“Why not?”
“My father was a freedom fighter. Bello convinced him to help with Brain Gain. He was the one that arranged your flights—he was the one that was supposed to move you to Nigeria.”
Wale recalled the notes that had been dropped in his locker, the tickets, all those years back. “Look at this,” he said. “I’ll prove it to you.”
“Don’t move.”
“I’m merely going to the wall.” He turned his back on her, daring her to shoot him. He picked up a doll that lay at the rim of the dome which he had included in his ceremony about Harran. To the tourists, it was just a bizarre totem.
“This is proof,” he said.
She snorted. “It’s a statue.”
“No, it’s not a statue. It’s an ibeji doll. In my tribe, a doll is carved when twin children are born. I found this hidden in the home that Bello had rented in Cape Town. I know that the killer was there. It’s proof that the Ibeji exist. I’ve kept it for years to help me find out what happened. Maybe you can help me.”
He handed it to her.
“What did you call it?”
“Ibeji. People do not lose these dolls lightly. There are spiritual consequences. If a twin dies, he must be reinvigorated or the twin can torment the family. Whoever left the doll in the house must have been planning to come back to collect it. It might lead you to your father.”
She nodded cruelly. “Then it is you. After all this time. My father wrote me that he had been betrayed. He wrote of a traitor. The killer in Basel told me that he worked for the Ibeji, and that there was only one left who knew everything. You. Bello is gone. You said so, yourself. I’ve seen your medical report, your history of paranoid delusions. I think you’re the killer. And this doll of yours proves it.” She raised the gun. “Your wife suspected you all along.”
He tried to steady his voice. “My wife? Tinuke? Where is she?”
“Austin.”
“Is she married?”
“Happily,” the woman snapped. “With three children.”
More, than anything else the woman had said tonight, this thought crushed him. A family! Children!
“What does her husband do?”
“What does it matter?”
It’s the only thing that matters, Wale thought. The nature of the family. He feared that this priestess had come to tear his apart.
“I came for an answer,” the woman continued. “Tell me where my father is.”
“Ask my wife what happened to my money, because I never received it or I wouldn’t be living in Observatory. All this killing is beyond me. I would never kill anyone. I’m only a scientist. I ran away. That’s it.”
Tears were falling out behind her veil, and Wale was so mired in his own shame at hearing about his wife that he felt no desire to comfort her.
“Enough!” the woman snapped. “I suppose you were passive in all this, too. That all these things were happening to you. All of these people were just dying around you. If what you’re saying is true, then show me the sample that you say you stole from NASA.”
The moonlight flickered through the dome, and the woman lifted up her veil. The light frolicked upon her skin except where she had obscured it with makeup. But like irridescent minnows swirling in the sea, when she lowered the veil, the glimmer dissipated into the darkness. He finally recognized her.
“You’re that model from the magazines,” he said.
“I’m the daughter of Mlungisi Tebogo. This is the last time: where is he?”
“I don’t know. He was probably killed with the others.”
“He’s alive.”
Something told Wale that what he was going to say next should be handled with sensitivity, but this was not his voice, but the boiled voice, the voice of the Wild Bull. It came through him again: “You’re a famous model.” He paused. “Forgive me if your name escapes me. Mole, is it? Molly? If all of my colleagues, as you admit, are dead, then these are dangerous people. We have a proverb: if a man does not hold the hilt of the sword firmly in his hands, he does not ask why his father was killed. Don’t go searching for revenge unless you’re on firm ground. Right now, you are not on firm ground. Your father could have told you where he was, and he didn’t. As a father, he did it to protect you. You’d best leave it alone. Enjoy the life you’ve been given.”
His thoughts turned to Dayo again. His son had stomped out of the house that morning, ignoring Wale as usual. Okeke had told him that Dayo had swung by his place, asking for power tools, and that he was preparing some kind of special demonstration for his lamps. Wale had laughed at the thought; his son could never give a sales pitch, and power tools wouldn’t help his cause. Dayo was probably calling to borrow more money. But Wale would give it to him, readily, anything to speak with him again.
