Congo

 

1

The old gray suitcase was heavy, pulling me sideways as I waddled between the pavement and main road. The wind rose from the national road and came in with tumble weeds and cigarette stubs that was disposed by drivers not turning their heads as they whooshed past with Marco Polo Lux liners.                   

If you did not watch closely, Touwsriver was a blink of an eye and less than a sun speckle for the travelling cataract eye leaving old age homes to visit family. It was a freaking small railway station that connected small sad corroded routes to the mainline.

I was on my way to the station from downtown and for the first time in twenty years I was not going to stare at that black lettered sign, greeting coincidental visitors that came for a pee and a cool drink at the local garage in the beginning of town.

Visitors never ventured further than the gas kiosk to maybe consider sightseeing of the village. Well there was almost f**k all to see anyway except for three mountain tortoises and a man with a huge hobbled back that worked for the Perm bank   

Oh! That strong wide gleaming rail ran living as the Nile, the Ganges through our dusty tarmac station, bringing the blue continental express with funny looking people flashing cameras at every god damn thing they saw and the Trans Karoo that seated mothers trying to contain hyper excited children screaming through the train passages and fathers looking out of their respective compartments drinking beers, eating boiled eggs maybe thinking holiday.  

 I was going to leave in one of those trains and never look back. For a Friday evening the station looked deserted and I only saw the signs of earlier activity, swirling litter in small baby tornados on the deck. My heart was thumping and I thought that I missed the train to Cape Town.

Old Teddy was the only person I saw cleaning the deck with an industrial broom. Dad said that there was something wrong with him. When he was seven years old he dived into the municipality bath and accidentally cracked his skull against the side of the pool. Ever since the accident he cannot control his mucus and got stuck to only count up to five. Donny  Evangelist felt pity for him and arranged a job for him as a cleaner with the railway company. Ever since old Teddy has been cleaning around the station and bothering the maids in the locations after he knocked off and I believed he was happy with his life.

The station loudspeakers was playing the clarinet of Acker Bilk and Teddy looked at me with his big lettuce ears and open jaw saying” Jesus mate what do you have there; it is one hell of a lunchbox for your father! “

The music that belonged to coffee shops and Mass Mart passages somehow weakened me to a rude response and I said “Teddy, it is my suitcase; I am leaving the village tonight.”

He looked at me with his customised void expression and smiled saying “ahh you joking now, nobody born here leaves this place, your dad just said this other day that he’s going to get you in as a fitter, grand job at 15 rands a hour  “

 

Blocking out Teddy’s ravings about my prospects I irritably said “How late does the Cape Town train arrive?”

Teddy seemed apprehensive and in a funeral  voice said  “20h00 “ He looked at me questioningly and one could see he was searching for words in his pot hole brain but was unable to find it. His droopy eyes became red and wet and he was crying “eeeeh �"eeeeh, his going to miss you, his oldest boy.....  , now you’re going to leave eeh-eeeeh “

My father, the  Station Master looked like he had the whiskers of a Scottish terrier and came abruptly out of his office and shouted through his big moustache at Teddy “get the bloody deck clean! Because I am not signing another warning for you retard, for love of Jesus why did I ever listen to that b*****d reverend?”

Teddy shuffled along applying his broom and now bulking like an injured a*s that lost a ball by hacking it on a barbwire farm fence. Dad looked at me showing no weakness and righteous contempt was burning in his expression” Good luck to you lad, going to play Cowboy and crooks in the jungles of Congo” He now walked towards me and his face dropped but his eyes was still fierce “Leave it son!, I need you here, you and your brother are breaking your Mothers heart ....”.  

Suddenly a harsh siren goes off and the saunters light go green” Thank you for your concern Farther but what I and my f****t brother need  is to break away from this Alcatraz  that you and mother created in this  honky tonk s**t of a place” 

The old man looked at me wearily and said softly “Martin you need to forgive your Mother if you want lasting peace, you going to get killed over there and this contempt of yours will remain unresolved”    

I turned my back to him and I walked to the farthest side of the platform waiting for the coming train that announced its presence through the powerful vibrations that rippled through the concrete under my soles.

The old man was looking at me, staring with dagger eyes through me, ripping, searching for my cancer. I wished I had another 10 minutes to tell him that I was not the hater, that I was leaving Touwsriver to put my life to the extreme test of fate 

I wanted to tell him that I loved him but that my life was a coincidental sperm spillage to an aggrieved Mother that cried for as long as I remember about the loss of her youth. If I returned then my life was justified but if I died that she was released from the burden of her guilt and remorse: my existence    

The train pulled away and I felt that I left with everything that was me but when I looked out of the window farther was crying on the shoulder of a wasted loving Teddy and I prepared for a long hard night of memory lane. 

 

2

Clickety- clickety clack the iron wheels were singing on the rail and the undercarriage moaned with volitional parts screeching and cracking under the labour to get a good smear, slowly running rhythmically in sync with the old engine in front.

The pace accelerated and I imagined ten thousand horses running wildly through those steel valves.

