The Raft: A Novel

by Fred Strydom

  I’m walking on the steaming pavement and I see an old man walking towards me. He’s wearing a large green trench coat with the collars thrown up. His thin strands of hair are combed to the side, drooping like dead tentacles, revealing pink scalp. He passes me, and the unpleasant secret that lies behind his upturned collar is exposed: his face is a mess of burned skin, a large patch of knots and cracks and swirls stretching from the neck to the forehead, a sludge of skin stirred with a spoon and allowed to set. He shifts his eyes down and looks at me as he goes by, dragging the long, mephitic tail feathers of a strong aftershave behind him—but he doesn’t move his head.

  His eyes seem to say, You see me, but I see you too.

  The man’s face repulses me, but for some reason I also want to touch it—that canyon of scarred tissue—maybe even poke it to see if my finger will push through.

  My mother says, “Don’t stare. It’s rude to stare,” and I snap out of my trance. I look back over my shoulder and see only the normal back of his coat, hunched over as he makes his way to wherever it is that burned people make their way. A cave, I think, or a lair. Some dank and lightless hole, no doubt. Not a regular house like ours, certainly.

  Don’t stare. It’s rude to stare.

  Stare at the stars. Stare at a sunset. Stare into the eyes of someone you love. Stare at your teacher droning on about the fall of apartheid. Stare at your grandfather’s pale face in his open casket.

  But do not stare at the burned man.

  I study my mother’s wide and ordinary face. She’s scanning the lot, looking for her car, one of the many ovular autovehicles glistening beside each other, but this time she looks different. I’ve seen her every day of my life and now she seems a stranger, her car-searching routine a mere impersonation of the woman who did the same thing last Saturday, and the Saturday before that.

  I glimpse behind me. The burned man is gone, and all I can think is that I want to meet him. I want to stare at his face for as long as it takes to satisfy me. Maybe even ask him how it happened. Instead, I climb into the back of my mother’s car as she locks the doors and starts the engine.

  I’m going home but I don’t want to; I don’t want to go home with my mother. I want to see the other side of this pure and cloudless world. I want to see the dark places, hang in the shadows, mingle with the grotesque.

  I gaze through the window as the car pulls out—at ordinary people, walking, talking, laughing—and suddenly feel that everything is wrong. I can’t help sensing, for the first time in my life, that something is being hidden from me. Some difficult, scarred truth. I can’t help feeling I’ve been told not to stare at the burned man all my life.

  Jack Turning can’t get enough of it. He’s finding my thoughts hilarious; he’s laughing maniacally. Strapped to my raft, I feel like a patient in a hospital for the criminally insane. Jack’s some twisted orderly who revels in mocking me, knowing there’s nobody who’ll believe a word of my implausible rants. A part of me knows it’s not possible he’s actually there—out on the ocean at night—but the manipulated part of me wins out and accepts that he is. He’s been there a while now, but I can’t see him. My head’s facing upwards and all my eyes can see is the night sky, peppered in bright white stars. I’ve been here almost a full day, bobbing and rolling in a drugged daze. The water beneath is completely still, as if the novelty of my arrival has worn thin. Directly above, a big white ball hangs in the sky. On any other day I might mistake it for the common moon, this beating planetary thing—but tonight I know better; this is not the moon. It’s a masquerader. A fake moon, the throbbing, sickly orb that’s been hanging in our dreams. It knows our secrets and has promised a few more of its own.

  “The burned man’s a good one,” Jack says. “You’ve held on to that little bauble of a memory for a while now, haven’t you? Kept it all bundled up in the back of your head somewhere. Ja. I like it. Really. I do.”

  I hear him kicking his feet in the water like a bored child. He’s there, my mind tells me, sitting on the end of my raft, but I feel no extra weight there. I wonder what it must be like to exist in a state lighter than air. Surely it’s easier than carrying the extra luggage of heavy bones, organs and flesh? Maybe that’s life’s big problem—its obsession with matter, weighing everything down, making everything just a little harder for us all.

