By MANDLA LANGA

CALEB ZUNGU was forty-three years old, married to
Nothando for thirteen years with two girl children, Busi
and Khwezi, aged eight and fourteen respectively. He
owned a house in Norwood, a car and two dogs of du-
bious pedigree. He was an insurance salesman for Al-
lied Life, where he had worked for five years. He was
overdrawn at the bank and hoped for an act of God,
perhaps the death of a long-lost uncle who would leave
him a handsome inheritance. Nothando had graduated
from Kelly Girl to full-time employment in the Human
Resources Department of TransStar, a transport compa-
ny. The girls were on school holidays, it being April,
and the dogs, which he addressed in imperatives such
as 'Voetsek!' or 'Come here, boys,' depending on his
mood, were content with life.

On this late April Monday, Caleb woke up, took a
shower, brushed his teeth and dressed. He cut a dash-
ing if formidable picture in his navy-blue, pin-striped
suit, a white shirt, a red tie and black shoes. He drank
his coffee quickly and went back to the bathroom.
Nothando almost dropped her coffee mug when she
heard a shriek coming from the bathroom. Thinking that
her husband might be suffering a stroke (it had decimat-
ed two male members in Caleb's family), she spilled her
coffee in her rush to see what was the matter.

She found Caleb, his head bent, gingerly feeling a bald
spot the size of an old one rand coin which had, it
seemed, developed overnight, on the crown of his
head. Standing behind him as he lamented his loss of
hair before the unflattering mirror, Nothando felt a pang
of tenderness mixed with disappointment. Why were
men such babies? She managed to coax him out of his
dark mood, telling him that baldness was an attestation
of virility, and that he looked very handsome and distin-
guished. Nothando resisted the temptation to kiss him
on his pate, but firmly steered him to his car -- a sec-
ond-hand, shocking pink Renault he had never got
round to repainting -- with encouraging words. Stand-
ing on the doorway and giving him the obligatory good-
bye wave, which he didn't reciprocate, she knew that
Caleb was deeply troubled; he hadn't even taken along
his mobile phone.

While in the midst of preparing herself for work, her
helper arrived and took over the necessary task of
putting the kids within the straight and narrow. This
might have seemed like heavy-handedness to the girls,
especially Khwezi who was spending too much time
yakkity-yakking on the phone. This was a little worry-
ing, especially since her daughter had taken to scrib-
bling I ♥ JM on her trainers and listening to Seal's
crooning with a rapt expression on her face. Nothando
wondered who the hell JM was; probably one of those
acne-ridden, foul-mouthed louts in oversized jackets,
baggy pants and loose-laced, high-top trainers who
slouched on street-corners, wolf-whistling at women. Al-
though Nothando had ascended to suburban re-
spectability, she still maintained contact with a few of
the heavy brothers on the streets. If JM messed around
with her daughter, she did not rule out calling in a
friendly neighbourhood enforcer. It wouldn't do to let
Caleb know of her anxiety; the way he felt, what with
his loss of hair, they would have a homicide on their
hands.

Nothando's lift came. Having negotiated the nerve-
wracking Johannesburg morning traffic, she and Marcia,
who drove a new Toyota Conquest, made it to the of-
fice on time. The Marketing Manager, Mr Peter Marshall,
was forever bitching about punctuality. 'The RDP will
go down the tubes.' he was fond of repeating, like a
preacher invoking holy writ, 'if you people keep this
up.' You people! Nothando would think bitterly, these
bastards never change, even if they pretend to be Jay
Naidoo's lieutenants.

Nothando mulled over her husband's difficulty, knowing
that some men had committed suicide at the loss of
their hair. A man who does that wasn't fit to live any-
way, she thought unkindly. Suicide, she believed, is the
highest form of self-criticism. Caleb had told her of
many people who had posthumously tried to gyp insur-
ance companies by making their deaths look like mur-
der or accidents. There was no bonus in killing oneself;
in the credo of the Catholic Church, you were even
barred from entering that great festival in the sky.
Nothando suddenly realised that she really didn't know
whether Caleb was a suicidal type. The morning's out-
burst in the bathroom had shown another side to him.
She'd be supremely pissed off if he took this way out.

She wouldn't know, however, that exactly at that mo-
ment, Caleb was in a boardroom where the Harvard-
trained MD, Arnold Spicer, was reading everyone the
Riot Act. The returns were low, much lower than had
been forecast by the salesmen. When Sanders, a bright
spark who specialised in retirement annuities, pointed
out that there was a slump in the economy, Spicer retort-
ed that he didn't give a rat's ass about the slump. 'The

MANDLA LANGA (b. 1950) served the ANC for fifteen years
(1980-94) as an editor, speech-writer, and cultural attaché to the
U.K. and Ireland. His published works include a number of short
stories and the novels Tenderness of Blood ( 1985 ), Rainbow on a
Paper Sky ( 1989 ), and The Cult of Innocence ( 1994 ).

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