into their malaise. His only complaint, and it was a small one, was that the greens and slouch hats that constituted their uniform did not seem to have taken into consideration all the various climates through which they would have to travel.

As he walked alongside men whose boots had been filled with sand or caked in mud or frozen hard by snow, men bent double by the things they carried, men who wished they had been assigned to Burma where the real fighting – with rifles – was, or to Durban, where they could at least escort Italian prisoners of war, Spokes knew he had to tread lightly. This was because he was the only man in the entire history of his country, perhaps in the entire history of the world, whose grandfather and father had both been hanged by the neck until they were dead. This rather weighty inheritance not only made him a rare and unique man; it also made him realise that he needed to cultivate a tenable relationship with the British.

By joining the war, Spokes felt certain that the promised land would make him something that his grandfather and his father had never had the chance to become: a man with a future. So, as men around him were struck by bullets against which they could not adequately defend themselves, or were blown apart by landmines that they had previously carried on their backs, this is what Spokes held on to: a future.

Spokes, and others who had survived the war, had returned home in 1946, to much fanfare and a victory parade as their regimental song, ‘Sweet Banana’, blasted from the army band on the stand, and confetti and ticker tape filled the air. There were many sensations to feel – pride was one of them. There were many things to believe – that they were heroes was one of them. There were many things to hope for – equality was one of them. A year after the parade, Spokes found himself standing in the long-anticipated future, waiting.

It was while he was waiting in that future that he saw something that he never thought he would see on Lobengula Street: a book. Not a scrolled-up newspaper placed in the pit of an arm, not a neatly folded pamphlet placed in a pocket, but a book – leather-bound and surprisingly new – held in a pair of brown hands with long, tapered fingers and delicate wrists. Books belonged in libraries where one could only touch them once one had donned a pair of white gloves, so what was this particular book doing in such beautiful brown hands, and on Lobengula Street of all places?

Spokes moved closer to the book and its owner until he could easily make out its title: Pride and Prejudice. Once he read the title, he became fully aware of his surroundings, and was shocked to find himself sitting in a bus. Somehow, as he followed those beautiful brown hands carrying the leather-bound book, he had managed to board a bus, pay the conductor and choose a seat, without his being aware of doing any of these things. The reason he could see the book’s title so clearly was because he was now sitting adjacent to the beautiful brown hands.

The bus pulled out of the terminus rank, and, for the first time in his life, Spokes had no idea where he was headed. He should have been terrified, but, upon deeper contemplation, he found that he did not mind not knowing, because this seemed to him to be a beginning.

He hazarded a quick glance at the owner of the beautiful brown hands. She was so much loveliness that he quickly had to look away … until he felt bold enough to look again. In order not to be too overwhelmed by her comeliness, he could only look at her in parts. The neat overlap of her ankles as she sat with her silk-stockinged legs slightly stretched out in front of her. The gentle arch of her calves. The softness of the soft places, which he made sure not to look at for a moment longer than was necessary. The long, regal neck, like a column at a temple he had seen. The face – the pretty, pretty face – slightly upturned as though always waiting for a kiss. She smiled at a passage she was reading, and a dimple appeared. It was the appearance of that dimple that allowed Spokes to discover what he was about – that he meant to make this woman, who was loveliness itself, his wife.

He should never have acknowledged this to himself because all of a sudden, uncertainty plagued him. Where was he going? What would he do once he got there? The sun was making its way towards setting; where would he spend the night? He would have to put himself in a precarious situation and rely on the kindness of strangers – and strangers were not always kind. He became hopeful that she was heading to a mission station. He could pretend (not lie, mind you, he did not like to lie) that he had travelled all this way because he had heard that there was a post recently made available for a teacher. An English teacher. And then what? He looked at the beautiful brown hands holding the leather-bound book and knew that there was no easy way out.

By the time she alighted at her bus stop, there were a few stars in a sky that was languidly giving itself over to darkness. Spokes followed her off the bus, as did other passengers. Once outside in alien land, Spokes was evidently the only foreigner, as most passengers had people waiting ready to greet them and receive whatever luggage or parcels they had brought with them. Those who were not performing this particular act were congregated around the caravan of a travelling salesman, who kept taunting them about closing down for the night. His customers seemed to enjoy this, and taunted him back about how difficult it was for them to remove money from their pockets at this time of day. There was much merriment as they tried to hold off the night a little longer.

Upon seeing her, the travelling salesman left his caravan and rushed to help her with her trunk. This was something that Spokes would have thought to do had he not been overawed by the newness of it all.

