The Boy Next Door

by Irene Sabatini

  I don’t tell him that I had it cut just yesterday.

  That Bea at the salon at Fife Avenue Shopping Centre kept saying, “Are you sure? are you sure?” over and over again. “But you’ve got such lovely, thick hair. The time and work we’ve spent. Look, it falls on your shoulders. Are you sure? Are you sure?”

  And the other customers were looking on in horror as all that hair fell, wasted.

  “Cut it shorter, shorter,” I said, ignoring Bea’s fit.

  “But you won’t be able to perm it. You’ll look like you’ve just stepped off a rural bus.”

  “Cut it, Bea.”

  I don’t tell him that I like his hair this new way, a bit long, and I wouldn’t dare tell him that it makes him look bohemian, artistic.

  I don’t tell him that everything I’m wearing is new.

  The first guy has come. A regular. Tall with a slight paunch. His shorts are shiny blue joggers digging into his crotch. His hair, as ever, is thick, glossy, the curls lapping his shoulders. He is standing, facing the water, his hands on his waist. I wait for Ian to say something.

  “News flash, Lindiwe, I’m not as racialistic as before.”

  “Oh, so you’re still a bit racialistic.”

  “Jeez, let me finish. I think racialism is always there; I’ve toned down.”

  “That’s something.”

  “I think it’s seeing dead bodies, white, black, brown, yellow; in the end they all look the same and that gets you thinking…. Heh, is that a mof—?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Start what?”

  “Yes, he’s a homosexual man, and he is on the lookout for other homosexual men. One will probabely turn up. Homosexuality is illegal in Zimbabwe although lesbianism isn’t; I guess the powers that be don’t think that’s a dangerous enough offense to the nation’s morals. Actually, I’m wrong; strictly speaking it’s sodomy that’s illegal. Let’s see: as long as you don’t practice what can be deemed a homosexual or an ‘unnatural’ act—I guess that includes women, too— everything should be fine. So, let’s not give him a hard time, okay.”

  “I was only making a comment. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m tired, too, Ian.”

  I want to tell him so much, what it means to have him suddenly here, with me.

  “Show me your hands,” I want to say to him.

  We’re quiet for a while watching the gay man. He bends down, dips his hand in the water. When he gets up again, someone is there. Another jogger. The tall guy touches his curls, flings his head back. The other guy pats him on the leg.

  “Looks like he’s happy.”

  “Good for him. Let’s go.”

  “Lindiwe…”

  His hand is tight on my arm.

  I turn around, look up. I’ve forgotten how tall he is.

  I’m standing at the museum in Bulawayo. He wants to know what the hell I’m up to. His hand is tight on my arm.

  “Sorry,” he says and lets go.

  I don’t ask him what he’s sorry for—for grabbing my arm or something else?

  I step back from him. I want to take his hand.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Bronte.”

  I don’t tell him that that’s where Jean and I go when he is in town.

  “We should go up north, Ian. Inyanga. I also need to get away from the heat and all this studying. I think there’s a National Parks office at the back. We can rent a cottage super cheap.” I want to get away. With him.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Why, you’ve changed your mind?”

  “Me. Never. Your Fren…?”

  We meet up again at Second Street Extension for dinner at The Manchurian. We have a seat by the window with a view of the car park, and we can just make out the car under the streetlights. Ian got into a lively discussion with the young tout about looking after his car and making sure its radio and other accessories didn’t magically disappear during the course of our meal. “Yes, baas,” the tout finally said, waving us off with his cleaning rag, and Ian looked at me and shrugged helplessly.

  “Vegetarian, heh?”

  “Yes?”

  “Only vegetables.”

  “And fruits.”

  “Vegetables, chete. Some of your gray matter did get cooked. Which reminds me, the Tongas, how were they?”

  “They’re incredibly resilient, very artistic; you should see the weaving they do for baskets. Anywhere else they would be making a very good living. What are you smiling at?”

  “You sound like a fundie, an expat fundie. Shit, don’t sulk.”

  “I’m not sulking.”

  “So, how does it work here?”

  “You get up, get a bowl, and pick whatever you want to eat; put it in the bowl; choose the sauce; and give it to the cook who stir-fries it in front of your very eyes.”

  “And there’s meat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very sophisticated. And I can take as much as I want?”

  “As much as the bowl fits.”

  “How big is the bowl?”

  “Could you get up and go and see for yourself.”

  “Asch man, it’s not a big bowl.”

  “Do you want to ask the kitchen for another one?”

  “Shit, I want proper food. I’m hungry.”

  “So maybe we can go downtown and get a plate of sadza and relish.”

  “That’s more like it. Come on, I’m playing, Lindiwe.”

  “Not bad. How can you just eat a plate of mush?”

  “They’re called vegetables and noodles.”

  “Yah, mush.”

  “So we set off early tomorrow. Seven, eight o’clock.”

  “Yes, baas.”

  I watch him join the queue again. The solid bulk of him. As if he knows what I’m doing, he glances back, gives me a wink.

