The Eternal Audience of One Read online

  Yves, despite a boisterous toddlerhood, has become a quiet, lanky boy, reserved in crowds. He has longer legs than a well-sized human his age ought to have but lacks the upper body to match. Like a giraffe, he is all legs, long eyelashes, and telescopic silences. His academic pedigree is unexceptional but he is a diligent student. His interests are in the imaginary world of dragons and knights, witches and wizards, manga, and the comic book multiverses. He is slow to anger and deliberate in his speech, which often gives people the impression of slowness. His delayed responses, however, are often the result of whatever is being discussed boring him.

  Therése finds herself outnumbered in the family, a single woman trapped between the egos of varying degrees of manhood. As her sons, one by one, successfully wage teenage wars for self-determination and flee her doting care she has become temporarily directionless, uncertain about what to do with her free time. She immerses herself in gardening – Séraphin refers to it as hospice care for flora – completing the arts and crafts projects she finds in women’s home and leisure magazines, and burning her way through complex cooking recipes, often with mixed results. New meals are approached with care by the rest of her family, each waiting for someone else to take the first forkful and pronounce it safe for consumption, or else valiantly ploughing through a bite while surreptitiously letting all other members know that the toilet will be hot property for the rest of the evening.

  Guillome is embroiled in the responsibilities of his new position at work. A recent promotion has swallowed a chunk of his time, working him to late hours of the night, leaving him a tired mess of grunts when he comes home, barely able to engage his growing sons in conversation. His attempts to speak to them are met with shrugs and clipped answers which clearly signal that his efforts to talk with them are noted but, really, unnecessary on the whole.

  “Dad, do you mind?” Séraphin says, back to him, books piled on his desk, cellphone not far away. Guillome and Séraphin avoid each other for the most part.

  “Err, Pappa, I have to do this homework …” Yves says. His answers are like the opening moves of novice chess players. One pawn moves one block forward, then another, and then another. “The day was okay. School was fine. I have homework.”

  “Yo, so, good talk, yeah?” Éric says after a reprimand. Éric is new school in everything, even in his insolence. Guillome does not know how to handle it. More often than not he is amused by Éric’s disregard for rules.

  “I’m serious, Éric.” He tries to sound stern. “Why would you put flour on the ceiling fans?”

  “Ah, you see a ceiling fan, it’s a hot day, and you just wonder, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know, Éric. How many times must I sign these detention slips? Don’t you get bored with punishment?”

  “It’s not so bad, you know. You write an essay, sleep for a bit, you know?”

  Guillome rubs his tired face and walks out of Éric’s dishevelled room.

  Despite his constant fatigue, Guillome has discovered a purpose in his labour: providing for his middle-class family. He is happy and comfortable with their integration into their calm Windhoek neighbourhood. Like many other families, they are secure in the collective identity of ownership. They are the proud owners of a four-bedroomed house with an extensive yard; they own a car; there are whispers of owning dogs; they own a large flat-screen television, a shiny, silver fridge, and a black gas stove that swallows the light when it is polished and cleaned. His family has climbed up the ladder; they are suburban; they are planting roots; and, in time, he is sure they will truly flourish. With the right education and the right encouragement – especially for Éric – they could break through the crust of their lot in life and ascend a level further: they could run a business.

  And further than that? Guillome does not allow himself to dream too much. The past is never far from his mind, and so he holds the future at arm’s length.

  Then there is Séraphin, the pioneer of puberty and the family’s first herald of changing family dynamics. Still beholden to his brooding silences, still a citizen of a world he has not seen, he charges headlong into his adolescence. He is Promethean in his attempts to bring modernity to a household choking under the nostalgia of a lost way of life. He is the bringer of casual greetings – hi, yo, what’s up, what’s good – and egalitarian titles which dub everyone a dude, bro, homie, or man. He has even attempted to fist bump Therése in parting rather than do something as blimpish as saying goodbye. Whereas Yves is pacific in his fantasy-filled thoughts, Séraphin’s temperament is protean, burning hot when aroused to anger. At times he is jocular and friendly, the embodiment of brotherly and filial affection when provided with ample motivation. At others he is titanic in his wrath from the slightest provocation. An argument is always fomenting around him at home and as his cleverness grows Guillome and Therése come to fear and loathe every instance in which he directs his terrible attention towards them and asks, “Why?”

