Storymania - Klaas by Adagio

Klaas
Adagio

Klaas

My entire life I have been a citizen of the beautiful city of Cape Town. Here on the southern tip of Africa, I exist as another member of the family of people that call this city our home. I move through her streets with ease and total comfort and everything that I do; every memory is interwoven with the lives and experiences of those around me. Although I am just an ordinary person, I can interpret her movements as one who is submersed in familiarity. From the movement of the wind to the slight change in the length of the afternoon shadows, I can tell how her moods will change and whether that calls for us to seek warmth from her notorious north-westerly, or to find shelter from the heat in comfort of the cool shadows her famous mountain provides.
It is this love for the city that drives me to experience all that is on offer and to mix with the diversity of people that provide the ingredients and the life that blends with the natural beauty to produce a culture that makes every experience of Cape Town unique.
Many years ago I decided that I wanted to learn more about the people that are undoubtedly the largest group of permanent residents in the centre of the city – the homeless. Either overlooked or socially abandoned, these people still try to exist for as long as they possibly can with as little as they possibly can. I had always been guilty of ignoring them as best as I could. I know that for many of us the two greatest irritations that we experience in the city as we bustle to out next appointments are the people who put there hands out in front of us begging for money, or the ‘informal parking attendants’ that jump into the roads to show us an open space within a yellow line or loading zone. I set out to find out who these people are.
Monday mornings in the paved walkway that is St George’s Mall are notoriously busy. Businessmen start their weeks bumping into each other while trying to make sense of overcrowded calendars, street merchants are putting up there stalls as quickly as the potential of a good days business will allow them, and beggars are taking up their self proclaimed doorways or street-corners of business.
I purposefully approached a group of four that were sitting in one of the smaller streets that branched off from the main walkway. Two men were sitting on upturned wooden boxes – one carelessly whittling a piece of wood while his neighbour tried to make himself a cigarette from various butts he had obviously found on the ground during the course of the morning. Two women were leaning against a wall talking to each other with very graphic gestures. I had decided on speaking to some of the older people, as would be a much better source for understanding. I believed this because if someone can survive life on the streets to reasonable age, they would have to have some very special survival skills and at the same time they could share a fare greater wealth of experience.
“Morning,” I said to no one in particular in the group, smiling as I did to appear less threatening. I found out that people were very weary of any friendliness, especially from an outsider. It was a well-learned scepticism required for survival. Even though they looked at me, they didn’t answer.
“Do you mind if I stand here with you for a while?” The question sounded very weak, but I had no idea to approach these people. In my haste to be enlightened to their lives, I hadn’t given any thought to how I would approach them or what exactly I would say.
The two woman looked at each other and then at me and shrugged before continuing their conversation or argument. I wasn’t sure which. The man with the handful of cigarette butts walked off with his eyes to the ground in search of more flattened dog-ends. The other continued to whittle. I stood for a while feeling rather embarrassed at being an obvious outsider, but at least I had the opportunity to watch how the world moved around them. The women tried to beg from some of the people that passed the, They were ignored. I too was noticed, but ignored. I knew that I would have looked completely out of place in a world that people had blocked from their minds over the years. I tried a few times to speak to the man who was hacking at the piece of wood with his little knife. A knife, I noted, that was incredibly sharp. It had to be an all-purpose utensil – used for eating and protection. But as I said, I tried talking to the man, but he ignored me.
Eventually one of the woman spoke. “Mister, Krisjan doesn’t like to talk. He won’t talk to you. Why are you here mister? Have we done something wrong?”
I assured her that was not the case, but I noticed that Krisjan had tightened his grip on the knife and had stopped his activity. He spat and wiped his mouth on a grubby sleeve.
Just as I was about to give up and leave them and return to my own world and existence, I saw Klaas. Klaas Witbooi was a skinny little man just above the five-foot mark. He had not a single hair on his head and no teeth at all. He was skipping towards us the same way a young child would, humming a tune that I did not recognise. As he skipped, his sleeves, which hung to his knees, flapped up and down, adding to the ridiculous spectacle. As if the cliched ray of sunshine had entered the tiny, shadowed road, the faces on the on the women lit up. Their weary faces broke into toothless smiles and they clapped their hands together, shifting from side to side in a mock dance to the tune that Klaas was humming. He kissed each of them on the cheek and they giggled like little girls. Klaas ran over to Krisjan and kissed him on the forehead before narrowly missing the sharp blade of the little knife as Krisjan leered towards him. As he skipped of towards the other end of the street and turned to me, tipping an imaginary cap at me. I looked at the two giggling women and raised an enquiring brow.
