Rusty Bell Read online

  Praise for Nthikeng Mohlele’s Small Things

  ‘Behind this story of love, music and the eternal quest lies an artistic sensibility as generous as it is complex. The prose is rich in texture, the final effect melancholy and comic in equal proportions.’

  – JM Coetzee

  ‘Nthikeng Mohlele has written a superb second novel in Small Things. This book is philosophically interesting, and psychologically astute, demonstrating intelligence and integrity.’

  – Sarah Frost, KZN Literary Tourism

  ‘An unnamed protagonist … a tragicomic figure worthy of some of the most existentially absurd creations of Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoyevsky or even Coetzee himself.’

  – Charles Cilliers, City Press

  ‘Lively writing that packs a punch. Mohlele’s writing is often superb, crackling with unexpected imagery and a lively inventiveness.’

  – Margaret von Klemperer, The Witness

  Rusty Bell

  Nthikeng Mohlele

  First published in 2014 by University of KwaZulu-Natal Press

  Published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2018

  10 Orange Street

  Sunnyside

  Auckland Park 2092

  South Africa

  +2711 628 3200

  www.jacana.co.za

  © Nthikeng Mohlele, 2014

  Author photograph © Oupa Nkosi

  All rights reserved.

  d-PDF ISBN 978-1-4314-2763-5

  ePUB ISBN 978-1-4314-2764-2

  mobi file ISBN 978-1-4314-2765-9

  Cover design by publicide

  Cover image © Angella d’Avignon

  Job No. 003236

  See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za

  For

  My son, Miles Mohlele, who is wise

  Contents

  Desirable Horses

  Sir Marvin at 24

  Pete Wentzel

  Consultation Seven

  Eugene Wentzel

  Columbus Wentzel

  Consultation Twelve

  A Cat Named Clinton K

  Frank & Maria

  Sir Marvin at 50

  Desirable Horses

  I wrestled with life and lost. Not completely, but enough to still have to lie on Dr West’s couch every second Friday of the month for the last twenty years. Apart from the occasional long face, in the privacy of my study I am no different from any 48-year-old in any corporate law firm anywhere in the world. I get paid obscene amounts to sniff out loopholes in contracts, litigation minefields that if not detected could obliterate our clients many years in the future. I am a legal soothsayer of sorts, though my formal job description is transaction advice for multinationals. As senior partner, with an ex-officio board seat – for my risk-management skills, I am told – my workload is proportionally related to my six-figure pay cheque, less executive incentives and performance rewards.

  My office at Thompson Buthelezi & Brook Inc. is large and tastefully furnished, in oaks and rare artworks. I put in adequate hours, am diligent, keep away from corporate gossip and office entanglements: some of the female colleagues are flirty and beautiful; the CEO, Bernard Parker, tells sexist jokes. My job’s all right; I meet interesting people, most of whom say I am one of the best in the business. The work itself is not rocket science, its essence rather straightforward, actually: firmly and officially advise corporates on how to make the most money, without getting burnt. That is not hard. I am busy with a Swedish-Namibian Telecoms merger as we speak: a 60:40 revenue share model. Nothing complicated.

  I have a team of young lawyers working for me. I have never met with them, because my instructions are carried out by their bosses, who tell them what to do. Most of their work is good, sometimes average; seldom brilliant. I can tell when my instructions have been diluted, misrepresented – but the slippages are easily fixed: presentation of a Sony cassette to the senior attorney in question, onto which I voice record all my instructions without fail. Located at the heart of the Sandton CBD, TB & Brook Inc. is surrounded by what economists call ‘big money’ – insurance, banking and mining companies. My office patio overlooks the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, evidence of the ultra rich trapped in a warped bubble.

  My name is Michael. Everyone at the office calls me Sir Marvin. I am the splitting image of my father, who for most of his life had people freezing in their tracks, thinking Marvin Gaye had risen from the dead. Home is in Morningside, eight minutes from work, five if I take the BMW M5. I cannot arrive late at meetings; it is not expected of me to be late – lateness is a disease for other people. I live with Rusty, my lovely wife. Michael Junior, our only son, has recently moved into a penthouse his mother bought him, where I hear they have all-night parties with questionable girls. I let my father speak to him, or my mother, because they understand him better. He has a thing for white girls and chewing gum, something I find rather strange. The chewing gum, I mean.

