Son

by Sonnekus, Neil

  But he could have told me so many stories, I thought. He who lived in that residential hotel with its dim passages, odours of limp cabbage and echoes of ignored voices. He had been a large, besuited man in a small, panelled room, which included a tiny basin and mirror inside a cupboard. Oupa contributed to the olfactory claustrophobia by producing a small, round silver tin of snuff, from which he and the old man would take a pinch, inhale and sneeze. The stuff looked and smelled as dark brown as the panelled walls and I couldn’t wait to get out of that room, even if my namesake called me Napoleon.

  But stay we would, and I was always convinced of Oupa’s inferiority because when he rubbed an itchy eye his protruding tongue went back and forth like a windscreen wiper across his chin. And if he did try to tell a good-time story, the old man would interrupt and start one of those mock-friendly family arguments in which I happily participated, even though I could see Oupa and his daughter’s discomfort. Thinking back on our family arguments today still made me cringe. After all, hadn’t I dreamed that he was actually just a good-time guy taking me to a rugby match at Ellis Park? He who now lay a hundred metres east from the daughter who had tended to him for decades, who had even ended up spoiled in the afterlife: his grave was one of the few resting in the shade of an acacia. It formed the apex of an imaginary triangle, for it was also east of the heroes’ plot with its pseudo-Nazi insignia of squared eagle wings, cement ox-wagon wheels and torches, their eternal plastic flames faded and cracked by the indifferent sun.

  I silently said goodbye to Ma and drove a roundabout route to the exit, stopping at my grandfather’s stone. The old man stayed put as I got out and gave my late Oupa’s grave a quick wipe, remembering a rumour I’d once heard that he’d been a bit of a womaniser himself. Back in the car the old man said it pleased him greatly that he was now officially older than “that fat, lazy bastard” had been.

  Chickens Come Home

  * * *

  Jay took me out for a coffee, apologised for not telling me about Kay – he’d been absorbed with his and Veron’s troubles – and said he was clean now.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m attending the AA.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “Alcoholics Anonymous.”

  That night, impressed with Jay, I had a double Grouse before calling Klara and ritually asked her whether I could come over.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” I said, flustered

  “Because it’s over.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t live with myself.”

  I wanted to say I needed her, but I knew what her response to that would be.

  “Can I at least come and say goodbye to you?”

  “No.”

  “So that’s it? We’re just going to walk past each other on the street and in the park and make like nothing ever happened?”

  “Yes.”

  The end of another disaster and yet one less reason to stay. But my troubles were far from over; in fact, they were just beginning, for the telephone rang.

  “How are you,” a female voice.

  “Fine,” I said, instantly annoyed.

  “It’s Kay.”

  I modified my tone and asked her how she was, though I didn’t have the slightest interest in how – or where – she was. She responded equally civilly. She was coming to “town” on Wednesday and would like to end things face to face. This was not a good idea, but she said I owed it to her. I said I didn’t but was impressed when she quoted Wilde’s dictum that laughter is a good way to end things too. She’d probably picked up the quote of the day at the bottom of her executive diary, I thought after I’d rung off.

  She had traded in her old BM for a veritable ship of the same brand, the better, no doubt, to serve the stinking poor with her pearls of radical amateurism. At least Butch was happy to see her again and she looked exceptionally elegant in her black pant suit, her skin clear and her cheeks glowing with good health. Also, she was wearing a matching necklace that a magazine hack might say combined traditional African elegance with twenty-first-century corporate realities, resting coolly above breasts that were either bigger or more propped up than usual.

  “What’s happened to you?” I said.

  “Nothing,” she smiled in a manner that was meant to be mysterious.

  “You’re looking good.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m in love.”

  “That’s nice. But there’s something else about you that’s changed.”

  She loved the power she had and asked me what I thought it was.

  “I don’t – wait a bit. You’re not wearing your specs. Have you got contact lenses?”

  “Yes. Well spotted.”

  “No pun intended, no doubt. So who’s the lucky guy – or gal?”

  “You know who it is.”

  “No, I don’t. I wouldn’t presume to know such things, though I’ve just realised something.”

  “What?”

  “That night I was in your flat, there was a necklace in your bathroom. It was an African woman’s necklace; more traditional than the one you’re wearing now, and I’ve just remembered where I’d seen it before – afterwards, actually.”

  “Where?”

  “At Jack Schwartz’s dinner party. Around Ezmerelda Davids’s imperious neck. Is she the new love in your life?”

  She continued playing the mysterious femme fatale, sat down and took a small, folded piece of white paper from her jacket pocket, and proceeded with the noble art of preparing two lines of coke with her gold card on Shanti’s glass table.

  “What is this all about,” I asked. “You call me about breaking off our relationship – such as it is, or was – you come here looking good and telling me you’re in love without telling me who it is?”

  “I just thought we could break up on good terms.”

  “Fair enough. But who is this lucky person?”

  “First have a line,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, and duly snorted it.

  “Why don’t you make us a drink and light us a smoke?”

  “Sorry. I’m forgetting my manners here.”

