They walked along the streets. Nate was surprised at the changes that had taken place in and around the town in just a short while. There was a small building with the words DISCO NIGHT hung above the doorway, there was a new food stall and the woman who ran it was a familiar neighbor. It wasn’t as if all the changes were dramatic but they were good noticeable changes and it shocked him how long he had been living in Mr. Fredrick’s house for all of these changes to have occurred.
They went through the town and through a back alley and soon came onto the familiar street where the Boarding House was located.
The drinking pub his father used to visit was still there, no longer as fancy but the regular customers still hung around. He couldn’t see his father in front of the pub but he didn’t care. Turning a look of disgust away from the pub he guided Anele and the both of them entered the Boarding House.
The usually bursting Boarding House was in dismay, a sense of poverty and depression hung over the place. Even the dining room which was a regular place for Nate to be when he lived here was now empty, only a few miners ate dry pieces of bread and soup.
Olga, the wife of the owner sat behind a desk. If not for the familiar clothes and the faint scar on her temple that Nate knew so well he wouldn’t have recognized her. She was older than he remembered and bent over.
“Want do you want?” she asked when he and Anele approached her. “There’s a bed for the night but you two look too young for my rooms.”
“It’s me, Nathaniel, you remember me? I used to stay here with my mother until I was taken away.”
Her eyelids shrunk with her frown. She peered closely at Nathaniel. “Nathaniel?”
“Nathaniel Schmidt,” he said with a vigorous nod.
Olga smiled, her smile was sad and toothless. She looked like she was going to stand up from the desk and hug him but thought better of it when she could barely push herself up.
“I thought you left now.”
“No, I live with Mr. Fredrick, he’s good to me.” Impatient to see his mother he went right to the point of his visit. “Is my mother upstairs?” he was afraid to hear that she was probably back in another man’s bed or worse that she had a man upstairs.
Olga’s eyes suddenly lost their shine. This time she pushed herself up and walked on unsteady legs. Nate could see why she was limping, there was a large cast around her left leg, she held on to a stick as she walked around the desk and came to stand in front of him. Nate saw the sadness in her eyes and knew before she told the news that something bad had happened to his mother still he waited till he heard the words and when he did, they came like a slow, burning ulcer pain.
“Your mother is dead, child. She caught something, the doctor said it must have been from her lifestyle on the streets. He told her he could help but he wanted money and your mother didn’t have money. I found her in her bedroom…she cut her wrists.” That last part came out with a sob.
“I warned her,” Olga sobbed. “I told her those miners are dirty, they are not healthy, keep away from them child! But your mother…she needed the money. She wanted to buy you back from Fredrick and take you back home to Germany but she died trying.”
There was a loud sob beside Olga’s, it was a choking sob that pierced his ears. It took a while before he realized that the sob was coming from him and he only knew it when he felt Anele’s hands curving around his shoulders to hug him. Olga completed the circle of hugs. Nate bit his bottom lip to keep the sobs under control but he couldn’t help it, not when his heart was breaking apart.
“Where is her body?” he choked out.
“We cremated it, child, the doctor wanted to contain her sickness so he made us put her in flames. Oh child, I wish you could have been here for her. Everything she did she did for you. She wanted to give you a better life.”
Nate agreed with what she said as hot tears poured down his cheeks. It was his fault. He should have worked harder. He should have found more than one job so he could earn more, he should have taken his mother with him. If he was here she would still be alive. It was his fault, it was all his fault. If he hadn’t been born his mother wouldn’t have sold her body to feed him. He hated himself for coming into the world to cause her misery, he hated himself, he hated his father. He hated everything!
Anele was still hugging him, whispering words of comfort when a sudden uproar outside broke the sad moment. At first, no one paid any attention to it until the noise became louder. Even Olga wiped her tears at this point and hobbled to the window to peep out.
“Uh, it’s another one of those drunks…,” She looked closer. “It is your father, Nathaniel! Come!”
Both he and Anele went to the window. Nate wouldn’t have wanted anything more than to go to the man who had made his mother’s life miserable and kill him with his bare hands but as he looked through the window he knew he would have to wait. There between two men - one of them he remembered as the owner of the pub and the other one looked like a miner in his dirty clothes – there was his father between them. He looked ugly. His nose was bloodied, his eyes swollen and he was hunched over like an old man.
“Where is the money, you bastard?!” The pub owner asked delivering one blow on his father’s face. His father staggered like a rag doll. He mumbled something and reached into his pocket then he brought his hand out and showed the men his middle finger, on his lips was a crooked grin.
“Fool!” the other man hit him so hard that he fell to a bloody heap on the floor. The crowd thickened and watched. They knew him, he was the most popular drunk in the area and the poorest.
From the Boarding House window, Olga looked down at Nate’s tear-stained face and saw the blankness in his gaze. There was no love for his father, no feelings of emotion in those eyes. She wondered with sadness where the innocent, gray-eyed boy who ran the corridors of the House asking for stories about the mines went. His once sparkling eyes were cold as tears filled his eyes again over the loss of his mother. With a sad shake of her head, she put her hand on his shoulder.
“You should go, if the men know you are Johann’s son they’ll hold you responsible for his debt.”
She showed him and Anele a back street through which they could return to Fredrick’s house.
Nate didn’t know if he was leading or his Anele was leading him, all he knew was somehow he made it away from the Boarding House with a numb mind and as he looked towards it one last time he saw his father on the ground getting kicked and punched by both men simultaneously, some onlookers even joined in. For that one moment, he felt sorry for his father. Johann Schmidt who had come to Gabore to make it rich with diamonds ended up a drunk in debt with scars and a broken nose.
And where was the wife he came with? The wife to whom he told stories of how much wealth they would return home with? Dead and burned.
I have no hope, Nate thought to himself. The one person he had to prove his worth to, his mother, was gone. I am just like my father.
Anele sensed the sadness in him and curved her hand in his to hold it tighter. She didn’t know what to say to ease his pain. But she stayed by his side.
They made it back to Fredrick’s mansion in time to see Tshepo return.