by Miller
Was I mad?
Did Madala exist at all?
Later I set to with my charcoals and acrylics in an attempt at a forced, detailed recapture. I started by drawing, in an elevated, receding perspective, two figures down below on a bench, small but precise. Five, six, seven pieces in a row from the same place. Then I tried to zoom in – to create the same figures from closer, from the left or from the right, but I could find no detail. The charcoal insisted on hard, broken strokes, on cut-outs with heads and arms but only slits for eyes, the broadest circles for faces.
Eventually I dropped the charcoal and the paints and the paper and resorted to a spiral-bound notebook and a pencil. I started writing the conversation down, word for word, and now there was no trouble at all. It poured out.* In exact detail – precise and clearly formed. I had never been able to write in that way before. The flow became a stream, which become a powerful, all-knowing flood:
‘There are many things you can’t understand, Roy – your brain doesn’t have the capacity.’
‘You can’t increase capacity?’
‘I could increase the speed. Power. But it wouldn’t help. You have structural limitations that define what you can understand and experience.’
‘Sounds like bullshit to me.’
‘Think of a rabbit. Yes?’
‘Yes. A rabbit.’
‘Imagine taking that rabbit brain and stimulating it so that it ran at two hundred times its original speed.’
‘Yes.’
‘Now, do you think it would be easier to explain the special theory of relativity to this rabbit than to any other?’
‘I’m the rabbit.’
‘You’re the rabbit. Even with more power, you have natural limits.’
Page after page after page. I didn’t stop to think or to remember. Not once did I need to reach in and pull out.
‘So is there life after death? Yes or no. Binary question. You have to answer.’
‘I can’t answer it until the definition of life is recalibrated. With your limited understanding of what life is, the question becomes moot. Whether I say yes or no, you will achieve no greater clarity.’
And God:
‘Humans need God.’
‘Why? I can see no benefit for the species from God. What has God ever done?’
‘The question is more what has he not done.’
‘Christ, you’re so fucking cryptic. I would take this conversation much more seriously, I would take it deep into my fucking heart, if you weren’t so cryptic all the time.’
‘I am explaining as best as I can.’
‘So, what, it’s my brain which is too limited to grasp the complexity of what you’re saying? Of why we need God?’
‘Exactly. Your most prescient observation yet.’
‘Fine, but you still haven’t told me why you want to be God.’
I scrawled and scrawled and scrawled and his answer – which made little sense at the time – became clear. Clearer, at least, than it had been.
Madala explained how slim the chances were of our little farm actually growing as we intended. The kind of lucky twists of timing and circumstance that would have to occur for us to actually be able to build our way out of our stagnant, inbred state of subsistence. Not only would we require what amounted to the will of the genetic gods to make it through the early phases, but we would require something far greater and more profound. We would need to stumble into a significant intellectual accident to prevent the knowledge and tools at our disposal from becoming old, useless pieces of paper and plastic.
He explained, several times, how far below rudimentary our collective scientific knowledge was.
How unlikely it was that any of our offspring would be able to make the spectacular leap of imagination and intellect required to understand the maths and science behind the boxes we called computers.
‘God,’ he summarised, ‘is necessary. A certain level of ongoing divine intervention is the only route to ensuring that the collective legacy of man doesn’t just dribble into the soil. You will have no success without God.
‘Without me.’
At the time I remember being repulsed by his ambition, but as I wrote, it all appeared more logical.
We had only partially succeeded in educating the children. The more progress we made, the more obvious it had become how many large gaps there were – in our approach, and in the content we were attempting to deliver to our brood. As maths progressed past times tables we – the teachers – were having to teach ourselves too much. The day was fast approaching when it would make more sense to send Roy Jnr by himself into the archives to decide what to learn, and how to go about learning it.
The chance he had created for us, mankind, Madala explained, was the opportunity to reset the pile of sand. To, this time, take advantage of the power and depth of our new foundation. To grow into a new shape and form, to put our abilities and our potential to a new, defining use.
But we needed help.
We needed God.
I allowed myself to picture our grandchildren and their grandchildren and their grandchildren in the fields, perhaps not having the most highbrow conversation in the world and perhaps not communicating with each other across vast geographic distances, but maybe, instead, lolling back, listening to their sisters shrill in the trees and watching their brothers, the buck and the elephant and the lion, go about their own daily quests. It wasn’t such a bad view. The picture, despite its painful weaknesses, held.
What, I had to ask myself, would truly be lost should we let go, should we sink back – not in panic and shock but in calmness and with love?
There were no easy answers. I pored over that single picture for months. I lifted the corners of the canvas and looked underneath, I searched deep, I made sure I took the very lines in each child’s face and broke them apart.
I found nothing other than life.
And what was so wrong with that?
My daughter loose in the grass, expectant and free, as a raw creature of the earth must be. My son wandered the veld thinking idly – not with the force and rigour of structured knowledge but with the freedom and indulgence of play; he is pleased and pleasant and calm. In enough control to be largely free from danger, free enough from danger to relax and explore and smile and fuck and eat berries and kill beasts for meat and … and … and …
Once I had put the full text of our last exchange on paper, I went back and made notes around the conversation, adding observations and details in the margins, inserting pages of footnotes and addenda, and so on. I chased down as many of his technical and scientific observations as I could. I confirmed that my molecular make-up and that of a flower shared the commonality claimed. Regardless of where I turned, his words rang true, like that big brass bell they used to use at the church up the road when I was a child.
