Ways of Dying Read Online Free PDF

doing what she was born to do?’ That Mountain Woman had razor blades in her tongue.
    Toloki’s mother, on the other hand, was furious. There was no more food in the house, and no one could get Jwara to respond to their pleas that he should give them money to buy maize-meal at the general dealer’s store. He just went on hammering and hammering to the rhythm of Noria’s monotonous song. It was in these circumstances that Toloki’s mother, her stout matronly body shaking with anger, uttered the immortal words that gave Noria her stuck-up bitch title, which lived with her from that day onwards.
    We know all these things, but Toloki does not remember them. He only knows that as far as his memory can take him, Noria was always referred to as a stuck-up bitch, and was proud of the title. How this came about, he does not know. Nor can he remember how Noria began to sing for his father. This is how it happened: he was eight and she five. They were playing the silly games that children play outside the workshop. Jwara had just finished shoeing the policemen’s horses, and was about to put off the fires, and to close the shop. He was looking forward to taking an early break, and joining his old friends, Xesibe and Nefolovhodwe, for a gourd of sorghum beer. Then Noria sang. Jwara found himself overwhelmed by a great creative urge. He took an idle piece of iron, and put it in the fire. When it was red hot, he began to shape it into a strange figure. He amazed himself, because in all his life he had never known that he had such great talent. But before he could finish thefigurine, Noria stopped singing, and all of a sudden he could not continue to shape the figure. The great talent, and the urge to create, had left his body. He could not even remember what he was trying to do with that piece of iron. Then in the course of her game with Toloki, Noria sang her childish song again. The song had no meaning at all. But it had such great power in Jwara that he found himself creating the figurine again. From that day, whenever Jwara wanted to create his figurines, he would invite Noria over to the workshop, she would sing her meaningless song, and he would work for hours on end at the figurines. Sometimes new shapes would visit him in his dreams, and he would want to create them the next day. Jwara and Noria did not usually work every day though, and the time that they worked for the whole week was an exception and a record. It was because Jwara’s dreams had been particularly crowded the previous night, and he was unable to stop until he had reproduced all the strange creatures with which he had interacted in his sleep.
    We were not surprised, really, that Noria had all this power to change mediocre artisans into artists of genius, and to make the birds and the bees pause in their business of living and pay audience to her. In fact, one thing that Toloki used to be jealous about even as a small boy, was that we all loved the stuck-up bitch, for she had such beautiful laughter. We would crowd around her and listen to her laughter. We would make up all sorts of funny things in order to make her laugh. She loved to laugh at funny faces, and some villagers gained great expertise in making them. A particular young man called Rubber Face Sehole knew how to pull all sorts of funny faces, and whenever he was around we knew that we would all be happily feasting on Noria’s laughter. So Noria received all the attention, and Toloki none.
    It is rumoured that when Noria was a baby, she already had beautiful laughter. We say it is rumoured because it is one ofthe few things that we do not know for sure. When That Mountain Woman was pregnant she went to give birth in her village in the mountains, as was the custom with a first child. Since we never had anything to do with the mountain people, we only know about the events there from the stories that people told. They said that nursemaids and babysitters used to tickle Noria