  I have been having a lot of trouble with Michael Junior, although I have to say that some of that abated following his brief incarceration on a drunk-driving charge: shock treatment. I had taken the afternoon off, at Dr West’s rooms, when he called, barely audible, the 550i completely written off. That was the firm’s BMW and, with insurance not budging, I offered to replace it with an identical car. I drove to the scene, found him reeling with and reeking of alcohol, walking around in his underpants, dictating to paramedics and traffic enforcement officers that he was the son of a respected lawyer, which was true, and that his father would be very upset if they did not let him go, which was false and infuriating.

  He could have posted bail the next day, a Thursday, but I insisted that not a soul lift a finger until the following Tuesday, so he had four days to sober up and think about his life. There are times I wish I had such time; the opportunity to completely alter the course my life has taken. ‘You let those thugs, those murderers almost kill me!’ he yelled at me on his release and didn’t speak to me for eight months – except when he wanted money, of course. Rusty played the diplomat, committed to both sides and yet to neither. I believe he has those parties to spite me, dare me, punish me for things his mother tells him in conspiratorial tones, especially when she is insecure in her diplomatic role, when she is angry with me, when she intentionally serves me burnt toast.

  There was a time, years ago, when Rusty loved me. She is, strangely, part of the reason I continue to see Dr West, but not the sole reason by any means. Catherine and Abednego, her parents, are old and sickly – and no longer visit every five minutes. I don’t hate them; I just don’t like them. Catherine tries, but she is married to a fatally flawed man who is domineering and has opinions on everything – the swine. Three visitor bathrooms, but Abednego will pass them all and stink out my private loo, off my bedroom.

  I regularly came home to suffocating smells, until I realised without being told that it was Abednego perching that wobbly rear of his on my loo, door wide open, filling in horse-racing crossword puzzles. I was, in the end, the unreasonable one, unwelcoming, unfriendly.

  I pleaded. ‘Can’t your father use the visitors’ bathroom? Please, Rusty.’ She sulked, became reckless with the dishes in the sink, and took the M5 keys without asking, leaving me to drive that lumpy piece of metal, her Hummer 3.

  I looked like I was driving through a war zone in that thing, tank like, with small side windows, like I was dodging sniper bullets. It was embarrassing parking that monstrosity at important meetings, graced by executive saloons – having to explain my sudden change in vehicular taste. But I digress.

  Dr West probably knows me better than Rusty, the woman who wakes next to me every day. He has aged, has become very candid with me, maybe too blunt. There seems to be no middle ground in how he speaks his mind
: promptly, perceptively, passionately. ‘You are a respected professional. Desirable Horses will be the end of you. Why can’t you rid yourself of these damned whores? Pull yourself together, for God’s sake!’ He is mean to me sometimes, says I need to understand I am not his only patient, that he does not appreciate being woken at two in the morning because I am having hooker panic attacks. ‘Why can’t you stop?’ he asks me. He has aged considerably, has the impatience of one with no time to waste.

  Why can’t I? I don’t know. I really don’t. But I do feel for the poor man. I have put him through a lot: depression of various shades, gloomy suicidal streaks, two alcoholic phases that lasted four and a half years and a peculiar addiction to dangerous behaviour, hazardous activities: 284-kilometre-per-hour blasts along Johannesburg’s motorways, eyeballing bouncers who interfered with my lap dances (I am a generous tipper), cooking and devouring mushrooms randomly picked from city parks, and an obscene consumption of filter coffee that resulted in a lingering, natural high.

  There were nights I couldn’t stand Rusty, when she wouldn’t stop complaining that I did not listen to her. Questions: how many stories of rotten teeth and bleeding gums can one listen to over the years and remain intrigued? How many stories of dental reconstructions can one person stand? How many detailed descriptions of mouthwash ingredients, toothbrush design and granny tooth disinfectants can be considered titillating? Of course the ex-Finance Minister is an old client of Rusty’s, and of course famous jazz vocalists and newsreaders frequent her rooms; footballers, models, spouses and mistresses, and the general public with tooth preoccupations. Even me. But did I really need to be hearing about it all in minute detail? I told her, years ago, that dentistry was a science limited to teeth, beyond which there isn’t much else. Rusty turned the argument on its head. It became a second Vietnam War, a war no one was ever going to win. And there are, to this day, surprise ambushes, unexpected landmines. She and Michael Junior are a two-person platoon; they sulk and reduce everything to one-word answers.