  Therése and Guillome, raised in a place and time when parental authority was papal in its absoluteness, are caught off guard by the word. The ‘why’ places an onus on them to provide reasons for their rules, reasons they have not hitherto considered nor deemed necessary to give to their offspring, the fruit of their loins, their own creation.

  “Séra, stop asking questions and listen,” Guillome says. “It has been decided.”

  The answer suffices when Séraphin is ten, when he is twelve. At fourteen it starts losing its binding power. By sixteen it is better to enforce a rule steadfastly than explain its rationale. However, in the absence of reasons, rebellion is but a denied privilege or a forced duty away.

  Why must he go to church? – “Isn’t your body a temple anyway?”

  Why must he pull up his pants? – “It’s just fashion!”

  Why must he get off the telephone if nobody else in the house is using it? – “And do what then? Talk to you guys? You guys are boring, man.”

  Why?

  Therése and Guillome hate the word. It brings clashes of wills to the house, which leave the arguing combatants and even innocent bystanders battered, bruised, angry, and sulking; the air is left heavy with blame and recrimination. The word swallows happiness whole. It leaves Guillome and Therése wondering whether they will ever secure a reprieve from being too old, too Rwandan, too parental—too them.

  Perhaps reasoning with Séraphin would have worked. Perhaps a more relaxed attitude to his affectations of the culture around him would have set some sort of precedent for peace in Guillome and Therése’s household. Maybe if they had not been so inflexible and accepted that the times they were a-changing they could have noted their son’s grating but useful cultural camouflage, Yves’s ill-fitting blackness, and Éric’s truancy as the blowbacks of lives which would not fit in templates, new dough which would not be cut with the same, tired cookie cutter. Maybe then things could have been different for the small family.

  Who is to know? Who can point at particular instances in these lives and say, “This is where it all begins, this is where you have to be brave and accept that migration comes with mandatory adaptations, Guillome.” At which point do you sit Therése down and tell her, “This is where it all starts to go wrong. This is where the past runs out.”

  Is it here, when the Kenya Airways flight starts boarding, with Therése and Guillome herding their young sons onto the airplane, with Yves scared by how high the boarding gate is off the ground, Séraphin curious, and Éric too young to register anything?

  Or is it here, when a so-called friend borrows heavily from Guillome and Therése, promising to return their favour with interest before vanishing into the Canadian unknown with his family, leaving the two with a difficult choice to make about Yves’s university education?

  Nobody knows. Only the weight of consequence can be felt.

  But look here, at Séraphin and Jasmyn on his bed. This might be the beginning of something. Not the start of all starts, not the First Word of the First Chapter of th
e First Book, but the start of a secret something that will be part of Séraphin, Yves, Éric, Therése, and Guillome’s lives for a long time. Here, in this room with this laughing boy and this girl with the hazel eyes, where everything is funny because the losing of one’s virginity is dependent on the maintenance of good humour.

  This might be a start of a start.

  Maybe.

  At St. Luke’s, when grade eleven and twelve students prepare for their year-end examinations they are permitted to study at home. Parents never doubt that their children will use the time to study. The high fees and the pressure to perform ensure academic diligence. It is that unequivocal trust which permits Therése to leave Séraphin in the house today while she goes grocery shopping. He has a biology examination tomorrow. He is conscientious with his schoolwork. He is a prefect. He is certainly not Éric. She fusses in the kitchen before looking at her watch and deciding she must start her short walk to town before it becomes really hot.

  “Séra!” Therése calls out in his room’s direction. “I’m off! I’ll be back later, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” A muffled reply comes from behind his bedroom door.

  “There’s some food in the fridge if you want. I won’t be long.”

  “Right!”

  “Okay, I’m off.”

  “Sure.”

  “See you later.”

  Silence.

