Permutations

By Mpho Maofane

About the author
Mpho Maofane was born in 1975 in the foothills of the Maseru district of the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho, Southern Africa, where he still lives.
He is survived by and lives with his mother and son, both from whom he discerns all love and support for all intents and purposes.
A timeless tale woven carefully only to unravel the heart-rendering and captivating testimony of a baleful fate which takes the reader through a voyage of facts, beliefs, existence, love, intrigue, betrayal and reality.
A young man named Lelo sets out on a journey of a predestined, yet unforeseeable and inalienable life. He embarks on this journey with a heart so pure, which ironically triggers a time-honoured head-to-head encounter between optimistic and rational readers, as the theme (that vengeance is a self-destroyer) transcends all boundaries and odds.
No sooner has he succumbed to the eminence and the gravity of the Permutations of the world, and his heart and brains cascade and wash away to where the waters flow.
Perhaps Permutations unfolds as a ubiquitous ode for men of goodwill and virtue, just like the very tales of old.
That heart, those brains...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mpho Maofane
• Release date: May 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9789991175706

Book preview

Dedication

To my beloved boy, Ntate Thabo Maofane (Pablo-Centrifusion); keep breathing, my son, and I will keep the ‘more fire’ burning. More fire! You will always be a God-sent blessing and friend in my heart.

My dear mama, Mme Mmamaofane, who can’t read English, may I here now savour your sheer brilliance and strength, from which I reaped. You know I love you.

Ntate Beleme and Ntate Rakhoabe, you folks think I could ill-afford to write trash even if I tried. Thank you, gentlemen, for believing in me. ’Til the sequel, watch this space. Sure!

Book 1

Cruising High in the Highway Lane

Chapter One

As though indifferent to the uncompromising glare piercing through his half-dirty window, Lelo yawned to beckon a brand-new day – another day. Ritually and by some instinct, with due respect for first thing’s first, he would check along the length of his pants for any traces of wetness emanating from the intake of too much water yesterday. The pants could have just as well been his two-piece school khakis, for, when it was convenient not to search for any sleepwear, they would suffice – almost perfectly. There were no traces of wetness. So, authority to march out of his room was duly granted.

He took a glimpse as he passed a bigger window outside their small living room, which, for all intents and purposes, would give a fair image of any pessimistic object placed in front of it. He analysed his image. An aggregation of what he was looking at made it crystal clear that, by any fair means or foul, notwithstanding the infinite diversity of human interests, no sane professor would consider his features as merely a part of a lineage in the evolutionary variation among individual members of the human species. He was not a Will Smith. He was not handsome. Period! No one would ever trade places with him at the drop of a hat – it would have to be struggled for, with all strength and sinew. He had his dark hair growing well down his forehead, and his eyes were a little miniature, not combining too well with his long and too-regular nose. All praises be unto time, for, at this age, six years, his cheeks were still not deprived of the tissue and his skin was smooth. Very smooth!

However, Lelo had never grieved or been worried about his appearances any more than he ever meditated worriedly about any human invented and chaotic descriptions of comparatives. For one reason: no one had ever complained so far about his looks. For another, in his community, for a boy from Mafeteng, Lesotho like himself, other cultural values and morals were in place should one not choose Westernisation. He could walk amidst a herd of cattle without being scared. He could bell a calf relatively taller than himself. He could opt not to run if a dog chased him and he could scare it away with his stick – and, when he grew a little older, he could actually harness cattle on a yolk by himself to pull a cart loaded with filed earnings – autumn harvest. He had already started grouping up with other boys of his age as they would follow their donkeys carrying unprocessed corn to the saw mill. If `Malelo Mohapi would be watching, his mother and a single parent, whom he referred to as Mme, as the battalion crossed the fields to the sow mill, like angel incarnates over some fairy tale land, she would be very proud. After the corn meal had been processed, another test of character and manhood would be to lift the twenty-five-kilogram bag and mount it upon one’s donkey. After all the hard work, how would you fancy an extra one-loti coin bouncing up and down your pocket, or better still, inside your gumboot, ready to be exchanged for mouth-watering fat cakes on your way back home? All of these things, the villagers understood, were manlike and realistic and paved the way for any youngster to willingly attend to his dues as a man throughout his three score years and ten life. A man. A Rudyard Kiplin man in If.