“Show me the sample.”
“You can’t have it.”
“Then I will talk to this mate of yours.” She pulled the phone out. “Dayo. I’m going to talk to Dayo. Maybe he knows where I can find it.”
Wale lunged for the gun, but she was quicker. The bullet tore through his chest and the impact spun him into the electronic panel on the telescope. There was no numbness this time, only pain. The roof of the dome began to retract as his tongue screamed for water. His left hand was on his torso, but he couldn’t feel the resistance of his own flesh on his fingertips. They were fumbling in a burning fire. He limped to the emergency ladder smelling pine smoke, cauterized flesh, the solvent on the yellowwood floor.
“I didn’t want to shoot you! Tell me where he is!”
My son or your father, he thought, as the clouds shifted in the sky of the open dome behind the girl’s head. But the answer was the same. He shook his head.
Then he was wrenched off the ground by his head, hands cupped around his jaw. Tell me, the woman was pleading. Tell me.
He could feel the end. The running was over. One less thief of the world. And then the flood of blue light on the white clouds, the light of the regolith, of the mare and all the lab-dead breccias, running through the girl’s numinous silhouette. The light pouring through the priestess’ skin as he began his ascent. I am going home. I’m going up now. I want to go there.
Load-shedding
Present day
South Africa
“Dayo, Dayo, come in. Did you see him?”
Dayo strived in vain to remember the code name. It had something to do with coffee and clouds. “No, I haven’t seen him—man.”
“Dayo, how about Mush? You seen Mush?”
“Forget about them. You’ve got to focus, Thursday.”
“Call me Mocha Thunder. You tell me if you see Mush. Or Viljoen.” Then, thoughtfully, he added: “Tell me if you see anything.”
Thursday did not want to be mentioned on the air because Constable Viljoen was bitterly monitoring his every move like a bull that had just backed down from a charge, and was reconsidering, but Dayo had needed the walkie-talkies to coordinate. Thursday had paid for the cables and silicon wafers, for the glass blower in Salt River, for the giant disco ball, for the hydroponic foils, for the distilled water, for the imported silicate from Tonga, for the gold-plated wiring: for everything. They were R2,500 over budget, with the extra coming from Thursday’s pocket.
The power company had indicated that the second reactor at the Koeberg facility would be down again, but also that the load-shedding schedule, to conserve energy and help businesses, would be accurately published down to the minute. First Khayelitsha, Camps Bay, Table View, Parow, and Langa would be shut off. Then Mowbray, Newlands, Gugs, Nyanga, and Sea Point at 21:27. Mowbray included Observatory.
Dayo had called in a favor to a friend at an advertising company who had done a thorough below-the-line job. He’d invited every lighting man in the business, postered all the bars, dropped cards in mailboxes, and phoned local politicians, telling them to come out at 21:30 to the Obz Community Centre for, depending on the recipient, an acoustic musical tribute to Steve Biko, a psychede
lic trance spin-off, a braii featuring surprise members of the Springbok rugby team, a gay pride parade, and the catch-all, a tribute to the visiting fashion phenomenon Melle. Mothers boiled kettles, girls showered, and men ran any power tool they could find in anticipation of the blackout. At 21:25, people began dribbling out of their homes to attend the fictional events. A couple walked their dogs to the park off Station Road. A few families ambled on the streets with their children, who threw tennis balls against garage doors or footraced down the street. The bergies and drunks pestered Dayo for change as he fastened the lamps to the streetposts. It was a warm evening with a light breeze carrying the scent of the game animals on the Rhodes Reserve above the state hospital. Sheets of cloud hung low over the town, sliding by rapidly, with pockets of black sky between the sheets.
Maybe it was the money at stake that was giving Thursday the paranoia; or perhaps it was the dagga he’d smoked, to help him relax, and it’d had the opposite effect. He had the paris, he was paaping. Thursday continued pestering Dayo about whether Mush was in sight, seeming more terrified of that silent cop than his gregarious partner Viljoen.
