THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: Russian Roulette
Written by Mlungisi Radebe
I woke up, mildly irritated, to the sound of men I did not know, chanting my clan names. They carried on for about an hour, with no sign of stopping. It worsened my hangover, ruining my day before it had even started.
I walked to the window and pushed the curtain to the side. To my surprise, there were three men standing outside my gate, repeatedly chanting my clan names.
“BoBhungane, boMthimkhulu, boMakhulukhulu, boMashwabada owashwabadel’ inkomo nezimpondo zayo, yathi isifika emphinjeni yadlamalala! Nina bonzipho zimnyama ngokuqhwayana, siyakhuleka kini! Sizocela isihlobo esiiiiihle!” said the men.
It was clear: they were abakhongi, the men who come to the bride’s home to pay lobola – the first step to marriage in the Zulu culture. I sent Mnqobi, my grandson, to invite the men in. Lindi, my wife, made them tea and biscuits.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I would like to know what brings you to our home.”
“We are here on behalf of the Ngidi family. Our son, Philani, has sent us to come pay lobola for his lover, Phiwe.”
“I hear you,” I said, a bit perplexed. “But there’s one problem: there is no one by that name in my home.”
“The address says we’re at the right place,” said the other man, who’d introduced himself as Bhekingwe.
“You must’ve made a mistake,” I insisted.
Bhekingwe took out a folded piece of paper and passed it to me. Indeed, it was my home address. There definitely was a mistake, for there was no one by the name of Phiwe in my home. “As I said, there is no one by that name here.”
The gentlemen looked at each other, communicating with their eyes and gestures. “We must’ve made a mistake,” said Bhekingwe, standing up to leave. The other men were still a bit puzzled. But I didn’t care. There was no Phiwe in my home, or in the neighborhood.
On their way out, my son Simphiwe appeared, wearing his mother’s doek and covered in a blanket. Befuddled by what I was witnessing, he dealt me a card I did not anticipate:
“I know these men, baba. They are the Ngidis, sent by Philani to pay lobola for me. He is my boyfriend, and he wants to marry me.”
I was dumbfounded.
“What?”
“I’m gay, baba. Philani and I wanted to do things traditionally, culturally.”
“You call this filth a tradition? Is this your idea of tradition? I taught you better than this, Simphiwe!”
“Calm down, Bhungane,” said Bhekingwe, enhancing my anger.
“So, you knew you were sent for this filth?”
“When Philani came out six years ago, we were as shocked as you are.”
“There is a huge difference between being shocked and being disgusted!”
“Let’s talk this through, Bhungane,” said Bhekingwe again.
“I’m gonna show you what I’m made of.”
I had never been that angry in my life. I went to my bedroom to fetch my sjambok. I wanted to beat the men for their insolence; for having the guts to come into my home and tell me the drivel they were telling me.
When I appeared with my sjambok, they fled. I chased them out, and, goddamn, they were too fast. I returned to the house, to deal with my disgrace of a son! That bastard was not going to humiliate me like that and get away with it.
The bastard had locked himself in his room. But. . . he was not going to get away with it. No one humiliates me and lives to tell! No one! He had to taste my wrath.
I went to get my sledgehammer. On my way to his room, Lindi tried to stop me. I told her to move, she did not. I told her to move out of my way, repeatedly, and she didn’t. I had to slap the living daylights out of her. She collapsed on the floor as I trudged toward my son’s room.
I knocked down the door, only to find out the bastard had managed to escape through the back window. As I ran to the front door so I’d catch him, fate dealt me another bad hand.
My wife was on the floor, bleeding. The corner of the table had blood, meaning she’d hit her head when she fell. I had two options: run to the door and get Simphiwe, or save my wife’s life. I did the right thing.
I called for help, and Ntshengula, my neighbour and friend, was the first to come to my rescue. When I suggested we call the ambulance, he dismissed that idea.
“The ambulance will take its time,” he bleated in panic. “Let’s put her in your car.”
With the way he was driving, we got to the hospital in half the time it would have taken under normal circumstances.
After about an hour and a half, my brother Ndaba, his wife, their daughter Sindi and my disgrace of a son joined us. Seeing him angered me, so much that I shot to my feet in an attempt to strangle the life out of him. Ntshengula, whom I’d told everything, held me back.
“This is not the place for this!”
“This bastard is the reason my wife is in there!”
“Calm down, Bhungane!” said Ndaba, my younger brother.
“I won’t be told by a simp what to do!”
“Don’t talk to my husband like that!” said Gladys, my brother’s wife.
“Listen here, you little witch, I’m not your simp! Don’t talk to me like I’m your spineless husband! I will beat the living soul out of you right now!”
“Don’t talk to my wife like that!”
“Or what?” I said, walking up to him. “What are you gonna do?”
