Note: If you have not read the first installment of Fikile’s Letter, kindly click here to read now.

September sixteenth. I remembered him. His hair was shorter, his beard a little fuller, but I remembered him. He was standing there holding a white board with the words “Forever September Fifteenth” scribbled on it in his handwriting. The handwriting I remembered. I remember the look on his face the day I arrived and our eyes locked for the first time in over ten years. I remember seeing him so happy that he seemed to be in pain. I saw an immense hope in his eyes. Hope that this time would be better. This time would be different. This time would be forever. I remember wondering if I was seeing his true emotions or just a projection of all that I felt on his face. I remember it all. I walked up to him. With tears in my eyes I hugged him. I couldn’t believe how much I had missed him. I couldn’t believe that he had showed up. “I’ve never seen you in stilettos before” he chuckled. I chuckled too. He dried the tears from my eyes, picked up my bags and asked me if I was coming. I followed.

When we got into the car the energy around us shifted. Both of us were prepared for the shock of seeing each other again but neither of us had really thought beyond the airport. What happens next? Where were we driving to? He never asked but I knew he was thinking it. “I’m staying at the Balalaika Hotel in Sandton” I answered. “I know where it is” he responded without looking at me. The rest of the ride to the hotel was a little bit less strange. But the strangeness hadn’t left entirely. In essence, we were complete strangers now. He didn’t even know what I ended up doing for a living. We got to the hotel and a porter followed us with my bags. He stood next to me as I checked in. “If the two of you need anything brought up to the suite just call reception. The extension number is written on the phone” the receptionist said in a routine voice. We didn’t bother telling her that he wasn’t staying. He walked me to my room, tipped the porter and waited for him to leave. “You’re probably tired from your trip. I should go. Let you rest” I didn’t want him to leave, but I didn’t say anything to make him stay either… “Do you want to have dinner tomorrow night? There’s a nice restaurant just a five minute walk from here” I nodded. He walked away and in a large outside voice he belched the words: “I’ll pick you up at seven”.

That night I went to sleep uncertain of why I came back here. I knew how I felt but a part of me also knew that I had been naïve in thinking that my feelings were enough. We weren’t teenagers anymore. We had grown into people who had everything to lose. I grew up with barely enough, now I was a fully grown woman who managed to support her grandmother until her passing. I still think about her. I haven’t forgiven myself for being “unable” to come home for the funeral. I wonder if she’s forgiven me. I wonder what she would advise me to do. It had been so long since I actually saw my family. I didn’t even tell them I would be coming back to the country. Everything seemed so out of place. Perhaps I had acted too quickly without thinking. Perhaps I should have been more cautious… perhaps

Although I felt very uncertain about how well I still knew him, Fikile’s punctuality was as intact as ever. I had asked reception to notify me the moment he walked in. Ten minutes early, he waited downstairs and called me when the clock struck seven. Just by arriving early he put me at ease and as we walked to the restaurant I started seeing all the bits and pieces of the teenage boy I left behind all those years ago. A closed book that opened for me once and seemed to be opening up again. The same book, just a little older and with a more respectable beard. At dinner we laughed about the past we shared and as the evening went on we started speaking about the years we spent apart.

The first couple of months away from home were the hardest. There were students at the school with scholarships from all over the place. The culture shock was unimaginably intense. Most of the kids were either German, Italian, Indian or Japanese students. They quickly formed cliques of their own. Speaking in their native tongues and feeling at home. There weren’t many African children there. I knew of one Kenyan girl in the school but she didn’t seem interested in finding any common ground with me. It was incredibly lonely. The language of instruction was English at the school so I managed to keep up well enough. I didn’t immediately do as well as most of the other foreign students but in time I managed to catch up. I grew accustomed to being on my own and started to thrive again.  When high school ended I spent the following years studying financial accounting. I was being groomed to work for the company paying my tuition. “Huang Investment Group”. I spent my holidays at their offices, gaining hands on experience. I walked right into a job after finishing my first degree. They continued paying for my accommodation and gave me a hefty starting salary to keep me interested.  It worked. I started sending money home every month. I called home often at first but as the years flew by I called less and less until the money I sent home was all the communication I had time for. A few years down the line and a few steps up the corporate ladder and I found myself sitting in managerial meetings discussing the investment banking firm’s future as the youngest person whose opinion carried a great enough weight to sway decisions in the direction I saw fit.  I reported only to one person. The head of the firm. Mr Huang.