  There’s lots I could tell him. Secrets. One by one. All of them. I want him to come back. I want to see his eyes. Find out exactly what shade of blue they are. I want to ask him if he still has that blue (the buttons all done up wrong) shirt.

  I watch him pile up his bowl, splosh in the sauce, hand it over to the cook, say something to him that makes him laugh. I can guess what he said: “Jeez, shamwari, I’m hungry.” I want to look at his hands. His hands that were bruised blue the first time I saw them. The hands that held my face that one night.

  * * *

  He drives me back to the university and he parks outside Swinton, the female Hall of Residence.

  “How’s life in here?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “The guys and girls are separate?”

  “Yes.”

  “The guys don’t get, you know?”

  “They do, especially after Pay Out, I mean when the government grant has come through. Then the Student Union becomes a no-go area for female students. The first year I was here I was… anyway, for some reason beer is subsidized.”

  He turns on his seat. “You were what, Lindiwe?”

  “Nothing, just some stupid guy locked his room and tried… Nothing happened. I screamed like a madwoman. He opened the door, that’s all.”

  “Shit.”

  “It gets out of hand.”

  “Too much jolling.”

  I open the door.

  “Lindiwe.”

  I turn to him, and before I know what I’m doing, my hand is resting on the side of his face, gently there, feeling the warmth of his skin. He puts his hand on top of mine.

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow, outside your Italian Bakery, eight o’clock sharp.”

  “Righto.”

  In my cubicle I open my desk drawer. I take out the box, which is right at the back. I open it. Kings Jewellers. Flame lilies. Thump, thump, thump goes my heart, telling its own impossible story.

  2.

  I’m late.

  “Thought you chickened out.”

  “No. One of the boys beat up his girlfriend. I had to take her to the clinic.
”

  “Jeez man, Lindiwe. You should move out.”

  Jean says the same thing. He’s even offered to pay for the rent.

  “I can look after myself,” I say.

  “This is what I miss. No traffic. No fricking billboards.”

  We don’t talk much all the way up to Marondera, and then as we’re leaving the town center, he says, “In case you’re wondering, I’ve got a spare tire and water and food, not taking any chances this time round.”

  I try to laugh but I can’t.

  Up to Rusape we talk a bit more. He tells me about taking pictures; the black people he has got to know in Soweto; the family who’ve taken him under their wing.

  “First days on the job and I make the cardinal mistake of going down there on my own, and I end up wandering around roads, dirt tracks, shacks still burning; get lost like a real shit and there’s a vibe in the air, bad. The place is deserted like I never seen; anyways, this old chap comes out of his house, tells me not to head into the hostels today, I’ll be killed in no time. Those boys in there once they’ve locked the place down got no time for journalistic what-whats; they smell blood, that’s it; so he lets me hole up in his place, which turns out to be two blocks from the hostel. And you never seen such a scene, Livingstone, his wife, three grown-up kids, six grandchildren, an aunt, uncle all in that matchbox and whoever else drops by from back home. And you see the love in there, the way they are trying to hold everything together, it just makes you think.”

  Hearing, listening to him talk like this in the car, I am brought back again to what must have struck and touched me as a schoolgirl, the gentleness at his core.

  “We’ve had braais together on that patch of dirt at the front of his house; of course, the whole street soon joins in. Man can Livingstone eat. I thought I was one greedy bugger. They lost a son in Sharpeville, fourteen years old. And you try and find the bitterness there, nothing, anger, yes, and this desire for justice. You know for the first time I can actually see myself on the same footing as blacks; I’m in their home, I’m a guest. I see all the bullshit of yesterday, of our fossils. ‘Ah, the blacks that’s how they live; they’ve just come out of the bush. They don’t understand European things. They’re just like that; they don’t mind no electricity,’ all that shit. When you see a family, decent people, trying to get by then it really donnars you. You’ve been thinking one way for one hundred percent of your life so far, and then, bam, you start to see, and it hits you hard…. Anyways, people change, that’s all I’m trying to say.”

  He’s quiet for a long time after that.

  We stop at The Crocodile Motel in Rusape to stretch our legs, have a Coke. There are some children playing in the pool.

  “Do you know that guy?” Ian asks.

  I lean over, and for a moment, my heart must miss a beat.

  Under one of the umbrellas, there’s a man looking directly at us.

  There is a shameless scramble in my head for words.

  “He’s been eyeing us since we walked in. What the hell is his problem?”

  “Yes, I know him. He’s, he’s a friend, Herbert.”

  “Air-bair. Let me guess, Frenchie?”

  “Yes, he works for a French NGO that’s based here. I’ll just go and say hello.”

  I get up. I am conscious of Ian behind me, watching as I walk towards Herbert, Jean’s good friend.

  “Lindiwe,” Herbert says. “I thought it was you.”

  He stands up, pushes himself away from the carcass of the T-bone steak, and gives me a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

  He smells heavily of the Galois cigarettes he chain-smokes.

  “As beautiful, as always,” he says.

  “I’m… I’m… with a friend.”

  How guilty and imbecilic I sound.

  “I told Jean I’d be going away.” Guilt, guilt, guilt. “How is Marie? Tell her I say hello.”