  Jack says, “You, Mr. Kayle, if you please. Tell me something about yourself I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Don’t I?”

  My raft rolls over the water. I turn my wrists in their straps, trying to relieve my irritated skin. Overhead, the moon-like orb is a fat yellow blister against the black rind of the night, waiting to burst and spill its pus. When it does I’ll be here under it. I’ll be drenched in its infected discharge. Drenched and helpless. And Jack Turning will probably laugh his non-existent head off.

  “I know that you think you’ve done some good thing, helping that woman,” Jack says. “And that’s why you’ve accepted this whole raft business. Like some kind of martyr. Ha! I’d go so far as to say you’re even proud of yourself. But here’s the kicker.” He pauses and cackles. “The kicker is you’re not a good man. And you know it. All the helping everyone, listening to everyone’s stories … you’re not doing it because you give a shit at all. You’re doing it because you know what I know.”

  “And what’s that?” I say. My voice is hoarse, my throat dry with thirst.

  “That you’re trying to make up for something. You’re trying so hard to be this shoulder to lean on, this sympathetic ear, but the truth is, good men never worry about doing good things. They just do them. You’re doing it because you know you’re not a good man. Not a good man at all. Only bad men have to work hard at being good. No. You did something terrible, didn’t you? You don’t remember what it is, I’ll give you that, but you know it deep inside of you. You know there is something dark and horrific lurking in the basement of your past, and all this being-a-good-listener, protecting these people’s silly little secrets, is not driven by love, or sympathy, or all that other nonsense, is it? You, Mr. Kayle, are driven by guilt. And the reality is, you’ve accepted your fate on the raft, not because you’re willing to nobly pay the price for helping that woman and her child, but because you know, you know, oh you know that you deserve it.”

  “What do you know?” I blurt, defensively. “You’re not even real.”

  “Not even real?” he roars out hysterically. “Not. Even. Real. That’s great. Just great. Not even real.” The water babbles and slaps against the sides of the raft. “Let me tell you what else I know, Mr. Kayle. After helping Jai-Li, you’ve already decided the beach just isn’t good enough anymore, is it? All this waiting, dreaming, moping. You won’t let yourself waste away on the sand with the rest of them. Nope. So what are you to do? You’re going to get out of here. You’re going to look for your son. Your love will guide you, won’t it?” He chortles again. “A father’s love will guide like the stars in the sky. But here’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Kayle. You will find Andy. I can feel it. I have a kind of sixth sense about these things. But you will not be guided by love. It’ll be by guilt.”

  “Guilt?”

  “Guilt is strong, Mr. Kayle. Powerful stuff. Love nests. It’s an undisturbed ecosystem, like all the little bugs and slugs that live happily together in an everglade. You can sit in one place and wallow with all the love in your heart, but it won’t get you anywhere. You’ll never evolve. You’ll never crash through walls. Love doesn’t change the world. The real driving forces in this world are guilt and fear. Guilt and fear. And you, my friend, have oodles of both. So you’ll find him. Oh, trust me, you’ll find him. Eventually.”

  I scrutinise the surface of the moon orb and it’s moving, swirling like sour custard, bubbling, beginning to ferment. The warm wind rushes across my body and there’s a terrible smell in the air. It’s the smell of cooked meat. It doesn’t belong out here on the ocean. I know this even a
s the drugs do their work and as Jack Turning rattles on.

  Suddenly, Jack Turning is right there, leaning over me, but I do not recognise him. His face is burned. He has no hair. His lips are taut and shiny, his teeth bared in a wide and unnatural grin. His left eyelid is folded over crookedly. His ears are tucked into his head like folded pairs of socks, and he smells like seared meat.

  “But,” he says, “but, but, but … will Andy want to see you? That’s the real question. Will Andy really want to reunite with a murderer like you?”

  Murderer.