There were more stars in the twilight sky when Spokes eventually and hesitantly made his way to the salesman’s caravan. The passengers who had been met by people had cleared away and left him standing there, a spectator of things he could not be part of.

Spokes found it rather surprising that no one had come to collect her as yet. Who would leave something so very precious unattended for so long? As if to answer his question, he heard her say to the salesman, ‘He always does this. Always keeps me waiting.’ To which the salesman replied, ‘He is a very important man; he keeps everyone waiting.’

A very important man … Spokes understood then that he had no chance at whatever he was trying to have a chance at.

‘May I help you?’ the salesman asked, and all attention – even hers – turned to Spokes.

What had he planned to say when asked why he had journeyed so far? Spokes struggled to remember as he removed his fedora from his head. ‘A school,’ was all he could think to say at first before hastily adding, ‘I hear there is a mission school in these parts. I am looking for a job as a teacher.’ He could feel all eyes – even hers – looking him over, assessing his clothing and appearance, judging and determining whether or not he was teacher material. He dared not look at any of them – especially her – for fear that they were finding him wanting in some way. Where was the perfect exchange that he had imagined?

‘I’m afraid you’ve been somewhat misinformed, but only slightly,’ the salesman said. ‘The nearest school is just over five miles away. Nearest bus station is Krum’s Place. Spelled K-R-U-M, but not pronounced as crumb, pronounced as K-R-O-O-M. You got off two stops too soon.’

‘When does the next bus come this way?’ Spokes asked, crushing his hat in his hands, feeling the desperation that comes with futility.

‘Very bus you alighted from. Early tomorrow morning. Heading back to the City of Kings,’ the salesman said.

Spokes’s plight must have been palpable because most of the remaining customers, not wanting to be co-opted into his predicament, noted the lateness of the evening and made their various ways home.

‘I travel to Krum’s Place first thing in the morning,’ the salesman said. ‘If you are here bright and early, I could take you.’

‘That would be very kind of you, sir,’ Spokes said. He would have to go to Krum’s Place and continue his job-seeking charade before returning to the corner of Lobengula Street and Selborne Avenue and waiting on a promise. Serve him right for not thinking things through.

‘It is indeed a kindness on my part,’ the salesman said. ‘But not an altogether fortunate one. I cannot put you up for the night. Only room for one in my caravan.’

Before Spokes had a chance to process any of this, she spoke directly to him for the first time, and it was like music.

‘I suppose we could put you up for the night,’ she volunteered.

There were words he should say at a moment like this, words that had been said by many before him, words that he himself had said innumerable times, words that would not come to him now. The words that came to him rather readily were these: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’

Now, of all things, why would he go and say that?

She looked at him blankly as though she had not recently read those very words herself. Spokes was desperately trying to formulate a single sentence in which he both explained that he had seen her reading the book and that it was his intention to be an English teacher when the salesman seemingly saved him by saying, ‘What an interesting thing to say in place of a simple “thank you”.’ There was obvious mirth in his voice as he continued: ‘So are you a man in possession of a good fortune?’

‘No, no … not at all,’ Spokes stuttered honestly. Things were going splendidly indeed.

‘And yet you are in want of a wife?’ the salesman said, not allowing Spokes to suffer his mortification in peace.

‘No …’ Spokes began to say, but then realised that he would be lying outright. He made the mistake of looking at her. Was he imagining it, or was that a dimple in her cheek? The hurricane lamp provided poor light, but he was almost certain he could see a dimple. She was laughing at him and his blundering ways, and why wouldn’t she?

Luckily for him, luckily for all of them, for God only knew what fresh calamity would befall them if he was allowed to open his mouth again, she pointed into the distance and said, ‘Finally!’

Spokes turned around to see two lights suspended in darkness, travelling towards them. It was only after they got closer that he heard the hooves of horses. So ‘he’ was not only a very important man, ‘he’ was a very important man who owned a carriage, like a European man.

The carriage came to a stop in a cloud of dust that in time settled to reveal a man with snow-white hair and the wisest eyes that Spokes had ever seen. The man seemed much younger than his white hair denoted.

‘Loveness!’ the man shouted as he alighted from the carriage.

Loveness – what a fitting name for such a lovely woman. What other name could she have possibly been given?

‘You should have named me Dojiwe,’ Loveness said. ‘You certainly treat me like something you picked up along the way.’

Father and daughter, Spokes happily deduced, feeling an undue hope.

‘Sobantu seems to have been friendly with Mthembu’s wife,’ the man with the wise eyes said as he and the salesman loaded her trunk into the carriage.

‘Again,’ the lovely Loveness said.