“Will you stop it, all of you!” said Ntshengula. “You’re behaving like headless chickens!”
My brother and I had not been in good terms for years. Growing up, we were tight and inseparable. Nothing could come between us, until he fell in love with that witch. He abandoned our Nazareth values, left Shembe for Jesus after that skeleton of his, with fake hair and eyelashes, and gave birth to a child that looks exactly like his neighbour. When I told him to do a DNA test, he refused. He said he was sure the child was his.
So, I stole a sample of the child’s hair and did the DNA on his behalf. As I had guessed, the child was not his. I showed him the results, he said he’d prayed about it and Jesus had told him to forgive his wife. I couldn’t believe it; I wanted to die.
I tried to reason with him, repeatedly. He was adamant that he loved his wife and “his” baby. I told him to, at least, do a traditional ceremony for the child to be able to carry the Radebe surname, he refused and said he was now a Christian. He said bowing to dead things and non-existent gods was against his faith. That’s when I lost it and punched him. From that moment he never spoke to me. Even when I apologised, trying to fix things between us, he said he would never forgive me for the DNA ploy.
At that point I realised he was a certified simp, that he was beyond saving. I had to let him be. If someone cheats once and you’re cool with it, they will definitely cheat again. And she did, repeatedly. He never left her, blinded by false hopes that she’d change. I kept quiet, hoping he’d wake up and smell the coffee. That he’d come to his senses and realise it was idiotic of him to turn a whore into a housewife.
When his love for her grew, I knew I had lost him. I had to let go of him and live my life as though I no longer had a brother. That was the only way I could preserve my sanity. Never again did I set my foot in his house.
Now here they were, with that bastard child illegally carrying my family name and my son who preferred a man to women. I hated all of them – my brother, his bastard child and my gay son, and especially his promiscuous wife. I hated Ntshengula for not letting me beat the gayness out of my son and the simpness out of my brother.
A boy I knew not, who looked my son’s age, appeared. I thought it was just a random person in the hospital for a visit or something, until I saw Simphiwe jump to his feet to embrace this man.
“Thank you for coming, Philani,” said Simphiwe, his head leaning on the man’s chest.
“You don’t have to thank me, love,” he said, kissing his forehead. “How’s your mother?”
“We’re still waiting for the doctors to tell us something,” he said and started crying. “What if she doesn’t make it?”
“Don’t say that, baby,” he said, kissing his forehead again.
I wanted to die.
Though my blood boiled, anger spiraling out of control, I remained seated. It took everything in me not to puke. I was even struggling to breathe but I held myself together. I wanted to see where the disrespect would end.
Whilst chained in silence, trying to contain my anger, the boy stood in front of me. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“Let it go, Philani.”
“No, Phiwe. Your father needs to hear this.”
The boy was buff; it was clear he worked out a lot. He was light-skinned, tall and moved his hands like a diva.
“It’s homophobic people like you who make us live in fear,” he said to me. “If you were a real man, you wouldn’t have chased away my uncles. You wouldn’t have stood in the way of our love!”
“Has my son told you about me?”
“Not much. I can see why.”
“Let me tell you, then. I served in the army for fourteen years, received every medal there is for my bravery. I have never been defeated in hand-to-hand combat, I held the boxing belt for three consecutive years. I killed a python with my bare hands. I diffused a bomb with a pocket knife in Iraq. You know what that means? It means I can kill you in less than fifteen seconds. If you doubt that, don’t get out of my face for the next ten seconds.”
The boy was clearly terrified.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” said my brother.
“Says a man who’s married to a prostitute, a simp knowingly raising a bastard.”
***
I visited my wife at the hospital every day – for two weeks straight. It broke me in half seeing her in that state. Simphiwe had moved into my brother’s home because I did not want him anywhere around me.
When my wife started moving, my hand in hers, I was beyond joyful as I called the nurses over. My happiness was cut short when she started uttering something; she was in a dream-like state. “Ntshengula. . . Ntshengula. . . I love you.”
I felt a strange kind of pain. One that comes from nowhere like a stray bullet. Hearing her pronounce his name like that. . . moving her lips the way she did, her eyes closed but twitching, angered me. I tried to convince myself that she was just dreaming, under the control of morphine or whatever it was the doctors had put in her drip.
Even if it was because of the injections, why was she calling Ntshengula’s name? Why did she say she loved him? What was happening? Was my wife cheating on me? I couldn’t believe it. We’d been together for years. Not even once did it cross my mind that she was capable of cheating. If she did cheat on me, when did she cheat? When did it start? While I was in Kazakhstan? Iraq? That’s where I was deployed for two years.
“Ntshengula. . .”
Had the doctor not have come in, I was going to strangle her. I left the room, in disbelief. My feet led me into a bar, where I spent the night drinking and crying.