Lelo chose the front of their house for starters. So he put all his collection of playing objects there as he sang the only track that came out so well in his repertoire, which was an extract from a hymn:

"Re ipeha ho uena Ntat’a rona ea Maholimong.

Re kopa paballo ea Hau, ha re tla ea phomola."

His other playing objects had all been collected from inside their compound while all his toys, mostly fleets of lorries and big machinery, were imperfect clay emulations of what he always saw at a road camp near his village. The next step now would be to come up with his cosmos – a perfect and idealised version of reality and a universe. He had to decide where in his universe, which was usually no wider than three metres, he could build a road, place his road camp and put his machinery and all the objects that blended and complemented each other to give his universe the perfection it deserved. He knew there were different possible arrangements, different permutations, but he would intuitively work on them. His plenary never lasted for any significantly long time – no, no need. For enormous flexibility was part of the credentials put in his implementation plan, such that regret had never been a part of any set-up. So any arrangement could be employed, at least for starters. Once again, the boy had never been worried about not being part of his own universe; he was satisfied enough to see his miniatures interrelating.

To every living organism is attached an ecological niche – a complete way of life. The behavioural patterns of a people’s community are an aggregation of these individual entities spiced with believes, cultures, values and other such parameters. These, together with material things such as infrastructure, give each village or city its unique façade. Not only that, but the wholesome picture probes deeply into the fabrics of any individual person’s life and influences and predetermines the person’s way of thinking and approach. Experiences acquired through encounters then dictated fantasies and, where necessary, adjustments. By virtue of being born in a certain household, dwelling or community, for instance, an individual may be a Christian or Muslim or of any other religious group, regardless of which one might be a true representative of the real meaning of existence. So fate and freedom of choice were necessarily compromised in this regard, much at the expense of reality.

So, by the same token and using the same argument, it was not surprising that, as Lelo dragged his ornamental lorry down his road, he saw only the things that he always saw in his real community, perfected by the good things that his mother always told him. It was as he drove around the second curve that he saw a cow crossing the road in front of him. It was in actuality an insect. He gently applied his brakes and the lorry stopped some metres away from the cow. He rolled down his window and recognised a herd boy – an ant – looking after the cow. Very politely, he greeted the herd boy.

How are you, good boy?

I’m very fine and how are you, sir?

I’m fine too, but would you mind having your cow a little further from the road? he asked.

No, please. I wouldn’t mind and let me actually do it right now, the herd boy calmly said as he acted accordingly.

The herd boy returned to the lorry and said, Thank you, sir, and have a good day.

The driver was already fumbling with a plastic bag containing a quarter loaf of bread wrapped in a newspaper. He handed it over to him and replied, Have a good day too, and this is for your savouring as I leave.

The boy said politely, Thank you.

They could have thanked each other for the better part of the day, because it was a good mini-session. No, not really good, but normal. Moreover, there was no hurry. It was neither am nor pm. It was a day time of no limits – it was as it was life.

The winter vacation was nearing its end and Lelo knew that, not because he had counted the remaining or the elapsed number of days, but because of the ever-building cumulative monotony attacking his universe. He was not aware as to how, but he had heard that the steady tick of the minute arm was answerable for that, and he hated it with passion.

Chapter Two

Three school sessions later, Lelo was in primary school, Standard Four, and he was seven and a half years old. The news of his abnormally good grades at school was a cutting call for ambiguous fireplace murmurs in every household, more often than not received with such enormous and insuperable envy, with their analytical remarks identically constructed. A superlative plus a conjunction followed by a comforting wishful statement; he was extremely brilliant, but, without a father, he had nowhere to go. He was the silliest boy in the school; it was only that the teachers didn’t know that he… he was… Unfortunately, they were making him feel big-headed and he would lose his touch. Lelo used to hear of some of them through the grapevine. Only one person would not comment, and that had to be unmistakably the boy’s beloved mother, Mme `Malelo, who had, through the last seven years, been like some biblical Joseph to him, as his priest had usually described him – a fruitful bough by a well, despite being a fine person. Once again, he felt the least worried, and all the motherly love filling him and taking the better of him, warming him up inside. He was satisfied.