  “I’m waiting for you to say goodbye, Séra.”

  More silence. And then, eventually, an exasperated “Goodbye, Mamma.”

  Therése stuffs her shopping bags, one into the other, and exits her house, town bound, a large brown sunhat on her head and a neatly scribbled shopping list in her purse.

  As the sliding gate clicks home, Séraphin emerges from his room and watches her hat cross Vivaldi Street before rounding the corner into Mozart. He waits for a few minutes and then reaches for his phone and sends a message.

  Sera_Phyne—JazzMyne: She’s gone.

  JazzMyne: OK. I’m on my way.

  If the jump from Quill Club seat-mates to this moment here feels strange, it really should not. The one thing this musical decade of decadence, of sugary pop-rock romance, R&B thuggery, throwback jerseys and bandanas did was to make sure teenage romances in Windhoek flourished with ease. The boo-thing was in, thanks to Usher and Alicia Keys; makeups and breakups were always on time according to Ja Rule and Ashanti, and, although she had only passed on a few years earlier, Aaliyah still made it to playlists which narrated the yearnings of adolescence. Take chronic boredom, the sweet Limewire and Napster nectars, pour them onto a blank compact disc, and pop it into a Nero oven at twenty-times writing speed and one had the pirated score of romance.

  It was so easy back then.

  Ronan Keating, Lifehouse, The Calling, Eagle Eye Cherry, and The Goo Goo Dolls had been priming a whole generation of Windhoek youths in the subtle arts of longing and not really belonging for a long time. The youth was in revolt and, after all, if one could not find themselves somewhere new, then they could at least find someone new. Love was a favourite pastime. Jasmyn had finally shed her Keaton shell, and Séraphin was the Rick Dees’ Weekly Top Forty fundi, fingers first learning the quick art of pressing the record and play buttons of the cassette radio simultaneously before moving on to the abundance and ease of peer-to-peer file sharing networks. He had grown taller and leaner. He passed a basketball as well as he wrote a descriptive sentence, and, floating somewhere between jock and nerd, Jasmyn, understandably, had decided that someone unlike Keaton, someone different, would be necessary.

  Enter Séraphin from stage left.

  “Dude, that mixed CD you made was the shit,” says John on another Friday at the Quill Club.

  “Thanks,” Séraphin replies.

  “That shandie was fire. You could sell it if you wanted to.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Maybe you should make us some,” a voice behind them says. It is Jasmyn, seated next to one of her girlfriends – even her friends are joining the Quill Club.

  Séraphin and John turn to each other hesitantly before Séraphin says: “Sure. What do you like?”

  “Everything,” she says.

  “Nobody likes everything,” Séraphin says. “Not even me and I listen to everything.”

  “Okay,” Jasmyn says. “Surprise me.”

  That night, with a broad music collection at his disposal, Séraphin sets to work.

  “Make it good,” says a voice.

  “Damn good,” says another.

  “I will,” says Séraphin.

  He delivers High School Mixtape, Vol. 1: Confusing Sadness to Jasmyn the following week, dropping it on her desk in their English class before heading over to his seat.

  “I didn’t know you liked Puddle of Mudd and Staind,” she says the day after.

  “Who doesn’t?” he replies.

  “Everyone I know.”

  “Then you don’t know everyone. I like them.”

  “Me too.”

  Those two magic words that make teenagers clap their hands ecstatically like a cymbal-bashing monkey in their heads: me too. In the future these words will divide, but for now they unite. What else can these two words draw from Séraphin? Eclectic Acoustic and Now Here, Nowhere, which garner gushing reviews.

  “Shawn Mullins,” she says, “is the best.”

  “He is good,” Séraphin replies. “I like that song.”

  “Me too,” he replies.

  It only takes two more me-toos – The Short Version of A Long Story (“It’s been a while since I heard Mel C and Left-Eye!” she says) and Time of Your Lies (“Nice word play,” she says – to go from verbal to digital conversation, all hush-hush, and complete with waiting for each other to show up online, texting each other until one of them falls asleep. It is a marvellous time for the young Séraphin and it is inevitable for talk to build towards that magnificent crescendo of teenage aspirations:

  JazzMyne—Tri_SeraTops: Seriously? You haven’t?

