After Tears. Niq Mhlongo

walked up our dusty driveway. He stopped and looked up at our house number that was scrawled on the unplastered brick wall outside the front door. He looked at least seventy, or maybe a bit more; both his hair and beard were grey and he was wearing an old brown suit with black shoes. Suddenly he seemed to come to some kind of a decision and knocked at the kitchen door.

      I saw Mama open the door, which was still the original steel one that made a loud bang when you opened or closed it, but I kept staring at the old man. I had never known my father, or my paternal grandfather, and I had long ago accepted the fact that I was the product of a man who didn’t care that I existed and a woman who hid the truth from me all the time. I didn’t miss the man who ran away without seeing the fruits of his handsome labour, but for some reason I was hoping that Mama was going to announce the old man as my grandfather.

      By the time I got to the kitchen the old man was already sitting on one of the plastic chairs while Mama rested on one of the others with a puzzled look on her face. The two of them were examining each other with great curiosity.

      “My name is John Sekoto,” the old man introduced himself to Mama. “I used to live in this house in the early seventies, before I leased it out to Mr Kuzwayo in 1974.”

      “Sawubona, mkhulu,” Mama greeted the old man, “I’m the late Kuzwayo’s daughter and my name is Rea.”

      “I see. Are you Nandi’s daughter?”

      “Yebo, mkhulu.”

      “You look more like your mother. You were still young when I was transferred to the Welkom mines.”

      Mama smiled.

      “You see, I was just discharged from the Weskoppies Mental Hospital in Pretoria. I had been there for almost two decades and right now I don’t have a place to stay. I read in the Sowetan newspaper that this house was up for sale and I thought that I should come here and discuss some issues with you.”

      “Oh, you’re right. It’s been a month now and we’re waiting for a potential buyer,” Mama lied.

      The old man nodded.

      “My two brothers have got their new RDP houses from the ANC government in Snake Park and Slovoville and now there’s nobody to live here. We’ve got another house in Naturena,” Mama boasted, “and that’s the reason we’re selling this one. You’re the third person to respond to the advert since we placed it in the newspaper again last week. Do you want to have a look around while I make you some coffee or tea?”

      “Actually, I don’t think you understand the reason I’m here,” said the old man, looking Mama straight in the face. “What I mean to say is that this is my house and you can’t sell it. In fact, I would like to reoccupy it and I thought that I should give you two months’ notice.”

      I was surprised at the old man’s claim and I listened wide-eyed.

      “What’s that supposed to mean, huh?” Mama finally managed to say, staring viciously at him. “That this is your house?”

      “Like I said, I’m afraid it’s the truth,” the old man responded with calmness in his voice.

      Mama clicked her tongue and shook her head as if she had just woken up from a nightmare.

      “We’ve lived in this house for our whole lives and now, all of a sudden, somebody from a mental hospital claims it’s his? No way! Never! What proof have you got to show that this is your house, huh?” she said, raising her voice.

      “Well, I have several photos of me and my family, as well as some papers,” said the old man.

      Silence fell while the old man took out six faded black-and-white pictures from his pocket and, uncomfortably, pushed them across the table towards Mama. I approached the table to have a better look at them. The pictures were almost identical. In each one of them he had posed with three other people, but before he even began to tell us about the people in the pictures, I had guessed that they were his wife and two sons. The sons looked like they were aged between two and four when the photo was taken. In the background of each picture was a number that was scrawled in white paint on the wall of a house. It appeared on the brick wall next to the steel door and it read 9183. That was our house number. The very same house that Mama was selling so that she could pay for my nonexistent university results.

      Mama looked away.

      “That’s my wife there,” said the old man, pointing at the woman in the photograph that Mama was still holding. “She used to be a great friend of Nandi, your mother,” he continued in a nostalgic tone of a voice. “Ah, those days . . .”

      “And where is she now?” Mama asked, as if she had suddenly remembered something about the woman.

      “I last saw her in 1979, immediately before I was committed to Weskoppies.”

      The old man looked at the asbestos roof of our house and smiled, and at that moment, I was convinced that he was still mad. Mama watched him as well, not moving.

      “Oh, I was looking at that hole up there.” The old man pointed at the roof of the house. “It happened in 1972, during the rent boycott,” he continued. “The police were shooting all over the township.”

      Mama appeared uninterested in what the old man was saying. She looked very tired and annoyed, but, indeed, there was a hole where he was pointing to and the roof always leaked slightly from there when it rained.

      “And where are your children?” Mama asked, her expressionless eyes meeting those of the old man.

      “The older one, Tumi, died in 1978 when I was in Welkom and the other one, Pule, I don’t know where he is. I’m still looking for him and his mother. I heard that they’re somewhere here in Jo’burg.”

      Mama frowned before she fired another question at him.

      “So, what other proof do you have to support your claim that this is your house, huh? I mean, where is your title deed for this house?”

      The old man searched his pocket again and came out with a very old, dog-eared document that looked like a passport, only bigger. He handed it to Mama. As I moved closer to see what was written in it, I saw the words Residential Permit Holder written on the outside in black. Inside there was a black-and-white photograph of the old man when he was still middle-aged. There were also fingerprints, the old man’s date of birth (which happened to be 1928), his race, sex, names of his previous employers and their addresses, how long he had been employed there and so forth. In one section the pages were stamped in red, stating Permission Request Denied or Permission Request Granted.

      Mama turned to the next page which was headed Lawful Dependants. Three dependants as well as their ages were mentioned. The old man’s wife was called Tseli and she had been born in 1941. Their son Tumi was born in 1960 and the other one, Pule, was born in 1963. The document was stamped with the words Urban Dwellers. There were also two pink cards with the children’s names on them and they bore the official stamps of the primary schools they had been attending. In the permit I also saw our house number again: 9183, Chiawelo Section Two, Soweto.

      His papers looked genuine although they were old.

      “Is this what you call a title deed, huh?” Mama asked with an expression of pure scorn on her face.

      “Yes, that’s it,” the old man replied, but at that moment Uncle Nyawana came limping through the door carrying his syringe in his hand.

      “Jabu, listen to this old man here. He says he has come to occupy this house because it’s his and he leased it out to our parents in seventy-something. He shows us these old papers and a dompas, and expects us to believe him,” she said contemptuously.

      “He’s mad,” my uncle declared, tapping at the side of his own head with his finger. “I told him a month ago already, when he was here before, that we have the title deed for this house. I forgot to tell you about him because I didn’t think it was important. He’s mentally disturbed.”

      “I