Ten Year Stretch

by Martin Edwards

  She couldn’t help sounding slightly incredulous.

  ‘Yes, like I said,’ said Blomman. ‘Long time, no see. What are we now? Fifty-five, huh? Almost forty years since we finished school. People change over such a long time. Well, not you, of course. Not much. You look quite similar. And the fancy clothes, you were like that back then.’

  She looked at Netta with a small smile that made her vaguely recall the girl she once was.

  ‘Come to my place,’ said Blomman. ‘I live here. On the boat over there.’

  ‘No, I have to go home,’ said Netta.

  ‘Just for a little while. I have to look at my knee. See if it’s bleeding. Come along for a bit.’

  Netta hesitated. What did she have in common with this swamp person, other than the fact that they had gone to the same school about a hundred years ago? But at the same time she was curious about Blomman. And she had never met anyone who lived on a boat.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘But just five minutes. My husband gets worried if I get home too late. But okay. For a bit.’

  Netta didn’t know what she had been expecting, but was surprised how pleasant it seemed in the cabin of the tugboat. Almost cosy, though the bedclothes looked extremely tatty: a dirty quilt with several holes from cigarette burns and a scuzzy pillow with no pillowcase. Netta thought of her own scented linen closet.

  ‘I don’t have much to offer you’ said Blomman. ‘Perhaps a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, I don’t want anything at all. Let me see your knee.’

  Blomman unbuttoned her coat and rolled up her trouser leg. She had two pairs of tracksuit bottoms on, and the outer one at least was worn smooth and blotchy. Her knee was a little swollen and a large blue-brown mark spread out below the kneecap, but the skin wasn’t broken. Blomman pulled down the trouser leg again and said:

  ‘Do you have a cig?’

  ‘Sure. We’ll have a smoke and then I have to go.’

  She gave Blomman a cigarette and lit it for her.

  ‘How did you end up like this? I mean...’

  ‘I know what you mean. Do you remember how I was expelled in the sixth grade because I got pregnant?’

  Netta didn’t remember. She had left school herself then, to go to sixth form somewhere else. But she said nothing.

  ‘Yeah, to cut a long story short, I had the baby. Svenne did a runner and the kid was adopted. Then I had some tough years, worked a bit here and there, got pregnant again. Obviously, that guy did a runner, too, and the baby was stillborn. Yes, we can skip over all that. I married a guy called Sture who drank, so I started drinking too, to get through it all. He hit me as well, and it took several years before I finished with him. Then things were calm for a while, I worked at the hospital and had a place to live, but I’d acquired a taste for alcohol, as they say, so I lost the job. Started hanging out with drunks, rowdy types, you know, so in the end I was evicted. And that’s how it went. I’m just borrowing the boat. In a month or so I’ll have to leave here too. That’s my life story—the short version. But I feel better now. Don’t drink so much. Still, it’s natural to long for an orderly life; a house and so on. Sure, I can hardly hope for a job at my age. Do you work, by the way, or are you just married?’

  Netta felt like she belonged to a different world when she listened to Blomman’s depressing story.

  ‘Yes, I work. In an ad agency. Writing texts and so on. But can’t you ask for help? Benefits...’ said Netta, breaking off. She realised her knowledge of such things was very limited.

  ‘No, I don’t want anything to do with the authorities. Had enough of them. You don’t get much help and once you’ve been evicted, you never get a house again. No, I can manage by myself.’

  Netta didn’t know what to say. This was a part of life she never even wanted to think about. She just wanted out of this misery. It didn’t concern her.

  ‘Well, I have to go now so Olof doesn’t worry,’ she said, and hoped that Blomman wouldn’t ask where she lived or for her phone number.

  ‘Sure, I get it,’ said Blomman. ‘I’ll see you out.’

  Netta put her pack of cigarettes on the table.

  ‘Take them. If you forgot to buy some,’ she said, and felt stupid.

  They went out of the cabin and were hit by an icy wind from Riddarfjärden. It was a starry night, but with no moon and it was dark out here on the quay where the glow of the streetlights did not reach.