At 21:27 the power was still on. More people were now perambulating the streets, trying to determine how bikers and cross-dressers fit into whatever rally they had come for. Dayo picked up his cell phone. This was the time, he thought, this time or never, for his father’s moonlight tour should be ending at the Royal Observatory. He cycled through the menu on the screen. Dad Cell. Then he dialed his father and waited for an answer. The phone rang ten times and went to the spartan voicemail. This is Wale. I’ll call you back. Dayo had not considered that his father would be unavailable, tried it again, and put it down, vowing to try again later.
Twenty minutes later the load-shedding of the power began and the neighborhood was dark. The moonlamps were arranged. The solar grids aligned. Forty lamps were spread wide across the suburb. Dayo dialed his father three more times and left two messages. He was about to put the walkie-talkie to his lips when Thursday interrupted him.
“Dayo, he’s here! They’re both here! I’ve got to go!”
“No, Thursday, please, not now! I need you now!”
“Don’t use my name! Mush saw me, my broer! I’ve got to go!”
“Thursday, no, give me the power switch! I need the switch!”
“I’ve got to go.”
And despite Dayo’s pleading and reasoning, the line went dead. He thought he heard a car screech in the tumult, but couldn’t have been sure. As good as the lamps were there were certain technicalities involved in illuminating them at the same time. He had switched in stronger bulbs, which meant they would run out of power faster, and he used the hydroponic foils to amplify the light. The lamps would in theory beam their light towards a disco ball, which would shower it throughout the neighborhood. He needed the beams to converge precisely, and he’d carelessly given Thursday the main switch to hold, which he’d promptly walked off with, twitching with paranoia.
The bikers and school kids were by now angrily clamoring for the Springboks to make their promised appearance. Parents shepherded their children inside with candles; there were nursery rhymes. Sleep. Then the school boys were taunting the trance hounds with their glow sticks and fire batons, and the gangbangers were profiting in the darkness by stealing from everyone, and the armed response arrived with their yellow lights, and the cops with their red and blue ones and their sirens.
Without the power switch Dayo would have to rewire all the lamps. By that time the evening would be over. Rage, pure and Nigerian, purely present, purely there, began surging through Dayo’s hunched form. He was angry at this failure. His spine straightened and he stomped towards a pile of rubble. He picked up a brick. Gauging its heft, he threw it with all of his ecstatic strength into the nearest lamp.
The projectile missed its target and instead hit the lamp’s aluminum collar. The lamp dropped down, halted by the width of the post at the base. He moved forward to smash it, but an enterprising bergie swiftly plucked the lamp from its collar.
“Fifty rand,” the drunk said.
Dayo tackled the man full-on with a running start, feeling his shoulder drive into the drunk’s chest and smelling his fetid sweat. They rolled on the ground, the bergie scratching at his neck, until a flash of light blinded him. The bergie sensed an opening and sunk his toothless gums into Dayo’s forearm. Dayo stumbled off, blinking his eyes. When he looked back he saw that the lamp had come alive. It was illuminating the tarmac around them. The drunk began a slow, stumbling march down the street with the lamp in his hand hurling insults in Dayo’s direction.
But that was it! The bergie had done it! Free of the lamp post, which had grounded the charge, the light was working. Dayo began running from lamp post to lamp post, snipping wires, pleading with people to hold up the lamps in their hands. He offered out sums of money he did not have. He promised chocolates and pints of cane spirit. Within a short while, he had assembled an army of drunks, passersby, and hippies bonded by a chain of shimmering blue light.
The forty lamps sent the moonlight shooting into the disco ball, scattering it throughout Obz. A chorus of barking dogs struck up at once. The police, who had earlier torn after the gangbangers, lost their sense of color in the light, and lowered their sjamboks, unable to tell black from white, rich from poor. The bikers put down their rebel flags and the hippies doused their flaming batons. And the parents, who had locked their security gates and their burglar bars as they put the children to sleep, set down the braii-forks and butcher knives they had held ready against intruders, and peered, cautiously, outside at the suburban moonscape.