The school compound was a disorderly arrangement of mud and stone and one iron-roofed block. It was, however, more beautiful than their houses and most pupils had never seen any other school, say in town, so it was beautiful beyond comparison.

The first day of the summer session was no repeat of any others before. It comprised a morning assembly and a prayer, a welcome speech by the school principal and pupils playing inside the school yard. However, before one o’clock, their green and yellow khaki uniforms would be colouring the whole village – and the playing session, as far as he could vividly recall, had never been formally announced, verbally or otherwise. The first day of school also included a lunch session outside the kitchen and, finally, an afternoon assembly and a prayer before shouting a weary ‘hip-hip! Hurray’!

There were important characters to meet and mingle with during the playing session. Ts’epo Matebesi, the boy who was Lelo’s competitor in the classroom in terms of grades; Maki Mosotho, with whom he would fight over soup and papa during lunch; and last, but not least, Peter Makara, who, for some reason, would always carry his sharp-tipped pen around to use as revenge against those who did him wrong, though this one now looked a little strange. All things considered, they were his friends.

The bell was ringing at around eleven o’clock in the morning – quite unusual. Suddenly, Lelo remembered how the principal had announced on the last day of their previous session that the store room was running out of dates and lorries carrying aid food was still expected. So it went without saying that these God-given lorries had brought the manna during Christmas break, and some fine men in the village had helped with the unloading. That, he decided, was the announcement for the eleven o’clock assembly.

Human nature tells that things look neat when orderly arranged, so the pupils stood in rows at the assembly. The routine was to have their heads bowed only during the last part of any assembly – the prayer. However, there were complications brought by communicating in the foreign language, English, with which even the principal was not very familiar – he had always found excuse in that English was a foreign language brought in a ship in a black book. Once a comfortable position would be found in the row, pupils would immediately bow their heads well before the prayer – curse be unto those teachers who made long speeches.

He never bothered much about paying attention during the delivery of speeches. He literally never listened much. Immediately in front of him was a much taller and older boy, Papiki Mathabela, whose shoes would be shining for most of the day. He looked at his shoes, and next to the right shoe was a crawling insect.

And, as usual… the principal was saying.

Lelo bent down cautiously and picked up the insect.

…We are all expected to contribute five maluti each…

Wrong again. I know when you say ‘we’ you always mean ‘you pupils’. I’ll ask the Standard Seven boys on our way home what the rest of the English meant, and if the five attached to a currency means money, then that’s up to Mme, who rarely fails to submit to the school’s unending demands, however much she’d complain first. So, go on, burn your time, boss!

The insect was still in his hand and he remembered how best he could make good use of good things. Papiki, standing right in front of him, was famous in the school for not having any underwear. So his small pants waist always exposed the uppermost part of the cranny of his bottom. This was a perfect spot. He cautiously introduced his predator to its prey and watched. There was no immediate response, but suddenly the prey started turning an arm to its behind. Papiki looked for any intruding eyes and there were none. So the drama began. Just like in the ‘inoculation’ process, he carefully introduced his hand into his pants. He scratched slowly, then the hand would take a leap in a quest to catch the insect, and he repeated this process so many times that the one-man audience was crying with laughter. Papiki decided that, if he was to catch it, just if, he would teach it a lesson no insect had ever learnt before. It was in for hot soup. Just sit and wait.

And so, my dear pupils, that has been it…

Full stop; my neck is aching. The small voice in Lelo was still busy responding to the headmaster, whenever his voice accidentally landed in his ears.