  “That’s the Len I liked.”

  “Now it’s just ‘liked’,” I said jokily. “Past tense.”

  “Hmm,” she said, also smiling contradictorily.

  So I got up and went into the kitchen to prepare the drinks, looking at every object as if I were seeing it for the first time again. Everything was heightened, hyper-real, like when someone is born or dies. Details become irrelevant. I grabbed the bottle of Grouse and took a long, pleasantly burning slug before pouring us each a triple, vaguely aware of the fact that something was terribly wrong here.

  Kay had prepared another fat line for us, so I gave her her drink and walked over to my sound system.

  “Can you play us something African?” she said.

  “I’ll play you some Moses Molelekwa.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A muzo from Tembisa.”

  “Cool,” she said.

  “Pity he strangled the mother of his child and then hanged himself.”

  “Eish.”

  We snorted our two lines.

  “So who is this lucky person?” I asked.

  “‘Lucky’?”

  “Ja. You’re a beautiful woman.”

  “Then why did you break up with me? Is there someone else?”

  “No. I’m a divorcee trying to get his life back. That’s all. So are you going to tell me who it is or not?”

  “Were you just on the rebound?”

  “Kay, who is it?”

  “You were right about Ezmerelda. I mean, that it was her necklace. She had been in my flat almost every Saturday night. I was letting it out to Ed, who was doing her there, every Saturday night.”

  “So you’d come and pass the time with an old fart who made you feel ‘safe’?”
>
  Kay nodded.

  “But why couldn’t he just do it at his own place?”

  “He’s married.”

  “Wonderful. So you weren’t trying to make Shunt jealous at the dinner party. You were trying to make ‘Ez’ jealous?”

  Kay tried her enigmatic smile and I was so bored with this little game that I asked her how her father’s cancer was doing.

  “It’s Ed,” she said.

  “Ed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I hope you’ll be very happy.”

  “Now you’re being sarcastic.”

  “No, I’m – well, personally I think he’s a prick, as you well know. So, honestly, I don’t think it’ll last.”

  “And that’s because he’s black.”

  “Not really. But if it makes you feel better, fine. But why are you telling me this? Have you come here to gloat?”

  “No. I thought you might find it ironic that he’s resigned and is now moving to the Department of Labour.”

  “As what?”

  “Speech writer for the minister. Spokesman. It’s a logical step, he says.”

  “And the money no doubt is much better, not to mention the power. But why are you really here?”

  “I’ve come here to say goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” I said. “And well done, by the way, for conducting a conversation without having to like everything.”

  At which point she stood up, but it wasn’t to leave, it was to turn her back on me – literally.

  “What are you doing,” I wondered.

  “I thought I’d give you a farewell gift,” she said, starting to take off her clothes, showing me her perfect young legs, buttocks and back, made all the more sexy because she’d put on a little weight, a bit of grip, as they say in certain circles. “Show you what you’ll be missing.”

  “Okay,” I said, as high as a thunder cloud and suddenly thinking about that woman I’d met in the bush, sensing her body through her mild green eyes, the way she’d smiled at me.

  “You’re not a bad lover,” Kay said. “But Ed is so much better. So much bigger. And stronger.”

  “Well, I’m very glad for you. And I’m very impressed at your ingenuity.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean suddenly wanting me to come over to your place when he was away in Queenstown, as if to show that you were being equitable. Giving me a blowjob just to get me to the dinner party in order to get him jealous. Where do you get so much energy for so much deception? Doesn’t it get tiring, if not boring?”

  She shrugged.

  “And that’s why you thought it was so funny that I said ‘fuck him’ that night after the dinner party, because that’s exactly what you were doing, or wanted him to do.”

  “We never used a condom, you know.”

  “That would have been during the week, but what is your point?”

  “I suppose now you want to go for an AIDS test.”

  “Kay, what are you trying to tell me?”

  “That you’re nothing but an ageing, racist, white male. Look what you’re going to miss,” she said, and bent over forwards, away from me, stark naked, apart from her pornographically clichéd high heels.

  “I think you’re quite right,” I said, beyond the point of ideology or morality, “and therefore I’d better start licking management’s arse.”

  On Rage

  * * *

  In the very meantime we had acquired a new colleague. That she was black didn’t matter, that she was as thin as a rake was concerning and that she was determined not to learn a thing was more than worrying.

  Caroline Geel had been a pre-school teacher, but obviously the money was no good and she’d decided to try her hand at journalism. Just like that. After all, she had a diploma in teaching and therefore she qualified as a sub. The editor of the associated paper in Kimberley had assured her father, a struggle royalist, that his daughter would fit in just fine. But Ms Geel soon tired of that dry, thorny part of the world’s social limitations and had requested a transfer to that place where the real action was: Jozi, Egoli, Johannesburg, Joburg, City of Gold, call it what you will. That was where the big bucks were. One time.