  Blomman walked down the short iron ladder to the deck and Netta followed close behind.

  ‘Watch your step,’ said Blomman. ‘It’s slippery.’

  At that moment, Netta’s heel got stuck and she stumbled forward, reached out to grab a railing, but she was groping in thin air and fell against Blomman and Netta heard a splash before she fell face down on the icy steel deck, and it was a long time before she realised that Blomman had fallen overboard.

  Netta crawled up onto her knees and now she saw that the rail, which ran along the side of the boat, stopped at the edge of the raised deck, and there was no protection. She held onto one of the posts and leaned forward, but saw only black water which foamed and crashed against the outside of the boat and splashed icy cascades across her face.

  In the end, she got up and came over to the quay where the trolley stood with its cargo of bottles and cans. Netta passed by it to get to her car and sat down behind the wheel.

  She was shaking all over; she didn’t know if it was down to the cold or shock, or both, but she wiped her face with a handkerchief and fixed her hair and sat there until the shaking stopped.

  She knew that there was nothing to be done. Or to be said; not even to Olof.

  No one would know.

  Blomman hadn’t been around for forty years—she had suddenly been around for twenty minutes—and now she was gone again.

  That’s just how it was.

  And the only thing Netta could do was drive home to Olof and eat lobster and drink champagne and lie down to sleep between smooth clean sheets, and what had happened wasn’t real or even a bad dream.

  The Ring

  Michael Stanley

  I guess some people are just nasty. Take Miss Joubert, for example. Her house is number fifteen in that big fancy complex on Fairfield Street. Rich people live there and they throw out lots of good stuff, so I get there early on Thursdays before the Pickitup people come through to collect. Some people are nice and put the good stuff separately, but most times I just have to dig through the bins to find the plastic and the cardboard and other things that I can sell. That’s okay. I shake them off, squash them as flat as I can, and pack them into my trolley. It’s a platform on wheels with sacking that can stretch up the sides, and by the time I’m finished with my rounds on a good day, it’s almost as tall as me.

  But Miss Joubert, she was different. First time I see her, she drives out of the electric gates in her fancy silver BMW and pulls over on the wrong side of the road next to me. I think maybe she has some food she doesn’t want anymore. Sometimes people do that—give me half a loaf of old bread or something left over. But not her. She rolls down her window and starts going at me.

  ‘What you doing in my garbage, hey? You leave that alone! It doesn’t belong to you.’

  I tell her I’m doing recycling, but she cuts me off. ‘I left that out for the Pickitup people to take away. Till they do, it’s mine. You leave it alone. Voetsek!’

  I’m offended. I tell her I’m a licenced conveyer of recycling, and once her rubbish is on the street, it belongs to anyone who wants it. The business about the licence I make up, but she doesn’t know that. Anyway, she’s not impressed. She just swears at me and grabs a spray can from under the driver’s seat—a big yellow can of Doom, like I’m an insect or something. I’m taking no chances, so I move away and start on another bin. She shouts at me again, and then drives off, so I go back to her bin. I don’t know what al
l the fuss was about—all I get are some dirty cardboard boxes and some old fruit she threw out. Nothing good.

  I see her again the next week, but by then I’ve found out her name. I asked Freddie—he’s the gardener at the complex. He does a great job, place looks like a park. Not one of those Johannesburg city parks with weeds and rubbish, but really, really nice. Okay, he’s not the brightest. You have to go slow with him, but he’s a great gardener. It’s his passion.

  ‘That’s Miss Joubert,’ he tells me and makes a face. ‘I don’t like her. Always something wrong, always shouting at me. Says she’s going to get me fired cause I’m a moron. What’s a moron, Mr Malele?’

  He always calls me Mr Malele. Nice and respectful of his elders.

  ‘She told me to voetsek,’ I tell him.

  ‘I can’t lose my garden. I just can’t.’ He looks like his mother just died.

  ‘Hey, she can’t do nothing to you, Freddie. You’re black and disabled. Gold for them. And you do a great job. They’ll never fire you.’

  He nods doubtfully, still looking really unhappy.

