by Mark Winkler
I leave the safety chain on when I open the door. Mrs. du Toit’s mascara has run down her cheeks. Her mouth twists. I think of those distraught women from old silent movies. Oversized gestures and grotesque expressions. Her hair is all over the place. She’s wearing a grey shapeless thing that’s stained wet here and there. She pushes her palms against the door. She wants me to open it. To let her in. The chain holds nicely.
“No,” I say. Nobody comes in here. Not under any circumstances. I sleep with the light on. I eat when I’m hungry. I wash the dishes only when there are no clean ones left. The place is a mess. It’s my mess. The mess is logical to me. I have my family stuck to the wall. I can’t explain any of it to anyone. I’m not obliged to. It’s my last place on Earth.
Mrs. du Toit collapses, almost. She folds more or less in half in the walkway. She clasps her hands between her thighs. She’s making a wheezing noise. I think the noise means “please.”
“Come,” I say. I slip the chain off and squeeze through the gap. Close the door behind me. Take the woman by the arm and guide her towards her door. The door is locked.
“What’s going on?” I ask. She turns away from me. She doubles over again and sobs. I can see the wet between her legs as she bends. I wonder if she’s wet herself because she couldn’t get into her flat. I feel in the pockets of her tracksuit pants. They’re also wet. She’s pissed on me before. I didn’t mind. It’s a sterile substance in healthy people. There are no keys in the pockets. There’s a pocket thing sewn into the front of her top. I slip a hand in. She’s not wearing a bra. I have to wriggle my hand to feel all the way round the pocket. There are no keys there either.
“Wait,” I tell her. I go back to my flat. Look for the key she gave me. I hope she doesn’t dive over the balustrade before I find it. When I come out she is slumped on the walkway with her back against her door. Her arms are locked around her knees with her head between them. I unlock her door. I pull her up before I open it so she doesn’t roll over backwards like a beetle. Just as well because there’s broken glass on the floor. Today her flat doesn’t smell like coffee and citrus. Today it smells like vinegar and shit. The shards are from a drinking glass. It was empty when it was dropped. Or thrown. There’s a plate next to the sink with brown slime on it. Next to it is a mug. It has lipstick on the rim and coffee streaks down the side and some beige liquid in it. In the sink is a pot with spaghetti glued to its sides.
“Is it your tumble dryer?” I ask. Of course it’s not. I know that. I just don’t know the right question to ask. Mrs. du Toit wheezes again. She’s not walking that well. She’s struggling to get one foot in front of the other. The arm I’m not holding keeps jerking out sideways. I’m struggling to guide her. I want to slap her to get her right again. I don’t. I steer her to her room. There are no flowers on the bedside tables. I seat her on the bed and pull off the grey tracksuit. Top first and then the pants. Some of the wet is sweat. I go to the bathroom to find something to wipe her down. The smell of shit is worse. There’s a flannel in the bath and a towel on the rail. I run the tap and wet the flannel. Three pill boxes stand on the vanity. The cards are empty. I feel I should flush the toilet before I call an ambulance. Topping a pile of turd is a thick icing of tablets. They’re pink and white and mostly dissolved. Better down the toilet than down her throat. I flush.
In the bedroom I wipe her with the wet flannel. She has stopped wheezing. Has stopped saying “Please.” She doesn’t resist, even when I spread her legs and wipe with the cloth. There’s encroaching growth on the lopsided topiary. I wipe away the mascara smears. I probably should have done her face before wiping between her legs. I do behind her neck and under her arms. Mrs. du Toit has become a compliant laboratory creature. Soft flesh goes this way and that. I wonder how we ever did what we did. How I ever did what I did. Without makeup her eyelashes are strangely pale. The roots of her hair give nothing away about its true colour. I lift her legs onto the bed. Cover her. The duvet hasn’t been changed for some time. It’s soft and slightly sticky. I turn her bedside light on. Open the curtains. There’s nothing worse than waking up in the dark. Other than going to sleep in the dark, of course.
“What is it?” I say. I’m scared to ask. I feel I should, though. She’s calmer now. I’m relieved when she doesn’t answer. I’m about to lock her front door when I realise I have an erection. It could hammer a nail into teak. I go back inside. In the drawer beside her bed I find a vibrator. I place it in her hand and turn it on. It buzzes at about A-sharp. She doesn’t move. Which is the real Mrs. du Toit, I wonder. The one ticking along while her meds are working, or the one crashing and burning without them?
