Someone at the far end of the sprawling counter was bemoaning the advent of money scarcity.
Money was rapidly becoming the crux of the matter in social relations.
Lazzo had a knack for sausages as he downed one bottle after the other at the watering hole …
In this vein, he had entrusted a K2 to a son of the hood who had mingled into the crowd and disappeared …
He ran into another familiar face and asked whether they had seen the ‘son of the hood’ pass anywhere around.
Lazzo found a receptive acquaintance and narrated how he had sent for a piece of sausage and gave the apt amount to the runaway emissary.
“You don’t know the renowned ‘son of the hood’, it is about time you got to grips with his character. He is now probably on the fringes of the hood gulping his opaque brew!” disclosed the well-informed patron.
Lazzo saw the writing on the wall that he had lost what had been the last dime between him and poverty!
He had seen rare philanthropy since his lucrative days in the hood when he booked a flurry of taxis in one night.
The all-embracing patron who seemed inspired by a cluster of women round him reminded Lazzo of the bygone era when he was in similar shoes!
“How much did you give him?,” the inebriated patron asked Lazzo as he waited for an answer. “It was a mere K2 and I asked him to buy a piece of sausage,” blurted Lazzo shyly considering the amount involved.
He recalled a local proverb in which one was encouraged not to be shy when bargaining for mealie-meal because this may lead to starvation!
The typical patron had a wad of notes stashed away neatly in his breast pocket and by a stroke of coincidence fished out the exact amount and handed it to Lazzo saying, Mudala, don’t trust these young men in the hood, they will leave you stranded!
Lazzo accepted the note with a pinch of salt because of the array of local blondes around the donor …!
Out of the blue, Lazzo was offered a drink by the patron donor who seemed to regard the cost of a lager as a drop in the ocean.
Lazzo instantly noticed the millionaire mentality that gripped many who ran into millions!
There seemed to be nothing he had seen before because once he had been here and found a long lost mentor who was similarly surrounded by the same flowers!
When he saw Lazzo, he got excited and pointed to a crate of lager bottles placed under a table. “Please, help yourself, we are here to be happy,” the man had said.
In tandem with old English adage,’ Every dog has his day’ Lazzo was also given a K50 for his transport. He was overwhelmed with this placid generosity.
Over time, he had believed that hard-core imbibers seemed reluctant to part with their cash and preferred to selflessly dispense alcohol …
He also reminisced over the issue of the ‘dog’s day’ and strongly believed that this English philosophy was based on the premise that one day, a dog ran down the street knocking down dust bins.
In several of these garbage bins was multifarious rubbish like paper bits of cloth porcelain and other inedible until the beleaguered dog knocked down a dust bin full of meat considered stale by the thrower!
Then this particular dog had a field day munching the meat after several times of failure!
Still, in keeping with the historical account, Lazzo had been attending a funeral in the hood and he recalled having returned there to donate some money.
“What a blessing in disguise!” thought Lazzo as he remembered the flashes of luck at the watering hole.
Lazzo was now having his third bottle of alcohol by courtesy of the K2 donor who now seemed unable to cope with the incessant bother by the predominant female company.
One after the other, they seemed to incessantly remind him that each one of them was running out of a drink and the hapless man was spending left, right and centre…
Lazzo noticed the drunken female neighbour amongst them who was narrating what sounded like a staccato narrative …
“Really, I see that money is hard to come by and this is forcing both men and women to sometimes become tricksters like Maria!,” she said as if addressing a colleague by her side.
“You know Maria!,” she chided her friend with intent to summon attention.
“Maria teamed up with the taxi driver who is her boyfriend and they staked someone’s vehicle as surety for a large amount of money which they are unable to pay back,” disclosed the opener of the Pandora Box.
“I have learnt my lesson with shylocks of the hood because I saw one man hide in a dust bin near his place of work when the female shylock came looking for him.
Apparently, he had borrowed so much that his pay packet could not sustain his indebtedness,” she said in a local language.
To sum up the character of the man she underscored: “Ndipo niba nkongole!” (The man is highly indebted!).
A section of the patronage as usual had got wind of what had happened in the hood and there were pros and cons of the scandal being tabled by the counter.
In his rare moments of introspection, Lazzo began to think where some people who spent huge sums of money at the watering hole plucked the fortune from.
He recalled an eloquent patron who he once cautioned to be careful who he sat next to him because some patrons were being sought by the long arm of the law.
Lazzo thought the hood was an elaborate human laboratory for social scientists.
Here was an informal circuit bank run by heartless shylocks and only those who have crossed their path know better.
In the meantime, Lazzo was a beneficiary to anonymous charity at the watering hole and like the fierce black dog, one can only give it a bad name and hang it …
?
?