  Tri_SeraTops: No.

  JazzMyne: I thought you would’ve.

  Tri_SeraTops: Still one. With a capital V, like the Vulcan greeting.

  JazzMyne: What?

  Tri_SeraTops: “Live long and prosper.” You don’t know that one?

  JazzMyne: I do. You’re strange, Séraphin.

  Tri_SeraTops: I’ve been told.

  JazzMyne: But I like it.

  Tri_SeraTops: Me too.

  JazzMyne: Did you just say you like yourself?

  Tri_SeraTops: If I don’t who will?

  JazzMyne: …me.

  Tri_SeraTops: …okay.

  JazzMyne: You’re lame. And your username is lame.

  Tri_SeraTops: Apparently I charge too much in basketball.

  JazzMyne: You should change it. Some of my friends call you Sera-Fine.

  Tri_SeraTops: Really?

  JazzMyne: Yeah. But don’t get a big head now.

  TheaElleC—Sera_Phyne: You changed your username.

  Sera_Phyne: Yes, I did.

  TheaElleC: Right … so John says you’ve been making Jasmyn mixed CDs.

  Sera_Phyne: John needs to keep his nose out of other people’s business.

  TheaElleC: Touchy! What do you guys talk about anyway? I’ve always thought she was a bit of an airhead.

  Sera_Phyne: She isn’t an airhead. She’s pretty interesting.

  TheaElleC: More pretty than interesting.

  Sera_Phyne: Hater.

  TheaElleC: What do you guys even talk about?

  Sera_Phyne: I don’t know. Music, I guess. She’s funny. I like her.

  TheaElleC: …okay.

  Sera_Phyne: What?

  TheaElleC: Nothing.

  Sera_Phyne: Okay.

  TheaElleC: Okay.

  JazzMyne—Sera_Phyne: You changed it.

  Sera_Phyne: I did.

  JazzMyne: I like it.

  Sera_Phyne: Hehehe. Me too.

  JazzMyne: How is the bio study going?

&nb
sp; Sera_Phyne: Okay, I guess. Gets boring studying at home the whole time. My mom’s always around, looking for new ways to annoy me.

  JazzMyne: The whole time?

  Sera_Phyne: Except when she goes shopping. Then she’s pretty much gone the whole day.

  JazzMyne: Okay. Next time she leaves let me know.

  Sera_Phyne: Why?

  JazzMyne: Biology textbook. Chapter seven.

  Sera_Phyne: Huh?

  JazzMyne: You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.

  Sera_Phyne: …Oh …err …right. …Okay!

  About fifteen minutes after Therése departs, Séraphin and Jasmyn are on his bed, the former laughing and trying to appear relaxed, the latter totally at ease, in control of the morning’s proceedings. They lean against a wall scrapbooked with the interests of Séraphin’s youth: a poster with the world’s most popular rock-rap fusion band has its frayed edges encroaching on a poster of a pale singer in a yellow jacket and tight white trousers, legs spread apart, fist raised in the air while his other hand holds a microphone, whipping a crowd into a rock-fuelled frenzy. On the opposite wall are three carefully spaced posters depicting the Arsenal Holy Trinity: Thierry Henry, arms spread, about to take flight in victory; Patrick Vieira, a cheeky confident smile on his face; and Dennis Bergkamp, hand raised triumphantly in the air as he walks away from a floundering Newcastle goalkeeper. Next to them is a giant print of a bald-headed black man, soaring to a basketball hoop, tongue out. Here and there can be seen rectangles of wanderlust with the Empire State Building, Christ the Redeemer embracing Rio de Janeiro, Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong, and brown, undulating sand dunes vanishing into a blue infiniteness of sky.

  “What’s that one?” Jasmyn asks, pointing at the endless sands.

  “Sahara Desert.”

  “Why that?”

  “Not sure.” Then he adds, “Looks peaceful.”

  “You know we have a desert too, right?”