A dream deferred by the spawn of the devil

I am posting this from Malaysia, after a 10-hour trip. Economy class. Don’t judge me. The Johannesburg-to-Singapore leg of the trip has managed to reaffirm my belief in the existence of the devil. I have always held the view that the devil is a real phenomenon and that, in all likelihood, he has managed to take on a physical, human form. That is because I think it would be highly unlikely that the devil would choose to incarnate as a blue-spotted owl, for instance.

It goes without saying, of course, that the devil would have inevitably knocked up some unsuspecting human female by now. Some female members of the human species can be horrible judges of character as is evidenced by the fact that Hitler actually got some “play” in his life. Plus, the devil wouldn’t be much of a devil if he didn’t have horny-bastardly tendencies, would he now? And let’s all agree that it is conceivable that the devil could take his family to Singapore.

In any case, I sat next to two of his offspring on this particular trip to Singapore. The Evil One and his significant other sat in the row in front of me, leaving me to share a row with the evil spawn of his loins. A boy and a girl, barely into their teens — perhaps 13 and 12 respectively. Within minutes of the 10-hour trip I already had nostalgic longings for my 10-year ordeal in the hands of my sadistic torturers in a Turkish prison. Except of course that I have never been in a Turkish prison — I created this fantasy to escape my hellish reality next to these kids.

I had chosen an aisle seat, as I always do, in order to minimise any contact with my fellow travellers. I have a famous aversion for in-flight conversations and I find that people feel a sense of entitlement to address me when I’m pinned down against the window. When I had boarded the flight, I had delusional visions of spending the relative peace and solitude of the duration of the flight finally getting stuck into Mark Gevisser’s Mbeki biography, The Dream Deferred. I hadn’t had the time to read it since I purchased the book over three weeks ago. Silly, delusional, podgy little man.

Like most individuals who fancy themselves as some kind of scribes, I am prone to my own bursts of the good ole hyperbole. But let me assure you that I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the little devils consciously set about to torture me for the next 10 hours. The girl sat next to me for the first 400 years of the trip — wait, that would be the first four hours. She hardly stands 1,4m in height but makes up for it in width, which means that she was spilling over on to “my side” the entire time. Now, I’m not one to pass judgement on people’s metabolism — I have my own problems — but I think we can all exercise a little self-aware consideration for others. (Please refer to The Sumo’s plane post.)

This porky little devil exhibited none of this consideration for her wide dimensions. She remained in perpetual motion the entire time, rubbing up against me, turning this way and that way; shifting up and then down; reaching forward and then back. I was unable to get more than five minutes of uninterrupted reading. I was starting to resent Thabo and his comrades’ efforts in liberating this country from the clutches of the oppressor. If apartheid hadn’t ended, the destiny that had been carved out of me by those social engineers would have landed me up in some baas’s garden, breaking up clods of manure at that precise moment instead of being next to Miss Piggy over here.

And I haven’t even begun to describe the accompanying sound effects emanating from her nasal and buccal cavities. The entire time she was breathing heavily — a deep, slurpy sound that was a cross between an ejaculating bullfrog and a Nguni bull 0,1 seconds after its throat had been slit. I was starting to lose my mind and rooting for Verwoerd and co in the drama I was reading.

Between the two of them, Satan’s son and daughter must have consumed about 17 packets of jelly babies and about 20 gallons of fruit juice throughout the trip. This ensured that they were getting up to visit the lavatory facilities every 23 minutes or so. Each. Never simultaneously. I would have to get up to let the piglet through. And then I’d get up again when she returned five minutes later. No sooner would she settle down than the stick insect of the brother would stand up to go drain his bladder. And then they switched places and I rejoiced internally. Ha!

I do not know what’s worse; being rubbed up by a fleshy upper arm or being stabbed in the arm by a sharp elbow every 20 seconds. Just like his sister, the Stick Insect was in perpetual motion for the remainder of the trip. He had long thin arms more suited to swinging off trees than inside this Boeing; arms than made contact with me consistently. But that wasn’t my biggest problem. Round about this time I became aware of a peculiar odour.

At first I hypothesised that we were, at that moment, flying over a nuclear-waste dump site. Until I detected a pattern — every time the breadstick next to me moved, my nasal cavity was flooded with toxic fumes. It was an odour that was a cross between a sweaty mountain goat and the tender skin in-between athlete’s-foot-infested toes. I have never been able to accurately determine the age at which boys engage in industrial action against cleansing the bodies. All I know is that this child had not been in contact with water in a LOOONG time. And that my murderous instincts were now highly sharpened.

By this time, Mark Gevisser was trying to take me through ole Thabo’s stint at Skhodnya, in the former Soviet Union, quoting him; “A weapon is manufactured, created, designed, to kill people and it’s not a normal human thing, this wanting to kill people …” Oh, shut up, Thabo! Clearly that pipe has melted a few of your brain cells. Where is Msholozi to give a man his machine gun when he needs it most?

I disembarked at Singapore 10 hours later having had no rest, sleep nor peace. Worse still, I realised, the insights into my president as espoused by Gevisser had been tainted by violent, murderous thoughts. By the time we touched down in Singapore, I was on page 471. But my reading experience is tainted by Sniffy and Stinky, which means that I probably have to revisit the book.

As I discovered today, the enjoyment of any piece of reading material is heavily influenced by one’s surroundings. Especially when one is travelling with the spawn of the devil.

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