  “In Cape Town, to get some culture.”

  Herbert shrugs.

  Last time I saw Marie she was in a rage, screaming at him about how sick she was of living like a rat. Later we had sat outside on the veranda where she told me that sometimes she feared she was losing her mind and that she would not be good for anything. She needed civilization, culture. Books. Theater. Art.

  “I am harsh, no,” she said. “So much poverty, hardship here, and I want these things. I think I will leave Herbert. Go back to France. But then I think, France, I am a small insect. I will get trampled on, poor little me.”

  “I pick her up from the airport tonight. And your friend, you are visiting this sleepy place or you’re passing by to Inyanga?”

  “No, yes, and… I… it was good to see you, Herbert.”

  When I come back, Ian is up on the veranda fiddling with one of the table games there.

  We both watch Herbert get up, wave, and leave.

  “One of your expat friends,” Ian says.

  It is a matter-of-fact statement. Almost. A statement of fact. Almost.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a big guy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Looks a bit like that Lethal Weapon chap.”

  He looks at me and then he says, “Let’s go.”

  “If you want I can drive.”

  “You can drive?”

  “Yes, don’t look so shocked.”

  “I have to get used to you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Grown.”

  He’s driving. I’m in charge of navigation.

  “We turn off here, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, it’s the only turnoff. Yes, I’m right, that signpost says Nyanga National Park.”

  As soon as we leave the main road and get onto the gravel, something seems to happen. It’s as if the car has slid off somewhere and is floating, weightless, carrying us with it. I know he feels it too because he turns and says, “Jeez, man, now I feel lekker.” We dip and turn, dip and turn, and ahead of us as we rise, the mountains ripple away in waves, the mist snatching bits of them away. I open the window, put my head outside. The air is cool and scented with pine. Then we’re in a forest, the trees sometimes so close to the road I can touch them, the breathless eeriness of us, the car, on this pass almost makes me want to cry.

  “I hope you brought a jersey,” he says.

  “Yes, I did.”

  We stop at Juliasdale to buy some groceries. We both take a basket. He fills his with a carton of Castle beer, a loaf of bread, cheese, biltong, chips, a packet of T-bone steaks, Nestlé coffee, sugar, Marie biscuits. I fill mine with milk, tomatoes, pasta, onions, toothpaste, carrots.

  At the counter he looks over at my basket and says, “Healthy living, heh?”

  “At least I won’t die of a heart attack.”

  “No, you’ll die because of a lack of food. How can you live in Africa and swear off meat. You must be penga.”

  The lady at the counter smiles.

  “Are you paying together?” she asks.

  “No,” I say, taking out my purse.

  “Yes,” Ian says and pushes past me.

  In the car I say, “Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “For paying.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  I close the window and I listen to the sound of the car moving. We catch a glimpse of the falls.

  “We’ll check them out tomorrow. I hope you like hiking. What kind of shoes have you got?”

  I lift my foot, show him the Bata tackies.

  “They’ll do. You really need a pair of veldt skoeners, farmer’s shoes, if you’re going to be serious.”

  It’s three o’clock when we arrive at the lodges. Ian gets out of the car to get the keys from the warden at the gate. The warden walks around the car, takes a look at me, and says to us, “No hooting in the park, please, and drive with due respect.”

  The cottage is right deep in the park, and it takes us another twenty minutes to find it. There are no other cars arou
nd. I stand outside and feel for one moment, looking at the still water of the lake, absolute peace. I look up to catch Ian watching me.

  “That’s a picture I could take,” he says.

  Inside, the cottage is simple and clean. Two old-fashioned sofas with sunken seats facing the fireplace. Four chairs, a table with a formica top, like the one in the kitchen in Bulawayo. One main bedroom with twin beds and a tiny one with a single bed. Ian throws both our bags in the main bedroom. Then we look at each other.

  “Right,” he says.

  “Right,” I say.

  “Beer.”

  He’s drinking a beer on the veranda.

  “Come on, sit,” he says.

  I drag the chair next to him.

  “Want some?”

  I shake my head, then change my mind. “Yes.”

  “I’ll go and get you a glass.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll just take a sip. Okay, you can pour it into a glass.”

  “Jeez, you’re complicated. Just take a sip. You don’t have herpes, do you?”

  “The question is, do you?”

  “Check.” He purses his lips towards me. I laugh.

  “It looks safe.”

  He gives me the bottle. I take a sip.

  “You don’t drink much do you?”

  “No, I don’t like the taste.”

  “I should have picked up a bottle of wine.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “Look, look, over there, look at that.”

  Two large brown eyes in a clearing. Then another two.

  “Waterbuck,” he says.

  The two animals look at us intently, and then they skip off into the mist.

  Sleeping arrangements.

  I’m standing at the door with my bag.

  “Good night,” I say.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “The other room.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “Because what?”

  “I’ll just feel better, I mean, more comfortable there.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Good night.”

  “Come on, Lindiwe, stay here. How am I going to talk with you if you’re right at the other side?”

  “We’re supposed to be sleeping, and it’s right next door.”