At her behest, Mr. Ngcobo had to relent to the divorce, even though it was something that he had hitherto never dreamt possible. The deterioration of his marriage had driven Jabulani to a place where common sense and decorum no longer mattered; only what one wanted and sincerely hoped for did. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not what they both wanted, but it seemed the only viable solution available.

On a normal day, Mr. Ngcobo would have looked good in his white Armani suit. After all, any man would, but that was no normal day to him and he indeed looked the part; his face did the talking.

“I’m not going to pretend to be happy about this whole situation, but the truth is whichever way you slice it, it’s still bread, so tell me something, do you still love her?” He’d been asked this by one of his few ex-colleagues who had bothered to come and give him some kind of emotional support before he went inside the court to put the final nails into the coffin of his marriage, and the simple, innocent question hit him square in the gut and took his breath away. His mind was filled with a million questions of his own. He had tried hard to block everything out of his mind, believing that once everything was done and dusted he would feel some sense of fulfillment, and maybe be able to leave all those sad moments behind him.

Something crossed his mind and he thought that maybe, and I mean maybe, if they just hung in there a bit longer they would be sure to find common ground, and his wife and he would be able to live their lives together again. He closed his eyes and thought of all the resolutions he had taken, and he whistled and said to his ex-colleague, “How in hell did we get here?” No one gave him any answer. After all, none of their so-called friends knew as much as they did not know. If they and other people did not know, maybe they had not looked hard enough for a better solution. A tiny seed of hope crept into his heart, making him forget where he was for a moment. As if on cue, a lawyer went past him and he remembered where he was and why he was there.

My gosh, he was in South Gauteng High Court for a single reason, and that was to put the final nail into the coffin of his already dead marriage. And the tiny seed of hope that he had allowed to grow was suddenly, abruptly, and brutally crushed under the weight of truth. He looked across the room and his eyes met her eyes and saw the very truth reflected there. Their marriage was now all an illusion. The invisible tears running down his face were like rivers of acid, burning all the way to his heart. He felt the sands of time running away under his very feet and he tried to let the breath out, sucked it in again sharply to stifle the pain, but it wouldn’t dare stop, it just kept rolling over and over again. To anyone looking at him, he looked as if he had sucked a lemon or been hit by a truck. And believe you me when I say there is no polite way of describing how he was feeling other than that, and honestly this is an understatement of the decade, if not for the century, if he had been a kid one would be forgiven for believing that all his toys had been stolen from him.

The judge looked at them and felt a twinge of sympathy. He thought, “Well, they should have tried to make things work. After all, it seems like they have both been down the same road, even if on different sides. This was a perfect couple,” he thought, and then said softly, “I don’t want to put a damper on it.” He then tried, but in vain, to advise the Ngcobo’s not to attempt to apply a permanent solution to a temporary situation. This made sense, yes, and perhaps on another day and in a different setting that advice would have worked, but not on that sad day, and the judge, after listening to the advocates, declared the union null and void. He didn’t feel good about himself, but at the end of the day he had a job to do and he had done his job.

Both their advocates had made it explicitly clear that the Ngcobo’s, by being together, were more or less punishing themselves. Whenever time to go to bed came, as it did every night, and they were alone in the bedroom, they simply wallowed in their own pity and the events of the 26th of April 2010 came flooding back as if they were being controlled by an invisible force that was hell bent on putting an end to their lives as a married couple.

The judge had tried to reason with them, but in vain, and in the end he gave them what they wanted. The divorce went through without a glitch and all the necessary documents were signed, since they were prearranged, and they got out of the court, one as Jabulani Ngcobo and the other as Jennifer Khumalo – no more Mr. and Mrs. Ngcobo.

Jabulani felt light-headed, but yet, when he turned to face the crowd, his handsome face was lit by a charismatic smile, his quite beautiful eyes glittering with what most people would have mistaken for indulgence or dry amusement. And they wondered how he could look so easy when his marriage of over sixteen years had just been dissolved. If only they could have sliced into his heart, maybe then they would have understood the agony that he was going through, but he had to put on a brave face. After all, there is this shit that a man never cries.

Now that the divorce was done and dusted, the only thing left was for them to inform their respective families and the kids. They had known that it was not for the kid’s consumption, but there was nothing to be done. All they could do was to force it down their throats. And now one of them had to go and tell the kids that indeed it was over, there was no going back. He dreaded that. Strangely, there was no pattern to the pain, nothing he could tackle in one straightforward way, nothing was logical in a very illogical situation any more.

They drove in one car back to the house that now belonged to Jennifer, as the custodian of the kids, in silence. Neither knew what to say to the other, but they both hoped that they had done the right thing and that is what preserved their sanity. When they got home and found that both their kids were there Jennifer said, “Now that it’s officially over, we have to tell the kids,” and Jabulani said, “Yes,” but he didn’t know how they were going to handle it, and he just closed his eyes like he had done on so many occasions when he was confused.

“So tell them. I’ll help you,” said Jenny. She hugged him with a cold hug. “I know it is hard, but the sooner the better, and I would prefer that they hear it from us than from the gossip mongers out there. What do you say to that?”

Well, this was meant to make him feel at ease, but it wasn’t yielding the required effect, for it set a sad, destructive train of emotions that were better left alone. He drowned in his sorrow with his imagination running wild. When he looked at his as of then ex-wife, he thought she needed comfort, and that was exactly what he intended giving her, but he hardly knew where to begin since he too needed it as much. It was the not knowing that was so hard and maddening. But he took the plunge once more and called the kids to their bedroom and said with a contrite smile, “Listen kids, I hope you know that I – no, I mean we – love you and would never do anything to hurt you if there was a better option.” He looked at them and saw that their mouths had instantaneously gone dry, and he felt like crying. In a scene reminiscent of that in the court, Jenny wiped her hand on her lovely face. She was white as a sheet and pouring with sweat.

***