“Klaas, mister. He is our little Klaas.”
Not understanding the contrasting scene I had just witnessed, I left the three solemn beggars to rejoin the mainstream of my world just around the next corner. As I walked towards the Foreshore side of St George’s, I tried to understand the feeling I had experienced for the short time I had seen the funny little man. He was so at home, yet so out of place with little community in the street. Although an unwashed, unkept little man himself, he hopped around the urine smelling, littered sidewalks as if they didn’t matter or exist. I suppose that just as many of us ignore the homeless of the city or are complacent to their plight, so they become used to their circumstance and surrounding resulting from the ignorance of another lifestyle.
The following day I returned, wanting to experience what I had the previous morning. The same scene greeted me. All four people were there again, Krisjan continuing with his now much smaller piece of wood. The two woman greeted me and the other man was not foraging for cigarettes as before, but leaning backwards against the wall. His eyes were rolled back, spit ran down the side of his mouth and he was snoring. I could deduce from the smell of cheap alcohol around him that he had a reason to be sleeping so soundly.
“Bergie slaap,” said one of the women pointing to the man referring to his state in her native Afrikaans.
I nodded, unsure of the reaction I was supposed to portray. I had long since become accustomed to the alcohol induced stupor that the very poor in South Africa find themselves. Sociologists will point out that it is a cause and effect of poverty. I didn’t have to wait long for a bouncing silhouette to appear. Klaas performed the same ritual as I had witnessed the previous day and he received the same reaction. I couldn’t explain it, but as I had watched the “Bergies”, or “Street people” as they are called, and began to absorb the conditions they lived in, I found that I sympathised on the one hand, but on the other I felt a sense of envy to the emotion they were experiencing. This man was a simple joy to them and didn’t need to pay anything or give them anything to get a smile. I grabbed Klaas’s shirt as he passed, nearly pulling him from his feet as I tried to stop him. It didn’t seem to bother him at all. He cackled as he hunched over into the stance of a boxer and started punching the air as he turned on the spot. I had no doubt that he was a little insane, but at the same time it was an endearing quality that he portrayed.
“Are these your friends?” I asked referring to the four that I shared the pavement with. Again it was a simple question, but like most I failed to gauge the intellect or mentality of the people.
“Ja,” he sang, boxing his shadow. “Everyone on the street is my friend. They are my family because we look after each other.” He winked at me.
“Why are you so happy?” The answer to this question could potentially be an answer that I had been looking for. A secret to a happy life if you will. After all, in the conditions that these people found themselves, it seemed unthinkable that they could be happy with anything.
“I am happy because I have nothing else to be,” he said, standing still and staring at me. At that moment I felt something inside me shift. Something that felt like a huge weight had moved from my heart. I understood what he had said, but even though his answer was simple to the ear, it had enormous depth to me, who had so much. Thinking I had so much to be happy for, I realised that it was the simplest of things that should be making me happy.
Klaas lifted a dirty, brown finger to his lips and winked at me before skipping off again. I watched him until he was out of sight and for the first time I felt that I understood something of the people around me and perhaps felt a little of how ignorant so many of us are to being happy. People like Klaas were not asking for pity. They asked for what they need to live and find whatever happiness they could from circumstance.
I returned to the street again a few days later. I felt that I needed to put myself in touch with the scene again as a reminder of the revelation that I had experienced. I stood against the wall again and this time as an outsider to their circumstance, but not to their understanding of life. Once again, I didn’t talk to anyone except to greet them and then I waited for my little saviour to appear. I stood for a while before Krisjan stood up and turned to face me. He held out his hand and I looked down to see that he was giving me the piece of wood I had seen him giving his attention to. I looked at it and saw that he had not merely been whittling, but carving a figure into the wood. I looked at a face crudely carved into the wood with a familiar toothless smile. I looked up at Krisjan to see him for the first time as an old man with tired eyes, but his lips curled at the edges to reveal something deep beneath the surface that I would not have noticed a few days before. Klaas never came. The women, Petra and Rosie, told me that he had died the previous night in his sleep. He had suffered from severe tuberculosis. I felt a deep sense of loss for someone I didn’t really know, but at the same time his words made me feel as if I knew everything about him. I grieved for him until I realised that he had given me a complete new life.
Now I can look at this city and when its mood turns bad, I too can find some joy from any situation.