The short illness that took your beloved Maki Mosotho from you. May her soul rest in peace…

At this juncture, Lelo involuntarily raised his head and held it high, the small frown firm on his forehead. He knew what ‘rest in peace’ meant. Somebody had passed away – his friend. Not that it carried any energy or an oddly awesome meaning, but merely a long-term absence of a loved one. Yes, he had asked Mme about his father’s absence, whom he barely knew, and the reply had been that he had passed away. He had seen his father’s grave and the epithet had read ‘rest in peace’, and the same phrase was in his mother’s chest of drawers. However, his father was not in that grave. The tombstone had merely been placed on solid ground as a constant reminder that, wherever his father was, his wife, and only her, would still be remembering him until the day the father came to his senses and came to terms with whatever kept him out of his house for this seemingly eternal period. Lelo had also been waiting for this stranger to knock at their door sometime soon, and he hoped that he would not be drunk like all the other elderly men in his community. Then Lelo had a second thought: if Maki could be inconsiderate enough to go for too long, he would be, for instance, two full years ahead of her and she would not know the things that he had been taught in her absence. He fancied himself able to add two eighteen-digit numbers, the digits so many that he would have to buy a bigger notebook to write in. Or better still, because Maki liked good fat cakes and money, she had probably headed for the South African mines, where most people were known to stay longer until they were jobless and moneyless. So, let’s say, four years. Bigger books; more digit numbers. Perfect.

He had lost the rest of the principal’s speech, or the principal’s speech had lost him, except the last phrase that said ‘and in God now you may all go home and inform your parents, and do not say any hip-hip-hurray today. Have a wonderful afternoon’.

The Standard Seven boys told Lelo what he had to say to his mother – that and only that. He had no questions. He went straight to his mother. He related the story. The mother said a silent prayer. He asked no questions, and in the evening after gluttonously declaring war and besieging a bowl of soup cooked from split peas and papa, his favourite, followed by a boiled cob of freshly harvested maize in their matrimonial house, they got lost in a warm and rainy summer night’s sleep – the kind that only home provided.

The school girl’s burial ceremony was held two weeks later on a Saturday. It was 9:30am, the usual starting time. The pupils had gathered at their school earlier so they could leave together to the girl’s village, through the bushes, then trees, then corn fields, and then more bushes. Lelo had never walked such a long distance before, so Peter Makara, who was carrying no sharp pen this time, would now and then assist him where the path would get steep and rough. However, they eventually made it.

There was a big congregation of people from the girl’s village and the neighbouring villages, such that, adding to the pupils, it was a very big crowd – all too silent for their number, at least in Lelo’s perspective. That was not the only discomforting scene: the windows of Maki’s house had been coated with wet ash as if darkness may circumstantially be comforting. In contrast, there were two tents fixed in the backyard, all filled with white chairs and tables, yet they, too, looked a tormenting white that defied description – a source of anonymous torment.

The proceedings began with four men entering Maki’s house, all with arms folded up. After a short moment of silence, they appeared through the awkward oval door – or what was supposed to be a door. They were carrying a big wooden box with a fairly rectangular base and handles like those of Mme’s chest of drawers, though now these gold-coated handles were not necessarily eye-catching. They placed the box on top of three stools placed just outside the house.

Just then, a tall white-bearded man wearing a blanket broke the silence when, in a high-pitched, slow voice, he said, While we are still gathering, we may all come to see the deceased. May the students come first, the family then follows and last the community at large.

The pupils were then arranged in a queue before the box, and a lid from atop the slightly broader end was opened. If Lelo’s keenness and eagerness to always be first matched his fighting ability, he would have been first in the queue. He was second.

What laid at most forty centimetres away from his eyes was the face of Maki Mosotho, with the rest of her body covered by the woodwork, all surrounded by a white silky cloth. His first reaction was numbness, then a stare, and, as if driven by a slow-building orchestra organ, the stare gradually changed into a commotion restricted only to his head, and his eyes and mouth betrayed a passionate smile. The commotion got noisier.

Just in the nick of time, before all hell could break loose, the white-bearded man said, C’mon kids, move faster please.

Lelo maneuverered his way through the crowd to where he had been standing. Once past the crowd, he turned to his right, took three steps, and then turned to his left, took three steps, and, eventually, still not derailed by any obstacle, he took a turn to the right again. He could barely stand still. He could feel his guts. His stomach was churning right in front of his eyes, and his heart was beating very close to his ears, if not inside. The hot summer sun was a lament. There might have been an eclipse. He could not think – no, not at all, at least for one unforgiving moment.

Chapter Three

Something, something, something was horrifyingly wrong. Lelo had