  Anyway, so when she drives up to me the next week, I’m going to sweet-talk her. Nice and polite. Get her on my side.

  ‘Miss Joubert, ma’am,’ I begin. ‘I’m so sorry about our little misunderstanding—’

  She doesn’t even let me finish the sentence. She starts swearing at me and spraying Doom, so I have to run backwards. I trip over some bottles I’d taken from her rubbish, and only save myself by grabbing at a bin.

  The next week I don’t touch her bin till she’s left, but when I dig in it there’s a loud snap—gives me a fright, I can tell you—and I jerk my hand out. There’s a mousetrap in there, brand new. No dead mouse. She put it in to get me, hid it under some newspaper. Like I said, a really nasty person. I got a nice price for that trap, though.

  So, I’m nervous, right? Who knows what she’s got in there this week? I even use old gardening gloves that I found in number thirteen’s bin, but they’re not much help. Full of holes and the fingers stick through. Anyway, this time right on top I find a clear plastic bag, and it’s got a mask or something in it, all covered with red goo. So, I stand back and take a careful look. Could be black magic. Maybe she’s a witch doctor. Maybe it’s a curse. Maybe I should just leave her rubbish alone, after all.

  Enoch is with me, and he’s working the next bin. He’s sort of my partner, more like an apprentice. People throw away a lot of good stuff and you have to get in early, so he helps me, and we move through the area much more quickly. And it’s good to have two people pulling that trolley into town. Sometimes it’s damn heavy up those hills around Melville koppies.

  ‘What you found?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t know.’ He comes over anyway, takes a look, and jerks back.

  ‘Eish,’ he says, looking into the bin. ‘It’s covered in blood.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. She’s done that to scare us. Tomato sauce.’

  Enoch looks relieved, sticks his finger into the red stuff, and takes a taste.

  ‘Ugh!’ He spits. ‘Blood, definitely blood.’

  Well, maybe it’s a pig’s head or something she’s thrown out. Something really good. So, I pull it out and yank off the plastic bag. It’s a head all right, but it’s not from a pig. The head belongs to Miss Joubert.

  I drop the head right away, and she’s looking up at us from the top of the bin.

  ‘We’ll have to tell the cops,’ Enoch says.

  I shake my head. What’s he thinking of? Our job is to avoid the cops. The cops’ job is to make people like us pay them to leave us alone. If we tell the cops, it’ll be expensive and take lots of time. Sometimes Enoch can be a bit like Freddie.

  ‘No way. We just leave it.’

  After a moment, Enoch gets it and nods. ‘Put it back in the bag,’ he says.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Cause the Pickitup guys will see it for sure. And they know we go through these bins. And there’s fingerprints and stuff.’

  I think he’s been watching too much CSI on TV, but he has a point. I reach into the trolley to get a bag and some newspaper.

  ‘You guys find something?’

  I nearly jump out of my skin, but it’s just Freddie standing at the complex gate watching us.

  ‘How’s it, Freddie? No, nothing special. Just the usual.’

  He nods, and gives me the smile. He has a smile to melt hearts, if he only knew it.

  Just as I’m about to shove the head in the bag, I see something gold shining in the hair. Shit, it could be real gold. She seemed like a real jewellery sort of woman, what with that BMW and the Fairfield address. I know it’s a mistake, but I can’t stop myself. I yank it to get it off, and it comes away with some hair still stuck to it. I shove it quickly into my pocket so the others don’t see, stuff the bag with the head under some cardboard, and wipe my hands on some newspaper. Waste of good paper, but I throw it on top of the bin, and say bye to Miss Joubert. No one’s going to find her head, or Enoch’s ‘fingerprints and stuff,’ in the middle of the rubbish dump, except maybe one of the wild dogs that hang around there. Then we hear the Pickitup truck in the next street, so we leave the rest of the bins in Fairfield unchecked and move on to Johannes Street.

  Of course, we know who killed her—that serial killer. The Beheader, the newspapers call him, always leaving a quote from the Koran and a headless body. The cops think he takes the heads as trophies or uses them for black magic. I wonder if they’ve ever looked in the rubbish? Maybe too simple for them.

