Affluenza. Niq Mhlongo

between the lines. Can you see? Did he sometimes used to write like this?”

      “Only when he was in a hurry, during note-taking in class.”

      “Thanks a lot for your time,” said Detective Nkosi, handing his card to Sipho. “Please let us know if you think of anything that might help our investigation into this matter.”

      The following morning, Sipho didn’t get up. He had no idea how he had managed to walk to his room the previous afternoon, but his body felt heavy, as if he had been carrying bags of cement the whole night. It was even difficult to open his eyes. He turned over; his stomach felt empty, but he had lost his appetite the moment he had received the news of his friend’s death.

      As Sipho slept a shaft of midday sunlight penetrated his room, roasting him. He had forgotten to close the curtains when he had come back from talking to the police.

      Suddenly, he heard a knock on the door, followed by someone calling his name.

      “I know you are there, Sipho. It’s me, Zanele. Please open the door.”

      Sipho shifted the sheets and rolled to the other side of the bed. Some tobacco fell out of the pocket of the old brown leather jacket that he was still wearing as he stood and realised for the first time that he had slept with his shoes on. As he walked to the door he noticed a can of Black Label lying on its side on the floor. The whole room smelt of stale beer.

      Zanele was carrying a blue sports bag with the varsity logo on it. She was studying at the drama school and was in her second year, but she had deferred all her remaining exams the previous day after hearing of the death of her ex-boyfriend.

      “Hi,” she said. “What smells so awful?”

      “Eish. Maybe it’s the beer …”

      Sipho walked to the window and opened it.

      “You know, I’ve been here since eleven this morning, and I’ve knocked on your door several times.”

      “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you,” Sipho said, yawning.

      “If it wasn’t for the security guy downstairs who insisted that you were in, I would have left without seeing you.”

      Sipho went to the kitchen and plugged in the kettle to make coffee. The sink was full of dirty dishes and pots that had remained unwashed for about a week, and as he opened the fridge for some fresh milk Sipho could smell that the eggs had spoiled. He ignored the smell and took out the milk.

      With a mug of coffee in each hand, he went back to his room. Zanele was sitting on his bed.

      “When I saw that bag I thought that you were coming to give me a beer to kill this babalas,” Sipho said, trying to make a joke.

      There was silence for a while inside the room. A rill of slow-moving tears rolled down Zanele’s brown cheek. She slowly wiped it away with the back of her hand.

      “Sipho, can you do me a favour, please?”

      “You know that you can always count on me.”

      “This bag belonged to Sbu. He gave it to me last night. I still had some of his things from when we were together, and he wanted me to drop them with him this morning. I’m asking you to give it to his family.”

      “So, you were with him before he died?”

      “Yes.” Zanele paused, the look on her face unreadable. “Why? What are people saying?”

      “Nothing. I just hear rumours that you were in Sbu’s room yesterday, before he died.”

      “Well, they aren’t rumours. It’s the truth.”

      Zanele finished her coffee and prepared to leave.

      “Please, Sipho,” she said as she stood up. “Just do this one thing for me. Make sure this bag gets back to Sbu’s family.”

      “I’ll see what I can do.”

      Sipho started to search the bag as soon as Zanele had left. Inside he found a washing rag, a pair of underpants, some books, a toothbrush and an envelope with a letter inside. The envelope was postmarked 11 November and was from Johannesburg Hospital. Opening it, Sipho could not believe his eyes when he read the word Positive in the Status section.

      FOUR BLOCKS AWAY

      My left eye was twitching nonstop. I’d been taught that this was a good sign. It meant that I was going to see something big. That is what my mother always used to say to me whenever my left eye went into spasm. Just like when the palm of my left hand was itchy. That was supposed to mean that I was going to come into a huge sum of money. Unless I scratched it – in which case my fortune would disappear.

      Looking back, I have to say that my itchy palm never led to me receiving any money, but my twitchy eye often preceded pornographic horrors. I used to share a bedroom with my cousin Spice in Chi, Soweto, and on several occasions after my eye had been giving me trouble I woke up in the middle of the night to witness him naked on top of a woman he had snuck into our shared bedroom from the nearest shebeen.

      So this is why, at the mature age of thirty-three, I still believed that my twitchy eye meant that I was going to see something big. However, I never figured on it happening while I was so far away from home. In the Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C., to be exact.

      That Saturday the twitch was almost unbearable and my mind was filled with the things I might see. Part of me was hoping to bump into the various big shot South Africans who I’d heard had flown in to congratulate the newly elected president, Barack Obama.

      I’d been in the US for about six months on a cultural exchange programme, teaching gumboot dancing to kids at the various schools around Iowa City. So, the fact that our visit to D.C., which was only for three days, had coincided with the inauguration of the first African-American president was extraordinary and wonderful.

      Everyone from the programme was in D.C., including my two friends: Kuri, from Mutare in Zimbabwe, who taught mbira, and Bakala, from Bamako in Mali, who taught tabale. Kuri was in his mid-twenties, very thin and very tall. He looked like he didn’t eat enough, which confirmed the idea that most people had about Zimbos around that time: that Mugabe was starving them to death. Bakala was older, in his early fifties, and almost always wore traditional dress. The three of us had stayed in the same house in Lynn Street back in Iowa City. Despite our different ages and backgrounds we had developed a close friendship and used to go shopping together at Coralville Mall.

      We were all in D.C. to thank our generous sponsor, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, for the unique opportunity they had provided us with, but that Saturday morning was our own time and we had decided to use it to explore D.C. At about nine we met in the lobby of the Hilton. Outside, the grey sky hung so low I felt I could reach out and touch it. It looked like it was going to rain.

      My eye was still giving me trouble, so I decided to tell Kuri what my mother had always said when it started to twitch. Immediately, he suggested that we should give the White House a miss. “That twitching of yours means trouble, man,” he teased. “The Ku Klux Klan is probably planning to bomb the new president!”

      Just after three o’clock that afternoon Kuri, Bakala and I arrived back at the hotel. We were tired of walking around and had given up before seeing the Korean and Vietnam War memorials. We had, however, managed to see the White House, or as my high school history teacher used to call it: “The house where God resides.”

      The three of us were scheduled to give a talk and a performance at Howard University at five o’clock. My topic was The gumboot dance and the South African migrant labour system.

      My eye was still twitching and I could not properly set my mind to the talk at the university. After scanning USA Today and the Washington Post in the lobby, I decided to go to my room, which I shared with Bakala, and lie down and close my eyes, in the hope that this would help.

      At five o’clock we found ourselves in one of Howard University’s lecture