  Me: ‘Anyone seen my rain suit?’ Rusty: ‘No.’ Me: ‘What we gonna do this weekend?’ Michael Junior: ‘Nothing.’ ‘Honey, I really feel like being naughty, can we … you Sexy Nefertiti you?’ Rusty: ‘Headache.’ Me: ‘Hello, Mike. Please give your old man a hand with these groceries?’ Michael Junior: ‘Television.’ I might as well be living alone. I have lost count of how many times I have explained myself to Michael Junior. Explained. Pleaded. Grovelled. To be absolutely honest, I have had very dark thoughts about these two, so dark I have to take midnight showers to rid my soul of impurities.

  Just look at this house. Look at it. Isn’t it solid evidence of hard work, of a dedicated husband, father? When she is in a good mood, the lovable Rusty, feeling lewd, she stops by at the law firm. I tell secondary lies about a burst geyser, climb into that hideous Hummer and she drives us home. There we follow freshly strewn rose petals in pinks, reds and whites from the front door – a trail of lit candles from the kitchen all the way to our queen-size bed, at the centre of which petals are arranged to resemble a heart. There is even a card, sprinkled with Rusty’s rose magic. ‘Open it,’ she says. The front is a cartoon of an ice skater, midair. Inside, in brown ink, is written: ‘Jump your highest, Sir Marvin. Rusty will always catch you.’

  An arrow directs the eye to the very bottom of the card, where it says in small cursive: ‘Long fucking completely allowed.’ I oblige. We have our shortcuts, you see – because I know every slope, every crevice, every curve of that body – when it is on fire or pretending, when matters become urgent, when to hurry. I am not fooled by the petals: they have nothing to do with romance, and everything to do with coded apologies for the shoddy way I am treated in this house. We crush the petals, claw clothes to the floor. Kiss. Twist and roll. Rusty has never been a complex bed mate, not one with carnal demons intent on all-night toils, but a sensual 38-year-old with the sensuality of a college girl. A few rapid strokes and she loses her bearings, speaks in tongues. She traps me between elegant legs, the colour of mahogany wood under certain light conditions, moans, quivers, surrenders. We stay in bed, like teenagers, and fall asleep in each other’s arms. The law firm has the good sense not to call, to disturb me while I attend to plumbing emergencies.

  I meet Abdul Azeez twice a week in my office. He teaches me Arabic. I am, during these sessions, able to travel thousands of years to the Islamic history of Timbuktu. I later ignore Rusty’s mood swings and, in the solitude of my study, lose myself in the tales excavated from the sands of the Sahara. Abdul Azeez is an avid scholar and researcher: tall, dreamy, humble to a fault. He has logbooks, bound and precious, detailing important ancient manuscript owners and conservators. Abdul speaks very little, yet when called upon guides me through profound discoveries that often leave me exhilarated. I dabble in ancient philosophy, in law, in poetry. Abdul declines a consultancy fee, yet dedicates four hours every week without fail. The only cost I have incurred for this privilege has been numerous glasses of tap water that Abdul gulps down during our sessions, and a very bad bout of influenza I picked up from him sneezing repeatedly one rainy evening.

  I, privately, wish his uncle Aaqil, an old client of ours – oil exploration – was like him; only he is an uptight, impatient, suspicious beast. Grown men run like anxious puppies around him, shielding him with umbrellas, opening the door of his Rolls Royce Phantom, answering his cellphones. That is how I met Abdul Azeez, who had been invited to be his uncle’s scribe, because Mr Hakeem does not completely trust lawyers. His reason is direct: hard-earned Saudi money.

