Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda

Author:Zakes Mda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador
Published: 1995-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

When Noria got married to Napu and moved to town, she stopped singing for Jwara altogether. He sat in his workshop for days on end, without ever venturing out. Policemen brought horses to be shoed, but Jwara told them to go away. He was mourning the death of his creativity. He just sat in his workshop, and refused even to eat. We went to take a look at him, and found him sitting wide-eyed, staring at his figurines. We brought him food and fruit, but these remained untouched.

His wife gave up on him, and got a job doing washing for the manager of the general dealer’s store. She had to earn a living, since no money was coming into the house from the smithy. After a while she no longer bothered going to the workshop, but decided to get on with her life.

We, however, continued to take him food and fruit, which kept on piling up all around him. While the food decayed, and there were worms all over the place, and a stench, he stayed intact for months on end, just staring at the figurines, and pining away. Not even once did he go out in all that time.

We finally got tired of taking the offerings to the workshop, and went about our business. But all the time we knew that Jwara was in there, lost in a trance. The workshop remained closed for many years. Sometimes we warned children, when we saw them playing outside the workshop, ‘Hey you children, go and make your noise elsewhere! Don’t you know that you are disturbing Jwara in his meditations?’

One day, some men who wanted to open a blacksmith business came to Toloki’s mother, and offered to buy Jwara’s old equipment. Toloki’s mother needed the money, and didn’t see the point of keeping blacksmithing equipment when it was clear to everyone that Jwara would never work as a blacksmith again. Accompanied by the men, and by other curious neighbours, she went to the workshop and opened the door. For the first time in years, light invaded the privacy of the workshop. And there was Jwara, sitting as they remembered him, but with his biltong-like flesh stuck to his bones. His bulging eyes were staring at the figurines as before. Glimmering gossamer was spun all around him, connecting his gaunt body with the walls and the roof. In front of him was a piece of paper on which he had written in a semi-literate scrawl, bequeathing his figurines to Toloki. We never knew before this that Jwara could write. In fact, we were sure that he could not write. He used to sign his papers with a cross, after Toloki or Noria had read them to him. But there it was, in his own handwriting, his last will and testament.

When Jwara was buried, no one wanted to be the Nurse. Everyone who was asked said, ‘We cannot call upon ourselves the wrath of the ancestors by being witness to things we do not know.

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