I get up and leave.
In the parking lot I see a couple climbing out of the car. The man is laughing. The woman smiles back. Some things are so normal out there.
In my flat I put my ear to her wall. I strain. There’s a faint buzzing sound. It’s dropped a semitone or two to A or A-flat since I left. There’s no other sound.
“What the fuck, Nathan,” Sonia says to me on Friday. My feet are on my desk. I’m doodling on Dino’s pad. I’ve taken my phone off the hook.
“What, what the fuck?” I say.
“You’re like the living dead, for God’s sake. One big sale and it’s a holiday suddenly.”
“Jesus, Sonia, I’m doing what I can.”
“Hardly. I’ve seen you do what you can. Right now you’re doing what you can’t.”
I put on my sorry face. “Look, I’m struggling here,” I say. “It’s got nothing to do with the sale.” Behind my face I’m wondering how Sonia would look with a Bic pen in her trachea.
She sighs and leans against the cubicle divider. It’s not very secure and gives way. She almost loses her balance. Her little eyes get littler. “It’s been, like, two weeks,” she says. “It’s not like Madge was exactly . . .”
She was going to say “family.” I know this. I look at her. I harden my sorry face. Just a bit. I stare at her. I’m challenging her to question my friendship with Madge. She looks down at the floor where my feet should be. If they weren’t on my desk.
When she looks up she has her own sorry face on. “If only you knew what I’ve had to do.” She doesn’t finish the thought. I can’t finish it for her. I wait for her to tell me. She doesn’t. I don’t know what she’s trying to say. I think there might be tears. Her eyes are so small I can’t see. She shakes her head and goes to her cubicle.
It’s a long and tedious day. I use up all the blank pages of Dino’s pad. My doodles get more and more intricate. I’d like to sit here and stipple the view of my cubicle for ever. I toss the pad in the bin. Skip Eric’s again. Go home.
I take the lift. I’m not expecting Mrs. du Toit to ambush me in her colour-coded assault gear. I listen at her door. Silence. I fetch my key and go inside. The spaghetti on the pot has gone hard. The liquid in the mug has grown fur. Mrs. du Toit is in bed. She has cocooned herself in the duvet. She is turned to the wall. Her hair is dank on the pillow. I can smell it. I take her shoulder. “Come,” I say, “you need to get up.” Why she needs to get up I don’t know. Perhaps to eat. To go to the toilet. I pry the duvet from her to make sure she hasn’t done so in the bed. She hasn’t. She grunts. Grabs the duvet from me and swaddles herself in it once more. I want to look her in the face. I go around to the other side of the bed. She grunts again and pulls the duvet over her head. There is a short length of rope on the floor. It’s about as long as a school ruler. Under it is a little pile of newspaper clippings. They’re small. Page six stuff. One or two are from the bottom left of a page. Serrated edges where the newsprint was trimmed. Some tell the story of the suicide of Henko du Toit. Some cover his funeral.
It seems Henko du Toit was a financial advisor. He’d embezzled most of his clients’ money. When they caught up with him the money had been spent. He hanged himself from an oak tree at his sister-in-law’s wine farm. The family
was having a braai at the time. They couldn’t find him when it was time to eat. Then they did. In the garage. The rope was a guy-line from an old tent. Henko left a wife and a trail of debt and little else.
I replace the clippings. The rope is interesting. I take it to the window and hold it up to the late afternoon light. There’s nothing to suggest its history. I sniff it and it smells like rope. Dusty and brown and organic. It must have been a very old tent. I drop it onto the newspaper clippings. I check Mrs. du Toit’s toilet. There’s nothing to flush. I go to the sink and wash the dishes. Not all of the spaghetti comes off the pot. In the cupboard are three bottles of wine. You’d think her sister would be more generous than that. I take all three to my flat. After the first bottle I compose a resignation letter to Sonia in my head. After the second one I curse Mrs. du Toit. I don’t remember anything after the third.