Dayo dialed his father again on the cell phone. “Come on, Dad, pick up!” He left a message—“Dad, the lamp worked! The lamps worked! Tell the tour to look up!” He was feeling present, he was feeing there and his father was gone.
Slowly the denizens of Obz came out to see Dayo’s lamps: car guards in fluorescent pinnies, painters, sculptors, goths, teachers, Malikis, Anglicans, Catholics, Jews, pagans perfumed with Nag Champa, booksellers, dagga dealers, capoeiristas, live-in domestics, cash-in-transit men, waitrons scooping up their tips, woodworkers, plumbers, conveyancers, sound engineers, publicans, photographers with flashes and, then, confused by the light, without them, PAs, actors and actresses, doctors, guitarists, graphic designers, beauticians, trinket peddlers, nurses, cobblers, pan-African dancers, ballet dancers, modern dancers, students and professors, overland tour operators, slam poets, and jacks of all trades. They came out.
Dayo tried his father one last time, and this time the call went through. He heard belabored breathing and static. “Dad, Dad, that you?” He cupped his hand over his free ear to drown out the noise of the crowds. “Dad?”
“Your father needs help.” It was a woman’s voice, husky; garbled.
“Dad? Dad? Who is this?”
“Your father needs help. Call an ambulance.”
“Who is this? Where’s my father?”
“He’s in the McClean.”
And their cohabitants: the dogs, the chittering rats, the mice, the feral cats, the stick-bugs, the rose beetles, mosquitoes pursing their probosci, moths, crickets, geckos, and ants. They came out. Watching the moon emerge not from the sky but from the streets, hands waving in the light, shadow puppeting, and Okeke toting his dundun talking drum with his Nigerian tenants. Squeezing out rhythms into the blackness between the stars. They came out. For it had begun.
A Hundred and Seventy
Present day
South Africa
As in a dream, Thursday Malaysius is running and Mush only walking but somehow narrowing the distance between them. Thursday hurls himself over a garden wall, cutting his palms on the shards of glass. Someone close by shouts at him and he flees over the opposite wall onto another street. This street is clear but the walls are too low to hide. He realizes this is a mistake, that it would have been safer to stay in the crowd, and tries to think of a way back to the main thoroughfa
re. But on the other side of the road there is the long brick wall of a factory that stretches on forever and he can’t think of how to traverse it. His hands are hurting now and when he looks his palms are dripping black blood in the shadows.
The narrow streets with their double-parked cars shrink his sense of space. The clouds above, which usually brighten the neighborhood from the tangerine reflection of the street lamps, coat the streets in stillness. Far down the street he sees the spark of static electricity as two lovers embrace in neoprene jerseys. There are no silhouettes, only forms.
Constable Viljoen has circled around to head him off, and Thursday is unable to scale the brick wall of the factory. He can only watch one of them, either Mush or Viljoen; this is their genius, two spiders attacking from both sides of the web. He decides that if he is going to be punched, he will want to see the fist. He turns towards Mush to deprive him of the satisfaction, his own fists smarting as he clenches them. Each step of Mush’s closes off his escape like a boxer.
“Where you going, Hampton?” Viljoen taunts him. “Hey, Hampton! We want to talk with you!”
There is the deep scream of an engine. Thursday looks up into the black sky expecting to see a jet plane. The sound comes closer and he ducks, feeling the wind of the turbine. Still he cannot see it.
“Thursday!” the girl shouts right behind him. “Get on!”
It is Ip’s daughter Seneca on her motorcycle, with the headlight off. But Thursday trusts no one and refuses to fly from one web into another.
“It’s okay,” she says. “Dad made you a partner.”
He does not move. He is not accustomed to making these kinds of decisions. He is used to having Leon decide for him, but Leon never told him how to handle the cops or a girl on a motorcycle. Viljoen is running towards him and offering to buy him another lamp.
“A hundred and seventy, right, Hampton? I’ve got it right here in my pocket.”
“Thursday,” Seneca insists, “Don’t listen to him. It’s a trap. Get on!”
Nigerians in Space Page 27