Nothing was normal. For the husband, for the lady, everything had gone mad, surely, as a result of them encountering a mad man that for reasons he tried hard to understand now, had attracted their interest, both of them, even as he used to stand innocently by that roadside, and only sometimes, begging.
Indeed it was both husband and wife who had noticed that he was good looking and was ‘a waste’ because nobody could use him the way good looking people were supposed to be used!
The husband remembered the discussions they had had about how good looking the mad man was, realising just then that his wife had apparently so badly admired the mad man she would eventually even take him into his matrimonial bed and… Jeeesus!  The thought!
He opened the gate and started walking towards the house, completely oblivious to the fact that the wife was also trudging uncertainly after him, their car still parked by the gate, outside, with windows open and doors unlocked.
At such a moment, did the security of possessions like that matter?  He was walking towards the house, his head the venue of a full scale riot.
A riot of thoughts about the whole thing! Surely, how could a marriage of so many years, which had borne beautiful and handsome children, collapse at such a stage when the two, husband and wife, really needed each other?
What could he have done wrong to cause his wife to go to the extent of bedding a mad man?
Or was she just in the habit of bedding other men but had this time just gone too far with her luck when she brought the loon home? It was often said that God had his own way of exposing the unfaithful!
He developed a confused sense of hatred and love for his wife, both hitting him simultaneously.
He loved her so much it hurt him very badly to imagine she could have been doing such things with other men all her life.
He felt humiliated imagining how many other men she had done this with, how many were the men who actually knew him – because it was said those closest to couples were sometimes their worst enemies in terms of snatching their partners and committing adultery with them – and if they did exist and had done things with her, what did they think of him?
Did the whole world know that his wife was a whore, a prostitute, but did not bother to tell him for fear of confusing their marriage?
He had heard it said that the spouse is always the last to know when their partner is committing adultery.  Was he the laughing stock?
Or was it just that mad man she had bedded?  But even if it was just the mad man, she had given their most valued thing in marriage to another man.  Sex in marriage was a preserve of married partners, not third parties.
He walked on, his head still a tumultuous zone, past and around the house towards the disused chicken runs.
The wife followed him from a distance.  He walked past the chicken runs, past the borehole until he had reached the wall fence.
Then he leaned against the fence shaking his head over and over.  The wife walked over and reached him.  Hesitantly, she talked.
“My dear husband, I… I…you… am sorry,” she stammered.  “I don’t know what to say to you but… I… I …” she sighed heavily, unable to continue.
“You did it?” he muttered under his breath.  She did not answer.
“You did it, right?’’ he continued, looking straight at her for the first time in several long minutes.
“With a mad man!  He’s sweet, yah?  He’s delicious, eh?  He knows how to swing left, right and centre, right?  He’s energetic and… and… you just loved it when…”
“Please….!” screamed the wife.  “Please darling… I beg, please….”
He stopped talking.  He realised it was jealousy that was talking, not him.  He was saying things that he wouldn’t normally ever talk about.  Imaginations.  Carried away!
He remembered the best of his wife, the magical moments not too long ago when he wondered what gotten into her for her to be so excited in bed, and then he put the mad man in his place.  He saw her earning a top ranking from the mad man.
He saw her exciting the mad man and the mad man just enjoying himself endlessly.  He saw his wife also giving the mad man the top ranking: A+!  “Oh mad man, you are wonderful,” he imagined her whispering.  “Oh crazy vagabond who lives by the robots, you are better than my husband…”  A voice in him screamed ‘Stop it!  You too are going mad!’
“I am sorry my husband, father of my children,” she whispered again.  “I know what I did is very, very bad.  It’s as good as murder.
“But please, please maybe one day I will be able to explain.  It’s not what you think.  I swear it’s not what you are imagining but for now, please, please I beg you, forgive me and allow me time.  I will explain.”