I smell pine needles when I wake up. My pulse is racing. Even when I open my eyes to the sunlight I can feel the darkness of the dream. I lie still until my heartbeat slows. Have a cup of instant coffee. I don’t have a coffee machine like Mrs. du Toit. I sit on the arm of the couch and stare at the family on my wall. The pattern of the tree is not symmetrical. I suppose no family tree is. They’re all out of kilter in some way. From this angle the woman in the red dress looks like Mrs. du Toit. It’s not just the sunglasses. For a moment I feel confused. I look away and my eyes settle on the woman with the big jaw. She still irritates. I take her down. Drop her on my bed as I get dressed. What’s worse than her being there is her not being there. I stick her into the pocket of my jeans along with Madge’s scarf. I’ll throw her away later. I go through the photos stacked on top of the TV unit. Find a woman more or less the same age. She has an ugly black thing on her head and she isn’t smiling. I stick her on the wall. I have a great-great-aunt again. She’s perfect.
Saturday morning sucks. I watch reruns about aliens. Every now and then I hit the mute button. I listen for sounds from next door. There is nothing. At twelve I heave myself off the couch. Take Mrs. du Toit’s keys and go to her flat. The dishes I’d left to dry next to the sink are still there. Mrs. du Toit is also still there. She’s still swaddled in her duvet at the edge of the bed. Her forehead is pressed to the wall. The room smells of armpits and hair. There’s a half-glass of water next to the bed. At least she’s drinking something. I shake her shoulder.
“Come,” I say. “You need to eat.” She gives the same grunt as before. Except this time she shakes her head. The news clippings and the rope are still on the floor. I shake her again. Repeat what I’d just said. She grunts.
I go to the kitchen and pick at the fossilised spaghetti on the pot. It’s hard as glass. I can’t dislodge it. I put the pot away with the rest of the dishes. At the end of the counter are her car keys. I haven’t driven a car since God knows when. I don’t even have a licence.
By the time I find parking near Madge’s shop I could probably have walked there or found a tuk-tuk. I’m happy for the car guard to guide me into the bay. Most people hate these guys. I give him ten rand. He thanks me in a French accent. I have to walk three hundred metres to the shop. I pull my hood over my head. They say the perpetrator always returns to the scene of the crime. Who am I to change human behaviour? It’s about fifty degrees. My hair is damp and skanky. I need to wash it sometime soon.
Madge’s shop has transformed. There’s all sorts of cheap plastic shit in the windows. I go inside. The first thing I miss is the smell. Mildewy dust and tea and wood and leather. Madge’s wildly floral perfume. Now, the rubbery odour of artificial fabric smothers me. It’s like having your nose deep inside a cheap canvas shoe. A Chinese woman attaches herself to me as I wander down the aisles. As if I’m going to pocket the trinkets and crappy knick knacks on the shelf. I see a T-shirt with a Disney character on it. Over Mickey’s head is an arc of cartoony lettering that shouts “Micky Moose.” Next to him are “Goofie” and “Donal Dack.” I head for the door.
“You not leave, you buy please,” the Chinese woman pleads. Or maybe she’s commanding. I’m not sure which. It doesn’t look like she’s smiling. I can’t understand her face. I don’t have a Chinese face like hers in my library. It’s taken barely two weeks to pave over the last of Madge. I don’t want to buy, please. I want to leave.
Mrs. du Toit’s car knows only two speeds. A low-level creeping and some kind of intergalactic thrust mode. Trying to get it up the hill in one piece gives me a hard-on. Maybe it’s the lurching. Maybe it’s the actual driving. I’m trying to get the thing to do what I want it to do. I can’t. It’s one or the other. Creeping or intergalactic thrust. Somehow I park the beast. I get out and walk around it. There are no scratches or dings. There’s at least a metre between the end of the bonnet and the end of the parking bay. I’m sweating. Hard.
I put the car keys
I put the car keys at the end of the kitchen counter where I found them. Mrs. du Toit is in no state to do anything. There’s a lonely unflushed turd in the toilet. At least she’s managed to do that much. I find a bowl and some cereal. Strawberry Pops. I thought Strawberry Pops were for kids. I sniff the milk. It triggers an instant dry heave. I go and fetch my milk. It’s not much better. I try to feed her. She slurps twice at the spoon. Milk runs from the corner of her mouth. She turns away. Buries her head under the duvet. The duvet is covered in drool stains. I pull it away and try to feed her a little more. She’s not interested. I pour the contents of the bowl into the toilet. Floating there it looks like some weird kind of pink vomit. It makes me feel ill. I flush. A dozen or so clump together on the surface of the water. I wait for the cistern to fill. I flush again.