  The word swipes at me like the swift talons of a dangerous animal. I don’t know what he means. No, he’s lying this time. He must be, I tell myself. I have never murdered anyone. I don’t know everything but I know what I’m capable of doing and not doing. Some things we don’t have to remember because once they’ve happened they form a part of our constitution forever, like a deep scar that will never fade completely. If anything, I need to believe that, at least. I would know if I’d done such a thing, surely.

  Jack says: “Oh yes, Mr. Kayle. You murderer.”

  My head is strapped down and I can do nothing but look directly back into his face. He squats, perched above me. He will not go away. I want the drug to wear off, to turn to my side, to run and hide, but I can’t, and the saccharine smell of his cooked face sickens me. I cannot turn in the other direction. Because of the raft, I have no choice but to keep staring at the burned man.

  Extracts

  (Excerpt from the The Age of Self Primary)

  There were attempts to restore society, of course. Humankind had lost its memories but little of its instincts. Over time, individuals stepped forward proclaiming they recalled how various systems had once worked—currencies, industries, hierarchies—but their recollections were limited. It was as if each of them recalled the purpose of an arm, or a foot, or an ear, but had no concept of the body as a whole. More importantly, a greater number of people were less than convinced by these declared systems, or interested. Most could barely remember who they were, let alone comprehend the part they were expected to play in the dead trends that had governed modern industries. The factory conveyor belts that had once produced thousands of identical must-have curios produced nothing but dust and webs. The latest fashion trends hung on mannequins in shop windows, enticing nobody. Who could tell the difference between the older model electronic palm-plates and the newer ones? Who had once had authority and who had followed? Who could be trusted to perform a surgery or educate a child? Who were the rightful heirs and what good were class structures without an understanding of status?

  It was soon evident that trying to put together the complex labyrinth of civilisation would be impossible. Nobody knew where to start. The class structure collapsed at the same time as the economy. There were a few sporadic acts of violence and destructive behaviour from a small group of frustrated individuals, but on the whole, the amnesiac populace knew too little of their predicament to build up sufficient rage, let alone sustain it for long enough to act. In the months succeeding Day Zero, most people behaved like harmless, curious babies enamoured by the simple forms of the world.

  It was not long after that a structured group did arise within the broken collective. Established by a man named Diet Coke, this group quickly became known as the New Past. It was the philosophy of Diet Coke and the New Past that the re-establishing of a society was no longer an option. According to the New Past, the extent to which they had found themselves disabled post-Zero had been precisely because of their reliance on external attachments. It had been their superficial regard for the material things that had inhibited them, many centuries before Day Zero had even occurred.

  This pre-Zero period came to be known as the Age of Self, and was denounced as a time of conceit and hollow consumerism. It was “attachment” itself that had crippled the people of the world. It was suggested that the only way to advance was to embrace their disconnection. Materialism was an archaic construct, and only with “detachment” could they hope to prosper.

  Word of the new model spread. Most adopted the model with the sense of hope that had once evaded them. They were given meaning like manna from the sky. Within months, several factions of the New Past sprang up around the world. Electronic technology was rebuked, and forbidden. Land ownership was abandoned. Money was forsaken. It was not long before the New Past proposed its most ambitious policy: the separation of the members of biological families. The family nucleus was the seed of tribal culture, and tribal culture had accounted for most of pre-Zero’s afflictions.

  It was suggested that in order to attain absolute “detachment,” these self-absorbed, outdated nucleuses would need to give way to Diet Coke’s “One Family” proposal, and the timing couldn’t be better. Most members of families did not remember each other well enough to fully resist, and the factions responded with gusto. Protocols were put in place. Locations were selected. Children were removed from their parents, husbands from their wives, and brothers from their sisters. Like the brave passengers of a boat that floats upon an ocean without the labours of unsynchronised oars, they cast out to the remotest corners of the earth with fellow exiles in the belief that their absolute detachment would propel Humankind into its new evolutionary era, the Age of The Renascence.

  Gideon

  K Jenner sat on the porch of his house and drank the last of his beer while he watched the rain. The grey clouds were thickly woven together without a single thinning patch of hope. It had been raining for hours now. K took another sip of his beer and stared out across the dull, mushy land. To the side of the house the two horses stood drenched and motionless in their paddock, blinking their eyes.