&&&&&
The husband spent much time roaming between two worlds, between two emotions.  There were many times when he was so filled with anger and hatred for his wife he even felt like drawing his pistol and shooting her to death.
Yet many too were the times when he reminisced over the many years of exciting love and peace they had shared over a long time.
Such moments, the terrible deed of his wife just seemed to just draw him even closer to her.  He felt stronger feelings for her than at any point in their relationship.
He felt protective, unwilling to let go of her, unwilling to let other men come at her and take the leftovers.
He wouldn’t leave her, he wouldn’t let go.  She was his and his forever!  He loved her.  That’s all that mattered.  After all, all people made mistakes, didn’t they?
Their two work places had become impossible for both to be because half the time, they were both absent-minded and unable to concentrate so without agreeing to do so, both took days off and spent many confused hours at home together.
So, during one such occasion, she explained everything.  She told him the truth.  She confessed.
She told him how the whole thing resulted from a bad coincidence and how from nowhere at all, Nkhunzi had decided he wanted to follow her and have a bath.
She narrated her indecision but also her curiosity, which had now led to all these problems.  She assured him she had been faithful all along, noting that it would be difficult for him to believe her but that that was the only truth.
She said she regretted the whole thing and begged, and begged and begged for forgiveness.
On some of these occasions, he felt so drawn to her he would hold and kiss her passionately but would sometimes just break away from her, walk away and stand gazing into the ceiling.
Whenever it happened like that, she would remain rooted to her position, wondering and worrying about how next, what next…!
Indeed on one such occasion, after kissing her passionately, he had suddenly broken away from her and told her he would just tell the whole world about it.
“I am wasting time,” he had declared.  “You are a prostitute.  You are a woman of no morals at all.  I was swindled paying lobola for you.
“I will go to your relatives and tell them you are SO CHEAP even mad men like Nkhunzi can recognise you for what you are and get into your car.  They know you are so cheap so they enter your car. And because you ARE cheap, you take them home.  Into my bed.  Shave their pubic hair and dirty armpits using my expensive shaving machines.
Bring mad men in my house, all of them, bath them and then do, do, do, and do all of them one after another!  The world must know!”
He threw himself in the chair, his lips taut his eyes darting all over the place. “The police must arrest you for raping an imbecile!” he screamed.
“Yes.  Fair game.  They shouldn’t just arrest men who sleep with mad women.  Women who sleep with mad men must also be jailed.”
Whenever her husband went into extreme tantrums, she often kept quiet, looking and feeling miserable.
The thought of the public ridicule, the hatred especially from her children… how would she face such a life?
She could never, as she had done with her husband, be able to explain to the whole world that she had just allowed a moment of madness to dictate things to her, that her emotions had spoken so loud and she had foolishly obeyed and was so remorseful she couldn’t repeat such.  She would just have to live with the shame the discomfort.
She also experienced a lot of her own moments of serious mental tumults!  She agonised, she failed to sleep and tossed in bed, she screamed in her sleep, awakening from nightmares so related to this incident and so on.
One day she just walked to the other side of their bed, on which her husband slept, picked the loaded pistol where he kept it on stand by in case of attack in the night, and put the barrel under her chin.  It was time to end this whole thing.
Life was no longer worth living.  Nothing was good anymore and if her most valued thing, her own husband, would not see anything good in her anymore, she had better end it here.
She felt so sorry for herself.  She thought of her children.  They would cry.  For her.  But also against her.
She wished just then she could talk to them, tell them she was sorry.  Hear them say ‘It’s ok, mum’.  Then her soul would rest in peace.
She also wished she could say for the last time to her husband that she loved him so much, and him alone.
But if she awakened him he would save her life.  She would go without saying farewell.  Let it be.  Let it be.
“God forgive my sin… my sins… accept my soul…” she whispered, her eyes closed tightly, her teeth sunken deep in her lower lip as she slowly, hesitantly started the process of pulling the trigger.
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