A couple of months later I got a call that my wife was in labour. When I held the child in my arms, he looked nothing like me. He didn’t have my ears, eyes, nose – he had nothing I could recognise as mine. During the night I’d wake up and go to the child’s room. I’d just stare at him. If anything, he looked like Ntshengula.
The anger and betrayal I felt led me into Ntshengula’s home one night. I didn’t knock, I just barged in.
“What’s going on?”
I did not answer but just beat him up. He tried to fight back but couldn’t. I threw him all over his house, throwing plates at him. I picked him up, slammed him on the table in the living room; it broke on him.
As he gasped for air, bleeding, crying, he yelped: “Why are you doing this?”
“Come with me, you dog!”
He could barely stand, so I pulled him by his T-shirt, towards my house. My wife was shocked when I arrived with his in tow.
“What’s going on?”
“Sit the hell down, or I’m gonna make you.”
She didn’t hesitate. I threw Ntshengula next to her. I took out my gun, the 38 millimetre. I emptied the bullets and left but one – then rolled the chamber. “We’re gonna play a game called Russian Roulette.”
“Why are you doing this, Bheki?” cried Ntshengula.
“I’m going to ask a question. If I don’t like the answer, I pull the trigger. Your life leans on honesty. Once the person dies, I’m gonna kill the other. If you think this is a bluff, lie and see what happens.”
My wife was already crying. The gun was already on Ntshengula’s head.
“When did you two start sleeping together?” There was a little silence. “ANSWER ME!”
When neither of them answered, I pulled the trigger. My wife let out a yelp.
“SHUT UP!”
“Don’t do this, Bheki,” he cried.
“Or should I point the gun to the child you two made?”
My wife jumped on me; I slapped the shit out of her. She fell back on her seat, crying. The doors were locked. I went to get the child, gently placed him on the couch. My wife went down on her knees, begging me to spare the child. I ignored her, pointed the gun at the sleeping infant: “When did you two start sleeping together?”
While they were hesitating to answer, I pulled the trigger. That’s when my wife screamed, waking the baby up.
“OKAY, OKAY!” Ntshengula cired. “I will tell you the truth.”
He explained.
While I was still a soldier, I spent a lot of time in the war. So, he would come check up on my wife. And one day they were drinking wine. One thing led to another and they were kissing. From there never did they stop. For years they’ve been sleeping together. Throughout all this, my wife was crying. At some point he felt like he was losing his mind whenever I was around because he couldn’t be with his lover. The nerve!
His wife found out; that’s why she left. He didn’t care because he had my wife to warm him. Until I quit from the military to start my businesses. Still, they never stopped. What started as a no-strings-attached deal ended as an affair.
Things took a bad turn between them when she announced her pregnancy. She wanted them to run away, to a place where they’d raise their child together, but Ntshengula did not want to be a part of the child’s life because his wife had forgiven him and was coming back home with his other children. So she pinned the baby on me.
At that moment someone rang the doorbell. “Sit tight, you two.”
I let Philani and Simphiwe in. I had sent them a text, inviting them to dinner.
“What’s going on here?” Simphiwe asked, befuddled.
“You two, sit down!”
“Dad, what’s going on?”
“SIT THE FUCK DOWN, BOY!”
He and his boyfriend reluctantly obeyed.
I rolled the gun chamber again, then pointed the gun at Philani. I saw tears coming out of his eyes. “I’ll ask you a question. You lie, you die.”
“Sir, please. . . ”
“Why are you with my son?”
As he hesitated to answer, I pulled the trigger – screams filled the room. “Why are you with my son?”
I pulled the trigger again and he started singing, telling me everything Sibiya–a private investigator–had told me. Never in my life did I see someone that frightened. He even spoke about being a Mkhize, about having a wife and two children – about lying about being gay just to con Simphiwe.
“This is what’s gonna happen,” I said to my wife, putting the gun on my lap. “You gonna pack your bags. You gonna leave my house. You will never come back.”
“Bheki, let’s talk this through.”
I took out a brown envelope and passed it to her. “In there are the divorce papers. You gonna sign them and you’re gonna get the hell outta my house.”
She and Simphiwe cried. “As for you, Mkhize; I see you again, you’ll get a bullet between your eyes.”
He just continued crying.
“You are going to support your child and his mother. Find them a safe place to live in, pay for it, and I will not kill you,” I said to Ntshengula. “As for you, Simphiwe, you’re not gonna run my businesses. In fact, I am going to disown you. You will receive nothing from me, not a cent. You have not made me smile, so you’re not gonna get a slice of my cheese.”
At hearing this he cried even more. In a flash he grabbed the gun from my lap and pointed it at Philani.
“This is all your fault!” he hissed.
I warned him not to shoot, repeatedly, but he didn’t listen.
____________
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