  Abdul turned out to be a meticulous note taker, quite useful in subsequent Emirates Gas and Niger Oil Consortium meetings, correcting misunderstandings. I warmed to the young man instantly, especially his burgundy ties, Rusty’s colour of choice when it comes to brassieres.

  I cannot stand whisky these days. The slightest hint of the smell, the sight of someone clasping a glass, with piss-coloured liquid and ice cubes, makes me ill. My drinking got so bad that my then boss, Mr Chuene, kind but boring, made it his mission to rid me of substance abuse. It was he, upon request of my adorable wife, who suggested that I be checked into a Melville facility – where I wasted valuable time playing chess with lifetime alcoholics. I kept to myself, mostly, but the programme encouraged group things. Diary readings. Hugs. Conversations of various kinds.

  I found the clinic’s routine torturous, not to mention sitting there on rock-hard wooden chairs describing our feelings to a group of strangers: dissecting, pitying, lying to ourselves. There were moments of brutal honesty, when one grey head with a disarming twinkle in his eyes expressly and responsibly opined that he knew his death would result from drinking, or the after-effects thereof. That his goal was not to stop drinking – because he couldn’t, because he had tried all his life, because his father’s father died trying – but to drink just enough to reasonably alter sobriety, without being a nuisance. His name was Joseph, or José.

  My throat got more knotted with each speaker, for they all seemed to take words out of my mouth. By the time it was my time to speak, to all those slaves of the bottle and addictive powders, words refused to come. The mind was working, the expectation real, from those wounded creatures craning their necks to hear what earth-shattering truths I was about to offer.

  But all I could manage was a pained smile, fiddling with the zip of my jacket, staring blankly out the window. With great patience they waited, until I, oppressed by their expectant eyes, finally said: ‘I will stop drinking one day. But I, for now, desperately need something to distract me from hanging myself.’ There were gasps, some shoe shuffling, then silence. Many hands were extended to me during the coffee break, to which (the coffee) I was also badly addicted, hugs that exposed voluptuous breasts of drinker housewives, a momentary striptease, with which I was also obsessed, and an unrelated conversation about babies, which drove me into a suppressed rage.

  I am a lot more relaxed these days. My Arabic is improving, the household i
s a lot calmer, and I have beaten all my addictions, but one. I cannot, for the life of me, with all of Dr West’s encouragement and rebukes, stop myself from frequenting Desirable Horses. It seems an inbred itch, an insatiable craving, to sit in a dimly lit room, a fine piece of classical music serenading other wretches like me, and succumb to the magnetic pull of beautiful breasts thrust in my face, the mock seduction of those skilled swindlers touching themselves in provocative places, tongues moistening lips, pelvises twitching in choreographed gyrations. I can, between those heavy seconds, totally spellbound, still read the slight frown that momentarily dims the naughty smiles, a frown that gently but firmly says: ‘Put more money, you scandalous bastard, this dance is not for free.’

  I pull that Simone (not her real name) by the small of her back, closer, so her cleavage stops inches from my nostrils, where sniffing calmly and hungrily, I slip a generous banknote under her brassiere strap. I gesture that she turns around, almost touch her toes, wiggle her perfect bottom in my face, allow me to slide fat rolls of notes, enough for three months’ rent in high places, on three sides of her focal points: left and right hips, and of course, just under her navel, where the panty front leads to her forbidden bulge.

  Bouncers break necks and arms for errant hands, but I am a law-abiding citizen, so Simone feels safe with me, no matter what the temptations. The bodies are sculptured here, beautiful figures with mesmerising collarbones, steady necks and perfect toes, and navels that look like islands in a calm sea of belly flesh. These girls, Merles, Biancas and Simones, are an addiction I cannot overcome, not even if threatened with impalement.

  My introduction into this world, the universe of female bodies, was a rather traumatic affair – one of the reasons, says Dr West, I frequent Desirable Horses: to recapture control, robbed by that sinister encounter. So, I admit I frequent whorehouses, if strip clubs qualify as such, but deny that I have any other intentions other than that addictive, forbidden, magnetic pull. This distinction, contradictory as it might seem, is the sole reason I have Simone’s respect, though her frowns are becoming more and more frequent, and her smile too brief these days. So I play by the rules, hand her a note or two. What else can I do?