Keening Against Icy Winds

On the last lonesome rocky hill that overlooks craggy mountains in the village of Zingquthu, less than forty kilometres outside of my hometown of Queenstown, you’ll find sparse and austere cluster of rondavel huts. That’s my father’s home. Standing there in owl’s light, two days before his funeral, I was visited by a vague sense of loss.
Nkonkobe River sent dingy melancholic sighs down below.
The river's tent is broken, Came rushing to my head the words from The Fire Sermon, of TS Elliot’s The Waste Land. A feeling of hollowness embraced me. A gleeman’s song came from the riverside. Someone was drawing water; urging spanned cattle to climb the hill towards the house as my father had done thousand times before my eyes.
My people are hewers of wood and drawers of water.
My father, their son, preferred to die with the harness of manual labour on his back. To die as he lived, with a hovering spirit of poverty around; no more by circumstances as character. He was a toiler by nature. Perpetual toil was the only cage he trusted. The ancient pastoral poet, Theocritus, speaks of things my father understood better:

No wide domain, nor golden treasure Nor speed like the wind across the lea I pray for: here I find my pleasure, In this cliff-shade embracing thee, My grazing sheep to watch at pleasure And sing to you Sicilian Sea...

Those of us who live the drill of stabbing mortality we call ‘urban life’ measure success by ledger books, and so are suspicious of such exquisite simplicity and frugal neatness.
I grew up being told that rural society is brutal and savage, that its customs dictates manners. If you ask me, I see more elements of amoral Darwinism in our urban way of life than the rural one.
My father was disillusioned by the hype of modern living that imprisons by achievements. He followed the spirit of his dissatisfaction, which brought him back to the point where, according to Elliot, he saw anew, with different eyes, the life of his youth. He trusted the rural life more, so went back home. This action lowered his esteem in the eyes of the worldly, including my mother who subsequently divorced him for that and other neglects.
In truth, my father’s life pricks my heart.

It was extremely cold the day we buried my father. The wind blew snowflakes that refused to melt on our shoulders and heads. Mountaintops looked like something off a postcards from Switzerland.
A certain song by James Taylor hummed in my head over and over again:

Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around. . .

It is the coldness that came with my father’s death that turned me around.
Eulogies are the worst part of African funerals; lengthy, irrelevant, and monotonous—noisy gongs and clanging cymbals that signify nothing. My father’s rural neighbour rescued us from that drag. He was of old tribal wisdom and blunt dignity. His Accipitridaean face looked frail and full of tingling sincerity. His speech, a remarkable achievement of economy and deliberate emphasis of frugal neatness. He cut through cant with eminent rapidness of a praise singer; limpid purity and measure of chaste eloquence of words informed by life. I adored him for trivialising the false sacramental gravity of other speakers; for being blithely indifferent and irreverent towards death—a sign of a healthy personality or a lunatic.
I’ll utilise my poor Thucydidean skills to translate him, even though I’m sure his speech will loose its bluff humour and pristine intensity. Only his character can put that across. Only those who still live with a carry-over of realistic detail from oral culture can manage things like those. This how his speech went:
“Today my soul is filled with heartbroken revolt against my own life. I do not know why we should be spared when our children are felled. To bury your child, as Mzoli (my father) was to me, is a harsh fate. Mzoli, you ‘feign-hell’”. A thunder of laughter slashed through the crowd. ‘Feign-hell’ was my father’s leitmotif whenever something went wrong. Hitherforth it became the harlequinade of the day of his interment.
The old man stammered on with a slight lisp in his speech. After an hour of turgid rhetoric and sanitized hagiographic speeches he was breath of fresh air.
“I don't know,” he continued, “who do you think will turn my fields, sow my seeds, and pluck my tares when you decide to join those fainéant you call your ancestors. But alright then Ndlovu [our clan name], have it your way, the faggots will be at you tonight. We’re coming too; so don’t get too comfortable, occupy spaces of your elders. It makes no difference that you go first we’re still your parents.
“Your departure shook our hearts, Ndlovu. Nobody osisimaphakade [lives forever] in this world. It did not happen to you what does not happen to others. You suffered the fate of all mortal men. There’s no resisting death. It levels all, and calls all bluffs. I’m old as the hills; my hair is like ewes on the field, but yesterday I dug your grave with a spade in my own hands against the protest of my family and friends who feared for my health. What do I need my health for if the likes of you are dead? Nothing made me more happy and proud as digging your grave. We’re even then Ndlovu. Don't you be asking for any favours when I get there where you sleep with those striplings you call ancestors.
“Your wordy and obsequious friends from town here say you were going to be a preacher. That’s bunkum. Iyilo elinje ngawe. Still, you were a mast in our village. We’re the people who’ll feel the loss of your departure most.” As he said all this his eyes were trained on the coffin. Then turning to face people he continued. “Allow me, people of my hearth to leak my wounds in quiet. Nobody should drink this common crock more than a mouthful. It’s on its dregs already; let’s bury uMzoli and be done. We’re getting fewer by the day. Damn it! This land shall not see the likes of us again. May God give us the light of His wand in this death journey.” Then he sat in deliberate silence.
The bard accuses us of living deaf to the land beneath us.
During the interment I stood very close to my paternal grandfather, so close I could see myself in his eighty-nine year old rheumy pupils. The bonding warmth and affection between us at that moment no wreaths could define. We were both aware of standing on the ground of our dead.

On the journey back to town soft showers fell like the memory of the departed one. Cars were sliding on mud and sparse snow that lay dingy on the road. It was quiet in our car except for the fan that hovering hot air; blowing comforting familiar odours of my siblings.
Outside I could see progress and consumerism of the capitalist system had caught on with the rural life of our people since the change of government from the apartheid regime. Bridges were built over rivers, electricity installed for those who could afford; purified water coming out of recently installed communal taps free of charge. Things are changing for the better, I thought to myself and wondered what Dr Samuel Johnson would say about that, since he was of the opinion that change of government makes no difference to the happiness of ordinary people.
I was wondered what was going on in my mother’s head who has propensity of gratifying spite where our father is concerned. Perhaps she finally realised that the failure of a marriage is seldom an achievement of one party, I thought. It’s sad that growing up must also mean our parents loose their cynosure quality in our eyes. Still I saw a dead man win a fight that day with his invincible humility.