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Chapter Three - To Become a Man
- African Perspectives
- Chapter
- Additional Information
34 chapter three January 1942. I stood in front of my paternal granny’s dressing table, almost transfixed. The multi-coloured cap on my head was perched very quaintly to one side. The grey suit was tightly buttoned. I had just turned six and I was going to a Roman Catholic convent school – Saint Theresa’s – in Mayville, Durban in Natal. The old woman had busied herself packing my clothes and lunch basket. She would pinch me softly now and then and I could feel the love with which she touched me. When I was disobedient , the pinching was violent.This time her soft hands rubbed my cheeks and her snuff-smelling mouth kissed the tears of parting from my eyes. ‘Don’t cry, my baby,’ she said in Afrikaans. ‘You are going to become a man. Indication is the only gift I can give you.’ ‘Indication’ was the word she used for education. To Become a Man To Become a Man 35 ‘You take a good watch, Tatson,’urged my grandpa, calling me by a nickname that actually meant ‘Tarzan’ because of my ability to climb trees and rooftops. I held firmly to both of them and cried. ‘Don’t cry. Don’t worry,’ she coaxed. ‘Ma will be waiting for her little man when he comes back from school.’ But this was not to be. The kissing and the holding and the coaxing would be the last for me. She died while I was at school. My mother accompanied me to Johannesburg station and I held on to her as if it would also be the last time she and I would be together. My mother was radiant and beautifully dressed, and as I sat in my compartment I heard my father hum his favourite tune – the wartime Vera Lynn song ‘You’ll Never Know’. It was a song I loved because it always reminded me of my uncle Willie who had enlisted to fight the Germans. My mother and father saw me off at the station. For once they were together, holding hands and laughing. This was a new experience, one that I had always longed for. I wished they would stay happily together forever. My mother stuffed three pounds into my pocket, kissed me several times and told me to take care. ‘Men don’t kiss,’my father said, and so we shook hands. I too was going to be a man. Everybody was so sure that I was going to be a man. In those days we believed our parents unquestioningly. When they said you were going to be a man you accepted it. Perhaps it was sheer dreaming , the kind that sustains against futility and despair, when a parent hopes to God that his son will become a man, with the dignity the word implies. I truly loved my parents although much of my life was spent away from them. As people thronged around the coach I saw, for the first time in my life, my father and mother hold hands and suddenly kiss in full view of the public. The whistle sounded and people eager to leave the coach hustled and pushed nervously. My mother squeezed another three pounds into my hand and kissed me on the mouth. My father, born a few blocks away from this very railway station, a six footer with curly brown hair and grey eyes who commanded much respect in Sophiatown, told me again that men never kissed. He just shook my hand. He had once been a member of the underworld, jailed and assaulted on many occasions. There was something about him that I feared: he knew all there was to know. He had seen and felt everything about life, people said he [3.238.135.30] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:06 GMT) 36 Memory is the Weapon was a law unto himself. A man who had abandoned my mother when she was carrying me, and had brought women to our house. This man whom I loved so deeply but had never had the courage to tell, gripped my hand firmly. ‘Remember, Zinga,’he said, calling me by his own nickname. ‘Remember you are going to school to become a man.’ It was final. I told myself I wouldn’t disappoint him or my granny.Aman I was surely going to become. My mother nodded and smiled. The world was a great place and I felt important as my father kissed her again. The nurse...