Later in the evening, in the middle of our long dessert, I began to cry. I couldn’t remember when last I had truly enjoyed the company of another person. Everything was always so formal and buttoned down. He grabbed my hand and asked what was wrong. “I should have wrote to you sooner, I should have called, I should have tried. And now, and now I don’t even know why you bothered to show up for a girl like me. All this time. All this pain. It’s all my fault. I just…” he tightened his grip on my hand and stared directly into my bleeding eyes. “We lost twelve years, so what? I’ve cried, I’ve gone cold, I’ve lived day by day with work as the centre of my life. Everything that you went through, I went through too, but that’s over now. I stopped being angry a long time ago. I don’t want us to cry. We’re here. Now. Together. We have no reason to cry anymore” he grabbed a serviette with his free hand and dabbed the tears off of my face, carefully making sure he didn’t smudge my makeup. I let out a little giggle. We walked back to the hotel soon after that. We stood outside my door, still hand in hand. He looked at me and started giggling “Nontobeko, are you blushing?” he laughed. He smiled. I closed my eyes. He gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Goodnight” he said in a strong, baritone whisper. “Goodnight” I echoed in a soft, moist tone.

We spent almost all our evenings together. We went to the theatre and walked back to the car speaking in dramatic voices. We went to the movies and got shushed for making fun of the characters onscreen. We took long walks through Sandton hand in hand as “that couple in the flip flops”. If I wasn’t in love with him before, I certainly was now. I loved being with him. Hearing him. Smelling him. I never said it out loud. I never needed to. I never needed to say anything. Somehow he just always knew and whenever I looked at him with an “I love you” struggling to find its way out of my mouth, he looked at me with a smug look that seemed to say “shut up, I know”. One night, after we had gotten dressed up to go to one of his work award ceremonies he brought me home as he had countless times before. When we reached my door I invited him in. In the dark I kissed his lips and grabbed hold of him gently but tightly enough to let him know I didn’t want him to leave. He, a closed book, open only to me. I, a poem meant only for his eyes to read. A poem he read fluently and effortlessly as if he had written it himself. As we lay there next to each other the next morning, I turned to face him. “Fikile, I need to tell you something…” he tilted his head towards me to let me know he was listening. I told him the firm I was working for sent me to South Africa to assess the viability of investing in the local business market. I told him that I was only in the country to consult with risk management experts to decide whether or not the firm should go through with its plan to grow its investment profile in the country. I told him that when it was all over I would have to leave again. He got up without speaking. He was cold. He got dressed silently and looked at me with a tear hanging off of his eyelashes. He struggled to find his words. “I think, I think it would be for the best if I left…” he walked towards the door and slowly took one last look at me as if he was trying to capture something. I couldn’t bring myself to stop him. He rubbed the tear out of his eye and left.

I expected a call. It never came. What did he really expect of me? It wasn’t fair of him to think that I would drop everything just to be with him. I was my own woman. I had achieved things for myself and no matter how much I loved him, there was no way I could just let all of that go in the blink of an eye. I decided to give him his space. Whether he was being unreasonable or not, the truth was that I hurt him again and I hated myself for it. I threw myself into my work and crunched the numbers with the risk management consultants in no time. My boss began to pressure me about wrapping up and going back to China. I stalled as long as I could, hoping that Fikile would call. I don’t know what I expected him to call and say. I would have even accepted him telling me how much he hated me for all I had put him through. I just needed to hear something. The silent treatment was torture. I suppose it was no different from the hell he must have went through the first time. I thought about calling him, but I wasn’t sure what I would say either. How do I approach him and apologise knowing that nothing has changed?  Eventually I had to ask for some time off from work. Paying for the remainder of my stay as well as my ticket back to Hong Kong was part of the deal. I took it without giving it a second thought. I waited some nights in the restaurant we went to that first night hoping to hear his laughter walk in. I remember thinking of how dim the lights in the restaurant seemed when I was on my own. I didn’t notice it before. It bothered me now. I got sick of the food and stopped going.

To read Part II click here.