I was structurally different. Even the twins, the most benign and accommodating of individuals, struggled with where and how to place me. Andile visited more often, came and sat with me while I drew. She let the silence run free, then sought gently.
‘It’s our turn again soon, nè, Roy?’
I broke from the rhythm of the lines. It didn’t seem possible.
‘For real?’ I said. ‘Doesn’t seem right. How old is Sihle now?’ I considered Andile properly, caught suddenly by the remarkable fact that this soft, gentle woman was the mother of my child.
‘He’s twelve, Roy.’
‘Twelve? Not possible. Last birthday was his eighth. He’s nine.’
‘Roy, look at me, sweetheart.’ I was on the horizon again, locked into the blackness. ‘Roy!’ It was a bark. A command. ‘Roy,’ Andile repeated. She leaned across and took my hand in hers, hers so soft and filled with electricity and life and potential. ‘It’s been two years, Roy, since we lost you. Two years, Roy. You’re still lost, my angel. We still can’t find you …’
Not possible. It had been a few months, four, maybe five.
Andile pulled on m
y arm insistently. ‘Roy, you’re our precious, but we’re terrified we’ve lost you. You’ve been sitting here for years – years, Roy – drawing these things and writing. I don’t know what you’re writing, but you must know it doesn’t make any sense to anyone but you. We’ve tried to read it, but it doesn’t even look like English. Roy, we don’t know what to do. If even you can’t find you, how can we?’ She was crying freely now, her lower lip wobbling all over the place.
‘They sent you here?’ I asked. ‘Assigned to mission Roy, eh?’
‘We need you, Roy. The kids miss you. We miss you. We need you back.’
‘The cup thing. That for real? It’s really our turn again?’
‘Ja.’ Eyes down.
‘I have been around though, nè? I mean, it’s not like I’ve been sitting on this balcony for two years, have I?’
‘Physically, yes, you’ve moved. But mentally, no. Not at all. You don’t hear us. The kids. You scare the kids. They ask but you don’t answer. You know they call you mthakathi now, Roy? And not in a good way. You’re the crazy witch. The scary one. Your eyes. You stare straight through us. We’re steering you around the most basic things. This is the first time, the very first time, you’ve had a conversation.’
‘But I do my lessons. I take my classes.’
‘Those are for you, Roy. Those are your lessons, not the kids’. They are trying to teach you. To reach you.’
I shook my head, slammed it left and right to clear it. Looked around the balcony and saw, as if for the first time, the heaps and heaps of Fabriano, thousands of sheets of the same abstract. Overflowing ashtrays, joint after joint after joint, many – most? – only half smoked.
‘And the cup thing,’ I said. ‘You’re not sure now. No one is. Right? Whether it’s a good idea or a bad one to use these twisted genes. Yes?’ I pictured them around the kitchen table, Babalwa shaking her head in that way, Gerald staring off into the dark middle distance, Fats raising the possibilities and their ramifications.
Andile kept her eyes down. Hands in lap.
‘I’ve gone mad. Have I?’
‘Not mad, Roy. Never mad. You could never be mad. But you’ve slipped a long way now, a long, long way. We can’t figure out if you’re coming back, or whether you’re just going to keep on going.’
V
CHAPTER 55
Very, very busy
The houses, the schools, the surrounds are run through with colour. And trance. Motivations. Exhortations. And a beat that never ends. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, the thump is there.
There is a canon. Created and maintained by Sthembiso, marshalled by his lieutenants, it contains the essentials: Do You Dream? Coldharbour Days. Fly to Colours. Hypnotic. Rain. Sleepwalkers. In a Green Valley. I know them well. I can predict each vocal inflection, the exact points at which we will rise, then fall, then rise again.
They bob as they walk. Boom boom boom boom bob bob bob bob. If I could walk fast enough I would surely bob as well.
The key, as far as I can tell, is that it is not dub. It is the polar opposite of dub, and Sthembiso wants it all – life, the family, the farm, the kids – not to be dub. Dub is the fear. Dub is what could swallow us.
I ask Matron every now and again what she thinks of it, whether her neck doesn’t hurt with all that bobbing, if she wouldn’t value peace, silence and the sound of birds.
‘Tuesdays, eleven o’clock,’ she chirped the first time. ‘Thursday eves, of course, and den also Sunday afternoon.’
‘But isn’t that really regimented?’ I asked, incredulous at her willingness to accept the scheduled call of birds. ‘I mean, isn’t the beauty of the bird that random sound? The chirp out of nowhere?’
‘Hai, tata.’ She chuckled and patted my arm. ‘Always da one, nè? Birds.’ She shook her head at the indulgence. ‘Birds.’
I chuckled too.
There are birds outside. A lot of birds.
But inside is new and shiny and filled with words and phrases.