I rinse the spoon and the cereal bowl in the kitchen sink. Leave them out to dry. Lock the door of her flat behind me. Before I’ve reached my door, I start shaking. Mrs. du Toit has gone somewhere without me. It’s not to her sister-in-law’s wine farm. It’s not to work. It’s somewhere in her head where I can’t follow. Even when I’m there I’m not there. I may as well be a pot plant or a sheep on a West Coast farm. Or anything else in the world that she’s not thinking of. Just like that, she’s cut the thing. I’m not sure what the thing is. Whatever it is, she’s cut it.
I stare at the TV for hours. I don’t know what I’m watching. I wouldn’t have noticed if Mrs. du Toit herself appeared on the screen. In a yellow dress or a red dress or a black one. With matching shoes. Yodelling in a talent show. Making a soufflé. Trying to survive in the jungle. People on the TV don’t respond to you. They’re there at the same time they’re not. Some of them are dead. It’s like Madge’s comment about Steve McQueen. You can watch him shooting and driving on the classic movie channel. Even though he is stone dead. Mrs. du Toit has taken herself to the place where dead actors go. Where you can see them even if they don’t see you. She’s gone where I can’t. Fuck her for going there. Madge too, in fact. Making me kill her like that and then going where I can’t.
By five o’clock it’s all I can do not to rip my family tree from the wall. I want to start with Woman in Red. I want to tear her into little triangles for her resemblance to Mrs. du Toit. I make myself stop. This family is so new I don’t even know them all yet. I need to give them a chance. I feel like setting fire to my head. There’s too much going on. There’s nothing going on. I can’t sit here any longer. On this couch with the bed behind it. With the coffee table all askew between the couch and the TV unit. Its secret drawers, hiding spare members of my secret family. The TV with its endless repeats. The repeats coming back like the things you can’t forget.
I take my hoodie from my bed. I put it on while I wait for the lift. My feet lead me towards Eric’s. My head isn’t interested. I can’t do Eric’s Alpine drawings and his small talk. I can’t do the weekend shift people. The way they do that thing, the journos and the subs. A glance and a half-raised glass and then the ranks that close again. I go to the bar where I went after Madge died. The thought that there will be people
there who I don’t know cheers me up. The bikers with their posturing and their leathers. Family men in dress-up. Pretending to be who they aren’t. Just for an evening. I bet they leave their bikes in secure parking and take taxis home in case of roadblocks.
The worst is when you feel like a drink and it doesn’t feel like you. The first sip of my draught is bitter. I can feel the acid of it at the back of my throat. The bubbles are too big. The complimentary peanuts don’t help. I wonder whether they’d find traces of urine in the nuts if they tested them. A little bald man tries to elbow his way in to a circle of bikers and their girlfriends. They close ranks and he turns away. He catches my eye before I can look down at my beer. He has a beard that juts like a prize fighter’s chin. I stare at the bubbles in my beer so that he doesn’t approach. He does. “Prost!” he bellows, and smacks his bottle against my beer. My glass shatters. It empties its contents onto the counter and into my lap. The barman rolls his eyes. Tosses me a cloth. Cleans the counter with another.
“For fuck’s sake, Charlie,” the barman says. He throws the cloth onto a shelf behind him. I’m glad my beer has gone. The barman begins pouring me another. I want to stop him. I can’t.
“Zaw,” the bald man says as the barman turns away. “Zaw zere I vos, in eine grosse unterwasserboot mit eine kleine Volkswagen on de top.” The put-on accent is ridiculous. He is rocking on his heels. I want to hit him in the face with his beer bottle. I pull my hoodie over my head. I stare at the empty place where my beer had been. The barman puts a new draught in front of me. He apologises. The glass is not in the middle of the coaster. It’s about two centimetres to the left of centre. I push it into the middle. I’m not looking at the bald man. I can feel the weight of him swaying at my shoulder.