With inflated cheeks they let off steam through their nostrils, puffing and galloping fiercely in the misty night out of town.Clicket-clickety clack their steel hooves raced on the frosted rail and I felt invigorated by the sound.

 

Hanging half way out of the window I looked back to the village and it was burning with an eery red glow in the rising mist. No it did not burn to its destruction like doomed Sodom in the Bible because these railway folk merely and punctually lighted their barbeque fires on a Friday evening. Red faced men sitting at their fires in camping chairs drinking tall glasses of brandy staring into the drunken dead night.

 

Ankle swollen pregnant women were washing the blood off the meat dreaming thoughts of one day just leaving with an old suitcase.  Leaving half Witt gossiping, snot nosed crying kids and the toiling life of splintered nails and detergent dry skin.

 

They were cursed all right with defeated burning hell inside them. The Men were confined in their skulls, job descriptions and the bushy perimeters that demarcated their mundane hum drum subsistence. It was the pagan fires of offering speedy heart attacks and liver smudge to Bacchus and other carnivorous gods.

 

I pulled myself back into the compartment and closed the window. The cabin light was still off and I tried to dose off when the small narrow door of the compartment door opened. The fluorescent light of the passage outlined the long thin body of a person shouting in a nicotine rasped voice “tickets” 

 

The conductor reacted before I could move and switched on the light, with quick eyes he scanned through the space. He seemed disappointed when he could not find any illegal activity. Looking sullen and with eyes boxed deep into his head he asked again “T-I-c-k-e-t”

 

Feeling startled and uneasy with the man I jumped to my money bag and removed my tickets. I handed over the ticket to him and his hands stroked over mine and felt it to be bumpy with arthritis. His eyes it seemed inspected every detail of the ticket and then he said with his eye brows that seemed super glued to his face.” This is an airplane ticket to the Congo”

 

Feeling embarrassed I said “S**t sorry Mr.Conducter I gave you the wrong ticket” Dreading his enquiry I grabbed the airplane ticket from him and searched for the train passage.” So you are on your way to the Congo “he said with a remarkable shift of mood.”Do you know that there is a civil war raging there-N****r killing N****r” He grinned with that well known smile that the Police gave before they started shooting at the rioting crowds with rubber bullets.

 

I felt reluctant to tell him and said “here sir, your ticket “I think he could pick up my tension and he remarkably changed mood with a tight lip turning around shouting out of his chest “Tickets!!!”

I closed the door and double locked it with the chain and turned off the light and felt safe, invisible and wondered why my mother never came to say goodbye.           

 

3

             

I really suppressed my need to go to the toilet and hoped that I could relief myself when the train arrived at Cape Town. Nature’s insistence and thrusting pressure forced me with a pair of clamped bottoms to run for it. 

 

I really hated that confined space with its unnatural florescent lighting that flickered with every dip the train made in this valley infested landscape called the Hexrivier.The offending smell of lubricant grease came through the little washbasin, shower grit and the toilet.

 

Sitting on a layer of government toilet paper I placed on the melamine ring, the discharge went rather easy with all the shaking and swaying of the coach. The poop fell on the little stainless steel trap of the base of the toilet and when I pulled the lever the lid opened and showed the speeding gravel and the faeces falling, splattering and disintegrating

 

The train goes to a standstill and a lighted sign says Paarl Station. There is a notice on the toilet door that informs that one is not allowed to use the toilet when the train is standing stationary. I found it interesting and imagined my formed dumpling on the rail to the disgust of mountain baboons and the railway patrol.

 

 A slight tinkle ran down my spine and the skin around my temples felt tight.” It is coming” and now my heart was racing steeple chase, irregular and thumping with the dread of the coming attack.  

 

I felt dizzy and feverish as I left the toilet and a sweat cold as black frost came through the open passage windows.”It was coming “I said to myself and started running to my compartment.

 

Then it happened before I could get to my suitcase for the calm-meds. My eye balls rolled in their sockets and turned their focus on my flash backs.

 

I was again in restraints, fighting off nurses and Security.” You f*****g sick b***h!”I screamed Mother watched me intently as they injected sedatives into my veins. She blew a kiss behind the wired mesh and formed her lips “I L-0-V-E Y-O-U”                     

 

 “Gasp!! “as water shocked my body and face. The conductor was standing over me with an ice bucket and said “What the hell is this? You contorted like a headless chicken on the compartment floor “

 

He pulled me from the floor and I felt heavy like concrete. I felt the conductor’s eyes on my back and heard him tapping with his shoes. I removed two calm meds and swallowed it. The relief was instaneously and dropped to the bunk.

 

“You got the bi-polar boy? “He said timidly and I looked at him and felt my emptiness speaking” I had a bad dream man “

 

“That needs no convincing and as he walked out he asked me “ your pass says you taking the red cross charter flight to Congo, tell me what are you going to do there ?”      

 

“To kill and to get killed” I said and I looked out of the window, the mountain was black and the skies were black and I felt black.