The Sunday Mail
Robert Mshengu Kavanagh
Finally got her! She do been a tough nut to crack. Went on and on about her virginity — and her parents would not let her out of their sight. This is how I did it.
I had spent the evening with her at her house in a brightly lit room opposite the lounge where her father prowled like a wolfhound protecting a succulent piece of meat — and her mother, who by now had a nervous tic, knitted worriedly. They did not like me. They did not trust me — quite rightly, I suppose, as it turned out — and they could not wait to get rid of me.
In such a situation what could I do? I could not even hold her hand. Anyway, I knew, like all experienced ladies’ men that it is the sweet tongue that opens the door to the sweetness that surpasses all understanding. We talked. I made her laugh. Again, like all good ladies’ men, I knew better than to keep going on about love. I never even mentioned it but I knew my eyes, my masculine presence, was having the desired effect — as I entertained her with my tales, some exciting, some funny, some perhaps just a little bit sexy. Not too much. I did not want to overdo it and frighten her off.
But alas! The time came for me to go and still no progress at all. Mummy and daddy wanted to go to bed and they were not about to go to bed and leave this cocky young man with their little chicken. It was now far too late for public transport. I was a university student. No car. It was going to be a long walk through lonely streets back to the university residence.
As for her, her heart went out to me. The more her daddy was not nice to me, the more she pitied me and the more she wanted to fall into my arms. “Daddy, can’t he stay in the spare bedroom?” she implored her father.
“Not on your life!” said he and gave me my marching orders. The father knew probably from his own youth that nothing could have been easier for me, whom he did not trust one bit, to tiptoe silently across the landing to her room when all were asleep and that would be the end of their daughter’s precious virginity. Her father was determined to defend it and she, too, had sworn to keep it safe for her husband.
So out into the cold I went. The door closed and locked behind me. The lights in the house went out one by one. Time went by. By now I should have been well on my way home. I was not. I hadn’t gone five metres. I waited and then quietly I crept round to the back of the house. The house was a double storey. I climbed a drainpipe that ran conveniently close to the girl’s open window.
When she felt my cold body slipping into her sheets, her first instinct was to scream. “Don’t,” I said. “It’s a long way to my place. Let me stay the night and I will leave early in the morning.” Her female heart turned over — for lots of reasons: with pity for poor me having to walk all that way in the night; with dread that at any minute her father would check on her; with excitement that someone had climbed a drainpipe for her; and with the strangely delicious feeling of a man’s body warming up next to hers.
So while the jealous old dog slept, he lost his succulent piece of meat to a young dog he thought was fast asleep by now in his own kennel.
The story does not end there. Not only did the young lady lose her virginity but she became pregnant too.
Now the time has come for me to come clean. The story I have been telling you is nothing but a modernised version of what they say happened to one of the greatest ladies’ men of all time, Don Juan. Obviously a lover of Don Juan’s calibre did not shimmy up drainpipes. He jumped from the back of a magnificent thorough-bred onto the girl’s bedroom balcony.
Don Juan never existed. He was a legend. He was very likeable — and very immoral. His whole life was devoted to seducing women. Therefore of course he was a great sinner. How many innocent girls and not so innocent wives did Don Juan seduce and then with a carefree laugh move on?
Though there are certain similarities with our friend, Adam Kok, in comparison with Don Juan, Adam was an undergraduate.
All this is said to have happened about 400 years ago. The girl Don Juan had seduced in the story came from one of the very best families. Her father was a great nobleman and he was determined to revenge this disgrace to his family and to his illustrious name. So he hired some izigelegeke to lie in wait for Don Juan in the dark one night and spill the dirty dog’s blood with their daggers. Unfortunately for the great man, he went along too to see the dirty dog die for himself and enjoy seeing his blood gushing out all over the place.
But Don Juan was no easy man to kill. He could not afford to be with the way he carried on. The whole world was full of furious fathers and hell-raising husbands not to mention the vengeful virgins and lustful ladies he loved and left. They would have liked nothing better than to see Don Juan’s blood gushing out all over the place. Sadly, in the end, it was not the old man who killed Don Juan. It was the other way round though to be fair to Don Juan he did not enjoy seeing the old man’s blood gush out all over the place. It stained his brand new boots.
The great man was buried in the family tomb and on the tomb his family placed a statue of him because he was an important man. One night, Don Juan, who had no conscience at all, paid the tomb a visit. He’d had a few glasses of red wine and was going off to have his sadza. So, not being able to think of anything sensible to say, he said to the statue: “I’m about to have my sadza nenyama. Your Excellency is welcome to come and join me?” So, laughing at his own joke, off he went to have sadza.
But what was his horror when, as he was about to have his first mouthful, he heard a voice and looked up. The statue had accepted his invitation to dinner. “Don Juan, my friend,” said the statue, “as you have already robbed me a succulent piece of meat, I hope to rob you of a succulent piece of your meat.”
“But I was only joking,” Don Juan said to himself. “You know these people who take you seriously when you’re only joking, vanobhowa!” Of course, no one else in the restaurant saw the statue. In reality it was obviously a ghost. After all, they had not murdered the greatman. He had. This was Don Juan’s own personal ngozi.
Akanga ari patight. But if you think Don Juan was going to let such a thing get him down, you have another think coming. He’d been in worse scrapes than this before. “Why certainly,” he said to the statue. “Sit down and join me, Your Excellency, and I hope you enjoy the succulent piece of meat I shall serve you with your sadza, as much I enjoyed yours.”
At this the statue was furious. He refused to sit down to supper with the man who had raped his daughter and sullied his family’s honour and good name and now made a joke of it. “May you rot in Hell!” said the statue, achiramwa. He stomped off.
Don Juan knew what the statue’s coming meant. It could only mean one thing — his death.
With death and gehena just around the corner, you would have thought now was the time to repent. “Bodo!” said Don Juan. “How can I be thinking of such boring things with that buxom wife of the Lord Mayor just itching to undo the stitching and fall into my arms?”
Don Juan never repented and, of course, he was damned. It is obviously impossible to know for sure but people believe that, when he got to hell, he found out that the devil had a wife. He went ahead and seduced her too. But this was one woman it was not going to be a good idea to dump.
So, Don Juan’s punishment was that, at last, he was forced to be true to a woman — the devil’s wife and atone for his sins for the rest of time.
