Ways of Dying Read Online Free PDF Page A

visitors. On second thoughts, he will not go to the beach. It is Boxing Day and all the beaches are crowded with holidaymakers from the inland provinces who come especially to litter the lovely coastal city at this time of the year. People like to gawk when he showers. The smaller the crowd the better. Perhaps he will take a walk to the waterfront and entertain himself by watching the antics of the buskers and the ridiculous excitement of the tourists who visit the pubs, stores and theatres there. Or he might just as well sit here, watch ships come and go, and think of Noria.

    Noria. The village. His memories have faded from the deep yellow-ochre of the landscape, with black beetles rolling black dung down the slopes, and colourful birds swooping down to feed on the hapless insects, to a dull canvas of distant and misty grey. Now, however, it is all coming back. Pale herdboys, with mucus hanging from the nostrils, looking after cattle whose ribs you could count, on barren hills with patches of sparse grass and shrubs. Streams that flowed reluctantly in summer and happily died in winter. Homesteads of three or four huts each, decorated outside with geometric patterns of red, yellow, blue and white. Or just white-washed all around. One hovel each for the poorest families. In addition to three huts, his homestead had a four-walled tin-roofed stone building with a big door that never closed properly. This was his father’s workshop.
    His father, a towering handsome giant in gumboots and aging blue overalls, was a blacksmith, and his bellows and the sounds of beating iron filled the air with monotonous rhythms through the day. Jwara, for that was his father’s name, earned his bread by shoeing horses. But on some days – Toloki could not remember whether these were specially appointed days, or whether they were days when business was slack – he created figurines of iron and brass. On those days he got that stuck-up bitch, Noria, to sing while he shaped the red-hot iron and brass into images of strange people and animals that he had seen in his dreams. Noria was ten years old, but considered herself very special, for she sang for the spirits that gave Jwara the power to create the figurines. She had been doing it for quite a few years. Although her voice added to the monotony of the bellows and beating metal, we thought it was quite mellifluous. We came and gathered around the workshop, and solemnly listened to her never-changing song. Even the birds forgot about the beetles, and joined the bees hovering over the workshop, making buzzing and chirping sounds in harmony with Noria’s song.
    The earliest reference to Noria as a stuck-up bitch was first heard some years back when Toloki’s mother was shouting at Jwara, her angry eyes green with jealousy, ‘You spend all your time with that stuck-up bitch, Noria, and you do not care for your family!’
    Noria was seven at the time, and she and Jwara had spent a whole week in the workshop, without eating any food or drinking any water, while he shaped his figurines and she sang. We came and listened, and went back to our houses to eat and to sleep, and came back again to the workshop, and found them singing and shaping figurines. Even the birds and the bees got tired and went to sleep. When they came back the next day, Noria and Jwara were still at it.
    Xesibe, Noria’s father, came to the workshop, stood pitifully at the door, and pleaded with Jwara, ‘Please, Jwara, release ourchild. She has to eat and sleep.’ But Jwara did not respond. Nor did Noria. It was as though they were possessed by the powerful spirits that made them create the figurines. Noria’s mother, the willowy dark beauty known to us only as That Mountain Woman, was very angry with Xesibe: ‘How dare you, Father of Noria, interfere with the process of creation! Who are you, Father of Noria, to think that a piece of rag like you can have the right to stop my child from