The beat goes on.
It’s the beat.
We live. We beat.
Remember the nine.
Etc., etc. Of course I don’t really understand what each of them views through their own interface. I refuse to wear the glasses or even think about engaging. But I assume, and I think I’m safe in the assumption. The general messages are repeated, and enforced. Drilled in. Drilled out. I ask, of course. I always ask. They laugh and cluck and pat me on the head. ‘Ah tata, always with the questions. Always.’
The beat is one thing. I understand it. I brought it – albeit accidentally – to this time and place. But the neon is different. Shocking. Ubiquitous. When I am forced to the centre, to the expo or the archive, I take the long way. I step around the colours and the faces – worst of all my own, flashed again and again like a prayer.
It revolts me. The story. The sight of myself. The way we have been cast in this concrete. But, even with eyes down, even taking the long way round, I catch glimpses, flashes.
‘Never Forget’ the text reads above a montage clip of my younger arriving self, hand in nervous hand with Babalwa. We hug Beatrice. Fats beams around us, dancing a little on excited toes. Beneath, a single word: ‘Origins’.
I ask Matron. I mean, I really ask her. I’m not just looking for somewhere to place this escaping old man’s air. I really do want to know.
‘Culture, tata,’ she will say, maybe not smiling this time, maybe serious, maybe really trying. ‘It matters to us, where we comin from, why we here. Wot you did. The journey. Your story. Is important.
‘If we don remember, who den? We love to see you – all a you. An wot you did when it was impossible to do.’
She’s serious. Like death. She believes. My eyes get wet. I push at them. She thinks they are all our tears. She thinks they belong to us.
I don’t have the heart to explain.
There’s talk and movement around a Mlungu’s-style set-up. They are building a set of chairs right now that approximate our old sex-money machine. Doubtless they’ll harness the story of Roy, my story, as they go.
I don’t have the heart to argue. I think of Eileen suddenly, out of nowhere. Eileen with her pad and her notes and her hormone spikes. We could do with her now.
The archive is old and musty. It stinks. There are fish moths. Insects. I refused to paint it, and later I refused to let most of them near it. Once you’re inside you’re safe – no messaging, no interface, no colour, no movement. It’s a library. As long as I’m alive I will keep it that way.
They say it matters. That it’s an essential part of the story – the Eeeyus, specifically, are supposedly within us all. The expo has a whole section on the Eeeyu experience. A narrative, so called. They visit and pray and defer to the idea of it. But the archive? The books? The servers? Untouched.
Unloved.
Unrequited.
I suspect they will tear it down, or wipe it away, or paint it over. But while I live, they would never dare. Sthembiso would never let them. It belongs to me. It is my peace. The little fuckers respect that, despite their stompings. Oh, it is also, crucially, soundproof. There are no beats in the archive. Not even an echo. As I say, peace.
I have no such influence over anything else, though. The corridors and paths – blizzards of neon – I hardly recognise. The expo remains roughly as it was at the core, although they have built and expanded and extrapolated hopelessly. It’s larger. Bombastic. A monument.
When I need to go, when I just have to, I have my own route. I walk around, find the statues at the front and take a quaint little stone alleyway, left in place as a pacifier, around the side, and on this path I know exactly where I am and where I’m going. At the bottom of the alley is the archive. A small wooden door. I push it and I’m in.
Other routes end in frustration. They find me somewhere unknown, wandering, lost, cursing the colours, spitting fire at walls and passages that I refuse, on principle, to read.
They c
all Matron.
Matron tuts in my ear and leads me back.
What are they doing?
Where do all those paths lead?
What are they saying? Why are they saying it?
I can’t tell you.
I wish I knew.
All I can say is what I see, and I see that they are busy. Very, very busy. Friday to Wednesday they rush, heads bobbing, beat driving. They walk alone, they walk in groups, they stop and chat. Some have clipboards, most have notes in one form or another. They all have devices. They all click. Moving or standing, meeting or running, they have a plan.
CHAPTER 56
I am her child
Technically she is the matron. It’s what they all call her. But in my heart, too, she is the matron. Matron defines, now, at the end, my parameters. Her name? I’m not sure. Some days it’s there, others not. Today I must reach. Let’s say Mavis. For today, Mavis. For what that’s worth. But really, she’s the matron. You don’t need to know much more than that.
Matron is somewhere between thirteen and thirty years old. She dresses in the uniform: skintight jeans, tank tops which accentuate her breasts and expose the flesh of her upper body almost completely, and glasses, of course, nestled within a robust afro, unused. Well, unused around me, out of respect for elders, etc., etc. She drops them down as she walks away from my tired old corner house.
Her skin is a cup of strong, milky coffee, so I know that I exist in her somewhere. She is, in an abstract sense, my child.
Mostly, however, I am her child. She walks me. Some days like a dog, some days like a five-year-old, some days like a father who never was. We go out the front and then we debate every turn, as if each choice matters. She offers them gracefully, not at all like some of the others, who ask with a bark and a push. She will gently tata me around a few blocks. Unless it’s a bad day, in which case she will force me distractedly by the elbow, at speed.