  It soon became quite clear to us that Ms Geel didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to string a sentence together, and when we showed her how she seemed to have the memory of a praying mantis. It went in the one delicate ear and out the other. We thought Robert Black as revise sub would give her hell, as he had us as part of the softening-up process, but he swallowed her vacuous excuses up to such a point that we feared for his life. He looked like he was constantly on the verge of a heart attack. Jay made a call to an ex-colleague in the city of the big hole and it soon became clear what had happened. No one had wanted her, but no one wanted to be seen to be blocking her way, either. Therefore, she was passed on, with glowing references, to the next bunch of suckers, the present ones being us. Jay made as if she didn’t exist, Desiree was as blunt as a sledgehammer, I was fascinated, amused and despairing, and Ms Geel was as imperviously gay as a tweety bird.

  The latest joke was that she had neglected to write a headline for a story on deadline and – as these things happen – it slipped past everyone after that and there it was, opposite the editorial page, loudly proclaiming that, according to the layout sub, the Heady Goes Hearey and Hery. The story had been an obituary.

  When she wasn’t working, which was most of the time (Bob simply bypassed her and piled the pressure on us), she was openly reading celebrity magazines. Not local ones but international ones, with mostly white celebs. There she sat in an anorexic daze, reading about Britney et al, chewing gum, flirting with all the black heavies and delighting some – though far from all – of them. Soon, no doubt, she would be promoted over us or, almost as bad, moved to write for the social pages, which we’d have to edit, looking up various double-barrelled surnames like Mngxitama-Brkic.

  On Sunday I found the old man was buried deep inside his house, watching TV in his airless room of dog, even though the back door and security gate were wide open. He was in a crappy mood because he hadn’t heard me, couldn’t see properly, his shoulders ached, as did the plantar wart under his foot, his sister had phoned again, everybody wanted to tell him what he should do and the price of electricity was shooting through the bladdy roof.

  I was in a pretty shitty mood myself because I had dreamed about Shanti again, falling in love anew with the idealised woman instead of the real one.

  “You know,” the old man said out on the cement apron, “people say they want to live there or there, but this is the only place in the world I want to be.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “This is the place they’ll carry me out after I’ve died.”

  “Hmm.”

  Silence.

  “So tell me, where is Shanti?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. We’re divorced.”

  “What?”

  I didn’t say anything to that.

  “But wasn’t she here the other day?”

  “No, Dad. That was Kay, a friend.”

  “I liked that girl, you know.”

  “Which one?”

  “Shanti.”

  “So did I.”

  “Then why did you divorce her?”

  “I didn’t. She divorced me.”

  “Your mother stuck with me through thick and thin.”

  “I don’t think she had that much of a choice.”

  “What?”

  I repeated myself.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she’d spent her life looking after her mother, then her father, then being your wife. She didn’t have any qualifications. Where would she go to? What would she do on a dental assistant’s salary?”

  “People today get divorced at the drop of a hat.”

  “Why don’t you ask me why Shanti divorced me?”

  “Do you think our marriage was easy?”

  “Why don’t you ask me?” />
  He stopped.

  “Why did she divorce you?”

  “Because I spoke to her the way you spoke to Ma.”

  “What do you mean?” he said, bristling.

  “Nothing was ever good enough for you. The meals she cooked, the father she had – nothing was ever good enough. It was one long half-a-century assault of venom and bile. And that’s what I gave Shanti. I hammered her with your and my rage. I may never have lifted a hand to her, but there are many other ways to torture someone. And I did. And guess who I learned it from? You.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “Yes. You.”

  The dog was up and barking but I told it to bugger off and continued.

  “But then I even went one better. I spoke to everyone like that, to their faces, thinking I was being very smart. Thinking I wouldn’t be a two-face like you, crucifying people behind their backs. Oh no, I went all the way. I told them what arseholes they were up front, to their faces, and in print. And do you know what I’ve got to show for it? Nothing! Sweet blow all!”

  The old man was the colour of crushed shells and said we could all go to hell, he had his dog and that was all that mattered.

  “Yes, and you’re killing it with kindness, just like you killed all the others. Just like you tried to kill me, but I won’t have it. If that’s the only way you can show love, then shove it!”

  I walked to the front gates, opened them, walked back to the car, got in, slammed the door, started the car and drove off. The traffic light, of course, turned red and I sat there, seething. If he didn’t want to take any security measures then he had to suffer the consequences, whatever they were. I lit a cigarette and did not bother looking in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t give a shit whether he was watching or not.

  I drove to work and applied for emigration before my shift started.

  Symptoms of Morbidity

  * * *

  The next day I got a phone call halfway through my shift. It was a certain Howard Nathan who asked whether it was a good time to talk. Ever the closet optimist, the faithful lapdog, I thought he might want to offer me a job, even though I’d never heard of him in a profession where everybody knew about or was aware of almost everyone else, so I scurried out onto the balcony where I’d first shaken Kay’s damp hand to hear what the man had to offer. What a pleasure it would be to have a change of jobs, a change of scenery, a sea change, perhaps, but I should have recognised that fuck-you tone of certain Joburg lawyers, saying his client had laid charges against me.