  Anyway, we do the next street, but we’re shaken up and slow. Funny thing. The Pickitup truck doesn’t catch up to us. I have a bad feeling about that, and I’m right. Pretty soon we hear the sirens.

  A good thing about the recycling business is that no one knows you. Maybe they see you every week, but most rich people don’t take any notice of poor people digging through their garbage. Makes them feel uncomfortable. So even if they give us something, no one asks our names, or where we live, or who we are. We’re like the beggars, or the parking guards who ‘look after’ your car while you’re shopping—you just accept that’s the way it is in Johannesburg.

  That’s what I tell Enoch. He’s nervous about people knowing we went through that garbage before the Pickitup people got there. I tell him even the people who drove past wouldn’t have noticed us, let alone remembered what we look like. But he says he’s moving to Cosmos City.

  ‘You mad? Those people aren’t rich. They won’t throw out good stuff. You’ll starve.’

  Turns out he has a second cousin there. He says maybe he’ll leave Johannesburg altogether. I wish him luck and leave it at that.

  When I have a chance, I take a quick look at the ring. It’s really big, a heavy gold band. I can’t remember her fingers, but I think maybe it wasn’t hers. That gives me a funny feeling. Maybe it was the man’s ring, and it got tangled in her hair when he cut off her head. Suddenly I’m not sure that selling it would be such a good idea.

  That night it’s hard to sleep. I share a few Klippies and coke with Miriam, but brandy doesn’t really relax me. Makes me more alert, gets my mind working, but I eventually doze off.

  In the middle of the night I’m thirsty and sweating from nasty dreams—men after me swinging axes, blood everywhere. I think I’ll never get back to sleep because of Miriam’s snoring, but I do.

  I wake up screaming with my eyes stinging. The dream was so clear I remember it like it was real. It was Miss Joubert, stark naked, holding a can of Doom, and walking towards me. She was saying that I’d stolen her ring and I’d better give it back. I don’t know how she talked or how I knew who she was since she had no head. But I did. Then she sprayed me in the face with the Doom.

  Miriam sits up and looks at me. ‘You and Klippies don’t mix.’

  ‘What time is it?’

&nb
sp; ‘It’s going on five.’

  She goes to make the coffee. A good woman, that Miriam.

  The next week when I’m back in Fairfield Street, there’s a car parked outside the complex. A coloured guy gets out and comes over to me.

  ‘You Malele?’ He lights a fag and offers me one. Why not? I thank him, and he lights me up. You never find fags in the rubbish, just stompies where you can maybe dig out bits of unburnt tobacco. Maybe ten of them gives you a roll-your-own. So we smoke for a bit, and I wonder what he wants. Like I said, no one stops to talk to recyclers.

  Turns out he’s a cop—Captain Willemse—but he’s not after money, and so right away I know I must be careful. He wants to know about last week.

  ‘No, sir, I saw nothing. We were a bit late starting so we skipped this street and went straight from Kessel to Johannes.’

  Why miss out the best street? he wants to know. And who was this ‘we’?

  I take a long drag while I wonder how I managed to slip up twice in one sentence when I was being careful. I also realise this guy isn’t stupid.

  I shrug. ‘Us recyclers. Sometimes we do that. Work every other street. Others come behind us later. Share, you know?’ I can see he doesn’t believe me. Shit.

  ‘So you weren’t even in Fairfield Street?’ He gives me a hard look. ‘You heard about the Beheader murder here, didn’t you? You know the Pickitup people found the victim’s head in the rubbish in this street? They don’t know which bin it was in because it fell out of a bag only when they got to the end of the street. You know nothing about that?’

  The victim? Hard to think of Miss Joubert as a victim, but I guess that’s what she was. I nod firmly. ‘Like I told you.’

  He gives me another long, hard look. ‘So, you won’t mind coming down to the Fairlands police station and giving a statement. And we’ll take fingerprints. Just to eliminate you.’

  Shit. Maybe Cosmos City has possibilities after all.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Let me finish my rounds, and I’ll come over there.’