  Thunder grumbled in the distance.

  Behind K the front door of the house hung open. Somewhere inside, his son was keeping himself occupied. Andy was good in that way. He didn’t need much to keep himself busy, and K was grateful for that, if nothing else. He no longer knew what to do for the boy. It was hard enough for K to get himself out of bed in the morning without having to worry about how he’d entertain his only child. Recently, the days had been long, silent and uneventful for them both.

  And still, the rain. The hard rain kept coming.

  Months had passed since he had stumbled from his AV on that bright morning without a memory in his head. Months since he had begun to rediscover his wife, and his house, and his life. But now his wife was gone and it was just the two of them. K and Andy. The memories that came back to each of them day by weird day did not arrive in any hurry, or any particular order. The day he and his wife had walked back into the house to find Andy curled up on his bed had been a day of hope. Hope that soon everything would make sense and a semblance of the lives they’d once lived could go on. But it hadn’t happened that way. K had remembered Andy as soon as he’d seen him in the photograph, but his wife had not. To her, the boy on the bed, the boy that she had carried in her body for nine months and had taken care of for twelve years, was a stranger, and seemed likely to remain so.

  K had tried to convince her that Andy was her son, but in the end it had become clear to the woman she’d never remember. Nor would she remember the young girl who’d been her daughter. After some time, perhaps because of frustration or shame, it had become too much for her to handle; one morning K had awoken to discover the woman he’d vaguely recalled as his wife had left. No note. No goodbye. One unremarkable day she had simply vanished, and K and the boy were left to themselves in that big wooden house on the hill.

  K’s own memories were far from complete. In fact, among all the small unrelated fragments that came floating in, it was really only the recollection of having loved his son and dead daughter that returned to him somewhat intact. He did not remember his children as the complex individuals they had undoubtedly once been to him. He knew his son and daughter’s names, that they were indeed his own children, but recalled nothing of the precious stories of their lives that must have once been stitched into his love for them
like the patterns that adorn a handmade quilt. The boy was still a stranger. A stranger whom he should continue to love. That’s what something in him said he should do. That was all.

  Besides the boy, K couldn’t remember much of own life. In the days that followed the resetting, he scrambled to piece together the puzzle of himself. He studied the objects and artifacts in his home as if they were pieces of evidence left by trickster elves—house spirits that sat in the cracks of the walls and enjoyed the ensuing mayhem and confusion from afar. A picture on the wall. The smell of a cologne. The feel of a soft sweater. But even though these trivial memories came back to him like a few loose coins between the cushions of a couch—worth little but heartening nonetheless—he was not able to put any of it together. His ability to read returned but he struggled to use appliances and technologies in the house. Digital screens hung dead on the walls. Whatever information those machines held within their chips and wires, he hadn’t a clue about how to retrieve it. And even if he knew how to operate them, the passwords and numbered codes that would grant access were gone forever.

  The only reason he knew his surname and his initial was because of a plastic card he’d found with his face beside the abbreviated “K Jenner.” Otherwise he’d probably still be nameless. Perhaps it would all come back to him. He hoped he’d wake up one day to find his life restored, but all each new day brought was a meaningless fragment of new knowledge or nothing at all.

  K crushed the beer can in his hand and got up from his chair to go inside the house. Dim shadows of rain fell across the walls of his kitchen as he stood at the counter preparing bowls of noodles for his son and himself. After he was done, he took one of the bowls to his son who was lying on the bedroom floor, reading a comic book. He said nothing to the boy. He grabbed another beer from the fridge and returned to the porch to continue watching the rain as he ate. He had no idea how much of the day was left. The sky was too dark to give away the position of the sun. It didn’t matter anyhow. He slurped at his noodles and followed it with a sip of his beer. When he looked back up from his bowl, he was startled to see an old man dressed entirely in black, standing in the rain, staring at him.